Waye Mason

Waye Mason (born 1972) is a Canadian politician, who was elected to Halifax Regional Council in the 2012 Halifax election, defeating long time incumbent Sue Uteck in District 7 Halifax South Downtown. As a city councillor, Mason is regarded as an advocate for the arts, culture and heritage, governance, transit and active transportation, and good land use planning.
Background
Mason is the son of Vice Admiral (retired) and businessman Lynn Mason. Mason married his wife Marnie Gillis, a creative director for Doctors Nova Scotia, the provincial medical society, in 2007. They have two children.
Mason has a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Dalhousie University where he was a volunteer at campus radio station CKDU, and involved with the Dalhousie Student Union. He holds a community college education diploma from NSCC and is taking his Masters of Business Administration part time at . In 1993 while attending Dalhousie he started his first business, No Records, a record label and later a wholesale 2007 distributor of cassettes, CDs and LPs, which went out of business in 2004. He also relaunched the Halifax Pop Explosion music festival in 2001, leaving as festival director in 2009. He was hired to teach the music business program at NSCC where he worked until his election in 2012.
Politics
From 2006 to 2009 Mason was a leader of parents and residents against a Halifax Regional School Board proposal to close Inglis, St Mary’s and Le Marchant St Thomas schools to create a single 700 student P-6 school, and then to close six elementary schools on the peninsula.
In 2012, he ran as a candidate in District 7 defeating long time incumbent Sue Uteck as well as local business recruiter Gerry Walsh winning by 94 votes.
He pioneered a process of participatory budgeting to distribute District 7's capital funding allocation, allowing residents to vote and chose what projects receive funding.
Mason has been active supporting the arts, helping to establish municipal arts grant, a municipal arts council 'Arts Halifax', and attempting to save the municipally owned Khyber Centre for the Arts.
He is known as a "policy wonk", speaking out on potential insecurity of single authentication electronic voting
, campaign finance reform
, commercial tax reform
, the regional plan
, and downtown revitalization.
He served as the vice chair of the Halifax Public Libraries board from 2012 to 2014, and as chair of the Community Planning Economic Development Standing Committee since 2014.
In May of 2016 he announced he is running for re-election in the October 2016 election.
Election results (2012)

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