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Getting to Know John Feher
John Feher was born in St. Thomas and has spent most of his adult life in London. A former business owner, John is now retired. John says that as the father of a son in his twenties, he’s thinking about the next generation of Londoners.
And working with the Canadian Mental Health Association gave him a deeper understanding of the human challenges facing many Londoners.
Feher says he is running for mayor to bring practical leadership, accountability and compassion to City Hall.
He is the first candidate in London’s 2026 mayoral race to answer The Loon’s Ten Questions, a series giving candidates the opportunity to share their priorities and positions directly with voters.
John Feyer spoke with journalist Lisa Brandt on October 9, 2026. Their conversation was recorded and is available below in both audio (transferred to YouTube) and written formats.
The candidate’s responses have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
John Feher: In His Own Words
Londoners are facing rising property taxes. What would you do to keep future increases down?
I just announced this a couple weeks ago at West Haven golf course. Freeze taxes on seniors’ homes for the next three years. And in the fourth of the year we will reevaluate.
There’s a government-funded program that allows it and it doesn’t cost the taxpayer any money. And so that’s what I’m going to do when it comes to the taxes, especially because nobody’s looking after our seniors, and it’s time that we do. So, that is, my one area right now that I’m going to be refocused on — getting that implemented.
Do you support completing London’s BRT system as planned? If not, what would you change?
Well, we’ve already spent all this money. We can’t get it back. And the sad part about it, we really didn’t need to do this. I did a little bit of homework on rapid transit, and I have here, CN has a live line going from downtown right up to the 401 or 402.
Where we could, actually, anybody coming into London, could actually take a ten-minute train ride or caboose ride, whatever you want to call it, get downtown, grab an Uber, go to the office, go to the business, get back to the highway at ten minutes, and be on your way to your next meeting or home, or wherever you want to go. Which I think in turn is going to bring business because people will see how easy it is to access our downtown.
The bus rapid transit, if you’re coming from Sarnia, it’s 45-minute drive. It’s still going to take 40 minutes with the bus rapid transit because of the lights. And if there’s a car accident?
Now, you’re in real trouble. And so there’s a lot I would like to go over, I have two weeks to go over. And I’ll be doing more videos regarding that and showing the maps that I’m talking about and hopefully we could improve this quite a bit.
What is the most important thing you would do to improve downtown London?
Well, that’s a great question. And what I’m going to do is, I’m going to take our drug addicts our homelessness, and our mental health, and we’re going to separate all three of them. Because not all of them are the same. And people don’t understand this.
Because you’re homeless doesn’t mean you’re a drug addict or you have mental health. It could have happened because you had - a separation, a death in the family, you lost your job.
Any number of things could have happened to make you homeless. And so a lot of people need a fresh start.
And that’s where I’ve reached out to different communities to get their ideas, and they’re willing to help work with me then I can work with council so we can get some of these affordable homes built. And get these people off the street and into affordable housing. Because I don’t classify $1,600-$1,700 for a one-bedroom, affordable housing.
My niece’s ex-husband and two girls. they live in SoHo, which you hear Josh Morgan brag about, but he pays for a two-bedroom just over $2,000. And he can barely afford it, he’s an apprentice. So he can’t take them anywhere. I don’t classify that as affordable housing.
You’ve answered my next question, which is, what would you do differently to address homelessness, addiction and public disorder?
What I plan on doing there is having a center for the drug addicts and not for a ten-day program or 20- or 30-day program. They just don’t work. For me, working in the business for many years, you’ve got to be in one of these rehab centers for at least six months just to get off them completely. I know you, people say, oh, it only takes ten days to get out of your system. That’s a fantasy.
It’s because it’s more of a habit, just like quitting smoking. Everything becomes a habit like; you always have to have something in your hand. You know when people that got to drink coffee or beer or anything, but if you have any of that stuff, you always have to smoke, they go hand in hand.
So they need to be somewhere, then we can move them into assisted living where you’re basically like a group home. And you just get the feeling of feeling welcomed and have a safe place to go and knowing that there’s help there for you. So when you do go into, out into the public world and into affordable housing, you’re prepared for it. And that’s what we plan on doing.
When, if ever, would you use your strong-mayor powers to override Council?
Ah, that’s a great question. And a lot of it, like, for instance, I’ll tell you — [is] the tax freeze on the seniors. I’ll tell you, I’ve heard from so many people since I announced this, sending emails saying, “Why do you want to help them [seniors]”? You know, someone makes $60-70,000 a year can’t own their own home.
