Behind the Headlines: Interview Brief: Toronto Star, October 13, 2026

The Toronto Star submitted the following questions to Mayor Brian Smith. The responses were prepared and shared with the Toronto Star and are reproduced below in full, with only two minor redactions to remove election-related references. All other content remains unchanged.

Q1: According to news stories, Wasaga Beach is one of Ontario’s fastest growing communities. Why isn’t the recent influx of population enough to sustain a tax base in Wasaga Beach? Why do you need to develop the beach area? Who are you looking to attract?

MAYOR SMITH:

I would challenge the premise of the question a little bit. The Main End has been the vibrant tourism heart of Wasaga Beach for more than 100 years. Generations of Ontarians have come here for the beach, the businesses, the entertainment and the experience around it.

And there are no plans to develop the beach. The beach will always remain public.

What we are talking about is renewing the commercial and tourism areas around it—much of it on land that is already developed or occupied by aging infrastructure and large, underused asphalt parking lots created by the provincial park.

At the Main End today, roughly 42 per cent of the study area is surface parking. That is a legacy of a very different tourism model—one built around accommodating huge numbers of summer day-trippers by car.

Destination Wasaga asks what that same land could do for the community today: better public spaces, year-round businesses, accommodation, recreation, entertainment and attractions, while maintaining convenient public access to the beach.

Population growth is part of the story, but residential growth alone does not create a balanced municipal economy. It also creates demand for roads, parks, recreation, emergency services and other infrastructure.

At the same time, Wasaga Beach already welcomes more than two million visitors every year.

So, the opportunity is not simply to attract more people. It is to make the visitation we already have work better for the community—giving people more reasons to stay overnight, stay longer, visit in the spring, fall and winter, explore more of Wasaga Beach and spend more with local businesses.

That supports stronger businesses, more year-round jobs, more private investment and a stronger commercial tax base. Right now, Wasaga Beach sits at about 95% residential tax base, 5% commercial.

The beach is what draws people here. Destination Wasaga gives them more reasons to stay, explore and come back.

Our North Star is simple: A place where people love to live is a place people will want to visit.

Q2: Why doesn’t Wasaga have a main downtown shopping street, or many of the amenities that other towns have? I’d like to explain to readers why the town’s growth was so different from other Ontario towns.

MAYOR SMITH:

This is really where you have to understand the history of Wasaga Beach, because our community developed very differently from a traditional Ontario town.

Wasaga Beach was never an industrial town. It was a beach town. Other communities developed around rail, shipping, manufacturing or some combination of those things. Their downtowns grew around those industries and the permanent commercial activity that came with them.

Wasaga Beach developed around tourism. Historically, the beachfront was our commercial and social centre—it was our downtown. You had hotels, restaurants, shops, cottages, dance halls, amusement rides and entertainment concentrated around the Main End. Then, beginning in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1960s and 1970s, the Province acquired and expropriated extensive properties to create and expand Wasaga Beach Provincial Park. Homes, cottages and family-run businesses were removed, and large areas of the waterfront eventually became parkland and surface parking.

There is actually a very good TVO piece, “The great Ontarian postwar parks boom”, that gives some useful context for what was happening at Wasaga Beach at the time—tens of thousands of visitors a day in the summer, cars along the waterfront, very limited infrastructure, and the Province beginning to reshape the beachfront around that tourism model.

The model that emerged was largely about accommodating huge numbers of summer day visitors. The acres of surface parking and aging asphalt you still see at the Main End are part of that legacy. The visitors kept coming—millions of them—but with expropriation and demolition, much of the commercial infrastructure that allowed the community to benefit economically from that visitation disappeared.

And you also have to understand the scale of the park that was created. I’m going to ask staff to share a map with you, because it really puts this in perspective. Wasaga Beach Provincial Park is more than 1,840 hectares—roughly one-third of the entire municipality. Most people in Toronto probably picture the park as the strip of sand along Georgian Bay, but it is much, much bigger than that. The beachfront is really only one part of it.

So for more than 50 years, one of the largest pieces of land in our community—and the principal tourism asset around which our economy developed—was controlled and managed by another level of government.

The Town still lived every day with the pressures and opportunities created by millions of visitors, but it had limited ability to manage the asset at the centre of the destination, shape the visitor experience around it or capture enough of the economic value.

That combination—a community built around tourism rather than industry, followed by decades in which much of its principal tourism asset was managed by another level of government—is a big part of why Wasaga Beach developed differently from communities like Collingwood.

