November 2, 2021, at 4:00 PM

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1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That Items 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6 and 2.7 BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

2.1   Facility Accessibility Design Standards

2021-11-02 SR Facility Accessibility Design Standards - Part 1

2021-11-02 SR Facility Accessibility Design Standards - Part 2

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the updated 2021 Facility Accessibility Design Standards document, as appended to the staff report dated November 2, 2021, BE ADOPTED; it being noted that the accessibility design standards apply to newly constructed and/or renovated facilities owned, leased or operated by the City of London. (2021-A22)

Motion Passed

2.2   Emergency Public Mass Emergency Notification System - Single Source Procurement (SS21-38) 

2021-11-02 SR Emergency Public Mass Emergency Notification System – Single Source Procurement (SS21-38)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Enterprise Supports, the following actions be taken, with respect to the staff report dated November 2, 2021, related to a single source procurement for an Emergency Public Mass Emergency Notification System:

a)    a purchase of service agreement BE AWARDED to Everbridge, Inc., as a single source procurement for a mass emergency notification system, at a cost of $77,000 (plus HST) per year for a five (5) year period, beginning December 20th, 2021 to December 19th, 2026; it being noted that this is in accordance with section 14.4 (d) and 14.4 (e) of the City of London’s Procurement of Goods and Services Policy;

b)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all administrative acts which are necessary in relation to this matter; and,

c)    the approval given, herein, BE CONDITIONAL upon The Corporation of the City of London negotiating satisfactory terms and conditions with Everbridge, Inc., to the satisfaction of the City Manager. (2021-P03)

Motion Passed

2.3   2021 Annual Emergency Management Program Update

2021-11-02 SR 2021 Annual Emergency Management Program Update - Part 1

2021-11-02 SR 2021 Annual Emergency Management Program Update - Part 2

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated November 2, 2021, related to the 2021 Annual Emergency Management Program Update:

a)    the revised attached proposed by-law, as appended to the Added Agenda, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 16th, 2021 to:

i)    adopt Schedule “A”, being the City of London Emergency Response Plan, as appended to the above-noted staff report; and, 

ii)    repeal By-law No. A.-7657(c)-2;

b)    the above-noted staff report BE RECEIVED. (2021-P03)

Motion Passed

2.4   London Symphonia Stewardship of the Former Orchestra London Music Library

2021-11-02 SR London Symphonia Stewardship of the Former Orchestra London Music Library

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Neighbourhood and Community-Wide Services, the proposed by-law, substantially in the form appended to the staff report dated November 2, 2021, and to the satisfaction of the City Solicitor, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 16, 2021, to:

a)    approve the Stewardship Agreement, as appended to the above-noted by-law, between the City of London and London Symphonia, for its exclusive use and custody of the City’s Music Library, for the benefit of Londoners and the regional community; and,

b)    authorize the Mayor and the City Clerk to execute the above-noted Stewardship Agreement. (2021-R02)

Motion Passed

2.6   Authorization and Delegations to Advance Urgent Housing Projects

2021-11-02 SR Authorization and Delegations to Advance Urgent Housing Projects

2021-11-02 SR Authorization and Delegations to Advance Urgent Housing Projects - Appendix A

2021-11-02 SR Authorization and Delegations to Advance Urgent Housing Projects - Appendix B

2021-11-02 SR Authorization and Delegations to Advance Urgent Housing Projects - Appendix C

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager Planning and Economic Development, the proposed by-law, as appended to the staff report dated November 2, 2021, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council Meeting to be held on November 16, 2021, to:

a)    approve the standard form “Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) Agreement”, as appended to the above-noted by-law, to be completed in accordance with Round 2 of the RHI program between Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and The Corporation of the City of London;

b)    delegate the duties of the City as Recipient to the Round 2 “Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) Agreement”, related to project plans, administration, development approvals, program and project management, oversight and progress attestation requirements noted within the CMHC Agreements, to Housing Development Corporation, London (HDC) as agent for the City; and,

c)    authorize and delegate the Deputy City Manager Planning and Economic Development to execute any such agreements, amendments or similar such program agreements that may be required by CMHC under Round 2 RHI or similar such CMHC capital investment funding programs and agreements that may be required to advance the City’s identified Urgent Housing with Supports projects; it being noted that these agreements are within approved budgets and do not increase the indebtedness or contingent liabilities of The Corporation of the City of London. (2021-S11)

Motion Passed

2.7   Back to Business By-law Extension

2021-11-02 SR Back to Business By-law Extension

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, and the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the Deputy City Managers and designates BE DELEGATED authority in regulations related to business supportive actions including business application and permit processing procedures until January 15, 2023 in the following By-laws: Business Licence By-law, Streets By-law, Traffic and Parking By-law, Sign By-law, Parks and Recreation By-law, Sound By-law, Building By-law and Council Policy By-law. (2021-S08/S12)

Motion Passed

2.5   (REVISED REPORT) The City of London 2021-22 Winter Response Program for Unsheltered Individuals (SS21-40, SS21-41, SS21-42, SS21-43)

CPSC 02 Nov - 2020-2021 Winter Response update V3 Final

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated November 2, 2021, related to The City of London 2021-22 Winter Response Program for Unsheltered Individuals (SS21-40, SS21-41, SS21-42, SS21-43):

a)    the above-noted staff report BE ENDORSED;

b)    a funding increase extension to the existing Municipal Purchase of Service agreements, at a total estimated increase of $1,685,000.00 (excluding HST), for the period of December 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022, to administer the City of London 2021-2022 Winter Response Program, as per The Corporation of the City of London Procurement Policy, Section 20.3.a.ii, BE APPROVED to the following existing agreements:

  •    Ark Aid Street Mission; 

  •    CMHA Thames Valley Addiction & Mental Health Services,

  •    Impact London; and,

  •    Atlohsa Family Healing Services;

c)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all administrative acts which are necessary in connection with the above-noted contracts; and,

d)    the approval given, herein, BE CONDITIONAL upon The Corporation of the City of London entering into and/or amending Purchase of Service Agreements with Agencies outlined in the above-noted staff report;

it being pointed out that the Community and Protective Services Committee reviewed and received the following communications with respect to this matter:

a communication from J. Duckitt;

a communication from L. Kellestine;

a communication from J. Hogg; and,

a communication from R. Young;

it being noted that a verbal delegation from J. Duckitt was received with respect to this matter. (2021-S14)

Motion Passed (5 to 1)

Voting Record:

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

Motion to approve the delegation request, as appended to the Added Agenda, from J. Duckitt, with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   Flyer Deliveries to Residential Properties

2021-11-02 SR Flyer Deliveries to Residential Properties

2021-11-02 SR Flyer Deliveries to Residential Properties - Appendix A

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That the draft by-law, as appended to the staff report dated September 21, 2021, with respect to Flyer Deliveries to Residential Properties BE REFERRED back to the Civic Administration for revisions that include enforcement measures in cases where compliance is not respected;

it being pointed out that the Community and Protective Services Committee reviewed and received the following communications with respect to this matter:

a communication from L. O’Brien;

a communication from D. Ronson;

a communication from D. French; and,

a communication from S. Trosow;

it being noted that at the public participation meeting associated with this matter, the following individuals made oral submissions regarding this matter:

M. McCann;

A. Marchand;

D. Ronson;

S. Trosow;

A. Draghici;

R. O’Hagan;

A. Doelman;

B. Alleyne;

J. Bulsza;

C. Corrales;

D. Sweetland;

E. Arnsby;

E. Bartsch;

G. Milousis;

J. Jeffs;

J. Saunders;

K. Dean;

N. Wakim;

L. Starr;

S. Raymond Mair;

T. Ewert; and,

T. Mawlam.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Voting Record:

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Moved by J. Fyfe-Millar

Seconded by S. Lewis

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   9th Report of the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee

2021-10-07 AWAC Report - Full

Moved by S. Hillier

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 9th Report of the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, from its meeting held on October 7, 2021:

a)    the following actions be taken with respect to the recycling depots and fishing line:

i)     the Civic Administration BE REQUESTED to obtain recycling receptacles for used fishing lines and hooks and install signage related to the proper disposal of these items and the proper use of the recycling receptacles; and,

ii)     a member of the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee BE GRANTED delegation status at the Community and Protective Services Committee, when the above-mentioned matter goes before the Committee, to provide additional information related to the recommendation;

it being noted that the attached information, with respect to this matter, was received;

b)    the Civic Administration BE REQUESTED to review the coyote signage in City park amenities, in comparison to the related signage posted in Environmentally Significant Areas, with an aim to providing consistent educational signage with respect to coyotes to the public;

it being noted that the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee would be interested in funding any changed or additional signage;

it being further noted that the attached information, with respect to this matter, was received; and,

c)    clauses 1.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, 5.4 and 5.5, BE RECEIVED;

it being noted that a verbal delegation from W. Brown, Chair, Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, was received with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

5.1   Deferred Matters List

CPSC DEFERRED MATTERS as at October 25, 2021

Moved by J. Fyfe-Millar

Seconded by S. Hillier

That the Deferred Matters List for the Community and Protective Services Committee, as at October 25, 2021, BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

6.   Confidential

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by E. Holder

That the Community and Protective Services Committee convene, In Closed Session, for the purpose of considering the following:

6.1    Personal Matter/Identifiable Individual

A personal matter pertaining to identifiable individuals, including municipal employees, with respect to the 2022 Mayor’s New Year’s Honour List.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

The Community and Protective Services Committee convened, In Closed Session, from 8:38 PM to 8:39 PM.

7.   Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 8:42 PM.

Full Transcript

Transcript provided by Lillian Skinner’s London Council Archive. Note: This is an automated speech-to-text transcript and may contain errors. Speaker names are not identified.

View full transcript (5 hours, 0 minutes)

Jerry, are you ready to do a sound check for chambers? I’m testing, testing. Perfect, thank you. Video room one and two, can you do a sound check for me, please?

A little bit faint, can you do that again? Yeah. Yeah, that sounds better, thank you. Okay, I’d like to call the 15th meeting of community and protective services committee to order.

That’s sorry for starting a few minutes late, we’re just getting logged in. This is a virtual meeting during the COVID-19 emergency. Please check the city website for current details of a COVID-19 service impacts. The meetings can be viewed by live streaming on YouTube and on the city website.

The city of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for council standing or advisory committee meetings and information upon request. To make a request for any city service, please contact accessibility@london.ca or 519-661-2489 extension 2425. To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact cpsc@london.ca. I’d like to welcome Councillor Fife Miller to his first meeting of community and protective services committee, welcome, our newest member.

And I’d like to look for disclosures of community interest from any members of the committee. If you’re on the Zoom, just raise your hand so that I know you wanna weigh in. Okay, I don’t see any. We do have quorum, I wanna just confirm that and we may have some members joining later on by Zoom.

We’re gonna get started on the consent agenda. Are there any items from the consent agenda that colleagues would like to pull separately for discussion? I have my hand up, Councillor Homer. Sorry, Councillor Slee.

Sorry, I was just indicating that I have my hand up to pull the winter, 2.5, the winter shelter program. Thank you, we’ll pull that. Any other items from the consent? Okay, is there a mover for the remaining items in the consent agenda?

Councillor Lewis, the seconder? Councillor Fife Miller, thank you. Any discussion, questions about all the items in the consent agenda except for 2.5, which has been pulled? Councillor Lewis, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll be very quick. I just wanted to speak really quickly to 2.7, the back to business by-law extension.

I’m supportive of this. I think it’s really helpful to let our staff have some delegated authority in terms of addressing how we continue to work our way out of the impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve done obviously some really great work there already and continue to do so. And I wanted to take this opportunity as we’re talking about some delegated authority to administration to actually, and I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating, to thank all the frontline staff who have been working in various capacities in our facilities around the city who are dealing with challenges about COVID-19, passport screening, extra cleaning responsibilities that they have to do with lots of questions.

And they have been just exemplary in my experience. I was at the arena once again last night for hockey practice. And as usual, the staff were right on the ball. And I know that’s the same that’s happening in all of our facilities, our libraries and locations from our boards, agencies and commissions as well.

So I just wanted to take this opportunity to once again, say thank you particularly to the frontline staff, not that our deputy city managers and the directors aren’t doing their fair share of work too, but the folks on the frontline definitely deserve a shout out. So Councilor Van Holst, I’m gonna go to you next, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And through you just some gratitude for the items 2.1 and 2.4, the facility accessibility design standards was a thick, but what I believe would be very valuable and helpful document. So a lot of work went into that. I’m pleased that we have that now. The stewardship of the London Music Library, I think we’ve done good work here in passing that on and creating that agreement too.

So I was pleased to see this. I remember when that issue came up for us last term. So those are my comments, thank you. Any other discussion?

Okay, I don’t see any. I just wanted to reinforce what Councilor Van Holst said about the facility accessibility design standards. Mr. DeVito and Mr.

Wellhauser, everyone who worked on those, that’s a very big undertaking to update the facility accessibility design standards. And I appreciate that work. The emergency management program update draw a lot of attention, but you know, we’ve been in an emergency for a very long time now. And I know Mr.

O’Brien and his team are doing great work helping us get through that and appreciate the update on the report that’s in front of us. So thanks very much for that. I’m gonna open up the vote on all those items, except for 2.5. Seeing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

Okay, that brings us to item 2.5. So what we’re gonna do, I’m gonna have just a brief comment from Mr. Dickens. So we have a number of delegation requests from the public.

And we can deal with those when we have heard from staff. If you wanna entertain the delegations at this meeting. So Councilor, Councilor, how would you use your own matter? Since it’s a consent item, shouldn’t I be able to go first since I called it in?

Councilor Slee, if you could raise your hand and then the chair will come and recognize you. I don’t see you unless you put your hand up on the screen. And certainly if you’d like to go ahead before staff, that’s perfectly fine. Go ahead.

Yeah, sorry. So I just wanted to have the opportunity to first put the motion happy to hear from staff. So I’m looking to refer the recommendation in particular around the locations. I think staff will come back and look for more appropriate locations.

And in particular, the golf courses that are outlined, but I’ll speak to it, I guess, after staff has their opportunity to see what they like. Councilor Slee, I just wanna make sure I understand what you’re suggesting. You’re looking to refer what exactly? So I wanna refer the recommendation from staffs for them to come back with different locations ‘cause I’m not supportive of the current locations proposed as the two golf courses in the east side of the city.

Okay, let’s see if there’s a seconder for your referral. Let’s raise your hand on the Zoom if you’re looking to second that referral. I don’t see one Councillor Slee, perhaps later in the meeting, you could bring your motion back after we’ve heard from staff in the members of the public and had some discussion. Okay, let’s go to Mr.

Dickens. Thank you, Chair, and through you two members of committee, I’m happy to provide an overview of the report that you see before you. I think it’s important to share and apologies if we’ve not made it clear in the report that this year’s winter response, as you’ve received it, is not simply a transplant of last year’s winter response. We have not brought you the same report that we used last year.

It’s not the same winter response, just in a different location. It’s fundamentally different, and I think it’s important that we draw that distinction. Namely, last year we relied heavily and benefited from the Wish Coalition. This year, there is no such coalition that exists.

We’ve also brought forward to you in this report, a three-pronged approach this year, recognizing the change in landscape and the need in our community. We’re happy to provide the daytime drop-in space and overnight drop-in space as part of this year’s proposed approach, as well, something that we have been working desperately to bring forward in any capacity, and we’re happy to do so in this fashion, is a very much needed mental health and addictions, stabilization space as part of our winter response as well. Of course, we will be benefiting from and using the assets we purchased last year in the overnight temporary emergency shelters by way of the trailers. But while the infrastructure is the same, the intent and the focus of this year’s response is fundamentally different.

You will see in the report that the location for one of the emergency shelters is the Fanshawe Golf Course. That is to target a more rapid housing approach. That site, very different than last year. Last year, the emphasis and our urgency was just to get people in a space and make sure they’re safe.

We feel we are still providing that level of acute care throughout this program. However, the Fanshawe site is more geared towards rapid housing, looking at using it as a temporary transitional housing site to really focus on individuals who can successfully move to permanent housing with supports through this intervention. The river road location as proposed in the report before you is again a first for us as civic administration in partnership with our community partners to provide an indigenous led response this winter. Again, this is not something that we were able to provide or something we did not provide last year during the winter, which I feel is a fundamental difference this year compared to last and also makes the location quite appropriate for this type of service, having received feedback from service providers and community partners.

The city’s role will also be different this year in that the response will be driven or has been driven by and the programming will be reflective of the agencies that are involved and the expertise that they’re bringing to the table. The locations of which the emergency overnight shelters will be provided so the two city owned assets, the golf courses, will not be transient or drop in in nature. These sites again are very specific for targeted reasons, but they will not be intended to be drop in space. We’ve heard from the community.

It’s been well shared by the community that that type of drop in space, the ability to connect and be safe is still needed and it’s still needed in the core. And that’s why we’re excited that in this report and this year we’re able to bring forward at minimum 100 beds, including no less than 40 overnight beds of a drop in nature in the core area. Last year we had 60 beds. This year we’ve increased it to 100.

So we feel like the balance between daytime space for people to receive services and get out of the cold and the core is still there as well we’ve added or maintained 40 beds in the core as well for people to connect in that area. We still see services being offered in the core for people to attend to, but additionally this year we are working with community partners to bring services on site to the overnight shelter locations. That is included conversations internally with our social service partners here at the city, but also externally with some of the health providers and some of the acute care providers that will be able to come on site. We’ll work with the operators of the site to finalize what that looks like and what the need is once tenants are settled in.

We think it’s important to civic administration to make it clear that we are not moving or putting people in these overnight temporary locations. In fact, we are using our homeless system, the data that we have in the by name list to match people to the most appropriate site, but then still offer them the choice and it will be people choosing to attend to these sites that will get them there. Transportation to the sites will be the same as it was last year in which we helped people move from Wellington Valley, for example, to some of our overnight sites, overnight locations. We’ll be doing the same again this year.

Once individuals are settled and moved into the overnight locations, we’ll be working with the onsite service providers to help facilitate and best understand what transportation needs will truly exist. Some individuals may require it more frequently than others and we’re expecting that and we are working through with the providers on what that transportation plan will look like. But as I noted, this is not expected to be a drop-in or transient in nature. So the amount of foot traffic to and from should be very minimal, if any.

We feel that in mid-September, sorry, in mid-September, we were able to have some conversations around the planning table with some of the current shelter operators, as well as with members of the London Homeless Coalition. To best understand what the space capacity limits would be this winter. Through those conversations in September, we were able to best understand the need for the city to be involved in bringing this report forward in the first place. We have shared and members of the London Homeless Coalition have seen this winter response report and to date, we have not received any opposition to this plan for many members of the London Homeless Coalition to date.

We hope that committee will take the opportunity to ask us questions about the three-pronged approach and we’re happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you. Okay, I just wanna check, Councillor Slee, your hand is up. Are you looking to speak again or is it this from the last time?

Correct, I’m looking to speak. Okay, I’m gonna go to Councillor Slee and then I’d like to deal with the delegations and I’m gonna come to Councillor Lewis. Go ahead, Councillor Slee. Thank you, Mr.

Chair and thank you to staff for the report. I think it’s a great report. I think I can support everything minus the location. My struggle is, I’ve heard from many people in the community, residents in the area, I myself think it’s very familiar with the area.

I’ve tried to run around that area, but it’s almost impossible to do that. And sorry, when I say run around, I mean, we’ll go out for a jog. It’s a safety concern and that’s why I can’t support that location. I can think of many other places in Ward 3 or even in the east end of the city that might be more ideal.

It would be great to think that if we set up a location, an X location, and we say to the residents of that location that we’re gonna provide you transportation, but some people are just gonna wanna go for a walk. Some people might just decide to not wait that extra 10 minutes for that transportation and then go out and use their two feet to walk around that area, which is extremely dangerous. I’ve seen more deer than I’ve seen people walking in and around that neighborhood. There’s absolutely no people other than vehicle traffic and the vehicles that are moving in there are dump trucks.

We have just commercial traffic and resident vehicles. And I’ve seen too many accidents and I’ve had too many complaints about accidents in and around that area. So I really strongly recommend to committee, to council, to not support the location. I do believe it could be a dangerous situation.

And that’s why I wanna flag that. There is no proper infrastructure. It’s essentially almost on the doorsteps of Arva. And I understand that we’re gonna have a three-part approach and I get that and I support that.

But the location and the lack of support and the lack of infrastructure that exists there just doesn’t make sense to me and it’s something that I can’t support. So I try to refer it. I didn’t have a seconder today. So if the chair is able to pull the locations and I can vote on that separately, if not, I will have to vote against the entire recommendation.

It’s unfortunate. Thank you to staff for doing the work that they did on this report. I think it’s great, but I just think we need to really, really revisit that location. And colleagues, I don’t put up my hand to speak that often, but I’m putting it up and I’m letting you know that residents of War III are very concerned.

I’m very concerned. Please don’t support the location. Hey, I think we’re gonna go to Councillor Lewis and then I think we should deal with the delegations, whether we’re gonna hear those delegations or not, Councillor Lewis. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. I’ll save my comments and some disagreement with Councillor CELEE for the debate proper. Just to, what I would consider, I hope a technical question through you to Mr. Dickens or perhaps a member of his team.

And it is one of the concerns that has been outlined and I hear the idea that this is not a drop-in leave, come back sort of site. I know last year’s program did include some on-site security and some fencing that sort of contained the area. And I’ve had questions from residents about whether or not similar sorts of measures would be in place for the sites this year. So I’m just wondering if staff can respond to what sort of public safety security measures they’re looking to implement around the site, Mr.

Dickens. Thank you and through the Chair. Both locations will have fencing erected around the location as well as 24/7 security. In fact, some of these locations because they’re underutilized in the off-season have been subject to some vandalism and break-and-enters.

So when we move in, we will make sure and we have it as part of our budget as well as part of our service plan that 24/7 on-site security will be there the same as it was last year. Thank you for that and I have heard as well that certainly at the former River Road Golf course, there’s been some vandalism to the clubhouse site. So I think that’s an important factor and I’m sure that folks listening and folks maybe who are presenting in the delegations will appreciate knowing in advance that security is going to be present. With that, Mr.