Yeah, but these are the people that brought you into this world. These are the people that raised you, they sent you to school. These were the people who looked after you your whole life. And now, you don’t want to make sure they have a good life? That doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever, so we need to look after them.
And we also need to look after our students. So, that’s why I propose, I’m really strong for public transit for their students, because everybody seems to be driving.
So, for the first year I plan on — it’s going to be free busing for seniors and students.
And for the students, that’s just for the school year. And that’s for people on disability as well. Like, it’s all got to go one and one because I had a mother come up to me, or actually, up to my wife and she was waiting for a geared to income home. And she said, there’s a ten-year wait to it.
So this other woman came up and she said I have two children. I’m a single mom and I can’t make my appointments because a bus - we have to wait for, and get out a transfer before we run out of bus tickets.
And well, we’re going to stop that. And then someone says to me, well, John, you know, seniors get half-price bus tickets. Doesn’t matter. Two dollars helps everybody. You know, you want to go to Cherryhill Mall or White Oaks Mall or whatever, have a cup of tea or cup of coffee, that extra two dollars three dollars makes the big difference to get over the hump.
What is one major decision made by the current Council that you would have handled differently?
That’s easy. All right, that is so easy it’s not even funny, and, and that’s the way they’re handling the drug addiction, homelessness, and mental health. I get more emails on that than I do anything else.
And we have these three councillors that the mainstream media have already made, they’re the only three in the race (Feher means three Mayoral candidates). Well, it’s not true, like they tried this thing at the London Club and only three of them were invited and the rest of us weren’t.
So I got on the phone with the RRAI2, and they booked me – before it even hit the door I was already booked in there. I’m a member at the RRAI, so all the candidates for the mayor, as many candidates come in, and the public come in because I believe everybody should be working from the same plate. All right, they should not be separated.
I actually had one media dude say, well — the rest of you can’t raise enough money. He goes I’ll bet $500 and I’ll donate it somewhere. Well I self-fund myself. And I guarantee you I’m not hurting for any of his money that he’s talking about. And they’re getting paid by the taxpayer dollar to run against me. I don’t think that’s fair either.
They should put a two-month hiatus while the election’s going on. And then, if any, money is owed at the end of the two months, okay, we settle up. But until then, they should not be using that money to run against us because they’ve been promising us since COVID about drug addiction, all this downtown, and they’ve done nothing. Zero. And it’s only gotten worse.
We had one of the candidates for the mayor on the London news yesterday, say, oh you know, the drug addicts, how they’re breaking in all these places. They’re making a mess, doing all this stuff well, hang on a second here. You’ve had how many years since 2020 to get this sorted out, but you’re obviously too busy doing something else.
Instead of doing what the people of London want, you guys [current Mayor and council] have your own agenda, and that has to change.
How can the city accommodate growth without putting too much pressure on existing taxpayers?
At the moment with the highest unemployment rate in Canada, we can’t. Like, if you want to be totally honest, the more people that come into London right now, our unemployment rate is just going to rise.
And the government, you know, we pay all these new people coming into London, or into Canada and I don’t begrudge them. It’s offered to them. Here you go. Here’s the money. And why would you say no? It doesn’t make any sense. But if we keep bringing them into London and we have no place to put them, and we have no jobs to put them into, then we’re running into big problems.
So we need to attract [people] because we are at a perfect spot. We’re right in between Toronto and Windsor, and so what we should be doing is utilizing that and getting manufacturers.
And again, that’s what I said about the CN rail going down into downtown, that makes it a little more attractive for everybody to, okay, this makes sense to come to London. Let’s do some business here. We could have a head office here. We could have a building here. We could have trucks deployed to Toronto, Montreal to Windsor, Niagara. Wherever you want to go.
We’re in the perfect spot, so we need to attract businesses. And don’t get me wrong, the small businesses that supply work for 20 people, 30 people that’s fantastic. But if we could get the ones that are 200, 300, 400 [people], now we’re talking numbers, and we can make big changes and start growing and accepting more people into the city.
What would you change to make City Hall more transparent and accountable to taxpayers?
Ah. Well… this is a funny story that you ask that because I had to go online and I was trying to get the numbers for the lawsuits of the potholes we have in this city against London. And it took me two months to get it. And I couldn’t understand why?
And, I’m going okay — hang on a second here, this doesn’t make any sense. I go to the courthouse, and I said: “This is all I’ve asked for”, and they said to me: “Well, John, we’re still on DOS”.