Destination Wasaga is about changing that trajectory: moving beyond the old day-use tourism model and planning the future of the destination as a whole—while keeping the beach public and protecting the natural environment that makes this place unique in Ontario and the world.

There is a Destination Canada case study on Destination Wasaga that looks at the project through a national tourism-development lens and provides useful context on the Town’s community-led approach.

Q3: You would have been on council when the town began buying beach property in 2015, I think. Why did council decide to start buying property?

MAYOR SMITH:

Yes, I was Mayor at the time. In 2015, Council made the decision to acquire a majority of the commercial beachfront properties along Beach Drive.

To understand why, you have to appreciate what Beach Drive means to Wasaga Beach.

We're talking about an approximately 800-metre commercial and tourism corridor along 14 kilometres of beachfront. It's a relatively small area, but for more than 100 years, it has been the beating heart of the local economy in a community built around one industry: tourism.

By 2015, many of the properties that were aging seasonal businesses not designed for year-round use and repeatedly damaged by flooding (also, see this video, and this in-depth article by On The Bay magazine).

We had lived through the devastating 2007 fire, a major private redevelopment proposal that failed, years of competing plans and continued speculation about the future of the beachfront.

The Town needed to take a more active role in shaping what happened next.

I've always said: We can't control what we don't own.

Today, people in the tourism industry call this destination stewardship—giving the host community a meaningful role in protecting the assets people come to experience, shaping the visitor experience and ensuring tourism creates lasting value for residents.

That's what we were trying to accomplish.

By acquiring those properties, the Town gained the ability to assemble land, plan for the Main End as a whole, invest in public infrastructure and public spaces, and create greater certainty for serious private-sector investors.

Fast forward to today.

Beach Drive is being rebuilt to address decades of flooding. A roughly $60-million Marriott hotel is moving forward. Stonebridge is advancing mixed-use commercial and residential development. Companies including Doppelmayr, EcoTrek and GVC are exploring opportunities to bring new attractions and experiences to Wasaga Beach.

We also have a renewed partnership with Ontario and, for the first time, a comprehensive, long-term Destination Wasaga Master Plan.

Instead of waiting for the next redevelopment proposal and making decisions one property at a time, the Town is now in a position to help shape the future of its (downtown and) most important tourism district.

Q4: Are there certain properties you still need to buy or appropriate to develop the beach according to your current plan?

MAYOR SMITH:

The Destination Wasaga Master Plan should be read as a long-term framework for the destination as a whole, reflecting what our community has told us they would like to see.

Individual projects will require detailed design, funding, technical and environmental work, Indigenous engagement and the appropriate approvals. Some concepts will change as that work proceeds.

Approving a Master Plan does not authorize the Town to simply go out and take private property. Where land assembly or partnerships are required for an individual project, those decisions would be dealt with through the normal municipal process.

The important difference today is that the Town already controls strategic properties at the Main End, which gives us far greater ability to coordinate investment than we had historically.

Q5: I read Sunray is building the hotel and Festival Square. What is the timeline, and what else has Sunray formally committed to?

MAYOR SMITH:

The Marriott is the first phase of Sunray’s three-phase development at Beach Area 1.

The current proposal is for approximately 160 rooms, with a year-round restaurant, meeting and event space, wellness amenities and commercial uses. The investment is now estimated at roughly $60 million.

Under the agreement, Sunray is required to obtain a building permit for the Marriott by April 1, 2027, with substantial completion by September 2030.

The second phase is a parking structure with ground-floor commercial space, while the future uses for the third phase are still to be determined.

Festival Square will remain in municipal ownership, with Sunray contributing up to $1.5 million toward its construction.

After decades of trying to attract a major beachfront hotel, we now have a Marriott-branded project and substantial private investment. That kind of investment creates confidence for the next investor as well.

Q6: Why do you think the town hadn’t been able to attract a hotel developer until now? What changed?

MAYOR SMITH:

Council changed, senior staff changed, and with that, the Town’s approach changed.

Wasaga Beach has wanted a major hotel at the beachfront for decades. There was never a shortage of ideas or redevelopment proposals. The problem was turning those plans into projects that could actually get financed and built.

Former Mayor Walter Borthwick talked about this challenge years ago. He cautioned against putting out attractive redevelopment pictures before there were shovels in the ground and confidence that the investment was actually there. That is an important piece of Wasaga Beach history, because it shows how long this community has been trying to solve this problem.

He also talked about how much activity there once was at the beachfront—how Wasaga Beach was “a whole lot of fun back then.”

