July 18, 2023, at 12:00 PM

Original link

The meeting was called to order at 12:00 PM, it being noted that Councillor P. Van Meerbergen was in remote attendance.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That items 2.1 to 2.6 and 2.8 to 2.11 BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

2.1   7th Report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee

2023-06-07 ESACAC Report

That the 7th Report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee, from its meeting held on June 7, 2023, BE RECEIVED.

2.2   7th Report of the Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee

2023-06-21 - ITCAC - Report

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 7th Report of the Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee, from its meeting held on June 21, 2023:

a)    the Municipal Council BE ADVISED that the Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee recommends Alternative 2: Signalized Intersection A, from the Hamilton Road and Gore Road Intersection Improvement Environmental Assessment;

it being noted that the presentation, as appended to the Agenda, from V. Pugliese, MTE Consultants, with respect to this matter, was received; and,

b)    clauses 2.2, 3.1 to 3.9, 4.1, 5.1 and 5.2 BE RECEIVED.

2.3   RFP-2022-224 Green Bin Processing Services

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (2.3) - Green Bin Processing

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to the Request for Proposal (RFP-2022-224) Green Bin Processing Services:

a)    the proposal submitted by Convertus Canada Inc., 307 Commissioners Rd W, No. 8, London, Ontario, N6J 1Y4, for Green Bin Processing Services to manage food waste and soiled paper BE ACCEPTED at their quoted processing unit rate of $89.75 per tonne (excluding HST); it being noted that this is being reported as an irregular bid as per the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy Section 19.4 (c) as only one (1) bid was received for this Request for Proposals, and that:

i)    the quoted processing unit rate of $94.50 per tonne (excluding HST) be accepted as submitted in 2023 to manage pet waste and/or food waste contained inside plastic bags should City Council wish to make Green Bin Program adjustments in the future;

ii)   the proposed annual rate be adjusted annually for inflation by the Consumer Price Index;

iii)  the term of contract be for four (4) years, with three (3), one (1) year renewal options at the sole discretion of the City; and,

iv)  the minimum amounts of Green Bin materials that must be delivered to Convertus’s processing facility are 15,000 tonnes (in 2024), 15,750 tonnes (in 2025), 16,540 tonnes (in 2026) and 17,360 tonnes (in 2027);

b)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this work; and,

c)    the approval given, herein, BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation entering into a formal contract, having a purchase order or contract record relating to the subject matter of this approval.

2.4   Western Road and Sarnia Road/Phillip Aziz Avenue Corridor and Intersection Improvements Detailed Design Appointment of Consulting Engineer

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (2.4) -Western-Sarnia.PhilipAziz DD - Appointment of Consultant-

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to the Western Road and Sarnia Road/Philip Aziz Avenue Corridor and Intersection Improvements Detailed Design and the Appointment of a Consulting Engineer:

a)   AECOM Canada Ltd. BE APPOINTED as the consulting engineer to complete the detailed design and tendering services at an upset amount of $1,645,435.00 (excluding HST);

b)    the financing for this assignment BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report, as appended to the above-noted staff report;

c)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this assignment;

d)    the approvals given, herein, BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation entering into a formal contract with the consultant for the work; and,

e)    the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract or other documents including agreements, if required, to give effect to these recommendations.

2.5   Appointment of Consulting Engineers for the Infrastructure Renewal Program

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (2.5) - Appointment of Consultant Engineer for Infrastructure Renewal Program

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to the Appointment of Consulting Engineers for the Infrastructure Renewal Program:

a)    the following consulting engineers BE APPOINTED to carry out consulting services for the identified Infrastructure Renewal Program funded projects, at the upset amounts identified below, in accordance with the estimate on file, and in accordance with Section 15.2(e) of the City of London’s Procurement of Goods and Services Policy:

i)    Development Engineering (London) Limited as the consulting engineers to complete the pre-design, and detailed design of Contract 1, Florence Street from Eleanor Street to Ashland Avenue, and Eleanor Street from Dundas Street to Frances Street reconstruction, in the total amount of $354,937.00, including contingency (excluding HST);

ii)   Stantec Consulting Ltd. as the consulting engineers to complete the pre-design, detailed design and construction administration of Contract 3, Cavendish Crescent East reconstruction, and Greenway low level trunk sanitary sewer relocation, in the total amount of $767,672.40, including contingency (excluding HST);

iii)  Archibald, Gray & McKay Engineering Ltd. as the consulting engineers to complete the pre-design and detailed design of Contract 7, Sterling Street from Oxford Street East to Salisbury Street, Salisbury Street from Sterling Street to Quebec Street, and Mornington Avenue from Sterling Street to Quebec Street reconstruction, in the total amount of $294,800.00, including contingency (excluding HST);

b)    the financing for this project BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report, as appended to the above-noted staff report;

c)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this project;

d)    the approval given, herein, BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation entering into a formal contract; and,

e)    the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract or other documents, if required, to give effect to these recommendations. (2023-T04)

2.6   Contract Award - Request for Proposal RFP-2023-141 Design, Fabrication, Delivery, Installation and Maintenance of Signage for Downtown Wayfinding Plan Phase 1 Sign By-law Amendment

2023-07-18 - Staff Repot (2.6) - Contract Award Request for Prposal Wayfinding Plan Phase 1

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure and the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to the Contract Award Request for Proposal (RFP-2023-141) for the Design, Fabrication, Delivery, Installation and Maintenance of Signage for Downtown Wayfinding Plan Phase 1 Sign By-law Amendment:

a)    Everest Signs BE APPOINTED to undertake detailed design, fabrication, installation and maintenance at an upset limit of $125,350.00 (excluding HST), in accordance with Section 12.2(b);

b)    the financing for this project BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report, as appended to the above-noted staff report;

c)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this project;

d)    the approval given, herein, BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation entering into a formal contract with Everest Signs for this work;

e)    the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract or other documents, if required, to give effect to these recommendations; and,

f)    the proposed by-law, as appended to the above-noted staff report, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on July 25, 2023, to amend By-law No. S.-5868-183, entitled “A by-law prohibiting and regulating signs, and regulating the placing of signs upon highways and buildings”.

2.8   Appointment of Consulting Engineers for Contract Administration Services - Vauxhall Wastewater Treatment Plant Refurbishment Stage 1

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (2.8) - Appointment of Consulting Engineers for Vauxhall Refurbishment Stage 1

That, on the recommendation of Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to the Appointment of Consulting Engineers for Contract Administration Services for the Vauxhall Wastewater Treatment Plant Refurbishment Stage 1:

a)    the following consulting engineers BE APPOINTED to carry out consulting services for the identified wastewater treatment operations infrastructure project, at the upset amounts identified below, in accordance with the estimate on file, and in accordance with Section 15.2(g) of the City of London’s Procurement of Goods and Services Policy:

i)    Dillon Consulting Limited as the consulting engineers to complete part time inspection and contract administration of Vauxhall WWTP Refurbishment Stage 1 in the total amount of $133,515.00, including contingency (excluding HST);

ii)   AECOM Canada Ltd. as the consulting engineers to complete part time inspection and contract administration support to Dillon for Vauxhall WWTP Refurbishment Stage 1, in the total amount of $40,000.00, including contingency (excluding HST);

b)    the financing for this project BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report, as appended to the above-noted staff report;

c)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this project; and,

d)    the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract or other documents, if required, to give effect to these recommendations. (2023-E03)

2.9   RFP-2023-097 Streetscape Master Plan for Dundas Street Appointment of Consulting Engineer- Irregular Result

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (2.9) Streetscapes Master Plan for Dundas

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to the Request for Proposal (RFP-2023-097) Streetscape Master Plan for Dundas Street Appointment of Consulting Engineer Irregular Result:

a)    Dillon Consulting Limited BE APPOINTED as the Consulting Engineer to complete the Streetscape Master Plan for Dundas Street – Argyle Core Area in the total amount of $159,899.30 (excluding HST), in accordance with Sections 15.2 (d) and 8.10 (a) of the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy;

b)    the financing for this project BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report, as appended to the above-noted staff report;

c)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this assignment;

d)    the approvals given, herein, BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation entering into a formal contract with the Consulting Engineer for the work; and,

e)    the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract or other documents including agreements, if required, to give effect to these recommendations.

2.10   Contract Price Increase - 2022 Sewer Lining Contract

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (2.10) - Contract Price Increase for 2022 Sewer Lining Contract

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to a Contract Price Increase for the 2022 Sewer Lining Contract:

a)    the 2022 Sewer Lining Contract (RFP-2022-120) contract value with Insituform Technologies Ltd. BE INCREASED by $33,795.70 to $4,407,511.80 (excluding HST) in accordance with Section 20.3 (e) of the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy;

b)    the financing for these projects BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report, as appended to the above-noted staff report;

c)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with these projects; and,

d)    the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract or other documents, if required, to give effect to these recommendations. (2023-E01)

2.11   Comments Provided to Federal Government on Recycled Content, Labelling Rules, and Registry of Plastic Products

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (2.11) - Comments Provided to Fed Gov on Recycled Content Labelling and Registry

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to Comments Provided to Federal Government on Recycled Content, Labelling Rules and Registry for Plastic Products, BE RECEIVED.

2.7   Adelaide Street North Improvements Environmental Study Report, Notice of Completion

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (2.7) -Adelaide Street North EA Study-Notice of Completion

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to the Adelaide Street North Improvements Environmental Study Report, Notice of Completion:

a)    the Adelaide Street North Improvements Environmental Study Report BE ACCEPTED;

b)    a Notice of Study Completion for the Project BE FILED with the Municipal Clerk; and,

c)    the Environmental Study Report BE PLACED on the public record for a 30-day review period.

it being noted that a corridor widening of Adelaide Street North be subject to the recommendation of the Master Mobility Plan and future Development Charges By-laws.

Motion Passed

Additional Votes:

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by H. McAlister

Motion to approve that the Adelaide Street North Improvements Environmental Study Report BE REFERRED back to the Civic Administration to include a no widening option as well as a discussion for a downstream mitigation option.

Motion Failed (1 to 5)

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Motion to approve parts a), b) and c) of the clause.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by H. McAlister

Motion to add the following to the end of the clause:

it being noted that a corridor widening of Adelaide Street North be subject to the recommendation of the Master Mobility Plan and future Development Charges By-laws.

Motion Passed (4 to 2)

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   8th Report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee

2023-07-06 - ESACAC Report

Moved by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 8th Report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee, from its meeting held on July 5, 2023:

a)    that consideration of clause 5.1 BE DEFFERED to a future meeting of the Civic Works Committee for further review; and,

b)    clauses 1.1, 3.1 to 3.4, 6.1 and 6.2 BE RECEIVED;

it being noted that a verbal delegation from B. Samuels, Chair, Environment and Action Community Advisory Committee, with respect to this matter, was received.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by P. Cuddy

Motion to approve that the Civic Works Committee convene, In Closed Session, for the purpose of considering a matter related to advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege, as it related to the Yard and Lot Maintenance By-law.

Motion Failed (3 to 3)

4.2   London Transit 2022 Annual Report

2023-07-18 - Staff Report (4.2) - 2022 LTC Annual Report

That the following actions be taken with respect to the London Transit 2022 Annual Report:

a)    the London Transit Commission BE REQUESTED to include Accessibility as a key component in their next Strategic Plan; and,

b)    the London Transit 2022 Annual Report BE REFERRED back to the London Transit Commission to:

i)    re-evaluate the grading components of the report identified by the Municipal Council, with respect to the grading of the key elements of the evaluation; and,

ii)   submit a revised report to the Civic Works Committee at a future meeting;

it being noted that the communication, as appended to the Added Agenda, from J. Preston, with respect to this matter, was received.

