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Ward 5

North London: Masonville · Sunningdale · Uplands · western Stoneybrook

ALL-CANDIDATE MEETING
Thursday, September 24, 2026 · 7:00-8:00pm
Stoneybrook Public School (1460 Stoneybrook Cr.)
Urban League of London ↗Organized by a third party, not London Decides. Dates and locations can change.
ON THE BALLOTKARIKKASSERYRAHMANRAZAROSESPINA
1234567891011121314NOT YOURS? ↗
THE SHORT VERSION

Your ward at a glance

Ward 5 is an open seat: Jerry Pribil is on leave to run provincially, and the field has five candidates: sitting Ward 7 councillor Corrine Rahman, Mary Blake Rose, Abid Raza, Simon Sabeesh Karikkassery, and Charles Spina. Nominations closed August 21, 2026; the City certified the list on August 24. The race is about who manages a north end growing faster than its roads and buses. The redraw shifted the ward's lines east, and Rahman's home now falls inside them. The seat is open because sitting councillor Jerry Pribil took a leave of absence to run as the Ontario PC candidate in London North Centre.

One candidate carries a prior election record. Corrine Rahman was elected Ward 7 councillor in 2022 with 3,910 votes (54.96%) of four candidates, per the City's certified results — her council record is from that ward, not the newly drawn Ward 5.

The rest of the field, in alphabetical order: Simon Sabeesh Karikkassery, Abid Raza, Mary Blake Rose, and Charles Spina.

THE FIELD

Who's running

Listed alphabetically. Identical treatment for every candidate. That's the deal.

KARIKKASSERYRAHMANRAZAROSESPINA

Simon Sabeesh Karikkassery

Our questionnaire ◌ GOES OUT AFTER AUG 24

Identical questions go to every declared candidate. Answers are published verbatim; “no response” is reported plainly.

Corrine Rahman

Incumbent Ward 7 councillor

Elected Ward 7 councillor in 2022: 3,910 votes (54.96%) of four candidates, per the City's certified results.

Council record (W7) →
Our questionnaire ◌ GOES OUT AFTER AUG 24

Identical questions go to every declared candidate. Answers are published verbatim; “no response” is reported plainly.

Abid Raza

Our questionnaire ◌ GOES OUT AFTER AUG 24

Identical questions go to every declared candidate. Answers are published verbatim; “no response” is reported plainly.

Mary Blake Rose

Our questionnaire ◌ GOES OUT AFTER AUG 24

Identical questions go to every declared candidate. Answers are published verbatim; “no response” is reported plainly.

Charles Spina

Our questionnaire ◌ GOES OUT AFTER AUG 24

Identical questions go to every declared candidate. Answers are published verbatim; “no response” is reported plainly.

No endorsements · Same rules for every candidate · Sources linked · Answers published word for word · How we research →

WHAT'S AT STAKE

What Ward 5 is wrestling with

Honestly told: the situation, the numbers, and what to ask the people who want your vote.

□ SHARED: CITY + PROVINCE

New subdivisions, two-lane roads, two builds at once

Sunningdale Road is a two-lane road through subdivisions built roughly a decade ago, and the area keeps adding rooftops. Two separate projects are now running on it at the same time, which is part of why the disruption feels like it never ends. The Sunningdale and Richmond intersection rebuild continues through the 2026 construction season, with lanes reduced on Richmond Street. Separately, Sunningdale Road West is being widened from Wonderland Road to Villagewalk Boulevard, adding sidewalks and cycling facilities, in phases across 2026 and 2027.

The honest numbers ▾

The province committed $18 million to widen Sunningdale Road from two to four lanes and add sidewalks, lighting, and cycling lanes. CBC News ↗

Put them on the record

Which road, transit, or sidewalk gap in Ward 5 would you push to fund first, and by when?

■ CITY DECIDES

The buses are finally coming, to part of the ward

The complaint that new north-end subdivisions were built without transit now has a date attached to it, though only a partial answer. The London Transit Commission approved route changes on January 26, 2026 that extend two-way service into the Plane Tree area near Richmond Street and Sunningdale Road, plus Northridge and Ambleside, connecting through to Masonville Place and Western University. Service starts September 6, 2026. It reaches those specific areas, not the whole ward, so streets outside them are still waiting.

The honest numbers ▾

Three routes carry the change: 25, 34, and 40. Approved January 26, 2026, in service September 6, 2026. London Transit Commission ↗

Put them on the record

Once the September service starts, which Ward 5 streets still have no bus at all, and what would you do for them?

■ CITY DECIDES

The city keeps growing north

The Uplands neighbourhood at the city's north edge continues to grow through new-home development (for example, Uplands Crossing), pushing the built-up area further north and adding to the same infrastructure squeeze.

Put them on the record

Who should pay for the roads and services new north-edge subdivisions need: the developers or existing taxpayers?

■ CITY DECIDES

What roadwork money reaches Ward 5?

The $385-million Renew London capital program (roads, bridges, transit, underground infrastructure) is a citywide initiative that will touch growth-area wards like Ward 5, though no Ward 5-specific project list was found in this research pass.