The Main End was not simply a beach. It had hotels, restaurants, shops, entertainment and attractions that gave people reasons to stay and spend money in the community.

For years, however, investors were looking at fragmented ownership, uncertainty over the future of the beachfront, aging infrastructure, recurring flooding along Beach Drive and a tourism model still dominated by summer day trips and a “Recreation Class” provincial park controlled hundreds of kilometers away that turned out the “Sorry, we’re closed!” signs for almost nine months of the year.

Private investment follows certainty. So, what changed is that Council and Town staff stopped waiting for somebody else to solve those problems for us.

Under my leadership, Council took action to acquire strategic properties. We began rebuilding the infrastructure. We created a clearer planning framework. We rebuilt the partnership with Ontario. We went to market more deliberately and, most importantly, we started creating the conditions serious investors need to commit serious capital.

We are also taking much greater responsibility for the destination itself—for the public spaces, the visitor experience and the long-term stewardship of the asset our economy depends on.

Now an investor can see our vision: a long-term Destination Wasaga Master Plan; all levels of government investing in enabling infrastructure; land assembled for development; and other private-sector partners putting real money on the table.

That is a fundamentally different investment environment than Wasaga Beach has had in generations, and since the provincial park was created.

You can listen to Mayor Borthwick speak on this subject:

• Walter featured on CKVR News - October 1984: Playland Park Auction
• Walter on It's Your Town - PART ONE (November 17, 2013)
• Walter on It's Your Town - PART TWO (February 09, 2014)

Q7: How important was the injection of cash from the government for projects like redeveloping Nancy Island and Beach Drive when it comes to the town’s redevelopment?

MAYOR SMITH:

Extremely important—but the bigger story is the renewed partnership behind the investment. Ontario committed almost $38 million to Destination Wasaga, including $25 million for Nancy Island, nearly $11 million toward Beach Drive and $2 million for tourism planning and the Destination Wasaga Master Plan.

That was a turning point, but this relationship is about much more than funding. The Province manages a provincial park that covers roughly one-third of our entire municipality.

For decades, that has meant decisions about the asset at the centre of Wasaga Beach’s tourism economy were often made by a government headquartered hundreds of kilometres away.

Yet the Town is the level of government that lives with that asset every day. Our residents live beside it. Our businesses depend on it. We deal directly with the visitor experience, infrastructure pressures, environmental stewardship and economic challenges and opportunities that come with millions of people visiting every year.

That is why we believe the Town needs a much stronger role in caring for the destination and shaping its future. Destination Wasaga is bringing the Town and Province back around one table, but with a clearer understanding that the community itself has an enormous stake in how this asset is managed and how the economic value it creates benefits the people who live here.

Q8: Where is the rest of the money coming from to rebuild Beach Drive? Can you tell me when the project will be finished?

MAYOR SMITH:

This isn’t simply a streetscaping project—this is about building climate resilience. The Town is raising Beach Drive by roughly five feet in places and rebuilding water, wastewater, stormwater and other infrastructure to address flooding that damaged businesses, properties and municipal infrastructure for decades.

It is enabling infrastructure—you cannot successfully rebuild a year-round tourism and commercial district on infrastructure that continues to flood.

The work is being phased, and the Town’s current project schedule identifies 2027 for completion.

Ontario is contributing $10.9 million toward the reconstruction. The remaining funds come from a combination of the following: Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund (OCIF), Federal Gas Tax (CCBF), Development Charges, surplus land sales and General Reserves.

Q9: The Destination plan shows a pedestrian boardwalk on the other side of Beach Drive as well as the amusement deck jutting well out into the sand. Is that why the town needed Beaches 1 and 2 removed from the provincial park? If not, can you tell me why you needed those beaches to be controlled by the town?

MAYOR SMITH:

The important thing to understand is that the Master Plan shows concepts and possibilities. It is not a set of detailed, approved designs. Something like the amusement deck would still have to go through detailed design, technical and environmental review, funding work and the appropriate approvals. As that work happens, the concept could shift in size, location or design. It could be rethought entirely if the detailed work shows that is what needs to happen. What the Master Plan does is put forward the idea and show how it could contribute to the broader destination.

The discussion about municipal stewardship of Beach Areas 1 and 2 also began before those Master Plan concepts were developed.

The larger issue was that, for generations, responsibility for the heart of the destination was divided between the Town and the Province. Yet the Town is the level of government that lives with that asset every day. Our residents live beside it. Our businesses depend on it. We deal directly with the visitor experience, infrastructure pressures, events, and economic development.