Motion Passed

Additional Votes:

Moved by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Seconded by P. Cuddy

Motion to approve part a) of the clause.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Moved by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Seconded by H. McAlister

Motion to approve part b) of the clause.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Moved by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Seconded by P. Cuddy

Motion to approve the addition of the following to the clause:

“it being noted that the communication, as appended to the Added Agenda, from J. Preston, with respect to the matter, was received.”

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

4.3   Mobility Master Plan Update Strategies, Mode Share Target Options and Project Evaluation Frameworks

2023-07-18-Staff Report (4.3) - MMP Strategies Mode Share Target Options and Project Evaluation Frameworks

That the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated July 18, 2023, related to the Master Mobility Plan Update on Strategies, Mode Share, Target Options and Project Evaluation Frameworks:

a)    that, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the above-noted staff report BE RECEIVED;

b)    the Civic Administration BE REQUESTED to remove item 2.4.1 Mode Target Share Option 1 from the above-noted staff report;

c)    that the London Transit Commission BE REQUESTED to: 

i)    develop a detailed 2023 to 2027 work plan providing clear information on how LTC will implement Council’s 2023 to 2027 Strategic Plan, with particular focus on the Mobility and Transportation Strategic Area of Focus and its Outcomes, Expected Results and Strategies, but also on other Strategic Areas of Focus that are associated with LTC and its operations;

ii)    report back to the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the results of a) at its meeting on October 31, 2023; and,

iii)    provide, at minimum, semi-annual reports to the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee starting in January 2024 and through the term of the Strategic Plan to allow for continued consultation with Municipal Council on local transportation system policy and on general administration and affairs in relation to general municipal policy as per the current Bylaw;

iv)    that the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to review the current bylaw and report back with any recommended changes to reflect the necessary collaboration between LTC and the City of London in delivering on Council’s 2023 to 2027 Strategic Plan;

it being noted that the presentation from S. Grady, Traffic and Transportation Engineer, with respect to this matter, was received; and,

it being further noted that the verbal delegation from M. Wallace and the communications, as appended to the Added Agenda, from A. Hunniford, A. Loewen Nair and C. Evans, with respect to this matter, were received.

Motion Passed

Additional Votes:

Moved by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Seconded by P. Cuddy

Motion to approve the request for delegation, from M. Wallace, London development Institute, with respect to this matter, to be heard at this meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 1)

Moved by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Seconded by S. Trosow

Motion to approve part b) of the clause.

Motion Passed (5 to 1)

Moved by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Seconded by H. McAlister

Motion to approve part a) of the clause.

Motion Passed (5 to 1)

Moved by S. Lewis (Acting Mayor)

Seconded by S. Trosow

Motion to approve part c) of the clause.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

4.4   (ADDED) Councillor S. Franke - Climate Emergency Action Plan - Phase Out Gas

(ADDED) Sumbmission (4.4) - CEAP - Phase out Gas

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the communications included on the Added Agenda from Councillor S. Franke, related to Climate Emergency Action Plan - Phase Out Gas, BE REFERRED to the Civic Administration for review.

Motion Passed (3 to 2)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 3:50 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 (4 hours, 10 minutes)

Good afternoon, everyone. The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Lanapawik, and we honor and respect the history, languages, and cultures of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The city of London is currently home to many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit today, as representatives of the people of the city of London. We’re grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory.

I’ll look to call the 11th meeting on the Civic Works Committee to start. First, I wanna mention that the city of London is committed to making a request, to make a request specific to this meeting. Please contact cwc@london.ca or 519-661-2489, extension 2425. Please also check the city’s website for additional meeting details, information.

Meetings can be viewed via live stream on YouTube, and the city’s website. I’ll go to item number one, disclosures of pecuniary interest. I see none, and I see Councillor Van Mirberg enjoying us online. Hello, nice to see you.

And we have all other members of committee in chambers, just looking to see if we have a other visiting Councillors online. I don’t see any, but I do see Councillor Privel here as well. Thanks for joining us. We’re gonna move on to item number two, our items for consent.

I’ve been asked to pull item 2.7. Are there other items that Councillors would like pulled? Councillor Trossa. I don’t want to pull any other items, but I do have some questions about 2.3 and 0.6.

And I don’t feel I need to pull those out. Okay, thank you. I will look to put items 2.1 to 2.11 on the floor, excluding 2.7, looking for a mover and seconder to do that. And then we’ll start our discussion.

Councillor Cuddy and Councillor McAllister, a little bit slower of Councillor van Mirberg in this time around, but we have a mover and a seconder. Thank you. Any questions for staff on any of those items for consent? Councillor Trossa, go ahead.

Point 3, I simply wanted to ask about the possible future status and the feasibility of the pet waste inclusion. Would that involve using a different kind of liner? Is that something that we could look forward to in the future if we have different types of liners, or is that, yeah, could you comment on that? Thank you to, just before, yeah, just before you, Councillor Trossa, if you don’t mind, can you just tip your mic down too, for when you’re speaking, thank you so much.

Were you able to hear all that, Mr. Stanford? And okay, I’ll over to you, thank you. Thank you, and through the chair, the addition of pet waste, the way our report has been positioned, it could be added really at any time that committee and council wish to do that.

Your report today before you has recommended what we refer to as material next number one, which does not include pet waste, as a good place for London’s green bin program to start. But the way it has been set up, where the liner system that’ll be permitted, either a paper bag, paper materials, or certified compostable bags, those are available in the marketplace right now, and are also available in the marketplace for a pet waste. So should committee and council wish to add it at a future point, we have pricing for that, and that’ll be part of the contract record, and something that could be implemented at council’s desire. Thank you, and also through the chair.

I appreciate that, and I just wanna avoid confusion on the part of residents as to where they should be putting these bags, because some people are gonna think it should go in one, some people should think it should go in the other, and I think we’ve got a big constituency of people who will be doing this, and they wanna do the right thing, but I think we’ll have to really focus our education effort on that. Thank you for that, Councillor, and I wanted to say welcome to Acting Mayor Lewis, who’s joined us in chambers as well. Thank you, Mr. Stanford, for the information that’s provided in the package today.

Was there anything else that you wanted to add, perhaps, before we, I know Councillor Purple has some additional questions as well? Thank you, Madam Chair. I think probably the only thing to add at this point is we’re still getting asked when, what does the rollout look like? When will the Green Bend program start?

That’ll all be subject of a report coming to the next CWC in August. We are currently working with a timeline of late fall, early winter. That will be narrowed down in the next 30 days. We’ve been in discussion with our truck manufacturer, and we’re starting to receive some positive news on when the remaining vehicles will be available for a rollout here in London.

Our report right now has that timeframe in mind. We will narrow that down, as well as some of the questions that still remain out there, such as what will happen with the container limit. Currently right now it’s at three containers of garbage per pickup, how will that change? We’ll be coming forward in our August report with details on that, as well as any other information dealing with the Green Bend itself.

It’ll take about two months, for example, for that container to be distributed to all London households that are receiving the service curbside primarily, as well as details on the multi-residential pilot project. So we have to wait just a little bit longer for those to be finalized. But if there are any questions on that right now, I’ll do my best today to answer anything in that regard. Thank you.

I will go to Councillor Cuddy, and then to Councillor Perfel. Thank you, through you, Chair. I just want to thank Mr. Stanford and his staff for the work that you’ve done on this.

This is a big issue during the election campaign. My constituents in War III were anxious to have something like this happen. You’ve made it happen, and we really appreciate the hard work and effort. I know it hasn’t been easy, and we’re looking forward to the roll-out.

Thank you. Thank you. I’ll go to Councillor Perfel, and then I have some questions as well. Thank you, Chair, and through the Chair to the staff.

Every agreement that I see, like agreement that we are obliged to deliver certain minimums always kind of worries me. And, you know, during the 24, 15,000 tonnes, and then it goes higher and higher. How confident are we we can deliver this? Because again, it’s a totally new territory for us.

And if we don’t, what are the penalties, or are we aware of those? Thank you, to staff. Through the Chair, the notion of minimum quantities was became a requirement of the request for proposals. The bidders put forward a number of questions and indicated that if capacity is to be tied up for the City of London, they needed to know how much.

In year one, which is probably our most challenging year, because it’s the startup of the program, we’ve had conversation with our proposed contractor here, and there will be some flexibility on that minimum tonnage. There has to be further discussion on that. But as we move into the future, these are tons that are very important that Londoners do their best to comply with. We’ll be making sure that information is available to them.

So we are reasonably comfortable that this can be delivered. It is based on experience in many jurisdictions across Ontario. We’ve not set high, high minimum standards. We’ve set sort of what we believe are quite reasonable.

So I’m confident that Londoners with their appetite for the green bin program will be able to hit these targets, perhaps even in year number one, will be bringing forward further information in our next report on how some of that’s going to work as part of the rollout strategy. But right now, I’m quite comfortable that Londoners can meet the requirement. Follow up, Councillor? Yeah, thank you for the response.

And I do hope that we deliver it as well, but if we don’t for both on both sides, so the corporation is protected, and as well as we know, there was only one organization that bid on this RFP. So it’s fair on both sides. So I just hope that just in case we don’t deliver the 15,000 in future years, that both sides, us and the organizations are protected. And there’s a certain expectations if we didn’t deliver what happened.

So we are not in a great area. That’s the only other comment. I don’t know if you would like to comment on that. Thank you.

Thank you. If the committee will indulge me, I do have some. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Mr. Chamber.

Sorry, Madam Chair, that continuation of the question is very important to understand. Minimum quantities are the requirement of what has to be delivered. So should the city of London and the residents not deliver that quantity, you would still have to pay for those tons. So that is why the monitoring of this program, the education and awareness reporting out constantly is very, very key to make sure that we’re using this in part as leverage, because why would we want to pay for something that we’re not using?

So all Londoners need to understand there. It’s incumbent upon all of us to make sure that we hit these targets. That’s why we pick minimums that we believe are quite reasonable to achieve. But it does require work and it requires consistency in product quality and feedstock quality.

All things though, that other communities have managed to deliver on. They’re therefore we’re building off a very good foundation, not only here in London, but across other communities experiences. Okay, just the last follow-up. So thank you for the answer.

But again, so the supplier, they would be, they would be understandably, we don’t deliver 15,000, but they would still charge us for it. To staff, go ahead. Through the share, that is how the contractors currently struck. In year one of the contract, we are looking at some flexibility and some of those discussions are ongoing now and will be concluded over the next little bit on what that might look like.

Thank you, no more questions, thank you. Please bear with us just for a moment as we make sure that our live stream is working. Okay, thanks everyone for taking a moment there. We’re gonna continue on, we are still working through getting the live stream working, but we are recording, so we’re able to put this up later if needed.

Okay, back to questions about 2.3. So I did have a question. First Councillor Pribble, are you satisfied? All your questions are answered.

Okay, thank you. I did have a question if the committee will allow it at the chair. My question is regarding odor mitigation. So I did read in the report that in 2021, some upgrades did happen at converters for odor mitigation, you can just speak to that issue as I know it previously has been a concern, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. During our tour of the facility, as well as referenced in the proposal submitted by converters, they talked about a number of the upgrades that occurred at the facility. The facility has been in London for many years and actually has been under different ownership. In fact, I believe this is now the third owner.

