Markham Ward 6 · Councillor Candidate
Patrick Yeung pledges 50 percent of his annual after-tax Councillor salary to an independent Community Development Fund for Families, serving Ward 6 seniors, young people and households under pressure.
Residents apply in public. An independent panel reviews every application. The fund publishes every grant, every recipient and every dollar, once a year.
Listen. Act. Deliver.
The Pledge
Property taxes on Ward 6 kitchens, driveways and front lawns pay the Councillor salary. Patrick Yeung treats half of that money as community money from day one.
On the day he takes office, 50 percent of every after-tax dollar the job pays him goes into the Community Development Fund for Families. The fund carries one purpose: it puts money behind the seniors, the young people, the families under strain and the neighbourhood projects that a city budget overlooks.
He hands every funding decision to that independent review. Families, seniors clubs, school groups and neighbourhood associations apply in the open. A volunteer panel seated outside his office scores each application against rules the fund publishes in advance. Once a year the fund names every grant, every recipient and every dollar, so residents audit the promise themselves.
Most candidates ask a ward what it can give them. Patrick Yeung starts the conversation the other way round.
“Donate 50% of my annual after-tax Councillor salary. Create an independent, open and transparent community fund. Public applications, independent review, annual reporting.
Support seniors, youth, families in need and community projects. Fund only eligible public-benefit projects, never private interests.”
Patrick Yeung, Priority One, Seven Priorities for Ward 6
Any Ward 6 resident, family, seniors club, school group or neighbourhood association may apply. No private phone calls. No quiet favours.
A volunteer panel of residents, seated outside the councillor's office, scores every application against criteria the fund publishes in advance.
Each year the fund puts every grant, every recipient and every dollar on the public record. Residents check the arithmetic themselves.
The fund pays for community projects. It never pays a private interest, a campaign donor, or any business connected to Patrick Yeung.
The Need
That gap decides whether a child plays a season of hockey, whether a senior eats well through February, whether a family holds the line one more month. Four numbers mark the size of it.
Ontarians walked through a food bank door between April 2024 and March 2025. Visits climbed 13 percent in a single year and 165 percent above the 2019 to 2020 total. One visitor in four held a job.
Feed Ontario, Hunger Report 2025The average yearly cost of one child in a Canadian sports club, counting registration, travel, uniforms and equipment. A recreation centre programme runs closer to $85.
Canadian Tire Jumpstart, State of Play 2024, cited by the Future of Sport in Canada CommissionChildren in households above $60,000 a year play sport at 74 percent. Below that line, 63 percent play. Eleven percentage points of childhood separate the two groups.
Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute, 2025Canadian parents who reported that they could not afford to register a child in organized sport. Another 58 percent watched recreation fees climb.
Canadian Tire Jumpstart, State of Sport 2023None of these costs dents a city budget. A hockey registration, a week of summer camp, a music lesson, a set of hearing aid batteries, a ramp at the door of a seniors club: each one lands as a rounding error at City Hall and as a hard decision at a kitchen table.
The Community Development Fund for Families closes that exact gap, one household and one neighbourhood group at a time. It will not fix Ontario. It will change a season, a school year and a winter for people who live on the same streets as the councillor who funds it.
Character
Patrick Yeung did not invent this pledge for an election. He has paid for community events out of his own pocket for years, and he lost money on plenty of them. He describes that record in his own words.
In Patrick's words
Patrick Yeung, Markham, 2026
- “I have held more than 35 concerts in Markham. I kept losing money on them, and I kept going.”
- “I put my own money behind the Orbis charity plane pull for sight.”
- “I stood behind Canadian soccer through the World Cup events.”
- “I raised funds for the Hong Kong fire victims, and I used that night to warn families what a fire does to a home.”
- “I booked a whole cinema so residents could watch a film together and share the excitement.”
- “I promote women's rights. I support pickleball. I reported the foxes wandering our streets to the authorities who could act.”
- “Many of these events ran on my own money. I love to give and to sacrifice.”
Patrick serves as Vice President of the Toronto Harmony Lions Club. Through SAA Entertainment Group he produces and hosts community concerts across Markham, and he carries the Lions eyeglass recycling programme onto the stage at those shows. The pattern holds across two decades: he books the hall, he pays the bill, and he hands the night to the community.
Leadership
A councillor reads budgets, planning files and staff reports for four years. Patrick Yeung brings the training that makes those documents give up their secrets.
Years of reading balance sheets, contracts and budgets. Patrick reads a financial statement the way most people read a headline.
Zoning, development charges, land economics and builder pro formas. He knows what a development application promises and what it quietly costs.
Service club leadership, charity fundraising and the eyeglass recycling programme that restores sight to people who cannot buy a pair.
Stage, microphone and a producer's ledger. Patrick fills halls in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, and he covers the shortfall himself.
He watched farm fields turn into subdivisions, and he watched the roads, the schools and the parks fall a step behind the cranes.
He holds a full conversation with a Ward 6 senior in that senior’s first language, then carries the concern to City Hall in English.
The Platform
Patrick Yeung put his platform on paper before he asked anyone for a vote. The giving comes first, and everything else follows from the same principle: residents fund this city, so residents deserve the receipts.
The Community
Berczy Village, Wismer Commons, Angus Glen, Cathedraltown, Victoria Square and the streets between them make up the north central quarter of Markham. Patrick Yeung walks these sidewalks, sings in these halls and shops at these plazas.
A councillor who lives somewhere else reads a staff report about Bur Oak Avenue. A councillor who lives here already knows the school bell that snarls it every weekday afternoon. That difference shows up in how fast a pothole gets fixed, how a construction detour gets routed, and whether a senior who speaks Cantonese reaches a human voice on the first phone call.
Patrick spends his weekends the same way he has spent them for twenty years: inside community halls, beside a microphone, at a fundraising table, on a pickleball court, or in a plaza parking lot where neighbours stop to talk. The campaign changed his schedule. It did not change his address book.
中文
Patrick Yeung 楊先生，萬錦市第六區市議員候選人。承諾捐出市議員稅後薪酬的一半，成立社區發展基金，直接支援區內家庭、長者與青少年。
用行動共創更好萬錦
Voting
Check your place on the voters list before October. A vote cast counts for a great deal more than a vote intended.
Online voting
October 16 to 26
Vote from a phone, tablet or computer, at any hour, across all eleven days.
In person voting
October 23 to 26
Vote at a City of Markham voting location during the final four days.
Confirm your registration
electionsmarkham.ca
Confirm, update or add your name to Markham's voters list, and check which ward covers your address. Visit Elections Markham.
Join In
Ward 6 campaigns turn on conversations at front doors and kitchen tables, not on advertising budgets. Three hours from you moves an entire street.
Knock doors on your own block for two hours on a Saturday. Neighbours open the door wider for a familiar face.
Put out tea, invite eight people from your street, and let Patrick answer questions in your living room in Cantonese, Mandarin or English.
Email or call the campaign with your address. A volunteer will deliver and install the sign, then collect it after October 26.
Share the pledge with your community group, your parents' chat, your building group or your seniors club.