Municipal stewardship at Beach Areas 1 and 2 gives the Town greater ability to manage the heart of the destination as one place—public spaces, infrastructure, parking, events, economic development, environmental stewardship and the visitor experience—rather than dividing those responsibilities between two governments.

Keep in mind, even with the proposed transfer, the beach remains public. That has always been non-negotiable for the Town and the Province.

And Wasaga Beach Provincial Park is more than 1,840 hectares—roughly one-third of the municipality. Ontario continues to manage the overwhelming majority of it.

A useful 2025 TVO analysis by John Michael McGrath, “The province’s Wasaga Beach plan is fine, actually”, looks specifically at the proposed transfer of beachfront lands from the Province to the Town and provides independent context for why greater municipal stewardship makes sense.

Q10: Is the Destination plan achievable? How much of the plan do you expect to build in the next decade? And where will the money come from?

MAYOR SMITH:

Yes, I believe the direction is achievable, but we must be clear about what the Master Plan is and what it is not. It establishes the vision and the framework. It does not mean every concept gets built exactly as illustrated, and certainly not all at once.

More than 16,000 people helped shape this vision through the largest public engagement exercise in the Town’s history. This isn't one Mayor or Council sitting down and drawing a picture of what they want Wasaga Beach to become. It is a community-shaped long-term plan.

Individual projects now have to move through business cases, detailed design, funding, technical and environmental work, Indigenous engagement and the appropriate approvals.

Some projects will be public infrastructure. Some will be private investment. Others will require partnerships with Ontario or Canada. The Town is not proposing that residential taxpayers fund every concept shown in the Master Plan.

Over the next decade, I expect people will see substantial progress, but future Councils will make those decisions project by project, based on the business case, available funding and the partnerships in place.

That funding will come from a mix of municipal investment, provincial and federal partnerships, private capital and project-generated revenue where appropriate.

That is the value of the Master Plan: it gives the Town and Province one coordinated long-term vision, so even relatively small improvements can be considered in terms of how they strengthen the broader destination and community—not just as isolated projects.

Q11: What happens if you can’t attract more investors/developers after the hotel is built? Or make Wasaga into a four-season destination?

MAYOR SMITH:

I don’t even think about that. Why would we make a plan that we thought would fail?

We are starting from a position most destinations would envy: more than two million people already come to Wasaga Beach every year.

We are not recreating the past, but we are not reinventing the wheel either. For more than 100 years, the Main End, its businesses, attractions and amenities have been part of what draws people to Wasaga Beach. The opportunity now is to build on that strength in a way that works for today and for the future.

That means giving the visitors we already have more reasons to stay longer, spend locally and come back throughout the year.

And we already have assets that can help us do that.

Most people know Wasaga for the beach, but the provincial park also offers extensive hiking trails, Nordic skiing, snowshoeing and winter biking. There is enormous opportunity to strengthen the programming, connections and experiences around assets that many visitors barely know exist.

We have seen right here in South Georgian Bay what can happen when a strong seasonal tourism market evolves into a broader year-round visitor economy. The Collingwood–Blue Mountain area built on what originally drew people there and gave them more reasons to visit in every season.

We are already seeing private-sector interest. The Marriott and Stonebridge represent significant investment, and Doppelmayr Canada has signed a Letter of Intent with the Town to explore potential opportunities as part of Destination Wasaga.

At the same time, this is a community-building plan first.

Better parks, trails, recreation, public spaces and environmental stewardship make Wasaga Beach a better place to live as well as visit.

We are not trying to invent a destination.

We are taking extraordinary assets that already exist and creating more year-round value for residents, businesses and visitors.

Q12: Is it true that all of the mayoral candidates have promised they won’t undo any of the deals that the city has so far committed to?

MAYOR SMITH:

What I can tell you is that legally executed agreements don't simply disappear because there is an election. Under my leadership, working closely with the Province, the Town and this Council spearheaded Destination Wasaga, and I am proud of that—but what we have created is much bigger than any one Mayor or Council.

More than 16,000 people helped shape the vision through the largest public engagement exercise in our Town’s history. The Destination Wasaga Master Plan now belongs to the community that helped create it.

Ontario has invested substantially, significant private investment is underway, and the Town now has a long-term framework to guide what comes next.

Future Councils will make the decisions about which individual projects move forward, how they are funded and how they evolve.

That is exactly how a long-term municipal Master Plan should work.