Some recent investment in 2021 was required to also, it was a bit of an aging facility, but in conversation with the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, they had to do some upgrades to make sure that they were making sure that their odor abatement system was meeting the requirements of their environmental compliance approval. So we had an opportunity to discuss that with converters. We had an opportunity to discuss that with actually the Ministry as well too. And the work that has been undertaken the last couple of years has really made a difference at that particular facility.

And the level of concern has dropped dramatically. So that was all been part of sort of our due diligence. And we are quite comfortable in recommending them today as a facility in compliance and prepared to enter into any type of discussions with the community at any time using a variety of methods and have been doing that. And we will continue and encourage that type of collaboration with the local community.

Thank you. My second question relates, similar to Councilor Trozzo around Pat Waist. I just wanted to ask, I noticed it’s about 50/50 in terms of current cities municipalities that are doing Pat Waist in those that are not. I’m just wondering from your perspective, what you see as the benefit and drawbacks of Pat Waist.

I know that you mentioned that there’s concern over, and Councilor Trozzo mentioned this as well, is adapting to whatever we decide to do, whether it’s adding it later on, or not doing it at all. But I’m just wondering what your thoughts are on achieving our targets, our greenhouse gas emission targets, our potential gains from having additional tons added and at this net price as well. I think there’s lots of benefits to considering adding Pat Waist and just wanting to get your thoughts. Thank you.

Madam Chair, as we chatted with other communities, and as you see in the report, it does refer to several communities that have Pat Waist in their system and that have added it in recent years. The kind of consistent information we received back was start wisely and through sort of a series of steps, get the basic materials right first. And in that case, food waste is the target material and some of the soil papers and a few other items listed in the report. We also though, because Pat Waist is, believe it or not, a large portion of the waste stream running at about 10% by weight, we recognize the importance of having solutions for that.

And so when we went out in the request for proposals, we asked for price on what would it take to add that material into the mix. And we have that price and it’s presented in the report today, counsel on how quickly it wishes to move forward. Here’s the dilemma that we’re still sorting through with staff as we move to biweekly garbage collection. With Pat Waist being kept out of this green bin, it would require homeowners to hang onto that material for the two week period.

So there will be some change. Other communities have managed to move through that particular change and have been successful. Others have prompted a change in the collection system. The benefit is what has been provided to you today is that the ability to move to that additional material is once again within committee and councils purview to do it basically at any time.

So we are quite comfortable in proceeding in the direction that we have presented in the report. But should there be a change? The system that we’re proposing here can easily accommodate that additional material. So it’s one of those where we’re comfortable in the current direction but can make that change at any point in time.

Thank you and just to follow up to that, do you know any of the cities referenced here that started out with Pat Waist right at the beginning in when they started with green bins? I’m just wondering perhaps there’s some key learnings that can happen from those that did it right at the beginning versus those that added that later on. My concern I guess is that we’re trying to set in place a new behavior and to me it seems to make sense to try to have all those behaviors and that conversation with the community about how to do green bins right all at once and at the beginning. So if we’re going to add another stream later on, if that’s the will of council later on, then to me it kind of makes sense to do it right from the onset and that way we are all clear on everything that can go in all at once but I would really appreciate your thoughts on that.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. You’re referring to table three on page 17 where it identifies about six or seven communities that we’ve been in conversation with. I believe about half of them added it right from the start.

For example, City of Toronto, the region of York, two very large facilities or municipalities, when they got their program started, one of the initial challenges was that pet waste brought in plastic bags and not the certified composable type of plastic bags ‘cause plastic bags were actually very, very common in the marketplace, just about all your retail outlets were using them on a regular basis. In the last year there’s been quite a substantial change in how the marketplace is responding to the regulation at the federal government level level where plastic bags are now being phased out and in fact this is the year that we’re still seeing them at retail stores but they will all be phased out over the course of this year. Basically stores are running through the existing supplies and they’ll no longer be able to purchase plastic bags for retail use. As a result, the increase in the use of certified composable bags is something that’s growing and it’s growing in the pet waste market as well.

So this is one of those items where a behavior at the start with the materials that we’re recommending, food waste and soil paper and cooking and oil and grease and those items. The addition of pet waste would not be a problem as long as it is following the same format, no plastic bags. So if that is something that Committee and Council wish to start right away, we are set up to do that. Or it could be referred to as an item that will be considered and within six months after successful implementation of the existing materials, it could be added.

There are a couple ways to position that and if it’s an item that you wish more information on, we could easily include that in our August report on how that could work if that is something that comes forward from Committee and Council today. We would get more details on that. Fortunately, what we have in our way just to repeat in the response from the converters, we have that opportunity. So that is an easy change to make.

Thank you and I appreciate the conversation and just a final comment. I noted in 3.0 on page 21, the unspent amount and the report that will be coming forward in September, just a comment. I’m hoping that that will be used towards the implementation of green bins, whether it’s we look at helping with some of the disposable bags to again help set that behavior in place or something to help encourage this program or other things related to our climate action plan. Okay, with that, I want to see if there are additional questions on the consent items, including and that was everything except for 2.7.

Okay, we’ll go to Councillor Van Meerberg and then to act to Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to clarify, in regard to 2.3, the green bin program, to clarify the situation with steaming baby diapers, what is the situation? Are they allowed to be used in the green bin program?

And if not, are they expected to fester for two weeks? Thank you, Mr. Stanford, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair, diapers and other sanitary products will not be permitted in the green bin.

That was a decided matter of council quite some time ago so to be clear on that one, as it stands right now, yes, they would be collected on the every two week basis and we will have more information on that in our August report. There are a number of municipalities that do make different types of exceptions on how diapers can be handled. So we will lay out some of those options in our August report for committee and council to determine whether there are any additional solutions they wish offered for homes that have diapers that perhaps cannot be handled for a two week period. Thank you, follow up, Councillor?

Well, no, I appreciate the answer. I just know that’s going to be quite a big issue for a lot of families to hold on to diapers for two weeks. So appreciate the answer, thank you. Thank you.

Any final questions on 2.3 before we move on to other items on consent? Okay, seeing none, I’ll go to Acting Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Madam Chair. And through you, my question is not about dog waste or cat waste or baby human waste.

It is actually about 2.9 and it’s not, well, one small question in there. Very happy to see the RFP recommendation coming forward on the master plan for Dundas streetscape in the Argyle business area as part of our CIP. The BIA is chomping at the bit. And so I’m just wondering with the approval of this, do we have a ballpark timeline for community engagement where the businesses in particular can start to provide some feedback on some of their priorities into the streetscape?

I have a file folder full of some ideas to share already. And I know that other businesses are looking to provide their input too. So I’m just wondering if we can get a little update on what the public engagement process will look like moving forward. Thank you, Mr.

Dales. Thank you through the chair. So subject to council approval of the consultant award, we will work closely with the consultant to develop a schedule, including consultation. That certainly will be an important component of the overall study.

And we look forward to proceeding with that work in the short term. Thank you, followed? Good, thank you. Any other questions regarding any of the consent items excluding 2.7?

Councillor Trussa. I just wanna indicate that I had several questions, but they were answered by staff before this meeting. Wonderful, thank you. Okay, with that, we have a mover and seconder for our consent items, which again is everything from 2.1 to 2.11, excluding 2.7.

So I will open, thank you, and we will get that loaded into describe for you. Councillor Van Meerbergen. Closing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. Thank you, and just to clarify for everyone that because Acting Mayor Lewis is here, it makes it six votes, not just five, so thanks.

For continuity, members of the committee would like to deal with 2.7 now, and then come back to our items under for direction. Councillor Trussa. No, specifically, specifically no, because I think that the conversation that we’re going to have about the mobility master plan will help inform our discussion on this item. Thank you, okay.

Then we’ll move along to items under item number four, 4.1, as we have no scheduled items. And we have, for 4.1, we had the eighth report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee. So upon further discussion with the chair of that committee and realizing that this is going to be a lengthier conversation, I’d like to move a referral to a future meeting for this item. He was to appear as a delegation, and he is going to do his delegation at a future meeting.

And that way we’re also prepared to have our Mr. Catolic here, as well as other staff that might be able to help address some questions related to that item. So I’m looking for support. I will move that referral, looking for a seconder.

Okay, Councillor Trussa. Any discussion on that item, 4.1? I’ve got Councillor Vamere-Rivourgen, and then Acting Mayor Lewis. Councillor Vamere-Rivourgen, go ahead.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. I’m wondering at this point, I’d certainly like a little bit more fulsome background on this, and I’d like to request that we go in camera for legal advice. Madam Chair, I don’t know if there’s anybody from legal on the call. I would check in with clerks.

There is, okay, wonderful. I’ve got, I believe Grace Smith is. Okay, Councillor, I’m just wondering because the chair who requested this item isn’t here, I’m just wondering, and again, that was based on a conversation that I had. So with the chair, about making this potentially an opportunity for a bigger discussion at a future meeting.

So I’m just wondering if you might consider having this at our next meeting. I would prefer that we go in camera currently. Just have one or two questions. Okay, thank you.

So you’re looking to move motion to go in camera? Yes, please. Councillor Cuddy has seconded that motion. Okay, so we, okay, so we will vote on the in camera portion and then come back to the referral.

So, oh, Councillor Chassa. Yes, I would like to speak against sending this to that in camera meeting right now. The very idea that we need more information is exactly why this is being deferred. We need to have the people who have been working on this and we have a very, very busy agenda today.

And I just see no reason going into camera today and then having to redo the whole thing later. There is no prejudice that is gonna result to anybody. No action is being taken, nothing is going to be moved. So I think that that would be a very poor use of our time.

And I would urge my colleagues to vote against that request. Thank you. Other speakers on the motion to go in camera. Okay, seeing then we will open that up for vote.

Sorry, Councillor Vameer-Barrion, go ahead. I just want to counter what was just stated. I think it’s very important we go in camera and it’s very German to looking at here. So I would urge our colleagues to vote in favor of getting a little bit more information from legal.

Thank you. Thank you, we’ll open that up for a vote if there’s no further discussion. Motion fails three to three. Okay, so now we are going to deal with the referral which was moved and seconded.

Anyone that would like to speak to the referral. Acting Mayor Lewis, go ahead. So I’m happy to support the referral. I think however, as we’ve clearly heard, that the next committee agenda that this lands on, we need to make sure that in addition that Mr.

Catolic Legal is available to answer questions. And I think that’s relevant specifically because the report from the advisory committee opinions some legal concerns. But respectfully, we don’t take legal advice from an advisory committee. We take it from our city solicitor’s office.

So I just want to highlight that I think it is relevant to have legal available when this item returns. Thank you. Any other comments? Back to Mayor Lewis, would you move the motion for me?

Thanks. Okay, and now that’s open for voting. Closing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. Okay, thank you.

So we’ll look to have that conversation about the eight report of the environmental stewardship and action community advisory committee as well as the added delegation at a future meeting. So we’ll move on to item 4.2, which is the London Transit 2022 annual report. That’s in your package. As you’ll note, we have this flesh in here as well.

Thank you for being here today. I’m not sure if you wanted to provide any preliminary comment on the report. Thank you, over to you. I can do a quick intro through the chair.

The 2022 annual report, consistent with the previous two years, reports on progress against the initiative set out in the commission’s current business plan and the performance and target metrics that are traditionally utilized, notwithstanding the operating conditions over the pandemic period were significantly different than what we would traditionally experience. As the report sets out the overall ratings for performance against the strategic objectives, range between satisfactory and good, noting performance was measured against the business plan targets, but also gave consideration to operating during the pandemic period. One of the important things that we’ve highlighted in our last few annual reports is the recognition by all levels of government during the pandemic period of the value that a viable public transit service provides to the community and that resulted in funding from both the provincial and federal governments with respect to operating on the federal side. That’s something we’ve never seen before.