And I just almost laughed. I couldn’t believe it. Young people won’t know what I’m talking about. And I said, really? Yeah, so I go back over to City Hall and the girl looks it up, she goes yeah, you emailed us. I said then, why didn’t you tell me that when I was online to begin with, and I paid online when I could have come here and paid”? But she goes, I don’t know. So, I said, all right, and she said it’s going to take about two months.
Then I finally got it [the information he was seeking]. And I only asked for a six-month version, okay — from last August to the end of the year.
And it was $177,000 in lawsuits we paid out [to the City of London], just off potholes. All right — so if I give it a full year, let’s add just a hundred thousand. Keep the 77 out.
You’re at a quarter million dollars of wasted taxpayer money because you still have your lawyers to pay for, right?
You have all these things to pay for that go with going to court. So, it’s stuff like this just blows my mind.
So, I’m going to have that on our website. And I’m going to give you — this is a great example because I know the question is going to come up about waste. Okay, garbage disposal.
So, if I say, okay, we’re going to go back to the one-week pickup, but we need new garbage bins, okay? The green garbage bins that we’ve already paid for, people are still paying taxes on them. All right because they haven’t taken it off. So, then, how does that make any sense to anybody?
So, I’m going to have it where you could go online, check the thing, whatever upgrade we’re doing in this city, you’ll see when it started, when in the middle, and when it’s paid for, and when it’s done, the taxes stop. All right, so everybody, you could pay in advance, you can do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter.
But everybody will be able to see what’s going on, and I think that is very important because people want to know where their money is, where it’s going.
You know, it’s like when they brag about how they invest. ‘So I get 5% back on my money.’ And from the start, I just start laughing. I go 5%? If someone offered me 5%, I’d laugh at them.
When I was in my twenties I bought my first house. And the mortgage rates were 13%. If somebody came to me then and said, I’ll give you 5% on your money, oh, I’d be happy. Nowadays, the 5% for people forget they’re paying that broker, appointing a half to two points, and then they’re making money on the other end.
You’ll never seen investor drive a bad car or the kids wear bad clothes, ever. So when they brag about that — if any one of these candidates want to talk about it, go head-to-head with me on that they can, even though one was supposed to be a heavy accountant for 25 years, all this stuff.
I don’t buy it for a second because it took all this time, we have a mayor who’s in charge of the budget for six years, and was assistant mayor for two — and between you and the accountant, could not come up and tell people why our taxes are going up in our homes?
Now, are these are the people you want running your city? When they can’t even figure it out? When some Joe Blow like me — I’m just a normal guy trying to retire, but when my sister forced me to do this [run for Mayor] during COVID, I wouldn’t sign up then because she was dying of cancer.
I said, I’m not leaving you, and she just kept pushing, pushing, pushing. And then, when she finally passes, I said, all right, we’ve got to do this. Let’s do it, so, that’s my little spiel on being accountable at city hall.
What do you believe is the fundamental choice London voters are being asked to make in this election?
To vote for the three that the media expect. When the three were announced at the London Club, we were – I can’t remember where we were, but a bunch of the mayoral candidates come up to me, and they’re going like, how is this fair? And that’s why I did what I did. (Editor’s Note: The London Club had a Mayoral debate that didn’t include all of the candidates - which received a lot of backlash online. So John Feyer booked the club himself and held a debate that included all of the candidates that weren’t included in the initial “meet the candidates” meeting).
Because then what they did is they had the London Club members go into the room with them. It wasn’t covered by the media, I don’t believe, or one of the guys from CTV News covered it, but they took a backlash on that on social media.
You know, they talk about homelessness, they talk about drug addiction, make it safe for kids to go to school, I mean, the parks, downtown, go for an ice cream. But you can’t. Because it’s not safe enough. But everybody here now is promising, and they just reworded it from what they did four years ago. So they added different words to it to try to fool you and, ‘oh yeah, I saw them. I’m going to vote for them.’ Yeah, this is not right. Don’t ever vote with your heart.
It’s like when you have children and you discipline them; you’ve got to make a choice. And you know what’s good, and what’s bad for them. And I’ll give you a great example. My best friend, he’s a surgeon at Victoria Hospital with children. And one mother was told, keep away these shiny objects from your son because he likes to swallow them. And she goes, well, I’m a helicopter mom. I let him get away with this, so he doesn’t scream. He goes well, look where you are. Now you’re in the hospital.