Chair, I’ll just move right onto the moving approval of the delegations. Okay, I think we just have the one person who’s attending by Zoom. I just want to clarify Joan Duckett. So it would be disapproving that one delegation.

Okay, is there a seconder for that? Councillor Fyfe Miller, okay. Any discussion on approving the delegations? If not, we’re going to open that up for a vote.

Opposing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. We’re going to go to you momentarily, Ms. Duckett. And you’ll have up to five minutes to address the committee about this matter.

And then we’re going to move into debating the actual issue. There might be further questions of staff, but you’ve got your five minutes starting now. I’ll just raise my hand when you get close to your time. Mr.

Chair, sorry, it’s Barbara’s like power. Ms. Duckett has not joined the meeting virtually. Is it possible to have someone reach out to her to see if she’s still interested?

I will reach out, I’m not sure if there’s somebody in the committee room that also was looking for delegation. Why don’t we look now and see if there’s someone else? If there is, perhaps we can hear that delegation now, and then we can come back to Ms. Duckett if she joins later.

Doesn’t look like it, colleagues. So perhaps what we can do is we can move into the discussion. And if Ms. Duckett does join, we can return to her delegation.

Okay, a discussion on the report and the recommendation from staff. Mr. Lewis, go ahead. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. I guess I will lead off and I will try not to exceed my five minutes, but if I do, I might come back for a second round. First of all, I want to say to both our staff, but also to the agencies and the staff involved, those that are at LOSA, at Arcade, and others that we appreciate all the work that has gone into this already. I, when I first saw this report, I had a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction that I’m not sure that I liked the direction we were going.

And then I did some more reading and I gave it some more consideration and I did a little bit more research myself. And I think that this is a good plan. And I want to start by emphasizing what Mr. Dickens presented to us.

The lion’s share of the homeless prevention and the shelters and services for Londoners experiencing homelessness is going to continue to be in the downtown court. And I think that that’s very important we heard. People will have a choice whether or not they utilize these sites. No one is being forced to go out to the golf course at the edge of the city and reside in one of these temporary home settings.

It’s going to be a choice. And certainly when it comes to the River Road location, this is going to be an indigenous led site for Londoners experiencing homelessness from the indigenous community. And I am certainly not going to presume to know better than the indigenous people leading this project that I know better than they do as to how to help indigenous Londoners experiencing homelessness. I think it’s just wrong on so many levels for us to presume that indigenous leadership at Atlosa doesn’t have the best outcomes in mind for the indigenous homeless population.

I think they absolutely do. And we’ve through this committee and through this council have had partnerships with Atlosa on a number of projects and initiatives. And they’ve all been very successful and I’m very appreciative of the work that both they and I should say No Ki Kui and Namerand as well have done with London’s urban indigenous population. So I very much support this.

And I think that River Road provides them a space where there’s an opportunity to do some culturally appropriate supports for those individuals as well and the connection to the river and should be in a more remote location. I think will be a benefit. I also think it’s important and I’m going to share a little bit personal here and I’m going to get a little bit perhaps emotional but I hear a lot of folks who are our academics or experts in the study of homelessness and homelessness prevention. And I appreciate the work they do.

I really do. To me I feel like there’s an over emphasis on the value of the connections they make through street involved culture, street involved community. Human beings did not evolve to be solitary creatures and any connection is important but that doesn’t mean that they’re all healthy. Last night many members of this council attended the launch of the Shine the Light campaign to end women abuse.

And we heard from this year’s survivor speaker about how someone hitting you is not love, how someone emotionally abusing you is not love. We know what else isn’t love. Someone enabling and feeding your addiction or enabling and feeding a cycle of poverty. And sometimes that’s what those street connections do.

They keep someone in a cycle where they can’t break their situation in terms of poverty and homelessness. Most of you know that I give part of my life in time as a foster parent with that risk youth. You know, with Children’s Aid, we talk about how very valuable and important is to maintain healthy connections with biological family members as much as possible. And those can be very positive things.

They can also be very toxic things. And sometimes for a youth at risk, the best thing for them is to break from those connections and get a fresh start. Sometimes that even means moving to another community to do that. And I see the parallels here with people who may be trying to break the cycle of homelessness.

The opportunity to go to a location that is not easy to get to, where there’s no nice way to say this. So I’m just gonna say it, where they’re dealer or maybe they’re pimp or someone else who is keeping them in a cycle of exploitation, which we know some homeless people face. When it’s not easy for those people to get to them, they have a better chance of breaking that cycle and getting out of poverty and getting out of homelessness and stabilizing and moving on to new chapters and better chapters in their lives. So I don’t discount that there can sometimes be very valuable connections that people experiencing homelessness make on the street with people who are sharing that experience.

Yes, there can be, but there can also be very toxic ones. We heard Mr. Dick and say that it’s gonna be a choice to go out here and that we’re not moving, we’re just not forcing people out of the city, we’re not. But what we are doing and Chuck Lazenby from the Unity Project said this in a free press article, we’re taking a little bit of a different approach where it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

And I think that that’s a good thing because the homeless population in our community or in any community, they’re not a homogeneous group. One size doesn’t fit all. The 65 beds that will be available at these two golf course locations are only 65 beds and no, they won’t be the right fit for quite a number of people experiencing homelessness. But for 65 people, they might be and they might be a chance at a fresh start on things.

And I understand the community concerns and I appreciate that Mr. Dickens was able to articulate that there will be security on site, that there will be fencing to create a community apart from the community that may already be there. But I think this is worth a try and I’m encouraged by the work that everybody has put into this so far. And I will continue to appreciate the work that the staff at the men’s mission and the Salvation Army and the arcade locations downtown are doing as well.

But I think that this is worth a try. And I haven’t heard anything yet that makes me feel otherwise. So I’ll end there, I’ll listen, I’ll continue to listen to the debate and may have some other comments to share before we wrap up. Okay, thanks Councillor Lewis.

I do see that the delegate, Ms. Duckett has now joined on the Zoom. So I thought maybe I’d go to her now and we can hear her delegation. Ms.

Duckett, you’re gonna have up to five minutes to address the committee. And you can speak to this matter that we’re dealing with now, which is item 2.5, the winter response. You have up to the five minutes. I’ll raise my hand just when you get close to the end of your time so you know when that is.

Go ahead, Ms. Duckett. I can see that you’re unmuted, but we can’t hear you. Okay colleagues, let’s give them this dugget some time to try and figure out might be a technical problem on her end.

Any other speakers? Councillor Foeff Miller, go ahead. Thank you Chair. This was, I’m gonna say from my first time here, I found this a great document to read through.

I think staff did a wonderful job and I think staff did a wonderful job in conjunction with a lot of the parties that are involved in homelessness here in the city of London. I think looking at the three-pronged approach, a lot of what’s going to continue with our homelessness population is going to continue to be in the downtown core. At the same point in time, additions like a stabilization space, I think is a new opportunity for us, one that we haven’t had before and one that will make holistic changes in what we see going on in the street right now. I think too is a little concerned at the beginning about the locations for the winter response program, but I wanna echo what Councillor Lewis said.

I think we’re to a point now where so many communities are having to think outside the box when it comes to dealing with homelessness and addiction and I think we’ve come up with wonderful alternatives for individuals to potentially allow them to get to a point where the street might not be their only option or it might not feel like it’s their only option. I think one of the things that we can all agree on is we learn as we go along, we adapt as we go along. One of the reasons we have to do that is this year, we have more homeless and this year, we have more people dying on our street. Because of that, we need to continually make these changes and continually try new things and continually look outside the box to look for opportunities and look for those pieces that may make that little difference and may have a lasting impact on someone’s life.

So I’m prepared to support this. I think this is an excellent opportunity for us. I was glad to hear that there will be some security there. I think that speaks to some of the questions from the public, but I think this is a great plan for us to roll into this winter.

Thank you. Thank you, I’m gonna go to Councillor Hopkins. I say you have your hand up on the Zoom and let me know colleagues if you wanna get on the list. Go ahead, Councillor Hopkins.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair for recognizing me at your committee. And I do have a couple of questions if I can start off before I make a few comments. And the questions really are around the Fanshawe golf course.

And I guess my first question to staff would be, why was this a location picked? I know there were a number of city owned properties that were looked at, but in particular, I’d like to know a little bit more about Fanshawe. And I’d also like to know a little bit more about how the people will be taken care of. And I understand they’ll be transit and opportunities for them to come into the city.

But I also heard that there is going to be more of a focus where the community is going to come to them. I think that is, I’d like to know a little bit more about that, I know a number of them do visit safe supply. And of course, just the accommodations for laundry and showers and that if there will be a facility there to deal with that. I’ll just start off with those few questions about the Fanshawe location.

Okay, I’m assuming Mr. Dickens are going to handle that. Thank you, Chair. And I will start the response.

And then actually my colleague, Ms. Smith can also weigh in on the location choice of Fanshawe, of course. I’ll start with the service provision, though the second question. We are working across the entire sector to ensure that any and all services that need to be provided on site will be provided on site.

The location affords us the opportunity for a couple of things that we didn’t have last year, namely being indoor plumbing, which is a great benefit, as well as the opportunity for meal preparation on site, some space for indoor dining. So the onsite services are really going to be around establishing the sense of community, which we’ve heard over and over again is very important to those that are currently unsheltered or currently seeking some type of connectivity, a healthy connectivity. So the services onsite will range from meal provision, social services onsite. We are working through our life stabilization team here at the city around what onsite social assistance supports and referrals to employment agencies may look like.

That’s still very preliminary, but those are the type of discussions we’re having. We have reached out to some of the service providers, including the London Inter-Community Health Center, who operate a fantastic home bus program. They were very willing to participate in last year’s winter response as well. We are also seeking their support for the provisions of the safe supply program as well.

And those are very preliminary discussions, but they will continue to evolve with and if we receive the committee’s approval and council’s approval. We are able to provide onsite laundry services or sorry, laundry will be provided through a contracted company to make sure that individuals can have their belongings cared for and cleaned. When we look at external services, we know that this is gonna take the effort of the entire community to wrap around individuals. At LOSA leading the indigenous led response, we’ll have a very different looking set of services than we may have at Fanshawe, for example.

But nonetheless, if onsite providers feel that additional services are needed, the city will play a role as facilitator to bring those services together. We’re currently in the process while Wi-Fi is available at these sites, ensuring that we go through the appropriate channels to make sure that Wi-Fi is available like it was last year at our temporary site so that individuals can still carry out whatever type of business they need to, but have a connectivity to the broader outside world as well. And now I may pass it over to Ms. Smith, who can talk about the golf course location proper.

Thank you. Go ahead, Ms. Smith. Thank you and through the chair.

Fanshawe golf course, as you know right now, sits dormant in the winter months and it has the appropriate infrastructure such as plumbing and kitchen required to support this initiative. Historically, golf course is open in the middle of April, weather permitting, and it’s important to note that the use of fans of Fanshawe golf course for this winter shelter will run until March 1st. This will allow us ample time to weather preventative course to prepare Fanshawe golf course if we are able to open early. Any further questions or comments?

Councillor happens, go ahead. Yes, I have one more question. Just as a follow up to Councillor Sallie’s concerns around security. And I know the Fanshawe Conservation areas is directly connected to the golf course.

And they do have security there. They have cottages as well as trailers that are left there throughout the winter. And I would like, I know that we’re also spending quite a bit of money on security. I see it in the report.

And I’m wondering if there’s any, if Mr. Dickens can expand on what kind of security is going to happen and if they will be working with the Conservation Authority as well, just maybe relaying their security plans over to the Conservation Authority. But let you know a little bit more about the security there. Dickens.

Thank you and through you, Chair. We’d be happy to have conversations with the folks at the Conservation Authority. That has not been part of our initial planning given that they are in relative proximity. We would be happy to engage them as key stakeholders to walk through this.

Our sites will, in addition to the 24/7 security and in addition to perimeter fencing, we will have similar to last year onsite cameras installed to provide safety for the residents. These locations, Fanshawe in particular, as the report indicates, is looking to work with individuals who are already moving towards their housing goals. So they’re a little further along in the housing journey than others might be in this entire winter response. And we feel that with this population coming to Fanshawe in particular, it is very deliberate, but we feel that the focus will be on housing, rapid housing, treating it as a housing first philosophy, so that people have a shortened stay at Fanshawe as compared to last year’s response.

Thank you for that, through the Chair. I think it’s being a member of the Conservation Board. I would encourage you to reach out to the entire Conservation area and exchange the plans for security. So each area is informed.

And Mr. Chair, I just wanna make a few brief comments, if I may, and first of all, I wanna thank staff. And I also think the provincial and federal government, a big thank you for the money that is going to enable us as a city to take care of the homeless. And I wanna acknowledge the three pronged approach.

I’m glad to see that we’re doing the drop-in space, the stabilization, space, the increase in beds. I think that’s very important. I too had a knee jerk reaction. And I thought, oh no, what are we doing here?

We’re trying to move them out. And I’m starting to understand a little bit more about what we’re doing. But I think it is fair to say that we are moving some of them on. I think it’s okay to acknowledge that not to do something would be worse.

And that is my concern. That’s why I’m supporting this. I look at this as a pilot project and something is better than nothing. The indigenous response over at River Road Golf Course is something I hope that we can build on.

And in the spirit of reconciliation, I think this is something that we can take a closer look at to see how this is going to work throughout the winter. So again, thank you to staff. And thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to make a few comments.

Okay, thank you. Just before we move on, Councillor Hopkins, I think in your comments, you mentioned that Councillor Sallie had comment on security. And I just wanna say, I remember talking about safety, especially for pedestrians and not security, but maybe he wants to weigh in on that when he comes to the speakers list again. I’m gonna go to Councillor Van Halst, then I’m gonna go to Councillor Sallie.

And then I do see a Ms. Dugget, looks like she’s on and could potentially do her delegation. So we’ll come back to her at that point, okay? Councillor Van Halst, then Councillor Sallie.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And through you, maybe I can start with a question to Mr. Dick and see talked about people at the golf courses were likely further along in their journey towards housing.

And maybe I can ask for him to just provide some more detail. What does that mean? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Y’all, thank you, Chair and through you. I will actually have Mr. Cooper answer this question. It relates to the assessment work that his team does around our V.I.

Spadat and the data that we collect on a regular basis. I’ll pass it to Mr. Cooper, thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Thank you and through the Chair, I appreciate the question from Councillor Van Halst. The work we do with individuals that are living unsheltered is really through our coordinated informed response and our outreach programs. And so we do identify individuals as being paper readiness for housing availability given the limited availability of supportive housing in our community.

So part of the process that we do to work with people to get to that point is around identification. It is around confirmation of income and consent to access services in the system. So a lot of folks we still, that are paper ready or on their journey to paper ready is what Mr. Dickens was referring to.

It does allow them that ability to then sign a lease when an appropriate housing plan is completed with the support agency and then to find that appropriate house or home of their choosing. And that is really the key and the stability here. The idea is to pull them out of that current situation and to stabilize to then find that housing or home, I should say. That’s right, Halst.

Thank you. I appreciate the answer to that question. The, let me talk a little bit about River Road because that’s in my ward and then a number of residents have raised a number of concerns. Maybe the first concern is the, that River Road isn’t a place for pedestrians.

It’s dark and narrow road. It’s badly needed repairs and those aren’t slated for discussion until the 20, 25 budget. So there’s very few street lights out there. And so that was a concern that was raised.

And so perhaps staff could just address that. We’d like to handle that. Thank you and through the chair. I believe I can handle that.

So the question about the pedestrian aspect. So while we’ve indicated that this will be a destination for individuals to reach some housing stability for up to four months period, we do not anticipate or expect it is not designed to be a drop-in type service where people show up one day and gone the next and come and go. We recognize that we will also not be confining people to the space and prohibiting them from leaving, but it will be incumbent upon the on-site service providers to ensure we have a very detailed and very welcome constructed sign-in sign-out process. But part of moving to the site is a full welcoming and orientation of the site.

And the River Road property offers many benefits to an indigenous-led response, but it also is important that when we orient the participant of the program to the location that we outline what’s available to them, but also what the risks are. Last year, we were located one of our sites on Elizabeth Street right next to the rail tracks and very similar conversations around cut-throughs, pedestrians trying to walk across the tracks, being careful of construction that was happening right next door to the site where we were located. This site is not completely without risk. We recognize that, but we also have participants who are well-informed and aware or will be aware of the risks of walking at night, for example, or trying to walk long distances.

This response is meant to establish community within the site, and we expect that the services will be provided on-site in most cases and work with the service provider to establish any and all necessary transportation plans as needed per the individuals that are on the site, to ensure that if there is people who need to move about the city move into the city for appointments, that transportation is provided to them, knowing the risk that walking could potentially pose. Hopefully that answers the council’s question. Professor Reynolds. Yes, thank you.

I appreciate the answer and that the transportation will be provided to them, so that’s great. I’d also appreciate if possible, our staff could describe some of the benefits for this area and what would a day in the life of someone who’s now taken up residence at the River Road Golf Course be like because there’s a concern, of course, that people are just locked in a trailer at the edge of the city, that’s the perception. Perhaps you could provide some more details. Certainly, through the chair, thank you for the question.

I feel like there’s a lot that I could speak to in terms of the benefits of what these locations provide from the sense of connection and healing. We’ve seen this play out through last year’s winter response at Elizabeth Street in particular with individuals getting access to medical care that they had not previously been privy to. One individual, in fact, going so far to receive a surgery that was much needed and leading to paid employment. However, I am joined on this call with Ms.

Kramer’s who is our project lead on the winter response and was hands-on boots on the ground last year as well and can speak directly to what these sites offer and what the services can do to an individual’s recovery. Go ahead, Ms. Carres. Thank you, Chair.

I would like to mention that the most significant takeaway that everyone who had the experience of staying at the winter sites did speak about was community. And that was because for the first time in a very long time, they were given the opportunity and the space to develop it. And by that, I mean, when you’re living on the street in doorways or in small, secluded areas, you stick to your designated area of safety. You don’t have the opportunity to have general conversation, connect with other individuals in open space, just an opportunity to be able to experience Wi-Fi and connect on a live feed for the first time ever or be able to watch a show because you only have ever experienced little windows of opportunity on Wi-Fi while you’re sitting outside of the library or sitting outside of another facility that offers Wi-Fi.

So I would have to say community is the biggest piece of this with our winter response last year. There was a lot of art happening, a lot of music, a lot of things that we take for granted in homes that people who are out in the street don’t have the opportunity to engage in. Relationships built, both between staff and participants and between participants amongst each other. They literally grew a family.

And if you think of how you would spend your day, if you were with your family throughout the weekend, then that’s how they would spend the day within their community space at one of these winter response shelters. At LOSA, of course, is engaging their participants in indigenous ways of support. So they have specialty programming specific to the indigenous culture and that connectivity, which is different. Some things are the same, but could be different.

They’ve identified wanting to have that space where they can run their programming and certainly where they can connect with land and each other with a cultural lens. That’s a riddles, okay. Yes, well, thank you very much. I appreciate that as well.

And that is an important thing. I would also do say that previous earlier this year, I did bring a motion forward asking for us to locate some transitional housing near agricultural lands so that people would be able to engage in activities. So I see there’s activities that we’re able to engage in, not those particular ones that might have been possible on the farmland that we own. So I do see that as positive.

I would also say that the ability to be out of downtown is a benefit, whether these are considered the best locations or not. The chance to move out of what might be a toxic environment for a person is a step ahead. I recall when I was on the steering committee for the community drug and alcohol strategy, one of the most exciting ideas was called favor-tapped faith-based residential treatment exchange program. And the idea there was that if say a church community were to purchase a home, make it available for residential treatment.

And then there was one in a community like London and then a neighboring community as well, then the people who applied would move to the other community just so that was the exchange so that they would have a chance to get away from the relationships that were not helpful. And I think Councillor Lewis addressed this. So that is certainly a legitimate strategy that takes place. The concern that was also expressed by the community was one of crime.

And I know that a vulnerable populations are often a target of crime. And so I see the security is there. However, that can spill over to the neighboring community. And I guess in this case, that might be a trailer stored around the Fanshawe location or just homes.

There’s quite a few homes right adjacent to River Road. So perhaps staff could address that. Is that security simply on-side? Or will they be looking at the little broader area as well?

Good, Mr. Pickens. Thank you, Chair. And through you, we are finalizing what the site plan layout will look like, which means that the trailers that are currently being stored at this location will be moved and altered and placed accordingly for the optimal use.

We recognize that we need to be courteous and cognizant of our surroundings. So what is a safe and appropriate layout for sightlines or access to amenities, for providing a safe environment within our fence line, but also recognizing that we’re not setting up operations to disrupt any neighbors that may be in close proximity. Last year, our experiences with issues that came to our attention around vandalism often occurred by visitors that were coming to the site where we were temporarily housing vulnerable people. Guest management was a significant issue last year.

Very seldom was it a participant of the location that had been identified or was involved in some of the minor nuisances or vanillisms that were occurring within the location. There were instances, but it was often as a result of guests that were coming to the site. As we’ve established our report and through this conversation, our location minimizes the guest management issues that we encountered last year as fewer people will have the ability to come out to the site where we are going to have vulnerable people. We want to create that safe community for them.

Security will be providing services both inside the fenced area, as well as patrols outside the fence area. We will look for breaches in the fence. We will look for any garbage and things in the immediate surrounding, but security is available and is part of our plan to make sure they do patrols both inside and outside of the property. That’s very nice.

Yes, thank you very much. Well, I think that’s encouraging and pleased to see we’ll be looking at cleanup too. I know that was an issue last year as well, particularly for the people who might be accessing safe supply just now. So there will be appropriate, I’m sure we’re going to establish appropriate places for disposal of needles if those are being used.

A question about the river road during the winter that the hill behind the clubhouse is used as a toboggan run. And I would note that there may be families at this location as well, but is that, will that still be open or available to the public or would that be fenced off? Is that a question for Ms. Smith or for Mr.