So that was a significant move from that level of government recognizing that it was imperative that transit continued to operate through the pandemic period so that members of the community had access to the community. I believe the rest of the report speaks for itself and I’d be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. So this item is in front of us today to be received.

I’ll look for a mover and a seconder and then we can have further conversation. Councillor Cuddy and Councillor McAllister, thank you. And would anyone like to get started with some debate conversation? Councillor Schausa, go ahead.

Through the chair, may I ask if you could respond to the items that was raised by the added delegation statement from the added item from Mr. Preston? Thank you, Ms. Plessany.

Do you need more detail than that? Or— I have a copy of the added, so I’m assuming you, you’re referring to the three bullets in the document. Thank you, Councillor, is that what you’re referring to? Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So through the chair, with respect to the first bullet, asking how a fully compliant report was submitted to the Ontario government, at the time of submitting those compliance reports, which is every two years is required under the act, we submit based on what we know at the time and the status that we’re currently at. I can say I wouldn’t knowingly submit a report that says we’re compliant when I didn’t believe that we were. So that’s my response to that.

In terms of resolving the instances of non-compliance identified in the letter, we did provide an update to the commission at the previous meeting on that, a number of the sections identified in that letter have just recently been audited by the accessibility directorate, to which we received no issues of non-compliance or any orders to change anything, a number of the other issues we have looked into and we will be providing a report back to the commission at our next meeting. And in terms of accessibility being added as a key strategic priority, we can certainly take that under advisement that commission is just now in the process of creating the next multi-year business plan and the associated performance metrics that will go with that as well as the service plans that will talk about the rate of growth for transit services going forward. Thank you, did you have a follow-up question? Go ahead, Council.

Yes, do you think that this council has said enough already on the question of the importance of accessibility as an equity issue in transit, both in terms of previous communications we’ve sent to you and most notably in our strategic plan that you don’t really have to take that under advisement anymore but it should be acted on as an actionable item right now? Through you, Madam Chair, well, accessibility isn’t a separate strategic outcome in our current business plan. The commission does have an accessibility plan that outlines specific accessibility initiatives and accessibility is inherent in the business plan. I was referring to the specific recommendation that talked about adding it as a key strategic priority.

So I’m not saying that accessibility isn’t something that we strive to achieve. What I’m saying is it’s not currently a separate objective. Thank you, follow-up, Councillor? Yes, also through the chair.

Putting aside the three bullets and the putting aside the three bullets, Mr. Preston also says that he was disheartened to read the largely self-congratulatory report submitted for review despite ongoing issues. Within the report, and I’ll quote, the commission self-assesses a satisfactory level of service despite the countless reports of missed rides and long read dial times to book rides on paratransit. And I’ll stop that there.

Now, you received the previous communication from this council regarding deficiencies in the paratransit program. This was informed by a resolution drafted by this committee, which was largely based on Dr. Preston’s earlier representation to this committee. I for myself have a very difficult time assessing this as satisfactory, ‘cause I don’t think it is satisfactory, and I would like you to comment on that.

As I said earlier, the assessments are against the strategic objectives within the business plan, giving consideration of the pandemic related impacts. I think we’ve been very transparent throughout the pandemic with respect to the issues that we’re facing, both unconventional and specialized, with respect to vehicle availability and staff resources. We’ve been doing everything we can on both of those services to get them ramped up to where we would like them to be, to be able to meet the demands of the community. That’s something that continues to be a challenge.

So we’ve never argued that we’re behind. We acknowledge it in several instances within the annual report that we aren’t where we wanted to be. We certainly weren’t in 2022, we’re not there today. But we are doing everything we can to get there, and we are unfortunately still facing some resource challenges.

The biggest one on the specialized side is the delivery of vehicles. The vehicles that were delivered over a year ago, or that were ordered over a year ago still haven’t been delivered. So we’re struggling, we’re working with the provider to consider a different type of vehicle. We’re considering all options on the table to get that service ramped up as quickly as possible.

So we are certainly working at it, and we have been very transparent in the fact that service is not where we would like it to be. But like I said, we are doing everything that we can. I’ll yield to other Councillors for now. Thank you, Councillor McAllister.

Thank you and through the chair. To Councillor Trosto’s point, I think the issue, and I had similar misgivings when I read the report, what you’ve identified, to me that leads more to needs improvement. It seems like it’s at the bottom tier. For all the reasons you’ve just outlined, but what I’m struggling with is, it needs to be a key priority, because of all the failings that we’ve seen.

And it’s come to us a number of times. I don’t think anyone in the public hasn’t heard about the issues of paratransit at this point. And so I think it’s hard in this report to see this, and not have it identified as a major failing. And I would have it as needs improvement.

I understand the challenges, but it needs to be called out for its failings. And I think we have to acknowledge that as a committee, that it should be a top priority. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Perbault.

I just wanna mention, as one of the commissioners on LTC, I just wanna state a couple of things. First of all, both the management staff and the commissioners, we do realize that there’s certainly a room for improvement, no doubt about that. On the other hand, currently, we are going, there’s a certain review that was asked for, so the review hasn’t been completed yet. That’s one thing.

And second thing is, we did get a request, certain goals, tasks to achieve by September, by January, and four year goal. So I just wanna let you know that currently all are in process. So it’s not that there were certain issues that were raised in February, March with deadlines 30, 60, 90 days, or anything like that, that haven’t been completed. That’s not the case whatsoever.

So the first ones are in September, everything is things haven’t been accomplished yet, but certainly the deadlines haven’t been missed yet. So I just wanna reiterate that the two previous Councillors, they are saying that there’s no urgency. We do see that there’s a tremendous room improvement. We are working on it.

And I hope we are gonna deliver all the things that were requested by this group. And when we talked about the strategic plan and actually increase right capacity, we are, the LTC will be putting it in the strategic plan in the budget. And this will be presented to the council with their budget requests. So I would say right now, currently, I just don’t wanna state that we are not, we don’t see that there’s room for improvement and we are working on it.

So I just wanna assure that both the council as well as the other ones, the work has been, it’s a work in progress and we are working on it and we should be meeting all the deadlines. Thank you. Thank you. I’ll go to Acting Mayor Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So when we look at the key elements and the grades and the ongoing development of a safe, integrated accessible public transit service, ensuring the service meets the needs of a growing competitive and changing market, I will echo Councillor McAllister’s comments. I think the grade on this should be needs improvement. I don’t think it is satisfactory today.

Through you, Madam Chair, I would like to ask our delegate. And this is a particular item. And so I’d like the opportunity to, if she’s able to provide an update on this particular item for accessibility in particular, when do we expect to move away from a phone-only booking and give specialized transit riders the opportunity to book rides online? This has been a long-standing ask.

I know the commission has heard it. I know that work has been taking place to get there. When is our anticipated date where we can tell riders you can now book online? Thank you.

Through you, Madam Chair. So again, this has been the topic of much discussion at the commission. And understandably, this has been a long-standing request. Unfortunately, the booking software that we use for the specialized service changed ownership twice during the pandemic period.

And it is currently owned by the owner of the software has a competing product. So what they’ve notified us of is they’re not making any more improvements to the product that we have. They will continue to support it, but they won’t make improvements. One of those improvements that we’ve been long waiting for is the ability to do booking online.

What that means is we’ve got to go out to RFP for an alternative booking system. That is in progress. We are in the works right now. We’re closely watching essentially York Region, Thunder Bay, another system up north in us are all with that product, and we’re all collectively looking at the best path to move forward and move forward quickly because we’re all kind of in the same situation.

So I can’t tell you a date. I can say that the RFP process is in progress and we’re moving as quickly as we can. We understand that it’s an issue and it’s something that we want to move on as quickly as possible. Follow up, Kim.

So in the interim with an RFP in process, if the current vendor has a competing piece of software that does allow for online booking, is there not an opportunity to fill that gap in the interim by upgrading to their alternate product while we wait for the results of an RFP? Most vendors are willing to upsell you to their next best thing. In many cases now, I am not familiar with the particular software you’re using. So maybe that is not an option, but it would seem to me that discussions around simply upgrading to their other product in the interim while an RFP is in process would be an option to getting paratransit riders the opportunity to book online sooner.

Is that an option that’s been investigated? Ms. President. Through the chair, that has not been investigated primarily because when we look at, when we implemented the system that we’ve got right now, it was about a million dollar project for us to switch to what the vendor currently is offering would be another million dollar project and it would essentially be a sole source award.

So it’s not giving us the opportunity to look to see what’s out there in the market and make sure we’re selecting the right one. There is no, you can try this for six months for a reduced fee while you look for other things. It would be a sole source award to that vendor versus going out and doing a public tender. Falua?

And further to that, if there’s an RFP process in place, does LTC anticipate a cost impact in terms of having to terminate the existing license when a new RFP is awarded for an online app or will you be continuing to use the software for the dial-in booking and then running a second piece of software in parallel? Through the chair, the entire system is being replaced but there would be no, we pay an annual maintenance fee for the licensing so we don’t anticipate that there would be any repercussions from that. Okay, I appreciate hearing that. So I do think at this point, I want to put forward one motion and I will agree with Councilor Trussow.

I think the message has been made loud and clear from Council but I think to put it in very clear black and white to send back to the commission, I do think that it would be appropriate and I’ll move that. I’m gonna try and keep this language as simple as possible and I’ll rely it ‘cause I’m doing it on the fly but I’ll rely on the clerk’s assistance on this that the London Transit Commission be requested to include accessibility as a key component in the development of their next strategic plan. I don’t know if I have a seconder for that or if colleagues might have some alternate or some language tweaks they may want to see but I think that it’s important that we do request that specifically of the commission. Thank you, I saw Councilor Cuddy’s hand up to second that.

Did you want to speak to it at all? Thank you, Chair. We’ll ask Clerk to read out the motion. That the London Transit Commission be requested to include accessibility as a key component in their next strategic plan.

Thank you, Councilor Trussow, you want to speak to motion? Yeah, I appreciate all of the comments that the Deputy Mayor made through the chair. I would take this a little further. I would be inclined to support the motion ‘cause I think what he suggested is right.

I also know that on the agenda today, and I hate to take this out of order, but we do have an added communication from Mayor Morgan on the Mobility Master Plan that I think speaks directly to the item that’s on the floor right now. So I’d hate to dispose of this and then come back later and go through the whole thing again, especially since staff is here. And I’m wondering if there was, I’m wondering if there’s a way to integrate these comments into the Deputy Mayor, the Acting Mayor’s motion. Furthermore, I’m not prepared to accept this report ‘cause I think the report is substantially deficient and I want to send it back and have it fixed.

And I think that you’ve been given adequate information today to do that, I don’t think that projecting, asking for this report to be tweaked and resubmitted is contrary to what the Acting Mayor has suggested or what Mayor Morgan has suggested, but I would really like to come out of this discussion right now with a clear package because I really think that this commission needs to get a very clear message from this council that the way things are going is not acceptable and we want to see some changes, not in the next period, but as soon as possible yesterday. So I’m looking for some guidance, perhaps other Councillors may have a suggestion or the clerk would have a suggestion, but I think we’ve got a couple of different things that are in the mix now. Okay, thank you. So just to comment on that, the report is in front of us is to be received.

So that’s what we’re being asked to do. It is a 2022 report as well. And what we’re talking about really is the conversation that has been had, I will say that those in the accessibility community have been having this for 10 years, but we as the council have only been having it for our term so far. So I understand where you’re coming from, I hear the frustration, I appreciate all the questioning that’s happened today and the clarification provided by Ms.