Q13: The town has committed to keeping the plover habitat. Someone mentioned you’ve hired a plover technician, is that right? Can I find out what they do?

MAYOR SMITH:

This Council has been clear from the beginning that environmental leadership and responsible stewardship are priorities for Destination Wasaga.

In fact, environmental stewardship was front and centre in the RFP we issued to select the team that would develop the Master Plan. It wasn't something added later. It was one of the expectations we set from the outset.

Taking on greater responsibility for the beachfront also means taking greater responsibility for protecting it.

This summer, we put that commitment into action in a number of ways. We created two dedicated seasonal Piping Plover Technician positions and worked closely with Birds Canada to establish those roles, including specialized training and on-the-ground support. The technicians were supervised by Birds Canada and supported beach surveys, nest monitoring, data collection, habitat protection and public education throughout the nesting season.

That was only one part of the work.

The Town also maintained established conservation practices, including the no-rake zone at Beach Area 1, which has been in place for over a decade; recruited and trained community stewardship volunteers; installed new educational and critical-habitat signage; continued learning and working with our provincial and federal partners; and Council strengthened the Town's Beach By-law to provide greater protection for dunes, critical habitat, sensitive natural areas and wildlife.

The natural environment is the foundation of our community and our tourism brand.

Protecting the beach, dunes and sensitive habitat is both an environmental responsibility and essential to the long-term sustainability of Wasaga Beach as a community and destination.

Q14: The tourism plan shows the concert shell at the remote end of the park, a boardwalk etc. Do you expect plovers can coexist with thousands of people at a concert venue?

MAYOR SMITH:

Two things.

First, there is nothing remote or untouched about this location. Second, the Master Plan is not proposing to pave over a natural area—it is proposing to remove substantial areas of existing asphalt and manage an already very busy public destination better.

This is Beach Area 1—one of the busiest and most heavily used areas of the waterfront, with the busiest boat launch and more than 10 paved parking lots that make up about 42 per cent of the Main End.

Millions of people already come to this part of Wasaga Beach every year, including during the relatively short period when Piping Plovers may nest here, from May through August. And the experience at Wasaga already shows that people and plovers can coexist.

Our partners at Birds Canada will be the first to tell you that since the birds returned, Wasaga Beach has been one of the most productive Piping Plover nesting sites in Ontario, even while remaining one of the busiest beaches in the province.

Over the course of the past year, they have also helped us understand that there is not one single right way to protect Piping Plovers. It is a constant process of reviewing approaches, outcomes and best practices, understanding what is working and what is not, and continuously looking for ways to do better.

That does not mean human activity is irrelevant. It means the real challenge is managing that interaction better.

Piping Plovers face a number of risks, including human disturbance, predation, severe weather and other stresses related to climate change. The Town's responsibility is to manage the risks we can manage—protect critical habitat, keep people out of active nesting areas, educate visitors, continue learning from conservation experts and look at how design and other stewardship tools can improve outcomes.

That is exactly where the Master Plan proposes to help.

Thoughtful design can help manage how people experience and interact with sensitive landscapes. Today, people sometimes create informal trails, cross dunes and move through sensitive areas because the access routes are not always clear. The answer cannot simply be more fencing and more barriers around a public landscape that millions of people already use.

Elevated boardwalks, designated pathways, viewing areas, naturalized landscapes and clearly defined access points can concentrate movement where it belongs, reduce trampling and disturbance, discourage informal trails and provide stronger protection for habitat.

In that sense, infrastructure itself can become part of the stewardship strategy.

This brings us back to the second point: the plan is not taking an untouched natural area and paving it for an outdoor concert venue. It proposes removing and naturalizing substantial areas of existing asphalt, replacing surface parking and cars with more public park space, naturalized areas, better pedestrian connections and an outdoor performance venue.

The Master Plan's objective is not to choose between people and nature. It is to manage a very busy public destination better and seek better long-term outcomes for endangered species, including the Piping Plover. The opportunity is to use better design, better stewardship and better management to help people and nature coexist more successfully.

And no performance venue—or any other concept in the Master Plan—gets built simply because it appears in a rendering.

Detailed environmental and technical work still has to be done. If that work shows that a concept cannot be delivered responsibly in a particular location, then the concept or the location has to change.

A Master Plan isn't a building permit.

Karla Findlay
Team Lead, Communications, Customer Experience & Public Engagement
Email Karla

Sandra Watts
General Manager of External Relations | Director of Communications, Destination Marketing & Intergovernmental Affairs
Email Sandra