Dickens? Through the chair, it’s Ms. Smith, I’m happy to answer. So we do not permit tobogganing on any city of London property.

So as per the signage that’s up, for example, at this property is it’s not allowed. I see, okay, well, well then I’m sorry. I think maybe 50 years ago I had used the Thames Valley golf course for tobogganing and should not have, I think, well, thank you, I’ll see the fly eyes quite a few questions and I’m very appreciated, appreciative of the answers. And hopefully that one of the residents are able to speak as well if they haven’t had a chance to connect.

Okay, I do have Councillor Cassidy on the list, but I see that Ms. Dougett has been able to join and I wonder if we could go to her. Yeah, so let’s go to Ms. Dougett.

Sorry you had trouble connecting earlier. I will say you have up to five minutes to address the committee. And so you can speak to us about this issue. I’m gonna just raise my hand when you get close to your five minutes.

So you have some sense of how you’re doing in terms of time. Go ahead. Looks like we can’t hear you. You are unmuted.

So it could be a microphone issue on your end. Dougett, I will say if the microphone issue proves unresolvable, you could also call in using the number that was provided in the Zoom invite. I’m gonna go to Councillor Cassidy and then if you could join on the audio, we’ll come over to you Ms. Dougett.

Go ahead, Councillor Cassidy. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for recognizing me at your committee.

I have a few questions. So through you to Mr. Dickens, last year I wonder how how our numbers compare for these overnight spaces compared to the number of spaces we created through the Winter Response Program last winter. Mr.

Dickens. Thank you, Chair and through you. Thank you for the question. Last year we were able to provide 60 overnight spaces.

This year we will be providing at minimum 100 overnight beds. That is a mix of at minimum 40 beds in the downtown core. And then at minimum 30 overnight beds at the two temporary shelters. Thank you.

And so I know last year as well, there were quite a few people that used the two sites at Elizabeth and York, at least York, that city staff through this process were able to see them housed. Were they the similar kinds of people that were targeting through the Fanshawe and the River Road sites where these people that were further along in their housing journey and ready to be transitioned into housing was, was it the same kind of targeted approach last year? Thank you and through the chair. No, actually, this targeted approach is different this year than it was last year.

And the individuals that we were serving last year, again, was more from an emergency response crisis perspective of getting people out of some dangerous places, whether it be a floodplain or from some unsheltered homelessness, just into a bed through the efforts of all of the community organizations involved last year and through our city efforts. Yes, several people were successfully housed and remain successfully housed. However, this year is another step further than that. And looking at the indigenous led response being very specific to those that are unsheltered and identify as indigenous, which is different than last year, and also individuals that are closer to being housing ready, moving to the Fanshawe location.

So in short, no, very different this year. Thank you. So another concern that I had heard was that even though we had 24/7 security last year, there still were security concerns. And you have outlined some of the things that you’re doing this year.

Are they different? So are these new and different sort of approaches to the security issue that you didn’t necessarily have in place last year? I’m just wondering if everything that was a concern last year is being addressed this year. Thank you and through the chair.

We are hoping and we’re taking a calculated plan forward that the locations that we’re located in will drastically decrease the outside influence that had plagued or troubled some of our efforts last year. We will continue to provide support to the service providers in the core. And that security plan will include a partnership with Arcade who will deliver the services in the core to ensure that both participants and staff, as well as any neighbors in the community at large, are safe and that it is a clean and well-kept location. But as far as the security presence out at the other sites, it will be very similar to last year.

We will continue to provide the security cameras. The 24/7 service will ensure that there’s always somebody on site and city staff will maintain regular daily briefings with service providers and then adjust that meeting schedule as needed. Thank you for that through you, Mr. Chair.

I’m wondering about the shuttles because some people have raised concerns about the distance. I do share some of the hopes of Councillor Lewis regarding the distance. So I’m wondering how frequently the shuttles will be there to bring people to the core if that’s where they need to go. And perhaps related to that is how will people have access to their OW or ODSP caseworkers?

If these shuttles are not at the right time, they may miss a scheduled appointment, which can be very distressing and could possibly cause them some harm. So I’m wondering about that accessing specifically OW and ODSP services and the frequency of the shuttles on a daily basis. Thank you, and through the chair, there is not currently a defined shuttle service. We are working with the service agencies to decide what that frequency for each respective site needs to be given the individual needs and the individual interest or desires of the participants at those locations.

Recognizing it won’t be a one size fits all. We do want to ensure that transportation will be available, but we will wait and work with the service providers to determine what exactly that volume and frequency will look like. It may include a shuttle service, it may include a partnership or it may simply just be a taxi service if there are one off and very few requirements. As far as the social assistance and the access to financial support, we will be working with our Life Stabilization team to look to bring Ontario Works service on site.

Those are conversations we’re currently having, whether it be around the check pickup or distribution, but also for case management services, intakes, as some people may not actually be on financial assistance and we can help with that. Looking at making referrals. And I think the sky is really the limit when we look at how we can connect services to the people that are on that site and we have a captivated audience that may participate in things like employment information sessions. Our Life Stabilization team here at the city has done some tremendous work about reinventing employment information sessions and maybe that’s something we can take to these locations as well.

We will continuously work with all of our service providers and service partners like ODSP around ensuring that if an individual identifies, they need to get to an appointment or they need to get downtown to pick up a check or whatever it might be that that service is provided to them in a timely manner so that they don’t go with it. Thank you so much. I really liked that answer. So one more question is, you know, this is another year.

What about long-term? Like how, and I get this as winter response, but winter is never going away. So do we have a long-term plan to address what is, and I know we hear reports from you, Mr. Dickens, every meeting of CAPS and I do appreciate those reports.

And related to this long-term, number one, I note in the report when the funding allocations were finalized, I note that it was August for the provincial and July for the federal, or yeah, in July for the federal. Is there any way we could have moved any faster on this? December 1st is still a month away. And also March 1st is actually, it’s still cold in March.

So last year, or this year, I believe we did extend it into April, if I do recall correctly. So I’ll just leave it sort of like a weird question like that, but Mr. Dickens, any comment on all of that through you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you and through the chair. Thank you for the question. As far as long-term goes, and I don’t want to conflate the homelessness response with direct correlation to some of the housing projects that we’re doing, but the city is also nearing completion on 61 affordable housing units that are set to be occupied in the, at the end of the year, into January. And while we expect that we’ll open up spaces throughout the housing continuum.

So as 61 people get housed, it creates spaces in rank-year to income units, it creates spaces in shelter, and it may even decrease some of our homeless population. We also have other affordable housing projects that are happening throughout the city. And we’ve made really strong end roads. When we talk about long-term and permanency and having an impact, we’ve made really strong end roads through our coordinated access program, which we just recently brought to committee as well, that allows the city the opportunity to have direct input on tenant placement for new affordable housing projects, which goes a long way in improving the way that we start to address the unsheltered homeless population, but also the backlog in a lot of our social housing programs.

As far as next steps when it comes to how fast we can move and the conclusion of this in March, I believe that our team has moved mountains to move as fast as we did. We began the learning of how a winter response can be successful the day the last one started. We dissected what we learned. We reported back to council in the summer.

I believe it was in June or July, we reported back on some of those key learnings just in the summertime. And then we learned of the funding in late August and were able to mobilize a report back to the province on an investment plan and bring forward this plan to you in fairly short order. I don’t think it benefits those that we’re trying to serve to be rushed, but all of these interventions require partnerships and key partnerships require relationship building in some cases, relationship improvements in others, but also several conversations. While you’ll note in the report, we are benefiting from social services, relief funding from the province.

As of today, we still do not have the approval for those funds, but we share your sentiment that December 1st is upon us, but it’s also late to the year. So we felt it’s best that we move with the expectation that we will receive the funding. I hope that answers the council’s question. Thank you and through you, Mr.

Chair. Just a quick comment. I do share, Councillor Lewis’ thoughts on giving people that meet the requirements as far as being further along in their road towards permanent housing and giving them the opportunity to get out of downtown if that is what they choose to do. And I’m especially pleased with the River Road site and the allocation to Atlosa to deliver services there.

As we all know, the indigenous population is homelessness has an oversized effect on the indigenous population. They’re very overrepresented in the population of people that are looking for permanent housing. And so having a specialized place, a culturally sensitive place where they can receive services that will best suit their needs, I think that is a really good thing. And I’m really happy and pleased with the community partners that have stepped up and especially Atlosa stepped up to deliver these services and to provide this relief for people that are right now living without a home and it is very cold out there.

So thank you to staff for putting this together. We have to move forward on this. We have to get people under a roof and safe from the elements and safe from other individuals that might do them harm. So I am willing to give this a try.

And I think that it is a very thoughtful approach and I don’t feel like it was rushed as much as Mr. Dickens said that this had to come together really quickly. It feels like there was a lot of thought put into this. So thank you.

Okay, I’m gonna try one more time to come to Ms. Duckett. Mr. Chair, before she jumps in, I’ll advise if she hasn’t got it already, Star Six will unmute the phone.

And if we get feedback, I will move out the video client and leave in the phone. Okay, go ahead, Ms. Duckett. Can you hear me now?

We can. Wonderful, sorry. I apologize for all the technical difficulties and thank you for allowing me to be part of this. So I speak on behalf of my neighbors who are all very, very concerned about this.

I just jumped into the conversation partway through and from what I could hear is it sounds like you’re talking a lot about the community of homeless and we’re sympathetic to their plight as well. But all I could hear was how this affects them and how it benefits them. Very little concern for how this affects the community of residents that live on River Road. I have lived there for 20 years.

I like that peaceful part of the world. But it doesn’t take much to realize that my home, the home of my neighbor is 100 yards from that golf course. When he sits on his front porch or like is in his driveway, he can see the trailers. My home is 300 yards from the golf course.

My neighbor’s on the other side of me, 500 yards from the golf course. I heard Mr. Dickerson say on the news that River Road Golf course is a remote location and that the city plans to move the homeless to an isolated location out of the watchful eye of the community neighbors and passers by. Please recognize that there are neighbors who live right there.

There is a community on River Road. The comings and goings of the homeless people who will be sheltered there will certainly be in our view and under our watchful eyes. They will be living 300 yards from my front door. It sounds like this is already a done deal.

I’m not sure why the residents of River Road were not included or any part of a consultation in regards to this. In July, I asked Councillor Van Holz to investigate why the trailers were on River Road Golf course. He wasn’t even aware that they were there, but he told me that he investigated. He found out that they were being stored there not to worry.

I asked again a few weeks ago when we heard that the trailers were indeed going to house the homeless. The Councillor again knew nothing about it. And then of course, this broke in the news. So obviously, we were lied to in July.

We were lied to a few weeks ago. And it seems like the decision is just rubber stamped. And again, put them out in the East and nobody will complain, nobody will notice. Well, you know what, we will notice.

We live right there. Couple of questions that I have. Just to interrupt you, Ms. Dugget.

You’ve said things like Councillor Van Holz lied to you. And I would just ask you to reconsider making a claim like this. No, no, I did not say that. No, I did not say Councillor Van Holz.

He did his investigation. I don’t know who passed on Ms. Truth to us, but that is, you know what, you can’t deny how I feel and how the neighbors and how our community on River Road feel. We feel we were misled about what was happening there.

So I would like to know, is River Road golf course zoned to house the whole homeless? We have delegations. We’ll answer all the questions that you might have raised at the end of your delegation. So go ahead if you have a whole bunch of questions.

All right, we wondered if there were any permits that needed in order for this to land on that property. We wanted to know why the city, if they’re trying to sell the golf course, why they let it deteriorate to the conditions that now exist. If you were really serious about selling a golf course, you would have left it in the tidy condition that it always was in order for it to sell. We also would like to know if you’ve had any viable offers for the property.

I already asked why we weren’t consulted, why it was left to the media to educate us on what was happening in our just yards from our door. Also, I understand that there was a study done through Wish evaluation team. And I’m not sure where in that, they recommended placing homeless people on a dark road with no sidewalks, no bus or no police presence. And I believe that Jody Hall was quoted as much saying that that wasn’t the recommendation of the study to further isolate these people.

And I’m not sure why the indigenous people are being segregated. We would like to know why are they being segregated from the general homeless population. We were also wondering about the sanitation facilities, what will be provided for these people, what toilets will they use, what bathing facilities will be available to them. We are not on the city sewer system, we all have septic tanks.

So just wondering how that is all going to work out. Are there permits to improve the plumbing there? Not sure. Our community is wondering why the homeless all can’t be housed at Fanshawe golf course, where there is no residential areas in sight.

I think you’ve talked a little bit about the resources that will be on site for them. And you’ve talked about the security. One of our main concerns in our community is about the security on the site. And while you’ve talked about you’re going to fence, you’re going to have security within and security around the perimeter.

What is going to happen when something happens on one of our properties? I don’t know how many of you have actually been down River Road. It’ll soon be dark on that road. 730 is pitch black out there.

There are no sidewalks. People are going to get hit on that road, walking along that road. They’re not going to stay within the fence. We know that last year and someone alluded to that, that the problems were not so much with the residents, but it was with the visitors that came.

Well, you know what, that’s not comforting to us. Whether it’s the residents or the people visiting that are being the vandals, it doesn’t really matter to us. It’s that things are being vandalized and our properties are going to be, you know, in peril. So— It’s not good I’m going to ask you to wrap up because you’re over time now.

So just— we have no police presence on our road. We quite like that. But, you know, we heard the clubhouse being broken into a few months ago. There was no police response until after hours after the vandalism had already occurred.

So, you know, we— we wonder how you can— if you can guarantee the neighborhoods that it will— that we will be safe, that our home and property will be safe, that we will have a police presence and prompt response. And, you know, we fear that all our property value is decreasing as we speak, as word gets out about this. You know, I heard our mayor say that he’s so proud of this proposal. I wonder if he or any of you on that committee would like to have this homeless set up 300 yards from your front door.

I beg you to rethink this decision. I encourage you to come to our location, try to see things from our point of view. It’s great that you’re thinking about the homeless. But we would also like you to give equal consideration to how this is affecting the people on River Road.

We are totally opposed to this. River Road Golf Course is not your solution to your homeless problem in London. Thank you. OK.

I have 11 questions that came up. Just noted down. I may have missed one or two. I’m going to go briefly to Mr.

Dickens, I think, is the person to answer most of them. There were some questions about, you know, the sale of the golf course, which I’m not sure if we actually have staff around to answer those questions. And I’m not sure that they’re directly irrelevant. But there were a bunch of them.

So I’m just going to go through them. I hope Mr. Dickens, you are making no— No, it’s relevant to that. Ms.

Duckett, your delegation is over now. So there’s a question about zoning and permits. What zoning is needed? Is it in place?

And then are there any permits that are required? Thank you. And through the chair, I believe Mr. Cotsvus is on this call.

But I can answer this question. We are taking the same approach that we did last year using the same infrastructure, which are mobile units on wheels. We go through a site planning process internally to ensure that we have the proper layout. We’ve consulted, we’ve benefited from, an enterprise-wide approach, tapping into our facilities team, the Realty, our legal and risk experts, as well as our environmental and engineering folks, and building and planning departments.

Because the units are on wheels, they actually fall under the Highway Traffic Act and not under the building code. However, like last year, we will work with our chief building officer, as well as the London Fire Department to ensure that all units are inspected before they’re occupied, that they are safe, and that everything is set up accordingly. OK, there were two questions about deterioration of the property at River Road and also whether there have been offers for sale that have been made. And I wonder, I don’t know if it’s Ms.

Smith or somebody from Realty who might want to answer those questions. Through the chair, I can start to answer these two questions. So with respect to deterioration, as you know, River Road is no longer a golf course, and therefore we wouldn’t be maintaining that at the same level, for example, that we would Fanshawe and Thames. So it is not my understanding that it is deteriorated, except for that it’s not kept at the same levels as a golf course.

With respect to this, with respect to where we are with River Road, it’s my understanding that civic administration is doing its due diligence on the property, and a report will be coming to council with respect to next steps. OK, there was a question about consultation with residents in the vicinity of where these locations are reposed, who would like to handle that one. Thank you, Chair, and through you. We will be working with, or sorry, we have been working with our communications team, and we will be providing two information sessions for neighbors in close proximity to the site.

On November 9th and 10th, that information is actually live, or will be live this evening, on the Get Involved page, Under Housing Stability Services, on the City of London website. So we’ll be working with council admin teams as well to direct people to the Get Involved site, where you can find a number of documents and a lot of helpful information that helps answer questions, and also helps to sort of demystify some of the assumptions about what we’re doing and who we’re serving. So the Get Involved page is very helpful, but we will be hosting virtual online information sessions on November 9th and 10th, and that information is available online. OK, there was a question about the study that was done and the feedback that was provided from the people who did that research to your staff.

So I wonder if you want to address that. Thank you, and through you, Chair. Last year’s Wish Coalition had sort of commissioned a external valuation of their services, and it was done through the lens of that Wish project. And as we’ve established this evening, what we’re proposing this year is very different than what was provided last year, where it was get people into a space as fast as we could and help program around it.

This is far more intentional this year. Having received some communication from one of the lead researchers, I have learned that there is no final report that was ever submitted to the city. I think there’s some initial findings that have been shared with Wish, but there is not, in fact, any final research report that has been submitted, and the findings are still being interpreted and correlated. So I think that is what the delegate was speaking to, but that information is not available to us as civic administration.

The delegate described the indigenous population as being segregated. I wonder if you wanted to respond to that characterization. Thank you, and through the chair, this municipal council has endorsed, in principle, a give-a-tosh cod plan, which is an indigenous homeless prevention plan and housing plan. While this short-term temporary use of River Road for an indigenous-led response is not directly affiliated to that give-a-tosh cod plan, it does align with our commitment as civic administration and as council to support and endorse indigenous-led responses when it comes to homelessness and housing.

The indigenous organizations in this community have been very clear on the impact and the volume of indigenous homeless individuals amongst our general homeless population. And they are the experts when it comes to, in an indigenous response, being very different and very beneficial for those that identify as indigenous and very different from what traditional services may provide. The connection to the River Road property as an underutilized city asset is imperative for the connection to the land and the river and all things that are identified in the U-a-tosh cod plan that council has previously endorsed. Thank you.

Okay, there were some questions. I’m not sure if they’re ready for Ms. Smith. They’re facility related around sanitation and any permits that may be required for plumbing works.

Thank you, and through the chair, I can start with this. And if I miss anything, I’m sure Ms. Smith will add. But through our communications, again, as an enterprise-wide approach, talking to our city service partners, there are no concerns when it comes to sanitation.

We are working to ensure that showers are provided on site, meals are prepared and enjoyed onsite, and the indoor plumbing will be something that we didn’t have last year, which created far more challenges last year when it came to freezing pipes and things like that through shower trailers and whatnot. So this year, we will have access to indoor plumbing, no concerns shared with us up to this point around any septic issues or sanitation issues, and we will have a full access to hygiene services on site. Okay, thank you. The last two I had, one was about why not have everybody staying at Fanshawe rather than split between River Road and Fanshawe?

Thank you, and through you, chair. There are two very different responses. As we’ve outlined in the report, the Fanshawe location is intended to be a housing first and rapid housing focus, supporting a very specific part of our population through consultation and ongoing feedback from the indigenous partners in this community. It has been clear that we’ve been lacking an indigenous response, and that’s why we have two different sites with two very different focuses.

I don’t think either site presupposes people to increase in crime necessarily. And in fact, we feel that the individuals we are supporting and through our experience of last year are quite overwhelmed and appreciative of the opportunity to have a safe, warm place to sleep with a door to lock behind them and a place to keep their personal belongings out of harm’s way. Often that gratitude and appreciation translates into, like we saw at Elizabeth last year, individuals on site creating pictures and art for community neighbors, but it would be our intention that we work with onsite service providers at both locations to build connections with the neighborhood, with the community so that they have a one point of contact if there are concerns, but also that they can build a better understanding of the two populations. Okay, the last one I had noted down was about safety, both for the participants at the location and then also for the residents who are worried about their own properties.

Thank you and through the chair. I believe as civic administration, we’ve answered this question a number of times tonight from council members, but yes, we will have onsite security that will patrol both onsite and outside the property. We will have fencing, we will have lighting that is adequate onsite respecting the privacy and the inclusion or sorry, the close proximity of neighbors, but we will also have security cameras as well to ensure that residents are safe on the location. As I mentioned, relationship building with onsite service providers will be paramount and that will help with keeping small issues small would be our expectation so that individuals and residents in the area have a one point of contact if they start to see concerns or feel that there are things we can do to keep participants and the neighbors safer than what we’ve already intended to do.

Okay, thanks very much. I have Councillor Slee and then Councillor Van Holst next on my speaker’s list and I just want to make sure that I’ve got everyone. So let me know if there is anybody else who wants to weigh in and to go to you Councillor Slee first, I think you were first with your hand up and then Councillor Reynolds, go ahead. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. And I put up my hand initially just to clarify a point that you’ve addressed one of the Councillors mentioned that I made a reference to security. That’s not accurate. So thank you for clearing that up.

On that note, I didn’t raise any issues with security. I don’t think that’s certain of mine. My concern is solely around the safety and just where the location is. I just think it’s not suitable and I think it could have a potential risk for those residents to put them in that location because there’s just absolutely no infrastructure, no sidewalks, it’s gonna be dark out and it’s not safe at all.

I’m not sure there was kind of a reference that was alluded to. I wasn’t sure if it was kind of directed at me or it was just a comment that one of the Councillors just made speaking in general where I said we shouldn’t in paraphrasing, we shouldn’t try to tell, or we shouldn’t try to tell the Indigenous community what best to do for them or something to that effect. But I just want to make sure that that comment wasn’t directed at me because I did not make any comments about saying anything about the Indigenous community and or any one members of the public how they should serve their community or anything like that. So I’m not sure if Councillor Lewis was making his comment around that about towards me or if he was just speaking in general.

So I just wanted to ask you to the chair as a point of privilege. Let’s check with Councillor Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chair and through you, no Councillor Silly, that was not directed at you.