Polashny and the continued willingness and openness and transparency, I have to say, you continue to come to civic works and really answer a lot of grilling, sometimes I hope you don’t feel that way, questions of our committee. But we have a motion on the floor right now. I will say that I had similar concerns, so perhaps Acting Mayor Lewis can address those around the mayor’s motion as well that’s coming through the MMP process. So perhaps you might want to comment on how those two things line up and whether or not this may be a bit of a repeat for that.

And then I’ll go to council approval after. Thank you, Madam Chair. So one of the reasons it was important for me to join your committee as Acting Mayor today is in Mayor Morgan’s absence and he is in meetings in New York at this time. So he’s not able to join even remotely with so that I could put his letter on the floor with regard to the master mobility plan.

While I understand the council’s desire to have a package, I think it’s really important that we don’t put everything together here, that we provide some clear direction to LTC with regard to their annual report. But the mayor’s letter actually is not only part of the master mobility plan update, but also speaks to work that our staff needs to do in terms of updating the bylaw for the London Transit Commission. I will share with colleagues, I actually had the same concern about it being in different pieces with regard to an item that is also on SPPC tomorrow, which is a communication from the commission to open the bylaw, because there’s a request to consider adding some additional representation on the commission. So there are some moving parts here, but I think it would actually be beneficial rather than trying to put them all together that we deal with these as individual votes.

And this is partly because consultation has happened with our staff, I can say on the mayor’s behalf that conversations were had with both our city solicitor’s office and with Ms. Share with regard to the MMP and how different components of the MMP, including this transit motion that is coming later, dovetail together, how they work together. I’m not gonna put words in Ms. Share’s mouth as to what her part of the conversation with the mayor was, but I know from the mayor’s perspective, because I asked why this wasn’t on SPPC instead of CivicWorks, and it was specific to tie it to the work of the master mobility plan, because that’s where the public engagement is also happening in terms of how people utilize different mode shares to get around the city.

And so that’s the reason why separate from the mayor’s motion on the next item for direction, I’m suggesting this item for specifically the LTC annual report in response to the letter from Dr. Preston with regard to ensuring accessibility is identified as a key strategic priority in their next strategic plan because the mayor’s motion is specific to our MMP, this motion is specific to LTC’s upcoming strap plan. Okay. Thank you for that clarification.

So we have a motion in front of us that the LTC be requested to include accessibility as a key component in their next strategic plan. I have Councilor Perbal next. Thank you, I just wanna make a comment and just to reiterate my, I’m gonna wait till this conversation finished so I can, sorry. Thank you, ‘cause I wanna hear what you’re seeing.

Exactly, that’s what I want to make sure I have your attention. I think we’re both, so why don’t you just go ahead. Okay, now just wanna let you know again, on behalf of all the commissioners and management at LTC, we do realize that we need to improve and specialize service. And we do know that it’s an urgency that we cannot wait for a month and years to do that.

So all the stuff is gonna be introduced within the budget. Some of the stuff is outside the budget and it’s gonna be, as Deputy Mayor, Acting Mayor, Luis just mentioned, even though passing this motion, but I’ll tell you right now that we all realize that. We do need, we realize that it’s gotta be a key component in the strategic plan. And the additional funding asks will be from LTC because again, some of them is additional costs.

But bottom line is the most important for everyone who is out there using the specialized service. I wanna say we do know we need to improve and we will deliver improved results for all of you. Thank you. Thank you, any further speakers?

I also wanna recognize that Councilor Frank and Councilor Hopkins are also joining us, so thank you for that as well. Any further speakers of this before we vote on this motion? Okay, seeing none, we will vote on the motion that the LTC be requested to include accessibility as a key component in their next strategic plan and that is open for you to vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries six to zero.

Okay, thank you. So now we will move back to the LTC Commission to be received, the report to be received and the added communication from Dr. Preston to be received as well. Is there any other comments or questions from members?

Okay, Councilor Trossa. Through the Chair, not withstanding your very valid explanation, which made a lot of sense. I’m still gonna vote against receiving this because I think it’s so deficient that it would be not good practice for the Council to take this. I know we’re just receiving a report and it’s from last year, but I think that there are, there are things that have been said in this report that I feel in good conscience are just wrong and I wanna see them fixed, even though it’s titled a 2022 report and someone might want to elaborate that, but I am going to be voting no on this motion.

Councilor McAllister. Yes, thank you. Through the Chair, I agree with Councilor Trossa’s comments. I don’t feel that it gets a satisfactory grade.

I know this is for last year, but I do believe there’s a lot of room for improvement. And for that reason, I will be also voting against this. Thank you. Okay, I have a act to Mayor Lewis, go ahead.

So colleagues, while I share the concerns about the report, not necessarily reflecting my opinion on a couple of key components of the LTC’s operation, I also caution against simply not receiving the report because then we have done nothing with it. I would suggest that if there are specific things that we have objections to in the report, that we refer the report back to the LTC with some specific direction, that they can then bring an amended report back to us at a future civic works meeting. And I will point out the two things that I personally have some concerns with, and they are located on page four of the report from LTC in the key elements table. And I would say that for me personally, the ongoing development of a safe integrated and accessible transit service, this is the one I mentioned earlier, being satisfactory, would be a needs improvement.

I would say that the one right below it, the use of proven technology supporting the effective and efficient use of delivery of transit services, while I understand that the work is progressing on that, is one that is not currently in a good grade, but is also one that is in a needs improvement category. So if I was, and I’m not putting a referral on the floor because I don’t know what other colleagues feel in their own categories of evaluating this report, but if a referral back was to provide some direction to LTC, those would be two areas that I would highlight as asking them to reevaluate those two key elements before resubmitting a report. So I will leave that as this discussion continues, but rather than simply not receiving it and doing nothing with it, I would suggest that we provide some direction to LTC through a referral rather than simply rejecting the report because there are things in this report that are valid and accurate. When we look at the ridership recovery from the pandemic, when we look at the data on the cost per ride, like all of that data should be received by us.

We shouldn’t just reject the entire report. So if we’re going to do something with this report other than simply receive it, let’s provide some direction. Thank you, Councilor Trossa. I fully agree with what was just said.

And I would ask if while we continue this discussion if you could provide some of that language to the clerk so we can draft the motion which I sense will be supported. And thank you for your observation. Thank you for those comments. I think that was helpful to you, steer where our conversation was going around whether or not to receive or to refer.

I’m just wondering if the committee would be looking for any information on how a referral would be dealt with from a legal perspective, if LTC has any obligation to bring that report back to committee, if it was referred or if we’re satisfied with where we’re on that. Councilor Trossa. As things stand right now through the chairs, as a matter of low, the LTC is a separately constituted board. And it would be in my view, they’re prerogative to accept this or not.

And in the event that they decide not to accept it and state that they are standing on the report as it was submitted, it would then be up to this council to decide how we wanted to deal with that. So I think that they, as things stand right now, they are a separately constituted legal board. I don’t think we have to go into closed session to understand that, we get that. So I think it would be up to them.

And that’s why I think the Deputy Mayor Lewis is suggesting is very wise. Okay, thank you. And Acting Mayor Lewis, you’re drafting some language currently, okay. That’s okay.

Any additional comments, questions? Well, we’re awaiting that language. Okay, Councilor McAlister. Thank you and through the chair.

I appreciate the comments by both the Acting Mayor and Councilor Trossa. I’m in agreement and I would be supportive of the referral. I think both those areas, as we’ve discussed today, definitely need improvement. Even looking at a report, which is for the previous year, I do think that it’s valid to give that feedback.

To Councilor Trossa’s point, obviously there was in the right to contest it, but I do believe from the discussion we’ve had today in the past discussions we’ve had as committee and council that those are areas that definitely need improvement. And I think moving forward, we really need to highlight them, especially for the strategic plan for the following years. Thank you. Thank you.

If it’s okay by the committee, I’d like to ask a question of Ms. Polashy. Just wanted to follow up on the conversation regarding the booking software. As you mentioned that we’re in the RFP currently and there’s going to be a significant, there may be some time before that’s up and running.

I’m just wondering in the interim, is there any other plans for addressing the long wait times for air transit users currently that are having to wait and re-dial for hours on end every day that they are looking to make a request in advance? And whether or not there has been any changes other than that that you think are currently in moving towards more improvements to the service. Thank you. Through the chair, so the demand for service is obviously the issue.

It’s a supply and demand issue. That’s the underlying issue. We are continuing every day to try and ramp that service up. So as the service provider has a vehicle and a driver for that vehicle, we’re adding service accordingly, attempting to ramp that up.

So essentially the more quickly we can move on getting more service on the road, the rest of those issues will dissipate. So that’s where our primary focus is in terms of call takers calling. Again, we’re working on education with the riders. Unfortunately, because of that supply and demand issue, people tend to try, everyone tries to call first thing in the morning because they’re trying to secure that trip, which obviously results in overloads on the call system.

So we’re attempting to work with riders and explain to them that if we spread that window out, it won’t be as problematic for everyone. But again, the underlying issue is that there’s more demand than there is supply. So everybody, unfortunately, is competing for those rides and that results in everybody calling at the same time. So we are trying to work with the riders.

We’ve already increased capacity on the call line so that there’s more opportunity for on hold, but that can only go so far when you’re still going to result in people getting a busy signal. Thank you, Councillor Cuddy, Councillor McAllister. So you were the movers and seconders of the motion to receive the LTC report and to receive the added communication from Mr. Preston.

As you know, we have a potential referral coming forward. Just wondering if you would consider how would you like to deal with your motion if you’d like it withdrawn or if you’d like to continue with your motion, we vote on it and then we deal with the referral. Thank you through the chair. In terms of just procedure, if we withdraw, could we put the alternative on the floor?

I will withdraw that. Thank you, Chair. Would you read the new motion if you— Thank you, so what we’re looking to do is if you are considering withdrawing that motion and then County Acting Mayor Lewis would then put his motion forward as a referral and I think he’s just finalizing that draft and then we’ll read that out. And is the committee comfortable with the withdrawal of that motion so that we can deal with the referral?

Okay, thank you. Councillor Vanneur, very nice. Yes, I am, Chair. Thank you.

So we’re just loading that language into E-Scribe for you. Take a look at Council Perbal. While we are waiting through the chair to Mrs. Polichny, actually, everything that was said today or in the last few minutes, is there anything that you would like to add or what is your any feedback on what was said besides the direct questions we had for you?

Would you like to add anything as of your feedback? Thank you. Through the chair, no. Again, I would like to reassure all members of Council that are in the room that we understand the issues and we are doing everything we can to work through them.

It’s not for a matter of not trying that we’re not getting where we need to be. There’s just unfortunately a number of leftover pandemic related issues that we continue to face and we’re making every effort to get through those and get the service back to where it needs to be. And I would point out a lot of the discussion today was focused on the specialized service but we’ve got the same issues on our conventional service. We’re driving by people every day at stops that can’t fit on the buses that are driving by.

So this is a public transit issue. It’s not just specialized and we’re working on all fronts to address those issues. Thank you, follow? No, follow up, thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so if you refresh your E-Scribe, you’ll see the motion that Acting Mayor Lewis has put forward, we’re in need of a seconder, but if you want to take a look at it that the annual report be referred back to the LTC to re-evaluate the grading components of the report identified by municipal council with regard to the grading of the key elements of the evaluation that a revised report be submitted to a future CWC. So I’m looking for a seconder. Councilor McAllister, any further comments or questions before we open up for voting?

Seeing none, we’ll open that up. Closing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. Thank you, and I just wanted to say thank you again to Ms. Palashni, and thank you also to Councilor Perbal for your work on LTC, and I know that this continues to be an ongoing conversation, and I really appreciate the opportunity to have that dialogue here.

