About Reid
Reid, his wife Susan Steele, and their two sons, have lived in Unionville since 2002. His elder son recently graduated from Bishops University in Quebec, and the youngest studies at at the University of Waterloo. Both attended Unionville High School and Parkview Public School. Susan is the Vice-President of Sales K-12 for Pearson Canada, an international educational publisher.
Reid holds an MBA from London Business School at the University of London in England. While in the program he spent an exchange semester at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He also conducted hands-on business consulting projects in Hong Kong, Britain, Poland and Russia.
Reid also earned an honours BA in economics and political studies from Queen’s University. He holds French language diplomas from the Sorbonne and the Université Savoie Mont Blanc in France.
Reid spent 25 years with Pearson, where Susan continues to work. He led large teams to develop resources for school students across Canada. He is particularly proud of the work he did to develop innovative world-class teaching tools to support struggling mathematics students and to improve opportunities for indigenous students.
Visit Reid’s Linked In page.
November 21, 2022
Dear Neighbour,
Thank you to the residents of Ward 3 Unionville who supported me to remain as their city council representative for another four years in the October 24, 2022 local elections. This website was recently revised. However, most of what I wrote when it was first created in 2018 still applies. I remain committed to supporting and building a safe healthy community amid the pressures of growth. I think we have made some progress on that front. But I have also learned how challenging the task is. Developing good public policy is time consuming, as it should be – a pace recently exacerbated by the pandemic. And as a new councillor I learned just how steep the learning curve can be. Now, with four years under my belt, I am much more able to move initiatives forward through the corridors of the civic centre.
Significant achievements include getting the Markham Centre Secondary Plan off the ground, and driving forward a complete reconstruction of the Main Street Unionville streetscape (beginning in 2023). In both cases, the time it takes to move these sorts of things along was clearly evident – longer than a single term on council would ever permit. Both will take vigilance well into the future, to ensure they are properly conceived and implemented.
The same will be true of a new secondary plan for Markville, to ensure that new development proposals for the area are part of a larger plan for a healthy new community. And the new Comprehensive Zoning Bylaw will require detailed oversight to ensure that the new zoning standards for the city don’t negatively impact our mature communities. In fact this will be an opportunity to improve some of the negative impacts of infill housing already being experienced.
So, understanding the issues, and thoughtfully balancing the many competing forces unleashed by rapid economic and population growth, will remain at the top of my agenda. I am proud of my record to date. I look forward to continuing to implement a vision of Ward 3 that makes it the envy of the GTA as a place to live, work, play, raise a family or even retire.
. . . for a better Markham!