That was a response that I will share is something that I was expressing in response to a number of emails that I’ve received on that particular issue. Some of which had very inappropriate language to use at committee and so I won’t expand on that any further but rest assured it was not directed towards you. Satisfied Councillor Silly? Yes, I’m satisfied in that.

Thank you, Councillor Lewis, I was just making sure ‘cause I was trying to think of the words that I said. So I’ll wrap up by just saying to my colleagues, you know, I also do, there’s a lot of mention about security and security. I’ve heard me in the past talking about security. I think it’s sometimes not the great mix when we’re talking about building community.

I’m not a fan of having a fence then 24-hour surveillance securities that’s patrolling inside and outside. You know, it’s really sometimes a false sense of security and I think, you know, the powers of security officials is very limited and sometimes what they can or can’t do can sometimes make situations more difficult and can also be barriers for members of the community. And I’ve spoken on this many occasions in the past and that’s why I’m not necessarily a fan of the approach with security. I think there is a way for public safety and making people feel at ease that can be taken.

But, you know, for me just that presence isn’t just something I support. So the last thing I’ll say is since this seems like there’s support around the committee for this, if the chair could just separate the locations, I will be voting against that part. If not, then I’ll have to vote against the entire recommendation. Thank you, Councillor Slee.

I have been looking over the recommendation the way it’s drafted. It’s not obvious to me how we’re gonna separate out the location specifically. I suppose you could just vote against part B, which is where the specific agreements are identified and those are tied to the locations. And perhaps you could pull out impact London and at Losa, those are the golf course locations that you seem to be posed to.

So that’s my suggestion. I mean, feel free to think about other ways that that could be done. But otherwise, I think you might be voting against the whole thing. Okay, I’m gonna go ahead.

Sorry, I was just, in fact, just response here. I was just gonna say if I could just ask the clerk then to just try to just kind of vote on the motion of the location. I guess I don’t know if I can do that or not, but that’d be my preference. I don’t wanna vote against the whole recommendation.

Yeah, I’m gonna go to Councillor Lewis, even though Councillor Van Holst and Councillor Hopkins are waiting just to see if he can help us out with an idea here, Councillor Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sorry, it was a sort of a point of order on the separating out.

So I appreciate you coming to me. Part A endorses the staff report as well. Part B speaks to for specific funding agreements, not specifically to the locations, but the funding agencies. Part C directs administration to undertake the necessary acts.

So while I understand Councillor Sleeves concerned about the locations, I think that it’s really a situation where he may want to vote against it now and perhaps have a discussion with the clerks about when this comes to council, how he might separate it out. But I see three of the four pieces of this motion being all tied together to the funding agreements, the authorization for administration and the staff report being endorsed. So I’m just not sure how we can separate these out at this point. Okay, I’m going to go to Councillor Van Holst and then Councillor Hopkins, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so it was true that during the summer, the residents reached out and we talked to staff who told us that the trailers were just being stored there for the time being. So my question is, when did we change our mind on the strategy and the river road location?

I realize this is a different strategy as was described at the beginning. When did we change our mind on that and what other locations were considered? Tradicates. Thank you and through you, Chair.

The plan was developed in September when we learned of the funding that was going to be provided from the upper levels of government. So in June or July, River Road was not an option. In fact, we looked at several city sites, including some that we explored that were not necessarily city sites for the storage of the trailers that we purchased last year. River Road was the best option.

So in June or July, those were not part of any plan. The plan was developed in September. As we started to develop and finalize a plan, it first needed to go through our senior leadership team here at the city. So nothing was set in stone and nothing was finalized until we’d had those conversations, which then allowed us to start to work on a very detailed and comprehensive plan, which would inform our committee report that you see here.

Okay, thank you very much. And I do appreciate that there seems to be an opportunity to engage the neighbors for building community. There’s the community, the surrounding community as well. So I think it would be nice if there’s an opportunity for the neighbors to meet the participants and certainly for providing more information that’s good.

However, there are still those concerns. And I believe that for the neighbors, the security of their homes is a big issue. So those were my, I guess last comments. I’m not a member of the committee, but I appreciate you, Mr.

Chair, allowing me to ask many questions and to staff for their responses. Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I just wanna thank you, Mr. Chair, for clarifying the difference between keeping people safe and security.

And I appreciate Councillor Sully’s concern around the importance of how people who move in this area around Fanshawe and keeping them safe is quite different to how they move around downtown, for instance. So thank you, Councillor Sully. Okay, I don’t have any other speakers. I just wanna make sure that that’s the case.

No one else wants to weigh in. No, okay, I think we have this moved and seconded, but it’s been long enough that I, okay, we don’t have a mover and a seconder. Mover, Councillor Lewis, seconder, Councillor Fife Miller, okay. Any further discussion?

If not, I just wanted to say a couple of things from the chair. We had, as part of the winter response last year, one of the sites located in word four. And in fact, about 360 yards from where I live. I couldn’t quite reach that with a driver these days, but I mean, it’s pretty close.

And I will say, in the area to the north of the train tracks, there was a lot of apprehension. People who live in that area were, I say it was divided into three buckets. There were people who were very strongly opposed to the temporary response being located so close to where they live. There were people who were quite supportive of that.

And there were people who were supportive for one year, like maybe, and very concerned. They were very concerned about it. And there were some problems. And I think, Mr.

Dickens responded to some of those issues where you had people who were visiting, passing through, potentially caused more problems than participants did. But there were also a lot of really great successes and I want to emphasize that. Many of the neighbors came and engaged with the participants who were now living in the neighborhood, reached out to them. There were some exchanges of artwork and relationships that were built back and forth, some exchange of food.

And I think it was actually very positive and people were quite welcoming. And I think they approach it with an open heart and an open mind. And it’s not perfect, right? So these solutions are never going to be perfect, but they’re necessary.

They’re necessary. And certainly as somebody who lived very close by to where the temporary response was, I supported it. Lots of people were against it. And it still was a good idea.

And it led to good outcomes for many of the people who stayed in the McMahon shelter, about three quarters of people moved from the shelter into some kind of housing at the end of that program. And I think that that’s a good news story. And I share, I have to say, I share Councillor Saleh’s concern about mobility from the golf course locations into the city. And I’ve actually biked out to Fanshawe Park Golf Course with my golf clubs on a trailer and been knocked over by a gravel truck, biking on the side of the road.

And it is, it is dicey. And I think we do have to be really cognizant of that and make sure that the budget for mobility is sufficient so that people can get to where they need to go and that they’re not doing unsafe things like trying to walk it in to catch a bus or something like that. I’ve similarly taken my golf clubs on the bus down to River Road to get onto the golf course there. And it is not a great road to walk on.

And it does need some sidewalks. And the street lighting is not good. And I think we have to recognize that and make sure that the mobility choices for people actually are gonna work. And I appreciate what Mr.

Dickens and his team are doing, which is let’s see what people need and then make sure it’s provided so that they can move about. I actually think that there’s some upside to having people a little bit more removed from the core, having that as an option for some folks and having in the core still a lot of places for people who they’re not interested in that, they’re not interested in the more remote locations. And I think similar to what we did last year, I don’t think this is gonna be perfect. We may have to change it as we’re going and be agile and adjust things on the fly.

And I just think we have to approach it with an open mind. I don’t think it’s a good idea to approach it from a place of fear where we think about all the terrible things that could happen because the status quo for people who are living on the street right now, it’s no good. And we’ve gotta do something better over the winter and we have to try. And I appreciate that people seem, for the most part, to be committed to making that effort.

So I’m gonna support the recommendation. I am concerned about the mobility of people from the sites into the city because people are gonna have to make those trips. But I’m confident that we can work that out and that’s part of the orientation and planning for each of those specific sites. We can figure out something that’s gonna work for the participants who are staying there.

And I hope that we can achieve even more than we did last year this time. So those are my comments. I don’t have anyone else on the speakers list. I’m gonna open it up for a vote.

Okay. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to one. That motion is carried. It won’t be finalized until it’s considered by council at the 16 November council meeting.

So I’m sure we’ll have another discussion about it. Then thanks very much for everyone’s patience as we work through the delegations and the many questions that committee members had for staff. I really appreciate the time it took. I’m just gonna look to committee members to make sure that we’re okay to discontinue on.

I know we have a number of people who are here for another item. Sometimes it’s worth taking a break just briefly before we hunker down for another long session. I just wanna check people who are online, people in the room. Do you wanna take a two-minute recess or a five-minute recess or you wanna just plunge your head?

It looks like we got an idea for a five-minute recess. Yeah. Okay, move by councilor Fife Miller, seconded by Mayor Holder. All those in favor?

Any opposed? Okay, we’re gonna reconvene at a 557. See you then. Okay, I’ve got just after 558, 559, so I think I’m gonna call the meeting back to order.

We’ll give everyone a second just to make sure we’ve got everyone. All right, just one second. Okay, so we’re going to start in on our public participation meeting on the issue of fire deliveries to residential properties. And I wanna just say right at the outset, just give you a bit of a content warning, the content of what we’re discussing tonight because it deals with abortion, termination of pregnancy, miscarriage, and any other very traumatic events for people could be very difficult.

And I want to say to all the people who are gonna be speaking as delegates to keep that in mind and to try and be as kind to each other and as careful with our language as we possibly can be. If a step over the line, if something is gonna be really out there, I’m going to bring you back in. And I’m gonna moderate the discussion quite firmly. If that’s necessary, hopefully it will not be.

We’re going to go through the speakers who are on the delegation list. There was a couple delegations that referred to this meeting. We’re gonna do them first. So one, two, three.

Then I’m gonna go to Mr. Trasso. I think he has to leave. And so I wanna go to him.

And then we’re gonna go through everybody else who wants to speak at the PPM to make sure that they can be heard. Each speaker’s gonna have up to five minutes to give their presentation to the committee. But I do wanna say that the issue in front of us is delivery of flyers to residential properties, especially those that contain graphic images. And it is not should abortion be legal or not.

That is not the issue that’s in front of City Council. And if there are long speeches about that topic, I will probably cut you off. The issue in front of us is how do we handle delivery of flyers with graphic material? Two residential properties when they’re not wanted.

And so that’s what we’re talking about today at City Council. I know that there’s lots of arguments about the broader topic, but that is not what we’re here for today. So this is gonna be potentially a difficult conversation. I’m gonna try to do my best to be very fair in how I chair the meeting.

But I will not be sitting back and letting people say whatever you like. Okay, I’m gonna go to committee just to get the PPM open. And is there a mover for that? Councillor Lewis, seconded.

Councillor Fife Miller, thank you. All those in favor of opening the PPM, it’s gonna be up on the screen. Posing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. Three speakers of the delegates we referred from our previous meeting.

So the first one’s gonna be Maria McCann. Second one is gonna be Anna Marchand. And the third one is gonna be Dina Ronson. Okay, so we’re gonna start with Maria McCann.

Go ahead. Just checking, is my audio clear? It is. Great, thank you and good afternoon everyone.

As was mentioned, my name is Maria McCann. And I’m the co-founder of a local grassroots pro-life group called London Against Abortion. I’m here today because I’m very concerned that certain priorities are advocating for policies that would seriously inhibit the freedom of expression of Londoners and in particular of pro-life Londoners. My family and I moved to ward 10 in 2013.

And I was very fortunate to begin studying at Western University that year. And while I was in university in 2016, a classmate and I co-founded London Against Abortion. We wanted to reach out to our peers, especially other young women our age, who might be facing unplanned pregnancy. And since then, our team of volunteers has been regularly and publicly sharing the pro-life viewpoint through street outreach using handheld signs through the distribution of pro-life literature and through engaging people in peaceful and civil dialogue about abortion.

We do this because we care about women and families facing difficult pregnancies. And because we care about pre-born children whose very lives are at risk from abortion. We’ve had hundreds of productive and positive conversations with Londoners about every aspect of that debate. However, since I only have five minutes, I’d just like to share a couple of stories with you about our interactions with people who have faced challenging pregnancies and in relation to the question at hand of whether graphic imagery should be permitted in these different public ways.

In January of 2017, as we were speaking with passers-by about abortion during our street outreach, an older gentleman approached one of our volunteers and told the volunteer that his granddaughter had driven by us on another day. And she was driving on her way to her scheduled abortion appointment. But the young woman’s grandfather informed us that she changed her mind and canceled her appointment because she saw our signs with the photos of what abortion would do to her baby. I firmly believe that all women have the right to full information about a medical procedure as impactful as abortion.

And I’m so grateful that the new information which that woman received helped her to make a fully informed decision about keeping her baby. At other times, I’ve encountered people who expressed the emotional weight they carried with them after their own abortion experiences. Just a year ago, in November of 2020, I was doing typical street outreach when I met Amanda. Amanda shared with me, through tears, the intense grief and regret she carried because of her past decision to have an abortion.

As I listened to her story, I affirmed her value and affirmed that she did not have to be defined by her past decisions. And I told her about the resources that we were carrying for post-awardive women seeking healing. Amanda actually thanked us profusely for our presence there. She told me that she wished she knew then about abortion, what she knows now about it.

And she told me her belief that other women also needed to see the information we were sharing. While it was certainly an emotionally heavy discussion, we parted it on warm terms with her leaving in gratitude for our outreach. Now, evidently, there are many Londoners who are actually genuinely thankful to receive the pro-life message. And our team, we strive to share the truth in love because we believe that people have the right to full information about the reality and the potential impact of abortion.

Whether or not someone shares our particular views on that issue, I hope we can find common ground in the belief that the right to peaceful freedom of expression should be upheld in our city. And so, counselors, please don’t silence the voices of one particular viewpoint, one particular community. And I ask you to vote no against any measures which would curtail the lawful freedom of expression of pro-life Londoners because their rights should be equal to those of all other Londoners and of all other Canadians. Thank you for allowing me to speak today.

Okay, thank you. Next up is Anna Marshant, go ahead. Hello, am I heard? Yep.

Thank you. Hello, Mayor Holden and city counselors. My name is Anna Marshant, and I am speaking as president of the London Area Right to Life Association and on behalf of the pro-life community. I just wanted to express my thanks for your following through with the best, the past tension during deliveries of postcards by the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform, the CCBR, I call it, when the viewer discretion team was, here, sorry, excuse me.

When the viewer discretion team asked for a by-law, you obviously had to patiently answer many phone calls of all kinds of opinionated constituents. I myself am grateful for your conversations and I regret that this emotionally charged by-law proposal had to fall in your hands. Thanks for taking our concern seriously. So here are just some ideas as to why I am asking city council to consider voting against the by-law.

So the draft mentions the goals of maintaining an engagement, community and educated approach. From what I can recall, the by-law petition was performed in order to squash, shut down, cease and assist any dialogue that could occur about this contentious issue in Canada. That is the message behind the abortion victim photography on the fires. I am concerned that this is not a mere soliciting or graphics complaint, but is a threat to my right and duty to exercise freedom of expressions.

I mean, protecting freedom is crucial to our democracy and a democracy and expression cannot be arbitrarily banned simply because the message is not widely accepted. This is entirely against the freedom of expression and a direct attack of our democracy. If I may, I’d like to talk a bit about the fires themselves. It is rarely mentioned that there are not just pictures on these fires, but useful info for women who are seeking help through their pregnancy crisis on these fires plus info on what an abortion was, et cetera.

The CCBR is simply leave letting, sharing a message by delivering fires to homes, a fundamental method of freedom of expression protected by the charter. The city of London is opening itself up to just wasting taxpayer dollars on passing an unconstitutional bylaw, which would interfere with the basic charter right to deliver flyers on any topic to local residents. As evident in the explanation behind Bill 259 that was brought up in the report, the abortion lobbyists do not just have a problem with imagery, they have a problem that I am for life. This is what I fear can happen to groups such as mine here in London.

I appreciate that this bylaw has not gone so far as to target CCBR and other pro-life groups. And I would hope that it would not be made any more restrictive, something which has been proposed by others. I have faith that mayor and council are against allowing this kind of action to aim toward a particular group and will vote with the best in mind for the entire community. Justice does not found it on hate and partial voting.

If you care to view both sides, it would appear that these two groups are concerned about protecting children. Both are just in two different ways. Inside the womb and also outside the womb. Slapping on a no soliciting sign or envelopes is not apparently enough for the abortion rights coalition.

They prefer a more destructive goal for the CCBR. I would hope this is not true for our city council because you recognize that both groups have equal opportunity to express their freedoms. I’m sure no one wants to look at the images on these flyers. They are grotesque and yes, can be very triggering.

I may not even agree with this type of activism. Even if I do or don’t, I would consider the freedom this group has to exercise their freedom of expression before agreeing with any by law that would inhibit their freedom. I understand that those of the abortion rights coalition of Canada would see a form of hate speech in these flyers delivered. But before fighting this claim, I ask that they primarily address some of their supporters’ groups that organize targeted attacks against pro-life activists, which strongly suggest hate crime.

I hope this kind of behavior is not what ARC encourages to achieve their mission, that they haven’t forgotten that healthy discussion always produces good results. London Area Right to Life mandate is based on support for the vulnerable lives in the community and education. I do not represent those who are even pro-life Ms. Varshan?

I don’t know. I don’t know. Ms. Varshan.

Just a sec. Okay. I’m almost done, yeah. I just wish to educate my community first, unopen and polite dialogue, and it is so important that you allow me and group such a CCBR to feel absolutely free to do so.

Thank you very much for listening. Okay, we’re going to go to Dina Ronson. Next, go ahead. Sorry, you’re muted, Ms.

Ronson. Good afternoon, Chair Halmer and committee members. Thank you for having me. We’re meeting this afternoon to discuss why law flyers containing graphic images of alleged aborted fetuses.

My request to the committee is almost the same as it was on November 3rd, 2020, just a little more specific. I request that the city create a specific by-law with monetary penalties that would ban the delivery of flyers containing graphic images of alleged aborted fetuses. We already know that voluntary compliance does not work. Many residents have already, already have no flyer signs and the CCBR has indicated that they ignore these signs.

In addition, the committee already knows that other cities have banned these flyers. The opposing side will argue this evening that such a ban would infringe on their freedom of expression. Such a ban may indeed come under section 2B of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, what the pro-choice movement in London will conclude tonight is that a specific by-law can be justified under section 1 of the charter.

I’m not asking City Hall to muzzle or ban the CCBR or the LAA in London. What I am asking is that the city acknowledges that the freedom of expression is not absolute. Section 1 of the charter demands that in order to pass such a by-law, we must show a legitimate and substantial objective. Our legitimate and substantial objective may be demonstrated by the overwhelming evidence of harm that has been heaped on our community by these graphic images.

We have measurable proof of the harm caused to our city in the number of Londoners who signed a petition calling for a ban on these images. 3,000 of those signatures were from London and surrounding area. In comparison, the CCBR petition gathered approximately 2,000 signatures from across the whole of Ontario. I also have measurable proof of harm in the form of countless personal messages and online comments that I received from Londoners during my time as a director of pro-choice London.

Here are a couple of examples. Quote, “My daughter who was four saw them and asked me what it was. Before I could respond, she said, ‘Is that a baby? Is that a dead baby?

My child should not be seeing this.’” Second quote, “My three-year-old saw these disturbing images that were in flyers delivered to our mailbox. I also had recurrent pregnancy loss, one of which resulted in the need for a DNC, and was triggered and upset by these images,” end quote. I know that the mayor and council have proof of harm from the numerous emails and phone calls that they received from residents after pro-choice London launched an email campaign last fall. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the harm that came to a certain individual in the form of an arrest over these flyers.

Mark Conrad, a resident of Old North in London, was detained and arrested by London police for walking behind and filming a pair of CCBR volunteers who were delivering flyers. It’s interesting that when our own activists called the police to report the CCBR’s graphics for members, we were told that nothing could be done. I always wondered if there was a racial component at play in Mr. Conrad’s arrest, but surely following on the heels of London’s Black Lives Matters protest, there’s no way that a black man would have been targeted by the police for following and filming two white people.

I’d also like to point out that these flyers target a very specific population, and that is women. The flyers target women and label them as killers. They demonize people who have undergone a specific health procedure. They are hate propaganda, and the identifiable group being targeted with hatred are women.

There is no room for hate in London. There is no room for the willful promotion of harm to our residents. That is why I am asking the Community and Protective Services Committee to protect its community by enacting a specific bylaw with monetary penalties that would prohibit the distribution of graphic images and alleged aborted fetuses. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I think I’m gonna go to Mr. Trossow next, and then we’re gonna open it up to whoever is on the line and in the committee rooms to weigh in. Everyone’s gonna have up to five minutes.

I’ll go ahead, Mr. Trossow. Well, thank you very much. Can you hear me okay with this mask from this room?

We can, go ahead. Oh, excellent. I really felt that that last presentation sort of cut the air out of some of mine. I was gonna talk about the charter in section one, and I think she did a great job doing that.

I’m gonna elaborate on some of the elements of section one, but I wanna point out that nobody is asking for legitimate speech to be suppressed in a matter that would be actionable under a constitutional challenge. And I think it’s very important to understand the constitutional law in this country is based on certain balancing of interests. And one of the things that is going to get in the way of absolute speech every time, and we’ve seen it with hate speech and it keeps this case, we’ve seen it, we’ve seen it with obscenity in the Butler case is the monsterable harm to an identified group of people. And the reason why I thought it was so important to have this public participation meeting tonight, was so members of the public could come out once more to make it clear that being exposed by surprise, by surprise on their door steps at home when their children are there to these images, these horrible images causes the monsterable harm.

Now, the people that are sort of sending these leaflets out can deny that, but the fact of the matter is you’re gonna hear, you’re gonna hear from, you’ve already heard from a number of people, you’re gonna hear from some more people about the types of things that the previous speaker was talking about. Now, if there is a primary patient, if there is an on-the-face violation of expression rights, your analysis is then gonna turn to section one. And the first part of your section one analysis is whether or not the government that passed the impugned measure has a legitimate substantial objective. So I think it’s important that any by-law that you pass will have a recital in it of what that substantial objective is.

And I think I wrote that in my submission. The substantial objective really goes to reduce the harms associated with the residential distribution of unsolicited flyers, depicting graphic images of aborted fetuses or what purported to be such. Such harms include unwanted exposure to disturbing and graphic images, and interference with residents’ peaceful enjoyment of premises, and particular harm to children resulting from exposure to images. And you’re gonna hear that from people over and over again.