I also wanted to say thank you to Mr. to Dr. Preston, again, for his communication, and we still have the item of his communication to be received. Madam Chair, sorry, just a point of order, and this just may be a software glitch.

The motion, the majority vote recorded in eScribe on motion three, doesn’t have the seconder listed, although Councilor McAllister was listed when the vote popped up on our screens. So just for the— Thank you, I’ll have a clerk take a look at it. Yeah, if we can just get the clerk to make sure that that’s reflected properly. Just to mention to everyone online, it is recorded in eScribe.

I think we are just having a few technical difficulties. Okay, so I’m looking for a mover and seconder to receive the communication from Dr. Preston. To Mayor Lewis and Councilor Cuddy, thank you all for that vote.

Opposing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. Okay, thank you. So we are on to item 4.3, the Mobility Master Plan updated strategies, mode, share, target options, and project evaluation frameworks. Staff have a presentation, but I do understand, and I’m wondering if the committee would consider.

We have a request for delegation status from Mr. Wallace, of LDI, as you all know. And I do see an urgency in him asking to go now. I’m wondering if committee would consider that before the presentation for staff, that he provides this delegation in order to help him to do whatever he has to go do.

So we would need a mover and seconder if we were to accept his delegation. Okay, and we have Acting Mayor Lewis and Councilor Cuddy, and that to vote. Opposing the vote, the motion carries five to one. Thank you.

Okay, so we will have Mr. Wallace to give his delegation. You have five minutes, as you know. And thank you to our staff for waiting to give your presentation after, and you may go ahead, Mr.

Wallace. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Councilor, for supporting me. I have a meeting at 1.30, which I am actually the host.

So I do appreciate the opportunity. First of all, really, we just wanna be on the record that we wanna thank staff for being very proactive and reaching out to a number of organizations. I know they’ve reached out to us as an industry to look at an opportunity to sit down and talk to them about the mobility plan going forward, and some of the recommendations and suggestions at an early stage, in my view, which is an excellent approach, and we do appreciate it. Just so you understand like why this LDI care, why does the industry care?

Well, the mobility plan will have a tremendous impact on everything from development charges right through to the layout of a subdivision to the design of roads. It has a tremendous impact on where and how the city will look. It isn’t just about moving from A to B, now you do it with your mobility splits. It has ramifications in a number of areas.

We have looked at the report. We’re gonna continue to look at the report, hoping to have a meeting in September with staff to go over some of the issues that we think are there, and just to be put on your radar screen, there’s no real discussion about EVs in the report. Like, where is the role in the next 30 years of a electric vehicles? What does that mean in terms of mobility?

And I know they’ve laid out a number of charts and suggestions on how the splits may go in the future. And we’re interested in talking to them about what that is in reality and what that might be in theory. And there are other areas that we would want to highlight in terms of, for example, we are very supportive of transit. Quite the discussion beforehand, but we are supportive of transit throughout the community.

But that also means in support of transit, likely higher densities along transit routes, not just rapid transit routes, but transit routes in general throughout the city, which might mean six stories might not work to in support of transit and getting people out of cars onto transit. So there are a number of issues that we’ve identified so far early on. We will be looking at that discussion and we’re looking forward to a discussion on what the reality is, what’s possible, and not just in theory. And, you know, what am I saying?

Like, we would need to know, what is the actual number of car registrations compared to population growth in London over the last decade? Be a good question for you to ask, ‘cause I think you’d be surprised at how many car registrations there are in town compared to growth over the last number of years. And where is that gonna go in the future? So we’re happy to talk about it.

I would love to stay and hear the discussion, but I’m sorry, when these only come out on Wednesday’s, this meeting I have in two minutes was booked long ago. So I do appreciate it, and we appreciate staff reaching out to us, and we look forward to our meeting. And I will watch this on tape after to see what the discussion was about. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay, we will now go to Ms. Grady, who is providing a presentation. She’s a traffic and transportation engineer on the master mobility plan.

Go ahead. Thank you, and thanks for having us here today for this opportunity to give you an update on the development of the mobility master plan. For those who don’t know me, I’m Sarah Grady. I’m one of the managers with our transportation planning and design division.

And I’m also the project manager for the mobility master plan. We have a, I’m here presenting on behalf of a very large team with staff from various divisions. And we also have LTC and the Middlesex London Health Unit on our team as well. The purpose of the report before you today is to keep council informed about the work that’s underway for the development of the mobility master plan, input from council and the broader public is so important to make sure that this plan reflects the desires of Londoners and receive support.

Development of the mobility master plan has been broken into three phases. Phase one was initiated in April 22, 2022, sorry. And it included the development of the mobility master plan vision and guiding principles, which are approved by council back in December. There was extensive community consultation as part of phase one, and that is summarized in a phase one engagement summary report, which is available on the project website.

We’re now in phase two. And the report today provides information on some of the initial phase two activities, including the development of strategies to achieve the vision, mode share target options, and the draft project evaluation frameworks. Following this report, meaningful consultation, consultation with the community will follow. Phase three will include the refinement of the recommending plan, including key policy recommendations, implementation phasing, and development of a monitoring program to track and measure success.

Mobility master plan vision touches on various things, including economy, environment, equity, choice, safety, and London’s role as a regional hub. Many of these align with a planning shift occurring in London and across Canada to advance the full spectrum of sustainable city building objectives. These strategies are in development, as noted on the screen, on how to achieve the vision. These strategies provide guidance for the development of the mobility master plan outcomes, specifically infrastructure, programs, and policies.

Each of these strategies are discussed in more detail in Appendix B of the report. We know how Londoners move around the city based on surveys and other data we have available. The MMP and future city building can help influence and support more choice for Londoners to get around. To achieve the vision of the mobility master plan and support Londoners’ desire for more viable options for how they move around, a more balanced approach to supporting all types of mobility is required.

This balance is determined by mode share. Mode share is the proportion of all person trips in the city that are made using each modal mobility. So the buckets that we’re looking at for those are walking, cycling, transit, passenger in a personal vehicle, as well as the driver of that vehicle. Mode share is a very important metric for many reasons is outlined in the report, including that it helps inform pressures on the mobility system and how cities should invest in mobility infrastructure.

The project team has developed a range of three potential 2050 mode share targets for this report and it discusses these mode share target options in more detail. Some of the key factors which support achieving them include land use and population employment density, as well as transit service levels. And then the third item discussed in the report is the draft project evaluation framework. It’s been developed based on the guiding principles which were approved by council back in December.

This information is primarily tables of considerations that are included in Appendix X for the report, a table of evaluation factors correlating to the guiding principles are presented for road, transit and cycling projects. All mobility related infrastructure projects will be evaluated using the project evaluation framework to inform the development of priority networks for each mode. Once those networks are developed for each individual mode, they’ll then be combined into one integrated multi-modal network. The goal of this process is to evaluate and prioritize multi-modal project recommendations within the context of the entire mobility system.

So this report to council is just one tactic to consult with the community and on the information contained in it. Once we’ve heard from more Londoners, we plan to return to committee with recommendations on these topics later this year. Those recommendations will inform the development of infrastructure needs, working towards integrated multi-modal network, public engagement event to vet the outcomes with the public has also planned for early 2024. Meaningful community consultation will continue through all phases of the development of the mobility master plan.

Reflecting the desires of Londoners and achieving buying as we go is really important. So the project schedule is being adjusted to allow for engagement with everyone interested. And then the third and final phase of the project will continue throughout 2024. It include the development of an implementation plan informed by project prioritization and project cost estimates.

And that’s the end of the presentation that we have for you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Ms.

Grady, for taking the time to walk us through that and providing that to the committee as well. I wanted to note that there is added communication from Mr. Haniford and Ms. Lowen-Nier and Mr.

Dr. Evans with respect to this matter as well. I know there’s considerable questions from committee members. I’m sure on this topic, I know it’s quite an engaging topic for the community right now.

And so I’d like to start us off with some questions. Just wondering if we had a mover and seconder on this before we start our conversation. I will look to committee to start their discussion. Councilor Trossa?

Did you? Go ahead, yep, go ahead. You can start the conversation. I’m just going to, first of all, thank you very much.

I think this has been an incredible process. Every time I go out into the community, a member of your staff is there getting consultation tickets from people and it’s just incredible. And I think that a lot of, we ask the residents of London to indulge us in a lot of different consultation processes. And I would understand that people are starting to get tired of doing it.

But I still sense a lot of enthusiasm for this. And I think it’s because your staff has really been out there and I so much appreciate that. And before I say anything else, I need to put that out there at the beginning. And here comes my having said that.

Having said that, I don’t, and I’m just going to start at the top level before I go into details. And I’m going to say my top level things and then I’m going to yield to other members. In my opinion, this report does not convey the sense of urgency that we’re facing right now in terms of our declared climate emergency in terms of the other documents that this council has developed over the years in terms of our strategic plan, which while our strategic plan reserves consideration of the mobility master plan, there are certainly very important decisions that have been made in this strategic plan. And the overall issue here, I think, is the extreme climate emergency that is getting worse and worse and worse.

And we feel it, we feel it at the global level, but we also feel it in our neighborhoods. Because as Mr. McCrae is very very, and this is all through the chair, by the way, as Mr. McCrae is very very aware, at least just looking in my ward, you’re constantly being asked by residents to engage in traffic mitigation measures, just for example.

So it’s global, but it’s also very local. And we can’t deal with the emissions in China and India, but we can deal with how people are getting around this city. So I think if later on, there is a suggestion that, well, you know, this isn’t really a big deal because of what’s going on globally. I think we just have to say, look, we’re London City Council and you’re London City staff, and we’re just gonna do the best we can working together on this.

So I don’t believe this report conveys the sense of urgency. That is not to say that your work is not valid up to this point. And what I would like to do maybe later in this meeting today is suggest some midterm correctives that we can do in order to get this back on what I would think would be a better track. I’m not going to go into motions yet, but an initial question you asked, initial question I have is, who is on this team?

You refer to a team. One of my frustrations as a council member is I want to move this along, and I think the public wants us to move this along. And I think I’m always in favor of doing more and more and more consultation, but I think there’s been a good deal of consultation on this, and I’m very anxious to start wrapping up phase two and getting into phase three. I am also not satisfied as a member of this committee to just sort of receive this report and sit back for a few months and get the next report.

I want to be more involved. I want to be more involved in the ongoing development of this report, and I’d like to ask, maybe this is a procedural question for the chair or the clerk, how does a council member keeping in mind that we have to be careful about close meeting numbers, but how does a member of this council be able to become a little bit more hands on regarding the next steps? And I think I’ll ask somebody that question before I proceed. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a number of options by which council could get involved outside of the public consultation realm.

We are happy to meet with any member of council to receive ideas, feedback, and look for ways to integrate that into the plan. If there’s a desire from council to potentially understand the future touchpoints at committee where committee work could workshop some elements of the plan, we can provide a schedule so you can see where those touchpoints are, where that could be done as part of either standing committee work here. I’m guessing there may be interest beyond civic works on this one, so it might also be an opportunity to use SPPC and do committee work at those committees. I’d be happy to provide an update to which parts of the plan you will see at what sort of approximate time and what committees we intend to proceed to, and if there are gaps within that structure, we could look for ways to fill them with special meetings for other opportunities, aware of the concerns about quorum and closed door meetings, of course.

Thank you to the chair that’s exceptionally helpful and I’m going to make a suggestion later that perhaps we have this on our agenda on an ongoing basis for some, at least some discussion, at least that’s an open meeting. I do have a technical question, what is the transportation demand management programs? Is it a concept that comes up a lot throughout this? Could you just say a little bit more about what that is?

