The Bloody Gall
October 5, 2025
In perhaps the understatement of the year, Mat Siscoe’s tenure occupying the office of mayor in St. Catharines has been an unmitigated disaster in more ways than one. One can only hope for a credible candidate to step forward next year to challenge him. Equally important is to have a fair election, without voting machines and with independent and unbiased overseers. Unionized City staff do not qualify. I’d sooner trust Siscoe to be counting the ballots.
He has introduced appalling tax hikes. He claims to have no choice, all while gleefully throwing away a $2 million asset for a homeless shelter. Under his watch, already burdensome regulations have mushroomed out of control. For example, this past year, the City issued a 33-page document for any downtown business owner who wanted to put up a patio, which included 23 terms and conditions that must be met before approval is granted. Yet he expected praise for cutting the fees in half.
Downtown business owners are further hampered by the presence of the St. Catharines Downtown Association, who he continues to compel them to fund. At best, the SCDA is an indolent nonentity. At worst, they act as the municipal arm of the anti-business NDP, fighting what feeble efforts Siscoe has made to try to save a buck or two.
The same man who preaches inclusion at every opportunity is doing his best to exclude people from using City services they’re being compelled to pay for and subsidize. Look no farther than downtown, where half the parking spots and the entire Ontario Street parking garage is now off-limits to those without smartphones. Now City staff are phasing out cash as a method of payment. All while he sits on the sidelines and cheers them on. He campaigned on accountability, yet has proven himself to be little more than a vassal of the staff, who he allows to operate with impunity. Whatever they want, they get. His hand must be sore from rubber stamping their edicts.
Scenes from a St. Catharines City Council meeting.
Any taxpayers who express opinions unfavorable to those edicts have their comments hidden and are shadow-banned on Facebook. Pay your taxes and shut up, in other words.
Having once laughably claimed to be a conservative, Siscoe has surrounded and allied himself with far-left radicals. So the $1 million of your money and mine he flushed down the toilet for DEI and the untold amount he spent to defile the front steps of City Hall with rainbow colors should come as no surprise. Again, no choice but to hike taxes through the roof, he says, yet there’s no shortage of money when it comes to appeasing the rainbow mafia.
His tenure in the mayor’s chair has been a complete failure. There is no aspect of his job he has done well. He has become a genuine embarrassment to the city.
And yet, despite doing all he can to drive people and jobs away, just the other day, he posted a video of himself celebrating small business month. It’s important to shop local, to dine local, to support local, to support your neighbors, support your friends, support your family members and all of the great things they’re doing in the community, he says. Yet not surprisingly, rather than congratulating business owners on their resilience as they battle his anti-business administration to stay afloat, he offers thanks to the St. Catharines Enterprise Center and the City’s Economic Development department. Useless agencies which do little but gobble taxpayer money and employ spin doctors whose top priority is justifying their own well-paying jobs.
The bloody gall, I thought. It’s like Colonel Sanders celebrating Chicken Freedom Month.
There isn’t anyone in this city who has done more harm to the business community than Mat Siscoe.
The best thing he can do for the small business owners is to take his steel-toed boots off their necks.
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