There’s your first prong of your section one analysis. Now, the next requirement is that you try to be reasonable, that it can’t be arbitrary, that it can’t be over-broad, and to collapse the next one in with the two, the interest of time, you’ve done this in the less restrictive way. So I think that so long as you make careful findings that whatever burdens you place on expression, and yes, you are gonna be placing burdens on expression, just like with the forced speech and cigarette advertising, just like with the obscenity books, just like with the hate speech laws. These are all, these all impact expression, but I think you have a legitimate reason to do it.

The reason why I would prefer to see you do something that was similar to Bill 259 is because what that does is that is a much less restrictive alternative than just saying no leaflets come to the door. I think you have a variety of options. I’ve laid some of them out in my paper. And finally, in my last minute, I want to, I wanna talk about why I think this is a municipal purpose, because I think that that’s an issue that’s been raised.

Now, section 10, two, section 10, subdivision two of the Ontario Municipal Act lays out the broad powers of municipalities, in this case, upper tier municipalities, regular municipalities like London. Section 10, two, speaks to, and you’ve recited a number of these and he attached by law that the solicitor already prepared. But the one that was missing, which I think is crucial here, is six, health, safety, and wellbeing of persons. You can pass bylaws that affect the health, safety, and wellbeing of persons, which is why I believe that this public participation meeting serves two important purposes.

Number one, it helps show what your section one justification is. And number two, it gets you into your municipal act head of power that deals with protecting health, safety, and persons. If you can listen to some of the things that people are telling, and walk away from that and say, no, this has nothing to do with the wellbeing of persons, well, I think that’s wrong. You’ve got a lot of balancing to do here.

Finally, I think that whatever firewall you pass, whatever firewall you pass is component to it. The evidence shows that it’s not, it’s not effective to just expect this to be voluntary. Voluntary compliance, it’s not worked here. And it’s really causing people a lot of upset.

So I think whatever it is that you pass, has to be based on, it has to be based on reason. It can’t be over-brought, it has to be narrowly tailored to deal with the specific harms that you’re hearing about here. Mr. Troso, you’re just approaching your time, so if you could wrap up.

Okay, well, anyway, I think that what was in Bill 259 has a lot of good information in it that you could use to base a bible on. And I also think looking at the experience from Ottawa and Calgary can also be very, very, very helpful. And I think with that, I’m just gonna say, I would be pleased to discuss this with Councillors further or with members of your staff further and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak. Thank you.

Okay, so we’re gonna open it up now. We’ll just take people in order, I think Ms. West, like power is gonna handle people who are on the Zoom. I just wanna check to see if there’s anyone in the committee rooms who’s looking to speak.

Okay, there’s one. Okay, so we’ll go to the Zoom and then we’ll come back to the committee room and we’ll take that person next. First up, Mr. Chair, is Alsia.

Okay, go ahead, Alsia. You have up to five minutes. My name’s Alsia Dregic and I am a recently elected board member of the Viewer discretion legislation coalition. However, today my remarks will not just be made as a board member of the VDOC, but as a Canadian citizen, a resident of London, Ontario, and as a human being.

When I first encountered the graphic pamphlets we are discussing here today, I was at home, just woken up and I was greeted with this gruesome pamphlet wide open in the middle of my floor in the entryway. The distributors of these pamphlets had shoved it through my mail slot into my house. This graphic unsolicited unwanted pamphlet was pushed into my home, shoved into my view, and forced upon me. Those who are against abortion like to call this graphic imagery abortion victim photography.

They believe they are showing the truth of abortion using graphic images to elicit an emotional response. It is very evident that they do not give any regard to those who fall victim to their graphic images. For them, the goal is the shock value. On the Canadian Centre for Biolithic Reform or the CCBR’s website, they have outright admitted that they believe that, quote, if the images were ineffective, one would expect abortion advocates to be indifferent to them, unquote.

In other words, if these images upset some people, that is not an unfortunate side effect of their so-called crusade. That is their purpose to them. That is a sign that these images are working, that they are creating the intended effect. And what is more upsetting, more shocking, than being assaulted with gore on your morning commute, or while sorting your mail, or while stepping out of your bedroom?

The disturbing nature of these images is only amplified by their presence in spaces that one would assume are safe, and that is precisely why they are placed there. So I ask you, council members, would you allow this blatant harassment to continue if it was around any other issue? Any other decision someone made with their body? Would you allow images of any other medical procedure to be distributed to people’s homes, left open in living rooms and on street corners for children and vulnerable people to see unchecked?

There are fewer discretion warnings for everything else, movies, books, YouTube videos, Instagram and Facebook posts. Why is this the exception? The very purpose of these images is to cause a negative reaction. This is not a few people being overly sensitive and requesting censorship over someone else’s freedom of speech.

This is your constituents asking you to protect us from these images that are explicitly meant to cause distress in our own homes. Do we not get a choice on whether or not we are subjected to it? As a community and protective services committee, will you do your job and protect our community? I would like to close with a reminder to each one of the elected officials here today.

You are just that elected officials. Your duty as members of this body is to represent and serve the interests of your constituents. Well, here we are as your constituents telling you what we need from you. If nothing is done, we will remember this the next time we vote.

Thank you. Let’s go to the next speaker. Go ahead, you’ve got up to five minutes. Thank you.

I’m not quite as free-spoken, so I’ve got some notes. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Chair, Halmer, and Councillors, Lewis, Salive, Fife Miller, and Helier. Congratulations to Councillor Fife Miller.

I greatly appreciate the community and protective services committee taking the time to hear from community members on the topic of the propaganda and harmful flyers that have been distributed to others. While there are a host of reasons for why these flyers should not be distributed, I am only going to focus on one reason and see me. These flyers are traumatic in nature and cause undue and unnecessary harm to members of the community without impunity. My name is Ryan O’Hagan, and I’m a resident of Ward 11 here in London.

I’m a teacher, community activist, husband, and father. In August of 2019, my wife and I welcomed our beautiful daughter, Eileen, to the world. While the pregnancy was largely uneventful, the delivery was difficult and riddled with issues that at times caused us to conserve for the health of our daughter. The birth in and of itself was traumatic.

This is especially true for my wife. On September 6th of last year, we were delighted to find out that my partner was again pregnant, though we didn’t know at the time she was carrying our son. My wife was still struggling with some post-partum depression and emotional trauma from the way that our first child’s birth had brought a year earlier. In October, a month after learning about the second pregnancy, we began seeing street signs and having flyers delivered to our home, flyers containing graphic images of bloodied, dismembered fetuses.

Originally, it was easy enough for my wife to avoid these images. We were a part of a local Facebook group that posted warnings and learning members to which corners these forced birthers were appearing on. Around the middle of October, a flyer came in the mail that my wife unfortunately saw. The flyer prompted feelings of nervousness and fear of the wellbeing of the baby that she was carrying at the time.

And I distinctly remember her asking me, “How can they do this?” My partner was not the only pregnant woman who suffered traumatic experiences of the hands of the CCBR and their flyers. I spoke to numerous women at protests through Facebook and on Twitter who experienced similar feelings of trauma and harm from the flyers. Mr. Chair, last night I submitted some photos to City Council to show during this presentation.

Ironically, these images were rejected by the clerk’s office for their graphic nature. The clerk’s office correctly decided that images of a graphic nature were not appropriate for this forum, a forum where the vast majority of viewers and followers are acutely aware of the nature of this discussion, a forum where children are unlikely to be watching. If these images were not appropriate for what will be a more mature and monitored audience such as this, I asked what makes the CCBR photos covered by free speech. The photos and questions that I submitted were two graphic images of murder victims and a graphic image of a Halloween prop decoration.

The images showed dismemberment, disfiguration, and blood, not unfamiliar to those distributed by the CCBR. It’s unlikely that those who support the distribution of these graphic flyers would be as understanding and accepting of their children, partners, or elderly parents seeing graphic images of the nature that I submitted. There are a number of reasons for why these flyers should not be allowed. They’re riddled with misinformation.

They violate the Canadian Code for Advertising Standards. But arguably the best reason for banning these flyers is because of the very real and very detrimental trauma responses that they triggered. Mr. Mayor, I recognize that last year you brought concerns about freedom of speech.

As I’m sure you’re aware, as a former conservative number of parliament and a former cabinet minister, unlike the United States’ freedom of speech is not an absolute right to Canada. It can be and regularly is overwritten by section one of the charter. This section states that the rights and freedom set out in the charter are subject only to reasonable limits prescribed by law as to be demonstrably justified and afraid of a crowded society. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that bylaws are strictly the amount of noise that can be made after a certain time are covered by section one, while banning traumatic images or not.

Ms. McCann gave anecdotal evidence that her signs successfully stopped abortions. Well, I’m not sure how true that is. Nobody here suggests that the flyers do not work.

I don’t have the stats to tell you how many people are those who stopped from getting abortions. I am saying that there is a better way to distribute this information without traumatizing it. Finally, I want to address the proposed bylaw referenced as Schedule A. Well, I believe this to be a good start.

And acting a bylaw without teeth is not going to stop the distribution of traumatic photos. As both Ms. Ronson and Professor Trausau have suggested, a bylaw similar to the previous Ontario Bill 259 would be much preferred if the option to ban the flyers outright is not adopted. Mr.

Chair, we are incredibly fortunate to be in the midst of one of the greatest movements of our lifetime, the progression of mental health awareness, treatment and prevention. The city of London has an opportunity here to be at the forefront of the prevention of at least one mental health issue by banning images that are seen as dramatic to a significant portion of the population. I thank you for listening to me today and hope that you consider protecting vulnerable people in our communities by banning graphic images like the one seen on CCR flyers. Thank you.

Okay, let’s go to the next speaker on the Zoom. That would be Amy. Go ahead, Amy, you’ve got up to five minutes. Good evening, can you hear me okay?

Okay, so thank you for letting me participate. My name is Amy Dolman. I’m a resident of Warly Village in London, Ontario. And I guess my comments tonight are going to build on some of the things you’ve already heard already in terms of talking about the harm of these flyers and the need for municipal council members to protect the health, safety and well-being of its constituents.

Today, I’m going to speak about protecting women’s rights in our community. There’s many reasons for abortion, but no one has the right to politicize this decision. Women, in fact, all members of society should have the right to make decisions about their body and their healthcare in an environment that is free from shame, harassment and discrimination. These flyers in mailboxes undermine a women’s right to choose what’s best for them.

The information can be biased, misleading, or entirely inaccurate. If COVID has taught us anything, it’s that fake news can be powerful and there isn’t time and a place for regulation in the information environment. Even Twitter and Facebook has come to realize this. Surely our community can do the same.

These flyers are commenting on a medical procedure and the advice should be coming from qualified medical providers that are free of bias. Drug companies, they can’t make false information about procedures. Medical providers can’t make false claims or about their services. Even nutrition supplements in today’s environment can’t make false claims.

Special interest groups, similarly, have no place in providing false information or even expressing beliefs and opinions that aren’t based on medical facts. This doesn’t mean limiting expression outright. I think this information can still be presented, but like our previous speakers have said, it has no place in being shoved in someone’s front door. These flyers, they create a stigma around abortion and the effects of this are not felt equally by all members of our community, which brings us to in 2017, the city of London adopted a policy on diversity and inclusion.

I think this is a really important part of this discussion tonight is this policy. It specifically talks about this corporation of the city of London upholding the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and the Ontario Human Rights Code. It speaks to the importance of equality, discrimination, the role of privilege and even some of the systemic barriers that are in place. These flyers disproportionately affect a certain segment of our population.

It affects young girls and women. They receive false information or they’re less likely to approach a medical provider when faced with a decision around abortion. The long-term impact is we can see a wider equity gap between men and women in our community. It also increases the risks in terms of health-related issues.

There’s an increase in home abortions or alternate methods of abortion that have serious health risks. We’ve already seen this in the United States. And again, women are disproportionately affected by this. We need to recognize that the burden of pregnancy and raising children is in large, felt by women.

And in fact, without access or without with this discrimination and stigma towards abortion, it disproportionately affects certain members of our population. Women, but also those of women of lower economic income status and brackets. These flyers, they create shame. They create stigma and they impact women’s support systems.

Instead of being embraced and respected by their partners, by men, by other family members, they’re more likely to experience judgment, isolation, even hostility. We have to ask ourselves, when a man makes a decision or wants to talk about his reproductive rights, if he wants to think about getting a vasectomy, is he faced with hostility, with judgment, with isolation? Or can they talk openly about it? That certainly has been my experience.

There is a space to have this conversation that’s judgment-free. So ultimately, we see women are affected. They’re well-being, they’re mental health by this issue. This brings me back to the city of London’s diversity, inclusion policy.

And one of the key arguments and statements of this policy, it says that the city is committed to establishing mechanisms to ensure discrimination and harassment are not encouraged or tolerated under any circumstances. It’s my belief these flyers meet that definition of discriminating and harassing women in terms of their choices around abortion. So I sincerely hope the city council will see this issue for what it is of these flyers being discriminatory, and they will make the appropriate choice and take appropriate steps to protect women’s rights and ultimately human rights. Thank you.

Thank you, let’s go to the next speaker. I don’t think there’s anyone in the committee room, so we’ll just stay on the Zoom. Go ahead. The next speaker is Blaze.

Go ahead, Blaze, Elaine. Hello. Hi, my name is Blaze, and I am the Eastern Outreach Director for the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform. I’m responsible for our public outreach across Ontario.

We advocate for human rights for all humans and share a message of peace and non-violence for the public to save children’s lives and spare people the trauma from abortion. I trust that the committee has received and carefully reviewed the letter from our legal council sent last October regarding leafletting and the Section 2B Charter Right to Freedom of Expression. Pro-life individuals and organizations have shared ultrasound photos and abortion victim photos for decades all across Canada. And the charter is the same across the country.

Many other governments and municipalities have also been lobbied by pro-choice groups to censor pro-life expression. And have come to realize that they have an obligation under the charter to uphold freedom of expression, and that such censorship would not be a reasonable limit under Section 1. For example, in 2017, several Toronto politicians asked then, Attorney General, for Ontario, Liberal, Yasir Naqvi, for guidance on how they might restrict the use of abortion photos. Mr.

Naqvi was the architect of the bubble zone law around Ontario’s abortion clinics, which is currently facing a charter challenging court. Yet, he told the Toronto politicians that restricting abortion photos is a very complex legal and social question that engages the fundamental constitutional protection for freedom of expression. I heard him speak about this at a panel at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in March 2019. He said, quote, “We did do a legal analysis “of the constitutional allowances, “and the advice that I received as the Attorney General “was that that would be unconstitutional, “and we will not be able to justify a ban “on just general display of graphic imagery “based on Section 1,” end quote.

Unrestricting leaflets to Holmes, he said at that panel, quote, “This is where I get a little nervous “when we start talking about broad bans, “like no unaddressed mail in the mailboxes. “As a former politician who’s knocked on a lot of doors, “I mean, that goes to the fundamentals “of your democracy, right? “So let’s just be very careful “how far we go down this road, “because people do have a right to make informed decisions “and some core fundamental values “around freedoms and expression and democracy “are involved in this,” end quote. Further, Londoners and Canadians do not have a uniform view on abortion or even abortion victim photos.

The viewer discretion legislation coalition and other pro-choice groups are upset at seeing abortion photos and ultrasound photos. And frankly, I have seen the group counter protests, the pro-life message in London, regardless of whether or not any photos are used. They are upset at the pro-life message being shared in general and view any advocacy against abortion as harmful. However, many other Londoners have thanked me and my friends for sharing abortion photos.

Last September, during an hour in downtown London, I spoke with a lady who had faced several miscarriages who thanked me for showing photos of aborted fetuses on the street. I also spoke with a man and I remember how we stared at the photos silently at first before opening up about how he had worked at a cleaner at a hospital where abortions were performed. It was obviously difficult for him to be reminded of that with the photos, but he was thankful for the conversation in my presence. The topic of abortion is difficult for many, but there are many people who are thankful to see the photos we share.

That some people are upset with freedom of expression does not mean it’s reasonable to limit it. Last fall in the city of Lethbridge lost in court after trying to restrict pro-life expression, the judge wrote, quote, “Public upset and alarm are not sufficient “to tip the balance away from the protection “of freedom of expression. “A strong and healthy democracy requires a willingness “on the part of the public to accept that the expression “of opinions and ideas may at times shock, offend, “and even disturb them,” end quote. The judge also ruled that the city had acted with bias by considering only the comments against pro-life speech and failing to weigh those in favor of it.

Some of the imagery essentials for our public discourse also ends up on the door stops of Canadians. I think of a 2010 front page of the Toronto Star with a photo of a man being brutally beaten to death or 2015, a photo of a toddler who had died in the Syrian refugee crisis. On the front page of these newspapers, these photos were visible at doorsteps and on sidewalks across the country. The newspapers recognize the graphic photos were essential to the conversation, not harmful, but helpful.

Some who support abortion claim that ultrasound photos or abortion photos are harmful, yet many people who have had abortions or face difficult pregnancies have told us that seeing the photos are helpful. There are varying personal opinions on whether abortion photos are harmful or actually helpful. And it is not reasonable to restrict the freedom of expression of one group based on the personal subjective opinions of another group in society. So I respectfully submit to the committee that we do not need to agree on abortion in order to realize that a robust and healthy democracy depends on respect for freedom of expression, that the charter requires it, and that Londoners are just as capable as other Canadians to respect freedom of expression and have a fully informed discussion on contentious issues like abortion.

It wouldn’t be reasonable in a free and democratic society to restrict one message when many Londoners find it helpful based on the personal subjective opinions of some other Londoners. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Go ahead, yeah, in the committee room.

Just give your name and you’ve got up to five minutes. My name’s John Bullshock, and first my heart goes up to all of this women who are hurting from abortion, who are pregnant right now looking for help. My main point, if I don’t get it in by five minutes is that there’s an ideological initiative, a pro-abortion, pro-choice initiative to silence the pro-life voice, and that must not be allowed, must vote against any motion that would limit the use of these pamphlets. And I’m concerned that later on I’ll tell you what it is, but basically my claim of fame is that I’ve been for 31 years on commissioners road in Wellington called, and I think this is called the pro-life information walk.

I’m there with science, graphic science, non-graphic science, wordage science appealing to the public to understand what abortion is. Those graphic images I do hold, they’re five feet by six, nice and big, and they’re there because I want people to know what the word abortion means. And we all know it, they’re hurting from it. We know, and yet our laws in Canada at section 223 become a code says, you and I are not human beings until we are fully born from the mother’s womb, whether the built court is severed or not.

That is the biggest lie that we are living under in this country. And it started with Mr. Trudeau, Pierre, what ever you call his first name, and every prime minister since. I have not tried to protect the number one child.

So anyways, as I’m there, let’s talk, okay, what really got me here is because I received on those packets in my mailbox from CCBR, and I actually opened it up and read it. And I’m saying, yes, this is good. There is information there for women who’ve had abortions who are pregnant to get help. Then three days later, this is in October of 2020, not 2020, this guy by the name of Mark Conrad and some other person along with Elizabeth Pelosi were on CTV2 news.

And Mr. Mark was really upset because he got this pamphlet in his mailbox. And there were two ladies there at that particular vigil or whatever they’re doing. It was on going to the streets of the hospital.

There were two ladies in red gowns, white caps, called maidies of something rather. Then three days later on October 31st, which was a Saturday, it was our last day of 40 days for life. Those two ladies showed up with about another 15 people like all the pro awards. And what they did was they stood in front of our benign signs, said pray to end abortion.

That’s all that we had. And we had one sign that said, here’s a hotline number. If you’re pregnant, call this for help. What they did was covered up our signs.

Why? Because they’re pro choice, pro abortion. I spoke to one lady standing in front of the sign that had the phone number, says, if you’re pro choice, why are you covering up this sign? There’s a woman going by right now in the car.

She can’t see that sign to get help. So this is an ideological situation. And of course, I’m concerned because if this viewer discretion legislation goes through, say Bill 259 at the present moment, then they’re going to shut me down to show these images of graphic images of afforded children. And we need to have this right to have this dialogue.

And what’s at stake here is our society, our children. And what we need in this society is city hall, provincial, federal governments producing programs that are going to reach out to these pregnant women who are in crisis pregnancies. They didn’t want to get pregnant. They’re unwanted pregnancies.

Whatever the case may be, we have to be there for them. Financially, psychologically counseling, all that sort of stuff. We’ve got to put our money into that so that not one woman would have to go through into abortion. And yes, I am calling for a law to say abortion is illegal, but we will provide all the necessities for these women and the men and their families to bring that child to life and bring fantastic people into this world.

It’s all like us. Next speaker, seems like a good time to just remind everyone and we’ve been doing, for the most part, a pretty good job of staying focused on the regulation of delivery of flyers or residential properties. Go ahead. Next speaker on the Zoom.

Next speaker is Cindy. Cindy, you’ve got up to five minutes. Thank you. Hello everyone.

My name is Cindy and I have lived in London, Ontario, since I immigrated with my family from Columbia 11 years ago. I currently live in word 12. I remember being 13 years old and advising my brother’s girlfriend who found herself pregnant to have an abortion. It wasn’t until 2016 during my university years when a friend invited me to a pro-life event where I saw abortion victim photography for the first time.

Tiny human fetuses whose broken limbs had been torn apart by abortion. I was convicted that very day that abortion is not good for anybody. That is how my niece could have ended up if her mother will have listened to my advice. That is how my brother could have looked if my mom would have gone ahead with her scheduled abortion when she found herself alone and pregnant many years ago.

It wasn’t until after I saw what that I was fully informed. I was totally convicted that day that if people could see, if people really knew what it looked like, if people could see with their eyes what abortion does, they will choose life. We have all heard the expression an image speaks more than a thousand words. When you have seen abortion victim photography, you can’t unsee it because seeing is believing.