Mr. Chair, sorry, that’s great. Or Mr. Stanford.

Through the chair, there was reference to a large steering committee and sort of project team on this and I’m happy to say that a number of folks that are in my area are very engaged on this particular project from transportation demand management perspective. What that really means is it’s policies and programs to encourage people, for the most part, to get outside of the single occupant vehicle. For example, areas like Carpool, which was very common about three, four years ago, which has gone through a number of changes right now, will be resurrected in the very near future now that changes are occurring. Assisting where possible with information and ideas on how people can get into different areas of the city, there’s been a lot of good discussion on how you get transit out into industrial parks.

Well, there’s also a need to work with the particular businesses in those areas to make sure their employees have access to information and programs and initiatives to encourage them to use those particular situations. So in our case, here, transportation demand management refers to series of programs and policies to encourage different ways of moving around this city, very tied to two things, the commuting network, those that go to and from businesses, but also the growing area, those that move around on weekends for recreational purposes and utilitarian trips. Thank you and I think I’ll yield for now. I have some other things I’ll come back to, but I wanna hear from some other councils.

Thank you and just to reiterate some of the points that you brought up, you talked about adding this as an ongoing standing item on the agenda as one possibility. I will say that I do think that there’s a valid opportunity to engage all council through SPPC. So I personally would prefer that option, that this be similar to some maybe the work that we did with the STRAP plan and that we could engage in those conversations at SPPC so that we have the majority of council able to attend and use that working committee structure to go through the different parts of the master mobility plan, but I’m in the hands of committee in terms of what they’d like to do. Councilor McAllister, you’ve had your hand up next.

Thank you and through the chair. Thank you to the staff for this work. I know I’ve heard from a lot of my constituents in terms of this project, a lot of interest. There’s definitely something that comes up a lot.

And in terms of the options, the one that I found most compelling was actually option three. And I think it speaks to a lot of the strategic goals we’ve talked about before. I think it’s a very bold target in terms of the mode share. And I do think that we need to have the modal and the mindset shift in London.

I think the third option presents a lot of interesting ideas. And it’s not to say that these are the hard targets. I know there’s a lot of feedback. Obviously we still want the public input.

I’m sure councilors have a lot of opinions in terms of how they’d like that split, but I think three touches on a lot of the ones that I was thinking of. And some of the things that I hear a lot that I just wanted to put out there as we’re having this conversation in terms of having an expanded system that obviously has multimodal share, encouraging connectivity, integration, and also importantly maintenance of whatever we decide, ensuring that these meets the needs of Londoners, but they’re also well maintained as well. And I do hear a lot in terms of having a functional infrastructure that actually encourages usage, especially when that comes to our cycling pass or public transit that we can actually support it through our infrastructure. And I look forward to, for instance, with our BRT seeing that really encourage that.

And part of that is also, as we heard earlier, in terms of infill and planning appropriately, that we have transit corridors that encourage the infill, so we’re building up and supporting that density appropriately through our vast mobility plan. And so I am curious to hear what other colleagues have to say in terms of their options, but I’m very intrigued and supportive of option three currently, thank you. Thank you, Acting Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I will share first, I’ll just be up front. I’m not enthusiastic about option three because I don’t think we will meet those targets. And I don’t like setting ourselves up for failure. I think we have to be realistic about the fact that, and Mr.

Wallace alluded to it actually, and that’s gonna lead into my question for staff, specifically around electric vehicles, which we know the federal government is certainly putting, and the provincial government is putting a lot of investment towards. Even here at the city, and Ms. Polishny still with us, we’re investing in electrification of our bus fleet. That electrification comes with the need for supportive infrastructure.

Electric vehicles do need to be recharged. And so that has a different impact, I think in our mobility plans, and our infrastructure planning, than a traditional fossil fuel powered vehicle. The, you know, we’re not talking about a gas station to refuel, we’re talking about parking your vehicle, and plugging it in for a period of time, and we’re also talking about charging stations. I know that, you know, again, we talk about the electrification of our bus fleet.

London Transit Commission has a headquarters redesign going on, and they also have to factor in the electrification of their vehicles, in terms of what that looks like. So, could staff provide a little bit of commentary in terms of how we’re differentiating passenger vehicle mode share with electric vehicles, versus the conventional vehicles that are in use today, because there are different impacts between those two modes of personal passenger vehicles. Ms. Grady?

Through you, Chair. Thank you for the question. Yeah, the adoption of electric vehicles and connected automated vehicles for that matter is certainly part of the solution, but it’s not the complete solution. One thing we do know is that the pace of electrical vehicle adoption in London is slower than the overall pace, and Ontario and Canada as a whole.

It’s an important consideration for the near-term emissions to meet our 2030 goals, as well as our net zero emissions for 2050. And we do have assumptions on EVs, which are gonna be incorporated into our modeling, looking at the rate of adoption and things like that. But the use of EVs also does not address public health concerns and other safety concerns, related to automobile dependency, such as inadequate physical activity, leading to obesity, as well as road safety concerns for people who bike and walk. It is really an equity issue as well, ‘cause there’s a number of people who cannot drive or choose not to for various reasons.

So I guess to answer your question, we are incorporating zero-emission vehicle assumptions in relation to our climate goals, but we are still considering it as part of the mode chair for a person of vehicles in general for a lot of those factors I just mentioned. Ms. Chair? Thank you, Madam Chair.

In addition to Ms. Gravy’s answer, I think it’s important to recognize that an EV still takes up space on a road. And right now, the same amount of space generally as an ICU or internal combustion engine vehicle. So replacing the current fleet strictly with EV while that has emissions impacts, it certainly is a quieter, less smelly experience for people choosing active modes.

That space requirement doesn’t change, so it has to be considered as part of a context to moving away from driving by oneself as well, providing other choices and options in addition to the personal passenger vehicle or the road needs really don’t change that much. It becomes a charging infrastructure discussion, but you still have to deal with all those capacity and safety concerns that come with a predominant mode chair being the personal automobile driven alone. Follow-up? Yes, so first of all, thanks to Ms.

Grady for reminding me that I’m also looking forward to automated vehicles ‘cause the day that I can say, “Hey, Siri, drive me to City Hall,” is one that I look forward to very much, that I can get some work done while it drives me here. But I wanted to follow up on the needs for transition. And I think about, I know I’m focusing a little bit more on the LTC’s move to electrification of our transit fleet, but it’s related to the master mobility plan in terms of I know lots of engagement has been happening, but I wonder in particular what level of engagement has been occurring with the Thames Valley and Catholic District school boards. I know that they are undertaking a feasibility study.

I know they’re working with LTC on getting students off of the yellow bus modes, but also in providing students the opportunity to access transit at a way that’s the same sort of opportunity that we provide to Western and Fanshawe students right now in terms of through their education, providing them access to transit passes so that they have that opportunity from the beginning to start using buses at an earlier time in their life. And I know we are providing the free transit for kids under 12 right now, but in regards to the mobility plan and thinking about our young people, how much engagement has happened both with the school board, but as well with secondary school student councils and things like that to get younger perspectives rather than perhaps the a little bit older demographic that might see a Facebook post or attend a public meeting or respond that way, are we reaching them through the school board? Thank you, Ms. Grady or Mr.

McCray. Sure, well, yeah, we’re all eager on this project. Yeah, it’s a good point. Youth is a target area for our communications plan and we’re currently talking about that.

We actually just sent out a meeting invitation to the school boards and my big yellow bus, the Student Transportation Service. And we connect with them on an ongoing basis of two day-to-day operations where we’re talking about these issues. So certainly it has been happening and we’re looking forward to connect further with both the administrators and the youth voices. Follow up?

Yeah, so thanks for that. ‘Cause I will share, you know, if we were gonna talk about the transition of mode share and I’ve talked about my hockey coach app many times, but when I see 17, 18 year olds who are graduating or about to graduate high school and the prime goal of their part-time job is to save money to buy a car. So if we’re not reaching them at this age to even see a mode share transition by 2030 is going to be a challenge when they’re out registering that vehicle to as a London resident. So I think that it’s really important that while I hear the counselor’s concern about wrapping up the consultation, I don’t think we’ve done enough in terms of reaching some certain target demographics.

Most notably being not the people who own cars today, the people who are looking to buy cars in the next five years. Because if we’re not providing them an opportunity to have a say in the transportation options that are available to them five years from now when they’re making that decision, we’re not going to change mode share. So I think that that’s a really key component that needs to be followed up on a little more. I don’t know if you’ve got a speaker’s list, Madam Chair, that is fairly extensive.

But I do want to touch on, because it is tied to this item, I do want to touch on the mayor’s letter. So perhaps I will yield to Councillor Frank, but then if I could ask you to put me back on the list and then I will come back to deal with the motion from the mayor. We’ll do, okay, Councillor Frank. Thank you.

I do have one or two questions. So through the chair, I was just hoping, and I’m not sure if I missed it because I came in a little late, sorry. But I’m wondering if anyone asked if the option three to 35% mode share, would that put us on track to meeting our CEAP emission targets for transportation? I’m just wondering, obviously option one, in no way will put us anywhere close to being on track to meet any targets that we have for climate change.

But does option three get us there? Great to go ahead. Thank you to your chair. Did touch on it a little bit.

And right now we’re looking at the 2050 targets. We haven’t really started looking at the analysis for the more near-term goal, which will be even more of a challenge to meet. And so we’re looking at 2050. We do anticipate that there will be a large number of zero emission vehicles on the road.

So we’ll be working towards that. However, the climate goals were very important and in particular in the near-term are gonna be a challenge to meet. There’s many other factors that we’re looking at as well, about managing road congestion, improving safety, providing more viable options. So I think all options can work towards achieving the climate goals in particular looking at 2050, but it’s those near-term goals that will be more of a challenge.

Follow up. Thanks, yeah. So sorry, just to clarify for option three, would that meet our 2050 target? That’s great.

Through your chair. Looking at 2050 and looking at the uptake assumptions, it is assumed that, so right now the assumption is that by 2035, 100% of new light duty and passenger vehicle cars will be zero emissions. So looking at that information, and based on that target, we assume that about 90% of vehicles on London roads will be zero emissions by 2050, because about 10% of all vehicles are typically over 15 years or older. So the greenhouse gas emissions tool that we’ll be using for this, and we will be applying that to all the options.

One thing I think is important to note, is that it only estimates direct tailpipe emissions, and they’re assumed to have zero tailpipe emissions, but there’s some associated with the manufacturing process as well. Well, that’s not directly tied incorporated into our sea goals. Go ahead, Councilor. Thank you, yes.

I think given that information, option three is really the only viable option for London. It doesn’t sound necessarily like it might even not hit our targets, and if we’re picking option one or two, which for sure won’t hit our targets, I really don’t think that’s fair to our future generations. So I’m gonna be very supportive of option three, or actually I probably would have been supportive of an even higher modal split, but that being said, I’m happy to be supportive of that. I will say for anyone who is really hoping for us to make all our cars electric, we know that won’t solve our problems, but hypothetically, if that is the goal, then I hope that you’ll be very supportive of the motion I have next on the list, which is to phase out gas and our electricity grid, because for electric vehicles, we know they charge using electricity, and if as we were seeing more and more gas in our electricity grid, more and more of our electric vehicles are actually not 100% emission free.

They’re currently not 100% emission free in Ontario anyway, because we use about seven to 18% gas in the grid on any given day, but that all being said, if we are moving in that direction, I hope people will be supportive of my next letter, but I think I’ll yield there. Thank you. Thank you. Before I go back to acting Mayor Lewis, did any other members committee or visiting counselors have questions or comments?