The honest numbers ▾

$385 million citywide; no Ward 5-specific project list confirmed.

Put them on the record

Which Renew London projects inside Ward 5 would you fight to keep on schedule?

■ CITY DECIDES

Nobody has represented this exact ward

With the incumbent not running and boundaries redrawn, Ward 5 voters are choosing a councillor for a ward whose exact makeup (which streets, which prior-ward neighbours) is new to everyone, including the candidate with council experience.

Put them on the record

Which part of the new Ward 5 do you know least, and what will you do about that before October?

□ SHARED: CITY + PROVINCE

The big three: homelessness, safety, roads

A 2026 CBC London reader survey found homelessness, open drug use, and road infrastructure as the top issues driving voter concern citywide, with affordability, crime, and transit also ranking high. These were not reported ward-by-ward, so how acutely they register in Ward 5 specifically is not confirmed.

The honest numbers ▾

Survey results were citywide, not broken out for Ward 5; commentary suggested concern is most acute downtown and in Old East Village. CBC News ↗

Put them on the record

Which of the big three do you hear most at Ward 5 doors, and what would you actually vote for on it?

YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL OCTOBER

Change can start now, at any point

The ballot is one tool, not the only one. Between elections, the people who show up are the ones who get heard, and you can start today, not next fall.

  • Email or call your councillor. Every office lists a phone number and address, and a single resident's message still lands. City of London ↗
  • Speak at a committee. Any resident can register as a delegation and take five minutes to address a Standing Committee on an item that's on its agenda. City of London ↗
  • Read the record. Agendas, staff reports, and every recorded vote are posted publicly on the city's meeting portal. City meetings ↗

None of it waits four years. The people already in the room are the ones who asked to be.

DON'T STOP AT ONE RACE

Also on your ballot

Before you go

The rest is showing up

You’ve read the ward. Ward races here can come down to a few hundred ballots, sometimes fewer. In a race that close, your vote is one of the ones that decides it. You don’t need to know everything. You just need to show up, informed.

BEFORE OCT 26

How to vote in Ward 5

ADVANCE
Oct 1
ADVANCE
Oct 3
ADVANCE
Oct 5–10
ELECTION DAY
Oct 26 · 10 am – 8 pm

You’ll need ID with your name and address. Full voting guide: where, what to bring, who can vote →

WHAT WE COULDN’T CONFIRM YET ▾
  • RESOLVED August 8, 2026 (raised by a commenter on the Ward 5 TikTok spotlight, and they were right): the neighbourhood list previously shown here came from secondary summaries and was wrong. When checked with the City’s Planning Districts layer (Open Data, Community MapServer layer 18) sampled against the official 2026 ward polygons (the same Open Data file the site’s ward maps are built from): Stoney Creek falls 99.8% in Ward 3, and Stoneybrook falls mostly in Ward 4 (61%) with its western 36% in Ward 5; Masonville (99.9%), Uplands (100%), and Sunningdale (~100%) are in Ward 5. The region line now reflects the official geometry.
  • No population figure found for the new Ward 5 (2026 or 2033 projected).
  • CBC.ca articles returned HTTP 403 on direct fetch in the July 2 pass; on July 3, 2026 both CBC articles cited on this page were fetched in full and the quoted claims ($18M Sunningdale commitment to widen from two to four lanes with sidewalks, lighting, and cycling lanes; 330+-response non-scientific citywide survey) were verified against the article text.
  • Operational status of the Ward 5 seat during Pribil's leave of absence (vacant, covered, or still attended) was not confirmed.
  • Nominations closed August 21, 2026, and the City certified the list on August 24.
  • One honest-numbers item on this page (roadwork funding) doesn't yet link to a primary source; we're still tracking it down.
  • RESOLVED August 2, 2026: the "no buses" half of the growth issue has a dated answer. London Transit's own notices (the Routes 25/34/40 change page linked above and its 2026 Service Plan Changes page at londontransit.ca/2026-service-plan-changes) confirm the changes were approved January 26, 2026 and take effect September 6, 2026, reaching the Plane Tree area near Richmond and Sunningdale plus Northridge and Ambleside. The issue card now says so. What is still unresolved is which Ward 5 streets remain unserved after September 6; London Transit does not publish that as a list.
  • August 2, 2026: the Sunningdale work was confirmed as two separate concurrent projects, not one. The intersection rebuild and its Richmond Street lane reductions come from the City's public service announcement on reduced lanes on Richmond Street (london.ca newsroom), and the Wonderland-to-Villagewalk widening with its sidewalks, cycling facilities, and 2026 to 2027 phasing comes from the City's Sunningdale Road Improvements project page (getinvolved.london.ca/sunningdale-road-improvements). No completion date for either project was published on those pages.
  • A median list price figure circulating for the Uplands area in June 2026 is not published here: it came from a real-estate marketing site, not a news outlet or a government source, so it does not meet this site's citation standard. A citation-grade Ward 5 housing-price figure is still missing.