If we cannot bear to see these pre-born children and their torn limbs, we should feel the same way towards the act that caused them to look that way. I have seen they enjoy various local pro-life groups informing people about the injustice of abortion. I have encountered countless of fellow Londoners change their hearts and minds after seeing what abortion does and having a civil conversation. Once when I was doing activism in the corner of Western and Sarnia, a young man stopped and said, “I never really had an opinion about this topic, “but after seeing you guys and those images so many times, “I am not sure I feel okay with it.” I completely understand this topic is extremely sensitive, which is why me and the people I do activism with speak with love, compassion and conviction.

Never watering down the truth. Choosing life is not easy. Courage means choosing the right thing at the right time, which also means that we cannot censor information, even if it is uncomfortable. Only by having all data points or at least as many as possible can we truly say we made an informed decision in freedom.

I ask everyone in charge to think for themselves and to choose according to facts and their conscience, knowing that abortion kills a fellow human being. I believe it is a right for all Londoners to be fully informed on abortion. And I urge you not to vote to censor one particular view or to censor information about abortion, that Londoners should have a right to see and consider when discerning the truth about abortion. Thank you.

Next speaker on the Zoom. Next speaker on Zoom is Donna Beth. Go ahead Donna Beth, you’ve got up to five minutes. Thank you very much.

Can you hear me? We can. Good evening and thank you to the community and protective services committee for allowing me to speak at this evening, this meeting. My name is Donna Beth Sweetland and I have lived in the Ingersoll area for over 50 years.

I am a wife, a mother of four and a nana to six grandchildren, five born and one preborn. I lived in the fair city of London for four years while attending UWO, completing my bachelor of science and nursing class of ‘85 and becoming a registered nurse. As a nurse for 37 years, I’ve worked in London and many communities of the Southwest region as a direct care nurse and healthcare administrator. I pioneered the successful Southwest regions pride of outreach care, outreach team.

I am a certified end of life doula, funeral celebrant and work part time with people who have developmental and physical disabilities. My sincere love for the triune God and the sanctity of human life for his image bearers from conception to natural death has been central to everything I believe and represent. I’m speaking here today to raise my concerns that the city of London is looking at bylaws to silence one side of a debate on a contentious issue in our society, the pro-life view on the abortion debate. I hope that the community and protective services committee will stand up for freedom of expression and even on challenging issues like abortion.

As a pro-life Canadian, I am concerned that my community and my views are being unfairly targeted. There are many contentious issues that we have discussed in society over the past year and sometimes that means encountering imagery or information that is disturbing, whether that’s about racism and police brutality, residential schools and unmarked graves or photos and information about abortion. I believe that people have a right to be fully informed on the issue of abortion. This includes hearing from pro-life Canadians about our ethical concerns regarding abortion.

Just to name a few, the photo evidence of what abortion does to a developing, living human being in the womb, the information about the alternatives that are available for people, facing difficult pregnancies in our community and resources for healing from the trauma of abortion. I do not believe that women should be treated as though they are not capable of being fully informed and hearing all sides, even on a difficult and sensitive issue like abortion. As the eldest daughter of nine, while growing up, I was always struck by how precious the lives of my two chosen sisters, Patricia and Shona, born with Down syndrome were, through the kindness of my parents who were already foster parents to many, Patricia and Shona joined our family by adoption in 1974 and 1982 at the age of two. I now, in my fifties, being a legal guardian with my elderly parents for Trish and Shona, have come to the realization that the likelihood that likely would not be likely would not have in this day and age lived past their birth mother’s prenatal screening because of the widespread pressure and practice of eugenics in our country and around the world.

When I think about the people Trish and Shona have touched the value they have added and about life living without them, I weep. We lost our first child, Jonathan, in his second trimester of development as a result of an unfortunate car accident. We were hit from behind by a careless driver. Jonathan’s life still mattered.

This experience of loss solidified everything about the way I approach life and how I view human life in the womb. When I see the disturbing pictures of babies post abortion, I hope for a day when we all embrace the culture of life and not death. I grieve for the approximately 300 pre-born humans that are aborted every day in Canada. I have witnessed transform hearts through many meaningful online and in-person pro-life interactions.

As we speak, I am observing the demonstration of love by a dear friend who has been unable to bear children and is entering into a formal arrangement with a young mum with addiction issues who do not want to abort her baby. The healthy baby girl, a fighter born in the last few weeks has been in a London hospital on a feeding tube overcoming withdrawal and maybe will be home this weekend. This scenario resulted from the free flow of pro-life expression, exploration, state of inquiry and advocacy at a local Salvation Army venue. In a free and democratic society, we need to be able to have difficult conversations and respect the charter rights of Canadians even and especially when we disagree.

I urge the members of this committee to stand by the charter rights of people in the London community and vote against any measure that seeks to silence debate, censor information or especially to target one side of the debate for unfair and unequal treatment. I ask you to please uphold the charter right to freedom of expression for all citizens. Thank you so much. Okay, next speaker.

The next speaker on Zoom is Elaine. Elaine, just unmute yourself and you’ve got up to five minutes. Okay, good day. I want to introduce myself.

I’ve been a member of London Area Right to Life for many years and in fact was president of it as well as my husband over around 13 years altogether. We have seen many, many people change their minds about abortion by seeing fetal models which are mind-blowing because people have been taught in the schools and the high schools and that it’s not really a human being. It’s just the clump of cells so that young people think it’s okay to go and have an abortion but they’re not making decisions with full information. So this business of showing the babies that have been aborted is very essential.

I joined a group in the summertime, one year to do that very work and we had a sign of it in our kitchen when my 14 year old son came in with his 14 year old friend and the friend was staring at the signs and I said, well, he asked me about it and I said that’s a baby that’s been aborted and these are verified, these are actual babies that were photographed from having been found in a garbage bag behind an abortion clinic. And so they, I told him what it was and he just kept staring and finally he said, wow, if that’s what an abortion is, then that’s wrong. And it’s been changing many minds ever since that I’ve seen one time I was in Ottawa during the March for Life and I was holding a picture of a baby that in the second semester that had been aborted and this young mother came along and she had a child in her stroller and she came towards me and I thought, oh, I wonder what she’s going to say ‘cause you never know. And, but she surprised me.

She said, I wanna thank you for being here. She said, I saw your sign three years ago and I didn’t wanna do that to my baby. And that was her little boy in the stroller at that time. It was very moving.

She thanked all of us for having witnessed. Now, saving lives is a Canadian ethic. You don’t go around trying to snuff out lives, right? So the thing is if people are not fully informed, they can make horrendous decisions that’ll affect them for the rest of their lives.

So anything that will bring forward information that’ll make people understand it, it’s a human being, there are human rights and that those little ones need protection. And the only person in our Canadian society that can be freely done away with is the child in the womb. There’s, you cannot, and I wouldn’t want it, but you cannot, the capital punishment is not allowed even for the worst criminal. But yet the child in the womb has no say.

So we need to see those photos and whether they’re in the home or not is neither here nor there because it’s a freedom of expression, freedom of information. And we need all of that that we can. Now, years ago I was at the Western Fair with our table and pro-life table and Joyce Arthur and her ARC group along with the local group decided that we shouldn’t be there. And they told the powers that be at the fair grounds that we were showing graphic images and we were not family friendly.

And so we were called in and my husband and I. And so when we realized what was happening, we talked to them about what we’re doing. And they came to realize very quickly that there was no offense being happening here. But it just shows that the group, it’s an ideological thing.

They want to censor any information that’s not along with their way of looking at it. And that’s not Canadian. We need two sides to the story on this, especially. It’s the elephant in the room.

Over six million, around six million babies have been aborted in Canada since the law was changed. So it’s time that people come to know what’s happening. Speaking of time, you’ve run out, you can wrap up. Yes, so I really think that it’s time to think about that and not allow this bylaw thing to go through because it’s against freedom of expression and freedom of our choices.

Thank you. Next speaker. The next speaker is Ellie. Go ahead, Ellie.

You’ve got up to five minutes. Hello, thank you for giving me time to speak today. My name is Ellie March. I have lived in London since I became a Western student in 2016.

I’m still currently enrolled at Western, completing the second year of my master’s degree in music, though my husband and I have now moved to Woodstock. I have lived in three different areas of London, taught music in the community, attended a community church and volunteered at several places in the city over my time here. I care about London and especially care about women and children that are being victimized here by abortion. I have spent countless hours of my time trying to defend children from abortion and speaking to women who were also vulnerable to its trauma.

One of my biggest passions is being able to show others the truths of what abortion does and to connect them to resources for difficult pregnancies or for healing from past abortions. I spoke to a woman named Kelly on the street once who expressed to me that she had had an abortion when she was 18. At the time I spoke to her, she was probably upwards of 50. And she told me that until seeing the pamphlet and resources I gave to her as well as our conversation, she had never received any help in dealing with the past trauma of her abortion.

She thanked me for being there and providing her with an opportunity to seek help. She told me she had thought about her abortion every day since it happened. And now she was so glad to finally have phone to reach her. The pictures of abortion that I shared with her helped her to open up to me since she realized that I wasn’t shying away from confronting me as you and was ready to speak to her about it when no one had.

Although the message isn’t always well received, I have had countless conversations with people who have received a pamphlet from me and thanked me for my work. I spoke to a man while delivering flyers once who was on the phone when he received it, but he actually passed from his conversation to call me back and thank me for spreading the message about what abortion does. I have had so, so many people thank me for standing up for vulnerable children and exposing what is happening to them, but not many other people are willing. There are so many people in London who are pro-life and support our message and want the victims of abortion to be shown in order to expose what is happening behind closed doors.

I’m extremely concerned that there’s a proposal to be on one side of this conversation from presenting our evidence for our views. Photos of abortion are the evidence we bring to show people what abortion actually is and what it does to children. People are shocked when they see them, but rightly so. They’re shocked because they didn’t know what abortion looks like.

I’ve had many people look at the photos and back at me and say, this is not okay. Thank you for being here. I’m asking all of you today to please consider that silencing one side of the debate never leads to justice. Please continue to allow freedom of speech here in London.

It is not right to silence someone from speaking about and presenting evidence on the social issues that they care about. Thank you. Next speaker. The next speaker is Garifalia.

Hello, honorable members of London City Council. My name is Garifaya Molusis. I am a London resident and I work as Associate Legal Counsel for Christian Legal Fellowship, a national organization of over 700 lawyers, judges, and law students, which is based here in London. My academic background is in feminist and gender studies and I hold a specialization in social justice law.

I appreciate that council is seeking to balance various interests in this context and that it has adopted a bylaw or is looking at a proposed bylaw that allows Londoners to opt out of receiving unwanted mailings regardless of the specific content. In my view, that is an appropriate measure. I’m concerned, however, that if the city were to go further and explicitly ban expression of a specific topic or idea, it would establish a very troubling precedent. As the Supreme Court of Canada formed last week, quote, content neutrality is the governing principle, end quote, for freedom of expression.

Any bylaw adopted by the city of London should be neutral as to the content of any messages it is regulating as the current proposed bylaw is. My concern is that if the city were to single out a specific message or topic as taboo, it creates a precedent for future councils to do so with respect to other issues. Bylaws like these should never be used to suppress unpopular voices or perspectives within a larger societal debate. Therefore, I see more at stake here than the debate around this specific issue as important as this issue is in its own right.

What council does today will set the trajectory for how we deal with difficult social issues in many other contexts. However, unwelcome certain opinions or messages may be, they are part of the discourse and truth seeking process of a free and democratic society and therefore benefit from charter protection. In a decision released just last week, the Supreme Court of Canada stated the following, quote, freedom of expression flows from the concept of human dignity. Equality would be hollow if some people were silenced because of their opinions.

The purpose of protecting freedom of expression is therefore to ensure that everyone can manifest their thoughts, opinions, beliefs, indeed all expressions of the heart and mind, however unpopular, distasteful, or contrary to the mainstream, end quote. Open discussion, including quote, “The free and open debate of public ideas,” end quote, has been described by the court as quote, “The lifeblood of our democracy,” end quote. On this basis, broadly speaking, the court, quote, presumes that members of the public have some resilience, particularly concerning political speech and are required to tolerate public expression of a wide range of views on matters of public life, including those views that are inconsistent with their own beliefs, choices, and commitments. Mirror offense at a message, particularly a message advocating for some vision for the better advancement of the public good is not enough end quote.

The courts are also clearly live to how contentious political expression can be. This does not change the legal threshold, however, quote. Political messages are always provocative. They imply that others are wrong, perhaps through ignorance, mistake, negligence, or even moral failure.

They frequently risk offending those with contrary views, but in a free society, individuals are permitted to use open public spaces to address the people assembled there, to challenge each other and to call government to account end quote. Last week, in the context of a discrimination claim, the majority of the Supreme Court stated, the applicable test must not be focused either on the repugnant or offensive nature of the expression or on the emotional harm caused to the person. Otherwise, it would amount to censoring expression because of its content or its impact on a person end quote. In short, the Supreme Court has made it quite clear that governments cannot target and censor speech because of its offensive content.

For these reasons, as a constitutional and human rights lawyer who engages in public interest advocacy work that impacts diverse communities across Canada, I am deeply concerned that restricting unwanted political expression, in this case, would set a dangerous precedent. History is clear that social and political change has often been advanced through the use of graphic forms of expression. Regardless of whether we agree with the social and political change being advanced through these measures, we should be able to agree that it would have been unjust for governments, both then and now, to wield their power to silence such expression in an effort to maintain the social and political order preferred by those in authority. I am therefore supportive of the approach reflected in the proposed bylaw, which does not single out specific groups, messages, ideas, or opinions based on their content.

I also consider it exceedingly appropriate that this proposed bylaw would empower individual citizens to make their own decisions about whether they wish to receive such content. Overall, I am deeply appreciative of the balanced approach that London City Council is seeking to take on this important issue, and I welcome any questions that City Council may have. Thank you very much for your time and your consideration. Okay, we’re gonna go to the next speaker, but just before I do that, I do see that Ms.

Ronson has her hand up, and I’m just gonna respond. I know you’ve been texting me directly, complaining about how I’m chairing the meeting, and I’m gonna keep chairing the meeting until I hear from a member of the committee that they have an issue with how I’m chairing the meeting, and you can stop texting me, thank you. Okay, we’re gonna go to the next speaker. Thank you, the next speaker is Jackie.

Jackie, go ahead, you’ve got up to five minutes. Yes, good evening, and Ms. Chair, through you, I would just like to thank the committee and the staff for the work that you’ve been doing regarding delivery to private homes of these flyers in London. I’m Executive Director of Alliance for Life Ontario, which represents 50 affiliate member educational pro-life groups currently operating across the province.

The city of London has been thrown into a national debate where one side is endeavoring to silence the other by using the city. I’d like to focus on the charter to be fundamental right freedom of expression as expressed by several Canadian courts, because it seems that this fundamental right provides the principal guideline for the London City Council, and thankfully, makes unconstitutional in many actions that some are asking of you. I, too, appreciate the balanced approach that is being taken. I would prefer, we would prefer that there was no by-law, but nests of necessity, it seems that while considering run, but it is content neutral, it’s not punitive, it’s voluntary, and it’s broad, which is the least we could ask for.

But I would like to quote the courts, if you’d excuse me, but they speak much more eloquently than I can on these issues. So the first is from Bracken-Verse for Erie Town in 2017, and at section 25, they have an analysis of the freedom of expression, the 2B analysis. And it’s, and I quote, “Freedom of expression “has received broad protection in Canadian law, “not only through the charter, “but also through legislation and the common law.” It also notes, as Rand J noted in Seymour Quebec City, that strictly speaking, quote, “Civil rights arise “from positive law, but freedom of speech, religion, “and the inviability of the personal original freedoms, “which are at the once, the necessary attributes “and modes of self-expression of human beings, “and the primary conditions of their community life “within an illegal order.” The court quoted, I quote, the court further, that it entrenches the limits on government action in order to safeguard the ability of persons to express themselves to others. As expressed in Irwin Toy, which was just quoted to you, “The freedom of expression was entrenched “in our constitution and is guaranteed, “so as to ensure that everyone can manifest “their thoughts, opinions, beliefs, “indeed all expressions of the heart and mind, “however unpopular, distasteful, “or contrary to the mainstream.

“Freedom of expression is considered so fundamental “by both our Canadian and Quebec charters, “because in a quote in a free, “prolorealistic and democratic society, “we prize the diversity of ideas and opinions “for their inherent value, both to the community “and to the individual.” In fact, to quote Ranjay again from Switzerland and Elbing, it was he considered that freedom of expression was, quote, “little less vital to man’s mind and spirit “than breathing is to his physical existence.” Even the European court stated in the handy side case, “Freedom of expression is applicable “not only to information or ideas “that are favorably received or regarded as inoffensive “or as a matter of indifference, “but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the state “or any sector of the population, “such are the demands that pluralism, tolerance, “and broad-mindedness “without which there is no democratic society.” Freedom of expression in the Ramston versus Peterborough city is thus not only inherently valuable to the self-constituting person, but courts have long recognized that it is also instrumental to the functioning of a healthy political community, particularly by facilitating the open criticism of government. Green Spench of Alberta, Lethbridge and District Pro-Life Association, versus the Lethbridge city. Or again, I love to quote the courts because they have such a lot to tell us, and especially to the city council in this deliberation. It is difficult to imagine a guaranteed right, this is freedom of expression, more important to a democratic society than freedom of expression.

Indeed, a democracy cannot exist without that freedom to express new ideas and to put forward opinions about the functioning of public institutions. The concept of free and uninhibited speech permeates all truly democratic societies and institutions. You reached the limit of your time, so if you could wrap up. Okay, I would like, I would do that.

If there is any principle of the constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought. Not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate, and very quickly to one, two points. I’m afraid you’re out of here. Thank you.

Let’s go to the next speaker. The next speaker is Janice. Hi, can you hear me? We can, go ahead, you have five minutes.

Afternoon, my name is Janice Saunders, and I am an elite elected board member for the viewer discretion legislation coalition. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today regarding the disturbing graphic anti-abortion material being displayed and distributed within our city. I speak here today as a resident of London, as the mother of four adult daughters, and as a grandmother with the hopes of being heard and bringing action towards much need to change. Early last year, my eldest daughter had a graphic anti-abortion pamphlet dropped into her mailbox.

My granddaughter, who was six years old, who loves helping her mom retrieve the mail, reached into their mailbox and pulled out this gruesome pamphlet. My daughter had no idea it was there, and she was not only upset and shocked, she was angry. A few weeks later, I also had one delivered to my home. Viewing this pamphlet for myself, shocked and disgusted me as the images they use are of dead, bloody human fetuses and pieces as an alleged result of abortion.

One image depicts a dead fetus with a detached head with blood seeping out of it. You can see what appears to be detached limbs, such as hands and feet, as well as bones, tissue, and internal organs covered in blood, laid out on a table. It is absolutely terrible. And if this graphic material doesn’t qualify for viewer discretion warnings, I don’t know what does.

I immediately posted in a community Facebook group in an effort to warn others, especially parents in the hopes of sparing them from having to see what I deem to be highly objectionable, highly inappropriate, highly offensive, and highly sensitive material. Many refer to these graphic anti-abortion pamphlets as flyers. They are not flyers, and I stress to you that they cannot and should not be placed in the same category. While flyers can be annoying and unwanted, at least they have a product to sell, a service to offer, and maybe a coupon to tear off.

These graphic pamphlets are nothing, but anti-abortion propaganda designed and intended to shock, shame, and upset those who are viewing it. Since being with the VDLC, I have seen firsthand these pamphlets being stuffed into mailboxes and between front doors. I have picked them up off the ground that have been dropped, discarded, or blown away by the wind, laying on front porches, driveways, walkways, front lawns, and far too often only inches away from children’s shoes and toys. This is so unfair and unacceptable.

I ask everyone here to truly consider the negative and devastating impact these graphic images have on those who have suffered the loss of a pregnancy, the loss of an infant, and to those who have had an abortion. Women are triggered and forced to relive deeply personal and difficult moments in their lives, which caused them only more suffering. I ask you to think about how you would respond and react if these graphic images cause grief and heartache to you, your child, or someone you love. I am almost 50 years old, and for the first time, I have been out on city street corners as the member of our rapid response team to counter protest and block graphic anti-abortion images.

Fewer discretion and consent do matter. It’s why movies, music, video games, to name a few, come with ratings about content that is explicit, offensive, and or disturbing, especially to children. These warnings serve people by giving them a chance and an opportunity to choose and decide beforehand to what they are being exposed to. Viewers should be warned and give consent or declined and be able to opt out.

I am pro-choice, but I am not here to limit or put it into the abortion debate. I am here to put an end to graphic anti-abortion images and an end to the harm that they cause. Change must happen, and I call upon our elected officials to help bring about this change. Help us because you agree that extremely graphic anti-abortion images are unacceptable and disturbing.

Help us because our requests for viewer discretion warnings are not unreasonable. Help us because you care about families and children and agree that they deserve better. Thank you. Let’s go to the next speaker.

Next, Zoom caller has two people on it who have registered independently, Katie and Natalie. Okay, let’s hear from Katie or Natalie, and then you’ll have five minutes, and then we’ll go to the next person and they’ll also have five minutes. Go ahead. It’s Katie, you can hear me, I assume.

We can, go ahead. Okay, thanks. Good evening, my name is Katie Dean, and I’m the co-founder of the viewer discretion legislation coalition or VDLC for short. We are a group of like-minded individuals trying to bring change to how graphic anti-abortion images can be displayed and distributed.

In fact, we’ve become a movement that is expanding to different cities and provinces across the country. Some people may wonder what motivated me to form the VDLC. Some people may wonder why these anti-abortion graphic images bother me so much. It is time consuming work full of ups and downs, successes and failures, and sometimes heartache and disappointment.

So why do I do it? Well, I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD stemming from my own experience with an abortion. I ended up pregnancy at 19 weeks in 2004 for medical reasons. It was the single most traumatic experience of my life and the single most difficult thing I have ever done.

This was a planned pregnancy. I want a baby. At 18 weeks, she was diagnosed with a serious medical condition that was impeding the way she was developing. I had a difficult choice to make, bring a baby into the world to suffer or end the pregnancy.

