Background
Mason is the son of Vice Admiral (retired) and businessman Lynn Mason.
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Waye Mason
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Career
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. 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 Nova Scotia Community College and is taking his Masters of Business Administration part time at Saint Mary"s University.
In 1993 while attending Dalhousie he started his first business, Number 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 People’s Explosion music festival in 2001, leaving as festival director in 2009.
He was hired to teach the music business program at Nova Scotia Community College where he worked until his election in 2012. From 2006 to 2009 Mason was a leader of parents and residents against a Halifax Regional School Board proposal to closes Inglis, Street Mary's and Le Marchant Street 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 has served as the vice chair of the Halifax Public Libraries board since 2012, and as chair of the Community Planning Economic Development Standing Committee since 2014.