You have to make the right choices, it’s the same thing. When you’re picking someone, oh well, ‘they came and they took a picture with me. They came to an event they did this.’ Okay. So, for the last ten years, what have they been doing? They promised you. They’re going to fix, fix, fix, fix. It’s only got worse, worse, worse, worse.
So put someone in, like myself. I’ve owned a couple companies that became very successful. And as for my sister, she used to work for me, knew exactly what I’m capable of.
If I tell you, I’m going to do it, it’s going to get done. It’s as simple as that and it has to be the choice people have to make.
It’s like when you hire a friend at home to do some work around your house, and you know, they’re no good at it, but you’re doing it because you’re trying to help them out. Now you got to hire somebody else to fix the problem that he did. Now cost you twice the money, right?
So that’s why, before I even signed up, I had these cards made. It says the city of pro-activity instead of reactivity. And I had these made even before I signed up. My wife said, ‘what are you talking about?’ I said, well think about it. You drive around the city, they’re building stuff, and then all of a sudden they got to go back in and redo the water mains or do whatever.
They’re spending two, three times the amount of money that actually need to be spent if they, if you know, they’re 40 years old — fix them before you put a neighborhood in there. It’s this is not rocket science. It’s very basic stuff.
And so I’m trying to get the voters to understand, don’t vote with your heart, vote with who can do the job, because in four more years you don’t want to be emailing me back and going, ‘Oh, I should have voted for you because you did something with the homelessness and drug ‘addiction.’ Why, you don’t like this guy no more? No. That’s not how it works. By the way, you don’t like this guy, no more.
If you are elected as London’s next mayor what will your first 100 days in office look like. What are the first steps you will take to implement your vision?
You are going to see people actually working. Okay, I’m going to have it separated where I’m going to have one set of workers just working specifically on rehab centers and low-income housing, and that’s going to be their job.
The rest of us, we are going to start right from the ground up, like, from potholes to the speed bumps to construction. I’m getting a lot of calls about construction.
I’m going to do a couple new bylaws, which it’s going to annoy some people, but I’ve annoyed a few people in my life so it’s all good. One of the first things, and I get asked this question especially when I go to seniors’ retirement home — and I get a lot of times, John, you know we get these e-bikes and scooters on the sidewalks, and they almost hit us.
And I know there’s an Ontario bylaw where you can’t ride your bike, your scooters, that on the sidewalks, but we’re going to enhance it. If you are caught, we’re going to have a bylaw. If we have to get the best bylaw lawyer involved, that’s fine and dandy. Where if you get caught, it’s up to the police discretion, your scooter or whatever will be confiscated for 15 days and followed by a fine, plain and simple as that.
You’re staying off the sidewalks because I’m keeping the bike lanes, okay. But I’m getting rid of all, you know, the protruding things that come off the sidewalks that people got to go around, that snow plows can’t go through and stuff. Those are all going to be gone, and so are the speed bumps. That way, we’ll keep the bike lanes, the scooters will have to stay on those.
But that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to keep it separated because we have to have a team working on one area where the other team can work on the other area. And because dealing with the drug addiction and homelessness and mental health,
It’s not going to happen overnight. I can promise you that, right now, okay. And the mental health is, like, my wife has bipolar. And she was diagnosed, I can’t remember how many years ago, but it was a lot, because she had an imbalance. And to this day she takes her meds and you wouldn’t even know it, but people talk about it and she tells them like, ‘I used to go on trips and spend money. I used to do stuff that was not me.’ And her family, they couldn’t understand. They’re farmers out from the Chatham area way.
But there’s different ways to handle because you can get mental health issues, like, I said earlier, from separation, you know, because where am I going to pay my next bill? How am I going to feed my kids? How am I going to pay the rent? What’s going to happen? And that bleeds into depression. And that’s where it starts. And it just grows from there.
I’m looking forward to running. I’m looking forward to the vote. Thank you. Have a great day and vote. Remember Feher for mayor!
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About the Author - Lisa Brandt
Lisa Brandt is a broadcaster, podcaster, voice-over professional and writer. She teaches part-time in the Fanshawe College journalism program. She has also published four novels. All of her work is supervised by a senior rescue cat named Cuddles.
Paid Political Advertisement - This article appears as paid sponsored content on behalf of John Feher’s campaign for Mayor of London. This paid placement is separate from The Loon’s independent editorial coverage and does not constitute an endorsement of the candidate.