This was never a position I thought I would ever be in. I mean, you get pregnant, you have a baby, right? Not right, not even close to being right. The last week of January, leading up to February 4th every year since 2004 is difficult for me.

Ice storms are a big trigger for me. Any type of ultrasound procedure is a trigger for me. Being around Victoria Hospital at that time of year is a trigger for me. In fact, I couldn’t be around Victoria Hospital for years without feeling like I couldn’t breathe.

Some years I have felt like I’m doing better and we’ll get through it okay. But then the memories of my experience wash over me and it feels like I’m dying. Typically between January 27th and February 4th of each year, I try to hide away as much as possible and not engage with anyone. Sorry, let me be clear.

I do not regret my decision, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. It was my right and it was my choice. I first received a graphic Annie abortion pamphlet in 2012 in my mailbox. I was horrified.

I thought I was being targeted that someone knew I had had a termination and they were giving me this pamphlet to shame me, to say, look what you did to your baby. It sent me into a panic attack and left me feeling worthless. My recovery and grief was set back and I went into isolation mode. Then in 2020, I heard these pamphlets were being distributed in our city once again.

I became afraid, terrified of them hitting my street so much so that I posted on my neighborhood Facebook page, asking if anyone had received one yet. Then one morning, as I was getting ready for work, my neighbor sent me a message saying that people delivering the pamphlets were on our street. I went to my husband and I asked him in desperation to get the pamphlet from our mailbox and destroy it as soon as they put it there. I stood in my house and waited for them to arrive at my door with their gore.

Imagine being afraid in your own home. Afraid not for your physical safety, but for your mental well-being. Knowing someone is going to come onto your property that you own, the property that you pay city taxes on, the home that you should feel safe in and leave something to shame you, to harass you, and to make you feel like you are an awful human being for doing what you did by terminating a pregnancy. This is abuse, plain and simple.

Our country has allowed these images to be widely distributed for far too long. First, there’s no evidence these images are real. Second, there’s no parental consent for images of their fetuses to be shared if they are real. Third, these groups will use terminology such as depiction of aborted fetus, meaning the images staged to look how they think it would look which means they are not real.

And lastly, abortion is illegal right in Canada and nobody has the right to decide except the person whose body the pregnancy is contained in. Enough is enough. By continuing to allow these pamphlets to be distributed in our city as they have been, you are saying it is okay to abuse people in their homes. It is okay to shame people.

It is okay to bully. The video see has told us council over and over again, the types of tactics used by the pro-life organizations that use these images. Their mission in their mind is to save the lives of pre-born humans. And they have said their view is to use victim photography as a way of achieving their goal.

They have said if they had to choose between the life of a pre-born and the emotional well-being of a born child, they would pick the pre-born. What does this say to you? They ensure do not respect boundaries. I must note that not all pro-life mindsets feel these images are acceptable.

We have had pro-life individuals sign our petitions because they see that these images trigger trauma in individuals who have had a pregnancy loss for any reason, not just abortion. This is proof that this issue is not one about abortion, but about human decency. Nobody should be reminded of the most difficult decision they’ve ever had to make. Nobody should be reminded of the baby they lost, no matter what way they lost them.

Nobody should be told that they don’t have the right to make their own choice. And nobody should be hurting kids with these images. I have stood on the streets of London covering these awful images so women like me don’t have to be subjected to it. So they don’t have to revisit their own trauma.

I’ve been called a coward, a murderer, and more by the people that hold these signs and those that support this imagery. Again, I reiterate this is abuse. If the city doesn’t take action, nothing will change. You’ve reached your time so you can just wrap up?

I have like three sentences. And in the essence, you will be allowing the bullying. We are not that kind of city. We are a caring city of people and thousands of people have said they do not want these images here.

They want their privacy to be respected in their own homes. It’s time to step up and help bring change. We waited long enough. Thank you.

Natalie? Yes. Natalie’s gonna go next. Okay, Natalie, you also got up to five minutes.

Go ahead. Sorry. It’s like you’re unmuted, but we’re not hearing you in council chambers. You’re gonna be okay?

I can now, go ahead. Excellent, thank you. Good evening, councillors, speakers, and members of the community. My name is Natalie Joaquin.

I’m a licensed paralegal at Jim Dean Law here in London. And I co-founded the viewer discretion legislation coalition with Katie Dean just over one year ago. Last fall, when Katie Dean came into the office one morning with this horrible flyer she had received in her mailbox, I stepped foot into a world I had no idea existed, at least not to such a degree. Using the information on the flyer, we immediately threw ourselves into research.

And in that research, we discovered a network of different organizations in Canada, the United States, all over North America. These, excuse me, these different organizations all use these same horrific images in their marketing material, all coming from the same online source. The first thing that crossed my mind was how this could possibly be legal for some of the reasons that Katie’s already mentioned. In my experiences with the VDLC, we’ve seen firsthand the harm that these images can cause.

You’ve heard stories from Katie and other constituents about how hurt, shocked, disturbed, and re-traumatized people have been after unknowingly opening the flyer and seeing the horror inside. Not to mention the countless children who have been the unlucky first to the mailbox. We knew that we needed to do something. In our research, we uncovered a number of cases confirming that these materials are inappropriate.

Notably, there were several rulings from Ad Standards Canada, confirming that these pamphlets violate the Canadian code of advertising standards. This is an excerpt taken from one of such rulings from 2017 in reference to the same pamphlets that are being distributed in London. Quote, “Council concluded that by its use of highly graphic “and disturbing images, the advertiser displayed “obvious indifference to conduct or attitudes “that offend the standards of public decency “provelling among a significant segment of the population. “To date, the advertiser has not responded to ASC’s requests “that this advertising, which prominently features “these disturbing images be permanently withdrawn “or appropriately amended.” End quote.

This is not an issue of moral, religious, or political stance. This is an issue of common decency. Unfortunately, Ad Standards Canada does not have a higher governing body. And since the organizations distributing the flyers are not concerned about losing profits as a result of these advertisements, they continue to distribute them, even though the harm caused is so clear.

It’s been established that these images are offensive and unacceptable for delivery, but with no type of enforcement options available, this invasive and harmful behavior will continue. Ad Standards and the proposed bylaw, while well-intentioned, both share a voluntary compliance model, which ultimately will not work because it has not worked. The organization responsible have made it clear that their intention is to continue delivering the flyers to show the truth of abortion, whatever that may be. I would implore this council to create only the enforcement measures necessary to protect the safety and security of citizens in their own homes.

All that we are asking is that if we don’t want to get one of these flyers, we will not get one of these flyers. And if we do, we need some kind of repercussion. I understand that there are some concerns regarding the freedom of expression. And Professor Trusso and some other speakers today have done a fantastic job at providing an analysis of section one of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

So I will not go too far into that here, but it does show that charter rights are subject to reasonable limits. The second, excuse me, freedom of expression only extends to the point where your expression is not harming me. The second harm to the community is caused, that expression becomes unjustified. As our elective council, I urge you to really listen to the stories that you’re hearing today.

There’s a lot of talk about literature, information, outreach, things of that nature. That is not what we’re here to discuss. The issue here is not the message that’s being delivered. The issue here is the way that this message is being delivered because it’s in a way that’s hurting your community.

The harm here is unmistakable and warrants a reasonable limit on this expression. Thank you for letting me speak here today. Thank you, can we go to the next speaker? Next speaker is Lauren.

Okay, Lauren, to introduce yourself and then you’ve got up to five minutes. Hi, my name is Lauren Starr. I really echo a lot of the things that have been said tonight and I don’t wanna repeat them, but I will say that I think it sends a strong message that at the beginning of this meeting, the chair had to give a warning about the sensitivity of the issue. The people that received these flyers or had to view these intrusive and graphic images as they drove by protesters didn’t receive that same warning.

And I think that’s why the committee needs to focus on people’s rights to be protected from harm. This is not about freedom of speech. It is not about silencing anyone. A ban on graphic images being delivered to homes would not stop people who support pro-life views, having conversations or sharing their opinions.

Anyone can share their ideas, but they don’t have the right to harm others. In order they have the right to force their messages on others, images and flyers that feature just remembered fetuses are harmful and they should not be forced on anyone. If the words dismembered fetus and dead baby make you uncomfortable, imagine how you’d feel if you were forced to view the images themselves. Then add to the fact that they were dropped in your mailbox without an envelope.

So you have them unexpectedly slid through the mail slot, landed on your doorstep. They have the potential to cause psychological harm. And that risk is a much higher for children or people who’ve experienced pregnancy losses we’ve heard tonight. There is a reason that so many people signed the petition last year and why so many people spoke out on social media.

These images cause serious harm and trauma for anyone who’s experienced any kind of infant loss and no one has the right to cause this high degree of harm. I was personally extremely upset by the images, but I was also extremely upset. I had no recourse to stop them from being delivered to my home. There was nothing stopping my children from coming home from school to find them in the mailbox before I got there to intercept it.

No one should have the right to infringe this harm on my home, nor should anyone be forced to see these images while simply driving to work or coming home from school. Ask that the city enact a specific by-law that bans all graphic images of alleged aborted fetuses and that the by-law contain a specific measurable penalty. Similar by-laws have been in place for many years as we heard in Ottawa since 2003, Winnipeg since 2008, Calgary since 2016. So I don’t know why others in this meeting are trying to scare the committee with legal arguments.

There’s nothing scary about doing the right thing. I encourage you not to shy away from protecting the well-being and mental health of those in our community who need our support. Thank you. The next speaker is Scott.

Go ahead, Scott, just unmute yourself, introduce yourself and then you’ll have up to five minutes. Go ahead. Okay, can you hear me? We can.

Okay, well, my name is Scott Merr and I’ve been a lot in residence for 30 years. I’m currently living in Lupin and I’d like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. A lot has been said about this law, but only briefly hasn’t been spoken that it’s part of a larger campaign to tick the pro-life view out of the public square. In 2017, there was a bubble zone law passed that would have allowed anybody who was critical of abortion, not in 50 meters of an abortion clinic.

People who supported abortion could speak, however, and sometimes even criticizing the law would get people in trouble. Consider father Tony Van Hee who got in trouble for holding a message saying without free speech, the state is a corpse. While there are two laws past here, one of them is narrower in scope, the other is much more broad and much more dangerous. The narrow out, which would force pro-life anti-abortion people to sheath their materials in a plain package letter and inform people of what’s in the bag.

And this has not been given to any other graphic imagery at all. Pro-choice is consent graphic imagery of people dying from back alley abortions. People can send images of George Floyd or Allian Curdie being killed. Only pro-life are seen to be targeted.

And while people absolutely have the right to forbid an organization from sending me out to their home, the government does not have the right to restrict the rights of mailers on its own initiative. Even worse is the viewer discretion, legislation, coalitions, law, banning all graphic imagery in public places is clearly flies in the face of the charter, which says that denying the person a form where all ideas like that are normally tolerated is content-based censorship and flies in the face of the First Amendment and can’t be justified. While the concern for children is laudable, the only thing that the used legislation coalition is concerned about is stopping the abortion message. They do not oppose pictures of what happens when you are in a car and you don’t wear your seatbelt.

They don’t oppose murals of George Floyd, even though the question he victimized is would be terribly traumatized by seeing all these memorials to him. And as has been often said here, one cannot restrict the message because viewers will be upset about the position it takes. And yet, these bylaws here will do just that. The VDLs should not be heated and these bylaws should not be passed.

Freedom of expression must stand, even if it makes us uncomfortable. And the way to express something is almost as valuable as the right to express something. One person’s vulgarity is another person’s lyric and that’s how it should be. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Next speaker. Speaker is Tabitha. Tabitha, you have five minutes. Thank you very much.

And thank you for the opportunity to present today on this proposed bylaws, impacting flyer distribution in London. My name is Tabitha Ewart. I’m a lawyer with We Need a Law. It’s a national grassroots campaign that seeks to equip pro-life Canadians to engage in the political process.

And I wanna make three points here tonight. First, I wanna discuss the impact of this bylaw on Canadians engagement with the political process. Second, I wanna discuss freedom of expression as being good for the city of London. And third, I just wanna comment on the nature of the debate before you.

So firstly, as an organization, we have supporters that we work with across Canada, including in London. You may have seen our message on buses. Previously, they said Canada has no abortion law, educating Canadians on the reality of abortion law in Canada. And then again, earlier this year’s with ads relating to the issue of women’s rights, women’s rights starting at the earliest stages of life.

Easy, the reality is sex selective, abortions happen in Canada. And those ads corresponded with Bill C233, the Sex Selective Abortion Act, which Parliament debated last spring. So in conjunction with those ads, residents of London put up lawn signs and also handed out flyers in the area. The goal of those flyers were to bring awareness to the Sex Selective Abortion Act and encourage citizens to engage with their MPs on the topic.

All this was done by local supporters who understand that being engaged in Canada’s politics and political environment is not confined to just election day or just to a legislature. Rather, political engagement happens on our streets and by talking to our neighbours, bringing awareness to issues and sparking conversations about important topics. We’ve invested interest in ensuring that the pro-life community has the freedom to disseminate their views through flyers. Canada has a long history of communicating on political topics through flyers, whether it’s a candidate running for office or a public interest group, bringing awareness to an issue.

Kings are well used to flyers being dropped in their mailbox as a way of becoming aware of social and political issues. So as you consider whether to limit the freedom to distribute flyers, you of course understand that you must balance it with the charter protection of freedom of expression. But I also ask that you consider the impact it will have on the citizens of London’s engagement with the political process. Our interest is in the political engagement on the abortion issue, but we know that we are not the only advocacy group that uses this method to communicate with Canadians.

And it’s not just the pro-life movement that wishes to draw attention to issues that are either before parliament or in various political parties agenda, whether it’s issues relating to the climate to indigenous issues to economic issues or any other issues. Political expression is not just limited to political parties. I urge the council to consider the impact on the participation in the political process that this by-law may have. So secondly, we come to the freedom of expression.

And I just wanna start off making note here that there has been some reference tonight to women’s rights and all this. And I wanna make sure you understand that women’s rights include women’s right to freely express their beliefs. You’ve heard tonight from pro-life women, including Maria, who’s one of the founders of London Against Abortion who distribute these flyers. The reality is the pro-life movement is made up of many, many women, including me.

Don’t ignore our voices and don’t erase our existence. Now second on freedom of expression, I wanna make a more general comment using the Supreme Court of Canada’s most recent decision just came out last week. And in that decision, they know that freedom of expression does not truly begin until it gives rise to a duty to tolerate what other people say. It thus ensures the development of democratic, open and pluralistic society.

Understood in this sense, a person’s right to free expression is protected, not in order to protect him, but in order to protect a public good, a benefit, which respect for the right of free expression, brings to all those who live in a society in which it is respected. Now that’s Ward versus Quebec. And again, that’s the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision that came out just last week. And the freedom to speak your beliefs on a deserted island is hardly freedom, nor is the freedom to only express popular ideas of freedom.

Freedom of expression to be truly guaranteed means having the same access to the public square regardless of what beliefs you have. And that public square includes the freedom to distribute flyers. Now, as Ben previously pointed out, we don’t end charter analysis just with section two’s protection of freedom of expression. Section one means we look at whether there’s a justification to impinge that section two.

But section one doesn’t demand that you ignore the freedom of play. We need to understand— - I’m gonna give you a heads up that you’ve got about 30 seconds, ‘cause you said three points, and I don’t think you’ve started the third one, so go ahead. Thank you very much. Yeah, so you need to have more than activists telling you that they don’t wanna see their flyers as a justification.

And so then just moving into the third point, what you need to be aware of is the activist on both sides of this issue. You’ve heard tell of both the CCVR and the viewer discretion coalition. Don’t let one activist hijack the conversation and limit the rights of the others. The rule of the city is to be neutral in terms of what ideology they are pushing.

I do think that’s the end of my times all and my comments there. Okay, let’s go to the next speaker. The final speaker on Zoom is Tom. Yes, hello, before we begin, I’d just like to clarify.

A previous speaker said the VDLC has no problem with showing car accident victims that are graphic when one of our co-founders brothers was killed in a drunk driving accident, and she has stated on several occasions that showing pictures of that would be just as exploitative as the flyers. I just wanted to get that out of the way to clarify our position on that. Hello, my name is Tom Mullum. I’m been a resident of London, Ontario since 2018, but I’m temporarily living in Chatham Kent to take care of her relatives.

Over the past year, I’ve been volunteering with the VDLC and have had the opportunity to talk to countless Londoners who have received these pamphlets in their mailbox. And despite some of the back and forth tonight, the thing that’s always struck me about my conversations is people rarely make this an issue of pro-choice versus pro-life. And in fact, several of the people I’ve met who favor regulating these pamphlets self-identify as pro-life. What does come up is stories about young children being the ones to find these pamphlets in the mailbox.

Grieving parents being given these pamphlets in the aftermath of a pregnancy loss, those who have had abortions feeling targeted and attacked for what was one of the most serious and personal choices they’ve ever had to make. I don’t want to silence free pro-life speech. Neither do most Londoners, but we do want some level of protection from unsolicited and offensive mail. We do want protection from harassment.

We would be happy with a compromise, considering there must be dozens of other ways for pro-life advocates to spread their message. But since the group distributing these pamphlets doesn’t seem willing to compromise and expresses little to no regret over the harm they may cause, we have reached a point where legislation is required. While I don’t believe a no-flyer solution is perfect, I think it would offer some level of protection. My two points would be, however, that I think there would need to be some sort of penalty for violating this as frequently when people do put no-flyer signs on their mailbox, it is not respected by the group distributing these flyers.

Second, I would support something along the lines of an envelope to protect people or a warning, similar to as you would have on a movie or a TV show or we had at the beginning of this meeting. I know I’m a bit frazzled, but that is most of the points I did want to make and I would like to thank this committee for allowing me to speak and city council again for taking an interest in this issue. Thank you. Okay, I just want to make sure that we’ve reached the end of the speakers, see if there’s anyone else who’s joined part way through or was in a committee room and we missed you.

Okay, if not, I’m going to take a motion to close the public participation meeting, moved by councilor Fiff Miller, seconded by councilor Lewis. Get that up on the screen in just a moment. Sure, I’ll vote yes. I’m holding the vote, the motion carries, six to zero.

Okay, that brings us to the substance of the issue having heard from the many delegates, committee members, how would you like to proceed? We’ve referred this matter from a previous meeting so we could have this public participation meeting and there’s many options in front of us and I wonder how you’d like to go ahead. Raise your hand on the Zoom if you want to get on the speakers list to talk about the issue. Sir Lewis, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, I’m going to say a couple of things that I probably said at the last CAHPS meeting where this came up. I was not satisfied with the draft by-law that came forward and one of my primary objections to it was that there was no punitive measure, there was no enforcement mechanism, it was purely voluntary and repeatedly and not just on this issue, on a number of issues, we’ve seen how voluntary compliance, unfortunately, isn’t terribly successful in a number of areas of the civic realm.

I’m also going to repeat what I said at the last meeting and I stand by it. Freedom of speech is a great thing to uphold and one of the last speakers referenced that there are many ways for people to get their views out. In fact, I would argue that flyers in this day and age have become one of the least effective ways in some measure because there’s this thing called the internet that so many people rely on now. But to me, freedom of speech and lots of speakers referenced freedom of speech in the public sphere.

Well, when you walk up someone’s driveway and step on their front porch, you are now on their private property. When you open their door and insert a flyer into their mail slot or into their mailbox, you’re not in the public sphere, you’re on private property. And I do agree with the folks who said tonight, they are looking for protection in their homes from this. And I think that we heard particularly from Mr.

Trussow with some very good points about the demonstratable harm that has been inflicted on some lot of nurse by those intrusions into private property. So with, you know, it comes back to me where your freedom of expression ends when you’re in someone else’s home. In someone else’s home, it’s their choice. What they see or are exposed to, it’s their choice what their children see are exposed to, not yours, not mine, not anyone else’s.

It’s that person’s home and we should be respecting the sanctity of that, frankly. So I believe we referred this to a public participation meeting so that we could get some input from residents on both sides. I think we’ve heard a lot tonight. I don’t know where the other members of committee are leaning.

It would be, I won’t move this just yet. I’ll wait to hear from committee members, but it would be my direction to send the draft back to staff with direction based on tonight’s public feedback to revise the by-law to include some enforcement measures that can be followed in cases where compliance is not respected. I see Councillor Hopkins, I’m gonna come to you next and let me know if you wanna be on the speakers. Let’s go ahead, Councillor Hopkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for recognizing me. And I don’t have a quick question through you to staff about what we’re doing here with the by-law. We heard a lot tonight about the importance of the right for information, freedom of speech, the education part, regardless of what side you’re on.

But I understand we’re mainly dealing with graphic images here. So through you to staff, the by-law would not prohibit sharing information. It’s just prohibiting graphic images being shared to London residents in their home. Just wanna confirmation on that.

Did you share the by-law? Well, and Mr. Kedolek, I’m just gonna go to you in one second, but I just wanna distinguish there’s a variety of things that have been proposed. There is the staff report and the by-law that they recommended, which is one thing.

And then a number of other things have been brought up throughout the course of the discussion. So I’m gonna go to Mr. Kedolek just to clarify what’s in the by-law that was recommended by staff. Go ahead.

Yes, through the chair. The by-law focuses on unwanted flyers, you’re regardless of the content of the flyer. So the voluntary portion of the flyer is that the property owner or occupant of the residential premise would put a sign on their front window or front door or mailbox indicating that they wish to receive no flyers. We have been in contact with several other municipalities across Canada, which have similar by-laws.

And in fact, we reviewed those by-laws together with our legal department in the previous report to this committee in September. So the by-law would focus on unwanted flyers only if there was signage on the residential premise. The by-law that we presented in September was voluntary compliance. However, there are several examples of similar type by-laws across Canada, which do have penalty provisions.

And depending on the direction of council, we could come back with a report in quarter one, 2022 if council directs a offense provision and a penalty. Thank you. Thank you for that information. So unless you have the sticker on your door, you still can receive these images in your home.

And Mr. Chair, I’m just gonna make some comments and that’s a long evening. So alum, you can give me a few minutes. And I just wanna say, Councillor Lewis, when we started this conversation many, many months ago, I think it was very important I think to both of us that this is not about do you or don’t you support abortion?

It really is strictly about the graphic flyers being delivered to London homes. And I wanna thank the Chair for the open dialogue. And I wanna thank the community too for their comments and experiences with receiving these flyers. I think most of us all agree and support the right to information, to inform our decisions regardless of what side you’re on.

Sharing information and educating is important for our point of view. Freedom of expression came up quite a bit this evening. For me, it is very important freedom of expression. But with that, there also comes the responsibility.

I wanna just say that to the committee members that this is about protecting residents from the harm that these images can cause in flyer deliveries to residential properties. That’s the conversation that we’re having here tonight. We’ve heard tonight that these graphic images trigger an emotional response, if not a dramatic response, which causes harm to some lenders. As a city counselor and as a woman, I have a physical intimate relationship with what I’ve heard tonight.

How we protect women and girls from emotional harm is important to me. We’ve heard from a resident that he cannot share these images and his presentation. I found out very interesting. I didn’t need to see these images to have an understanding of the issues that lenders were expressing.

I didn’t need to see these images to have compassion to the public that was out tonight, but we allow these images to come into London homes. So I would encourage the committee that we, as a counselor, are committed, that her harassment will not be tolerated and we should take that responsibility and do what we can to protect lenders from these images. And I just wanted to make these comments supportive of having this bylaw go back and looking at strengthening the bylaw. I think it’s fair to say that voluntary compliance may not make much of a difference in the community.

So with that, Mr. Chair, thank you very much for allowing me to speak. You, I’ve got Councillor Hillier next. Go ahead, Councillor Hillier.

Thank you very much. Okay, it’s been a very long night for all of us. Now, freedom, freedom to me does not allow you the possibility of coming onto someone’s front step and dropping off a flyer that their children get to see. And you get to start, sorry, spark a conversation with a four-year-old with their parents that they don’t want to have at that given moment.

As a parent, I like to choose how I raise my children. And I don’t want someone dropping a flyer through the mailbox and all of a sudden, poof, we have to have this conversation. Oh, look, it just changed the entire theme of the evening. No, we need to choose when this gets done.

I don’t know how we’re going to move forward with this, with the bylaw and make it enforceable. But to me, I believe the flyer should contain some sort of a warning on the outside. So it’s folded in such a way that the contents are described but not shown. It is the only way I can see this going forward.

I’m just, I’m very upset by this because I’ve had a few neighbors within earshot of my house have this happen to them with little children and it was a conversation they did not want to have. So I am not in favor of fighting for the right to throw this in someone’s face. No, I am not. But we do need to have this conversation and figure out a way that this information is available but not thrown in on our doorsteps.

Thank you. Any other discussion? Councillor Fai Miller, go ahead. Thank you, Chair.

Just to add to the conversation, I think what we’ve heard tonight and when I read this bylaw and what I’m seeing is we are not looking to limit someone’s ability to share information. What we are giving them is the ability to share through engagement and not without asking. And I like this bylaw. I think the bylaw, I think it creates an opportunity for people in essence to, it gives them the right to choose whether or not they want to receive this information or not.

And this bylaw doesn’t just pertain to these flyers but it’s going to pertain to any flyers that they don’t want to get. So I think being focused on what we have here, I’ll agree with Councillor Lewis. I’d like to see some form of enforcement measure attached to this. But I like where this bylaw goes.

And I think it’s going to do what we want it to do at the end of the day. So thank you. Go to Councillor Vanholz, next, go ahead. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. And a question through you to our staff about the bylaw. When I was looking at it, of course, then it talked about flyers that of course wondered about the flyers from political candidates. And of course, it says that those are exempt along with a number of other things, one of those being addressed mail.

However, I was also wondering if those political flyers weren’t exempted explicitly, what I might do. And that would be to put a little blank spot on the flyer. And since I was going door to door, just right in the address where I were to deliver it. So my question to you is if someone were to do that, would that make those flyers from wherever they were delivered by exempt from the bylaw as it’s written?

I already are. I’m just going to clarify, Councillor Vanholz, before you answer, Mr. Catolic, are you saying, does it have to have the name of the resident or just the address of the residents? Yes, if it would just be just the address.

Okay, go ahead, Mr. Councillor. Thank you for that question, it’s a very good question. And through the chair, this is a draft bylaw.

And the perm addressed mail is not actually defined in the bylaw, so that may be something that we would have to take a look at because you’re suggesting, Councillor Vanholz, that if somebody simply writes in the address of the house, is that now an addressed form of a flyer? So that may be a form of a loophole, if this was ever challenged. So that may be something that we would have to have a closer look at in terms of the definition in the bylaw. Yes, okay, and thank you.

So it just, it seems to me that we may have a difficulty achieving the goal that some people are interested in here. And I also wonder if this were to be enforceable what that would require in terms of staffing? Through the chair, we have had discussions with Halifax, Winnipeg and Calgary on the volume of complaints that they have received and how the bylaws are enforced in those municipalities. I could tell the committee tonight that the volume of complaints is quite low.

Charges have been issued in those municipalities. And we have examples of the penalty amounts should counsel direct civic administration to include a penalty provision either through a provincial offence notice or through the city’s administrative monetary penalty amps bylaw. Okay, thank you. And have those bylaws been challenged?

Because I know there could be a challenge to this one. I mean, the reason that we are would consider it as was stated for one purpose and that’s the graphic images as opposed to the flyers in general. I haven’t heard many concerns about flyers in general, but would as a challenge likely or have they those other municipalities face challenges? Through the chair, the focus of the bylaws and other municipalities similar to the draft bylaw that we presented is unwanted flyers irregardless of the content of the flyer.

So it’s simply that you wish not to receive any flyers to your home in conversations with those three municipalities. There was no indication given that challenges have been requested by anybody in those three municipalities. Okay, thank you. Those are my questions for now, Mr.

Chair. Any further speakers? If not, does anyone have a motion in mind? It looks like Councillor Lewis is working up some language.

It’s possible colleagues, if you want to take a brief recess, if somebody’s very close to having something finalized, maybe that’s not necessary, but they also don’t need to rush. And if we want to take a little break, we can. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the few seconds of delay there. And I’m gonna preface this by saying, I may consider even looking to amend my own motion when this comes to council, but I think for the purposes of getting to some direction tonight, I would like to move the following. That the draft by-law, as appended by staff to the report of September 21st, 2021, with respect to flyer deliveries to residential properties be referred back to civic administration for revisions, that include enforcement measures in cases where compliance is not respected. Is everyone clear about what that motion says?

Councillor Lewis is hopefully read it out. Perhaps we can have it circulated or put up on the screen if there’s a seconder. So I’ll look at it right now, just having heard the language of the motion if there’s a seconder for that. Councillor Fythmiller, okay.

So I want to make sure our committee members are clear about what’s on the floor now, which is direction to send the by-law back, revise it to include penalties, but essentially to maintain the approach that has been recommended by staff, which is all unsolicited flyers rather than targeting the content or the medium in some way. Okay, the clerks are pointing out it’s up on the screen, so hopefully people can see. Let’s go to Mayor Holder, go ahead, Mayor. Thanks very much, and I’ve listened with exhausted interest all sides of this, and it reminds me of something that we did in the federal government, which I think we over-reached.

And that has to do with something that ultimately ended what they call CASL legislation to avoid spam email, because the concern that we had was that this was unwanted email. I’m talking about the electronic version, not the door-to-door that we’re dealing with now. And a lot of businesses who truly depended on legitimate businesses, depended on a marketing, now had to go through a formal process of permission. Maybe that’s the right way to go, but they had to go through a formal process, whereas those who weren’t licensed in Canada, so basically we’re talking about American, and so US, European, and Asian actors flooded the Canadian marketplace ‘cause there was no impunity.

They did it with impunity. And so I appreciate this catch-all might be the only way to do it if the intent of council is to deal with this, but you’re going to have some very legitimate businesses that frankly depend on that as part of their marketing exercises, and we heard earlier tonight, the reference to some that have a coupon, some that are trying to promote their product, not so much an advocacy piece, one way or another. So, Chair, what I’m really going with this is that I’m glad that the counselor, as he’s moving his motion, is going to be amenable to change. I think we need to get something on the table to move this forward, but I’m just very mindful that this kind of all-encompassing approach as we did, federally with spam legislation while well-intended, ended up hurting legitimate business too, so there’s a caution there about the flyer piece, and I just throw it out for consideration as we go forward.

Councillor Lewis, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through you, I’d just like to follow up on the mayor’s comments and share with all committee members, including his worship that I absolutely share the same concern about it perhaps being too broad your worship, and there’s been a lot to absorb tonight. I would certainly not be opposed to narrowing the focus, perhaps, but I need time to process that, so I wanted to give us some direction tonight to start having staff look at the compliance enforcement piece and certainly whether it’s offline with staff or something that I might circulate ahead of the next council meeting, I’m going to be taking that advice as intended in the spirit of making sure that we don’t unduly cause some unintended harm to those businesses that rely on marketing through that means.

Thank you. Any other discussion from committee members or guests committee? No, if not, I’m just going to turn over the chair to, sorry, I do see the Ms. Dean and Natalie have raised your hand, but the delegations and the public participation meeting are over, so unfortunately, you’re not able to weigh in at this point in the meeting.

I’m just going to turn the chair over to Vice Chair Hillier, so I can say a few things. Thank you, Councillor Neill. Thanks very much, colleagues, and I appreciate everyone’s patience as we worked our way through hearing from members of the public. I know for many members of the public, it’s very difficult to weigh in on this issue, and I want to say, I would say that, I know it’s also taken us a long time to get even to this point in the discussion and for something that people feel is quite urgent in terms of stopping the behavior that they see to be harmful, you know, it’s really a long road to get to this point and it doesn’t look like we’re really at the end of the road yet, and so I wanted to just recognize that.

It is an area that is very difficult to regulate effectively, and what I mean by that is I actually found tonight’s PPM to be very instructive. I was listening very carefully to what people were saying and the way that they were saying it, and it’s very clear to me that there are some folks in the pro-life movement who will never be dissuaded from sending these images to people. Very clear, you know, it is like the purpose is I’m going to shock you and I’m going to inflict this harm on you, and then you’re going to change your view, which is what I’m trying to accomplish. And the disregard for the collateral damage of that tactic is very plain.

No, not among everybody who spoke, certainly not, but among many people. And I think that’s the difficulty in trying to figure out how can we regulate this effectively to stop the harm when that is the approach that people will take, right? And we run into this in many areas of human behavior where people will just continue with the behavior over and over again until there’s a rule that says you can’t. And I think the difficulty we’re having now in even working through the discussion is what is the rule that will actually be effective, right?

That is broad enough to capture the behavior that is harmful, but not so broad as to capture other kinds of behavior that we don’t see the harm in. And one that’s not so focused that it’s targeting a very specific kind of political opinion, but the actual behavior, which is the display of these graphic images. And I think it is also instructive that these display of graphic images, there’s not a whole other movement out there that’s distributing graphic images to people at the doorsteps. There’s just this one, like it’s just not happening.

It doesn’t happen. There’s not flyers. I don’t get contacted by people who say, I got this really graphic image about some other issue. It’s just the pro-life movement and really a subset of that movement that’s engaging in this behavior.

So it is the tricky thing we have to deal with. If there was a whole other movement that was trying the same kind of tactics and they saw value in those tactics and they kept pursuing them despite the fact that people were saying this is harming me, you should stop. We would be having a broader discussion because we’d be talking about many different actors that are actually out there in the world engaging in this behavior. And it’s the distribution of the graphic images that is definitely the problem, right?

Because we’re not talking about regulating pro-life opinions. We’ve had lots of pro-life opinions. Unfortunately, although we tried to keep the focus on the distribution of flyers, there was lots of opinions expressed even here tonight that were pro-life. And we’re not saying you can’t have pro-life opinions and you can’t disseminate your pro-life opinions in the community.

What we’re saying is the distribution of graphic images, especially unsolicited, is causing harm to people. And it was very plain from the delegations we heard people who were harmed, people who were counted stories and had to show up at this meeting to tell us about those things over again, right? Experiencing it all over again. And it’s really unfortunate that we’re in this position.

You know, I think this problem could be solved by people just stopping the behavior. But it’s clear to me, at least, listening to people who are weighing in that they won’t. They won’t unless there’s a rule that says you can’t and there’s some mechanism to enforce it. And so I think we have to wrestle with that is the way that the staff recommended, which is certainly from a content neutrality perspective, I think it’s very defensible.

You could take it to core, you’d probably do pretty well. But it’s also catching all kinds of other potential messages that are not causing harm right now. And I think that there’s some problems with that approach. It requires people to take action, to file complaints, to say, hey, I had a notice up and then I got this thing I didn’t like and they’re still gonna experience the harm.

So they’re gonna get the harm and then they’re gonna make a complaint and then they have to go through that whole process. So I think there’s a burden on people that I would like to relieve them of, of having to constantly report these things and go through the experience. So it’s not clear to me that this is exactly the right approach. I think that’s something that’s more narrow in its scope that’s not about the political opinion itself.

You know, here’s my position on whether we should have a law about abortion or, you know, I’m pro-life but the method, right? The unsolicited distribution of graphic images. And I think that’s something that we need to, we still need to figure it out. So I’m gonna support what Councillor Lewis has suggested now because we certainly need to get something on the books that’s gonna be some kind of deterrent to this kind of behavior which is causing harm.

It’s very clear to me. I wanna think about if there’s a better way, you know, and if there is a better way, we could change. I think at some point we have to act. We need to put something into place that’s gonna be effective.

And I think we gotta take a step soon. And I think we’ve taken lots of time to think about how to do that. And I’m gonna be making the final decision even now until sometime in 2022. But I’m open.

If anyone’s got a really specific idea that could be more effective, a bit more targeted and narrow in its scope, I think that that might be better. I’m still open to that way forward. I really appreciate the discussion tonight ‘cause it’s a difficult topic and we’re talking about, you know, on the one hand, the wellbeing of residents in the community. On the other hand, they’re desired to have unfettered free speech and be able to engage in political discourse both of which are important and it’s not gonna be easy to resolve that.

So those are my comments, Vice Chair Hillier. I return the chair to you and Councilor Van Holst is on next. Okay, Councilor Van Holst, go ahead. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. And so in past meetings, I’d suggest that the Trust Pass to Property Act might be a better solution and that we as a city could help people make that known so that the people who hope not to receive these wouldn’t get them. It was suggested that that might not work. But I wonder if we still have the representatives from the CCBR here, if it would be appropriate to ask them if they actually respect these, when they come through, when they receive those requests for non-trust pass, if those are respected.

Fortunately, we’ve closed the public participation meeting, Councilor Van Holst, so you’ll have to make inquiries, I guess, directly of their organization. Perhaps you can find out for Council. Okay, although I do think I recall committee members asking questions after these meetings are closed, but after the PVAM is closed. Anything else?

No, that’s the end of the speakers list. So I’m gonna just finally, we’re gonna have the motion come up on the screen, make sure everybody’s the motion you’re expecting, and then we’ll open up the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. So colleagues, that brings us to the end of item 3.1.

We had the public participation meeting, we passed a direction. We’re gonna be dealing with this again at a future community of protected services committee. Thanks very much everyone who participated in the meeting, I really appreciate it. We have the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee report, you’ll see there’s a couple of items there that are requesting civic administration to do some things, they’re requests, but I wanna make sure you’re aware of those.

Is there a mover and a seconder for that report? Councilor Hiller, thank you. Seconder, Councilor Fiedmiller, any discussion on the AWAC report? Councilor Lewis, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I did wanna follow up on actually both items for direction. Through you, I’m wondering if staff can provide any indication of what the differences are in this signage in between city parks and ESAs with regard to coyote information.

I’ve certainly seen the signs in Medal of the Woods as I do enjoy walks there. I’m not sure what the difference is. I’m wondering if staff can just help with that. Yes, through the Chair.

Our understanding is that the signage in ESAs is more information-based and put up by consultation with the Upper Thomas Conservation Authority, whereas the signage in city parks is more based on bylaws. It’s more of a parks issue. So this issue was brought up at the AWAC Committee last session. And I believe that the parks department is open to reviewing the signage to have a more balanced information to the public.

Through you, Chair, thank you for that answer, Mr. Catolic. The other item that’s seeking some direction here is recycling receptacles for fishing lines and hooks and signage for that or, yeah, signage for that as well. I’m wondering if anyone can assist me in terms of, we have a lot of waterways in the city.

Certainly, I know the Thames River Anglers Association makes great use of the Thames, but it’s not the only body of water running through the city where you might see somebody casting a line. So while we have this request to obtain receptacles, I’m wondering if staff can provide any insight into how many and what locations they might be considering. And I’m also through you, Mr. Chair, going to ask, and this may be actually just the advisory committee’s choice rather than our choice, but why would we be requesting the obtaining of these receptacles when AWAC has requested delegation status to come and talk to us more about this recommendation?

And we have not yet received that delegate status. Through this chair, I could provide some information. Once again, this is a idea that came up through Animal Welfare Advisory Committee. It is a partnership with BassPro and Berkeley Fishing Line.

And this partnership has been in place in numerous municipalities across Canada. Apparently, there are 750 of these receptacles across Canada and to continue this partnership and to receive these receptacles. One of the requirements is to have municipal approval for this idea. We have already put up signage at some hotspots where there’s a fishing occurring, recreational fishing along the Thames River.

So we’ve already put up some signage, just informational signage indicating when you finish fishing, sort of clean up after yourselves, don’t leave fishing line and hooks in the general area. So we have already done that, but I don’t know if there’s anybody on AWAC on this call. Maybe I’ll defer to the clerk. I believe there is the IC, perhaps Ms.

Blash and Ms. Brown, both on the call. So I see that Marie Blash has her hand up and I wonder, do you wanna hear directly from the chair of AWAC, ‘cause they’ve managed to stick it out through the whole meeting? Well, I do appreciate Ms.

Blash staying with us for the whole meeting. Mr. Kritowalik’s response actually was really, really helpful, but if Ms. Blash has anything to add, I’d be happy to hear that now.

I mean, I think that this makes sense now that I’ve got a little more understanding of it. Okay, let’s go to Ms. Blash and you can weigh in. Go ahead.

Oh, yes, thank you very much. I was just raising my hand in the hopes that you would realize that we are here and I would like to defer to the AWAC chair, Wendy Brown, to make the presentation on these issues. Go ahead, Ms. Brown.

Okay, hello everyone, can everyone hear me okay? All right, okay. So in addition to, we’re really grateful that we’ve got some awareness signage going up for anglers out there, but to follow that with some action, the AWAC did some comprehensive research to see if there’s anything more that might be helpful. And this all, the background for this, you know, recently here in London, an osprey was found ensnared and hanging from a bridge.

These large birds of prey use their waterways to capture fish and in the cases with many other birds of prey and songbirds, they’re known to bring non-natural materials such as plastics, balloons, and fishing line to their nets. We believe that we should take steps to protect these remarkable birds and all wildlife flora and fauna that call our rivers home. The incident was shared on social media and it sparked lots of conversation across, you know, social media platforms in terms of it being an issue in London, Ontario. So one of the things that I want to point out is that when fishing line gets snared out in a waterway, it doesn’t always make its way into the hands of folks that want to collect that fishing line and dispose of it.

So that’s one issue and what happens then is that when we have flooding, we have icing up and thawing out of waterways, debris gets carried down river and so do these filaments and they end up on the river banks. So long after an angler has left the area, these fishing lines still persist in the environment. So we wanted to look at if there are there some actions that we could do. So in consulting with a program, clear your gear, they were able to let us know that and give us some feedback on that.

And that not only installing the receptacles, it brought awareness, but more importantly, it got community engaged in collecting up fishing gear when they went out for walks with their grandchildren. So it wasn’t just anglers then collecting it back up and using these receptacles. So that’s a really important piece of feedback that we got. And in fact, they’re expanding these programs across Canada.

Thank you, any further discussion on the AWAC report? If not, Councilor Lewis? Sorry, I just wanted to just follow up following the chair of AWAC’s comments and thank both Ms. Brown and Ms.

Bloch for sticking it out with us tonight and sharing that. I love the, it’s catchy, clear your gear and we should certainly be doing what we can to encourage everybody to leave our natural areas in the same state that they found them. So I think this is a really good piece of advice from the advisory committee and I want to just thank you for your time tonight. Thank you.

And if I may, just an additional point to make, I just wanted to also let you know that in terms of the clear your gear program, the other important piece is that this filament on a fishing line, it’s not recyclable. So it’s not something that you can take home and put in your blue box. That’s why it’s really important that we recycle it properly. And that would be part of that program is that recycling that would be free and they would provide prepaid packaging to be able to then take that discarded fishing line from those receptacles and have it shipped for free and it to be recycled appropriately.

We know that these filaments persist for more than 600 years in the environment. So they’re not just affecting our wildlife but they’re also affecting the soil and the flora. Okay, we’ve got the report moved and seconded and have that open up for voting. Using the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

For matters list, a mover to receive that. Councilor Five Miller, seconded by Councillor Hillier. Any discussion? Okay, we’re gonna open that up for a vote.

Using the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Okay, I need a motion to go into closed session so we can deal with item 6.1, which is listed on the agenda. By Councillor Lewis, seconded by Mayor Holder. That up on the screen, personal matter pertaining to identified employees with respect to the 2022 mayor’s new year’s honor list.

It’s up on the screen, we’re voting. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. It’s gonna take a little bit to turn it around. We’ll be coming back and we’re just waiting to make sure we’re streaming and colleagues.

Okay, here we are back in public session. I’m gonna turn to Vice Chair Hillier to report progress on the matter we went in closed session to discuss. I’d like to report progress on 6.1 who in the closed meeting discuss regarding the mayor’s new year’s honor list. Thank you, I have a motion to adjourn.

Mr. Lewis, seconded by Councillor Fife Miller. All those in favor, adjourned. Thanks very much.

Thank you all. Thanks, Chair.