Councillor Vamberg and sorry, go ahead. Yes, thank you, Chair. I wanted to follow up with staff. I’m listening for a little bit more clarification.

I see from what I’ve gleaned here, there’s basically four basic modes that appear in the charts. I’m just wondering, there are other categories that also put pressure on our road system and that demand for our road system. And that includes, of course, school buses during the school year. I think most of us know that many there are in that we want to also transport trucks, commercial trucks, commercial vehicles, both sorts, both in sizes.

And also, right here, like Uber and taxis, they’re all having to use and put pressure on the road system, and indeed transit itself. So I’d just like to know, of course, school buses and transport trucks factored in in the thinking of this mobility plan. Thank you, Mr. McRae.

Yeah, thank you. The evaluation of which mode is used is based on asking the you trip, the person taking the trip. If it’s in a vehicle, are they the driver or are they the passenger? So that passenger vehicle, the passenger mode would apply to many of those that you are referring to.

We certainly know that there are evolving needs. So that would include modes such as taxi and Uber with respect to freight. We, it’s kind of a category of its own. I mean, it’s captured within personal vehicle driver, but it’s considered sort of as it’s a very special topic in that it’s tied to economic growth, London’s role as a trans, regional transportation hub.

And so it’s garnering special attention and special consideration as we move forward. Follow up, Councillor? Yeah, okay, no, I appreciate that response. I guess my point is that there’s a lot of pressures on our road system and we have to keep up with it.

And we have to always be mindful of that fact as we go through this process of the reality and the actual needs of Londoners and also our economy certainly when it comes to freight and transport trucks, et cetera. So for these various reasons, I mean, it’s very clear to me that option one is the strongest. This is what Londoners want. This is what Londoners expect.

They expect that they can get in a vehicle and be able to drive around their own city. Transport trucks have to be able to get around efficiently in a workable functional road system. And I think not to be realistic and just to wish that we can do other things and maybe sprinkle some pixie does is meet the reality that’s gonna present itself to us. And that’s not what our electors and voters are expecting from us.

They want us to meet them with what they want and what they need. And I think we have to be very mindful through this process to be realistic at all times right here. Thank you, Councillor. That was the comment I take it.

And I don’t remember anyone referencing pixie dust, but okay, I see Councillor Hopkins has her hand up. Go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair, for recognizing me. I just would like to make a few comments.

I really do appreciate the comments that I’ve heard already. I would like to just follow up with a comment around the options. I don’t think we have a choice, but option three, if we wanna make change and meet our climate change objectives, we have to have at least option three. I do believe the community is usually ahead of governments when it comes to wanting to make a difference in creating a change.

Residents are way ahead of what we need to do as governments and we do have to catch up with the community’s concerns to make a difference. We do it now. We plan for the future. It’s not gonna happen overnight.

We need to make decisions today for the future generation. I would like to follow up as well on a couple of comments that I heard from the committee. I really have been sitting here listening very intently and appreciate everyone’s comments and thoughts. I know community engagement is very important.

I’ve been doing that myself in the community. I represent a community that is all about development and we have very few options of moving around. So this mobility plan is very dear and near to the representation that I bring to council. I do wanna follow up about the public engagement.

We can all in particular engage in our communities, get that information, pass it on to staff. It is important that we get this plan moving sooner than later. I appreciate acting there, Lewis’s comments around the youth. It is important that we hear from them.

But having a number of young people in my family that and comparing the youth today to the youth in my generation, when you turn 16, it was automatic. You got a driver’s license. Got a car for a couple hundred bucks. Wasn’t a big deal.

I find very few young people today aren’t really going out and getting their license at 16. It may be something that they can have and do to supplement the family and moving around but getting another car and adding to that footprint to believe that younger generation today does not want that large footprint, that one, that smaller footprint. But I think it’s important that we definitely engage with youth but the youth today are very, very different from different generations when it comes to driving vehicles. My last comment is to committee members just to, I’ll leave it with you but I would like to see this mobility plan come to the committee of a whole.

We did that through the BRT process. There’s a lot of interest in other counselors being engaged and informed in this mobility process. I think it can move that process along faster if it does go to strategic priorities and planning committee. With that, those are my comments.

I appreciate having the opportunity just to pass on a few thoughts that I have. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I do have a number of counselors, visiting counselors that have asked to speak as well or to ask additional questions.

Before we do that though, again, just to see whether or not we’re having a discussion right now about the different options that are in front of us but again, we’re here today to receive and to not make a decision on those options at this time, I just wanna reiterate that and see if anyone’s looking to put forward a motion to move or to second to the report that’s in front of us as well as the presentation. Acting Mayor Lewis is willing to move it. Councillor Schausler, are you looking to second? No, I would be prepared to actually make some substantive amendments.

I wanted to hear this discussion. I’m inclined to wanna take option one off the table right now, I think it’s very close to option two and I would like to see some further refinement given to option three. I think it’s correct to say we’re just here to hear a report today and this is not a decision point on the options, but I think that option three is broad enough, is broad enough that it can be broken down into maybe three A or three B or if you eliminate one, it would become two or maybe you’d make it four, I don’t know about the number. But I think that the report points out very, very, very well.

Some of the challenges that we’re going to have in terms of reaching option three. And so I would like to make a motion to amend what’s on the table right now to ask number one, ask the staff to consider eliminating option one. I don’t think we can do that on the floor. I’m not sure, can I ask for option one to be eliminated on the floor or should I just ask staff to come back and maybe collapse option one and option two is one option.

That’s a procedural question. Thank you. Okay, so I had Councilor Cuddy’s hand up to second the motion. So then if you’re looking to make amendments, then it’s moved and seconded and then we can look at amendments.

So we’ve got Acting Mayor Lewis who has booved and we’ve got a seconder. So we are having discussions about amendments. I do have other visiting counselors but also wanted to, okay. I know Councilor Frank had her hand up and then I’ll go back to Councilor McAllister if that’s okay and then we’ll have further discussion.

Thank you. Thanks, yes, I’m actually, I can’t vote but I’m very appreciative of Councilor Trossow’s perspective ‘cause I think option one is almost hilarious. If I was to try and print out page 21 of the report and go door to door and say, “Hi resident, award 11.” In 2050, would you like to sit in traffic on every single arterial road in our city for the same amount of property tax that you’d have to pay? People would laugh at me.

Like, why would we ever even move option one forward in any conceivable way when you’re essentially just locking everyone into gridlock for the majority of the time that they spend commuting anywhere in the city? So I just don’t see the point in wasting staff resources in our time even considering option one. That being said, if staff want to use it as a baseline and work their way up, perhaps that’s why they’re including it as an option. So they have like, this is why we don’t want to do this.

I’m fine to leave it. I’m not really sure if maybe that’s why they included it but in no way could we ever go to the public saying, you were essentially locking you into decades of gridlock. Enjoy the rest of your time commuting in the city. We already get enough complaints about traffic.

I don’t think that signing us up for that in perpetuity is a good use of anyone’s time. So I don’t think we can sprinkle any pixie dust on option one and try and make a viable. So I’d be with Councillor Chassa unless staff have a better explanation as to perhaps why they’re including option one as an option in this package. Thank you, Ms.

Shear. Madam Chair, we wanted to provide arrangement of options for the community to consider before providing recommendation to council. As certainly we’ve heard a range of opinions in the community from none of these are aggressive enough to all of them are too aggressive in past discussions. This is really just our opportunity to provide that information to you in advance for us to go out and consult with something you’ve seen.

If council wishes for any of these options to be eliminated prior to us engaging the community, that is certainly your purview. It will narrow our scope in terms of the conversation we’re having and we would serve at your pleasure within that regard. Thank you, follow up, Councillor? Just that I would support taking off option one then to reduce the workload on our staff who are already very busy and I’m sure would appreciate some scoping.

Thank you, Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair. Again, I appreciate all the conversation we’ve had today. And just to kind of reiterate what’s been said, I agree with my colleagues.

I think option one for me is off the table. I’ll leave that up for a committee to vote, but I would like to focus on the other two. And I just want to say that I think the lack of viable alternatives to personal vehicle usage does largely fall in government, but it is not solely on us. I do think that there are funding partnerships available with other levels of government.

We have tapped into them previously, and I think in terms of mode share, I think we’d like to encourage us to continue with those efforts. And I just want to comment also that if we don’t invest in substantive change, we won’t see anything. If we set the bar too low, which is my issue with option one, we won’t invest accordingly. It’s not just us, obviously, as I just said, it’s other levels of government.

And that’s why I don’t personally like option one. I think it sets the bar too low. And we won’t see any substantive change from that in terms of the mode share that we are hoping to see by 2050. And I think the objective of this, and in my opinion, is that we want to see a better and more equitable split mode share.

We don’t want our roads to take that burden. As Councillor Frank said, it just encourages traffic congestion, and I think all lenders can agree that it is particularly bad out there. And I do think we have to work towards a more equitable split in terms of options for lenders to get around our city. Thank you.

Thank you. I have Acting Mayor Lewis next. Thank you. So I hope I’m going to focus this in a little bit here.

And I’m going to preface my comments by saying, I actually don’t have a problem with eliminating option one. Option one as a baseline is a baseline, but we’ve already got the 2019 numbers here. And essentially, option one is just status quo. There’s very little change.

We’ve spent a fair amount of time at this committee, even today, talking about transit and the need for transit service improvement. And when we look at both option two and option three, the biggest mode share changes in transit. So yes, if we’re investing in transit, we want more people to take the bus. So I’m okay with actually shrinking staff’s workload a little bit, ‘cause I’m sure we’ll find something else to put on their plate.

And removing option one from the future engagement piece. What I would say to colleagues though is, if that’s what you want to amend, let’s get a motion on the floor to that so that we can deal with that particular choice and then move forward. Because the original intent today was to receive the report, not to make a decision on only endorsing one option, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking one of the options out and leaving the future work to be a narrowed focus on options two and three. So I just wanted to ask people to perhaps get focused in on the motion to receive the report is here.

If you want to amend that, and I’m hearing some willingness to do that, and me too, is let’s get a motion on the floor to remove option one. Thank you, back over to Councillor Trossa. Go ahead. So I’d like to receive the report, and this is a motion to the chair to the clerk.

I’d like to receive the report with the removal of option one, which this isn’t part of the motion, it’s which leaves option two and option three. And that further the city clerk is requested to consider shifting some of this discussion to the SPPC. That’s the second piece. And the third piece is Councillors are encouraged.

Now, I don’t know if we need a motion to do this, but I want to say it anyway. Councillors are encouraged to engage, to step up their engagement in their wards on the implications of options to an option three. And that staff be available to assist us with that, which I’m sure they would be. And I think I’m going to leave it at that, because I think it would be premature to say, okay, let’s adopt option three.

Right now, I don’t think there’s support for that, but I think by eliminating option one, we’ve at least focused this a little bit. And quite frankly, option two is incrementally better than option one, but incrementally. So that’s my motion. And if there is an opportunity for individual Councillors to become sort of, I don’t know if we could do this, members of your working group, I think at that point, maybe the chair or the mayor would want to consider asking someone to do that.

I don’t think that needs to be part of the motion, but I want to express my, I’ve made such a fuss about this that I feel as if I should volunteer to take on some of the heavy lifting that has to be done. So that’s my motion. Thank you, Councillor. Okay, I see Ms.

Westlake Power has her hand up, but I think to help us with that, how we’re moving this around procedurally, go ahead. Thank you, through the chair. As I understand, the committee already has a motion on the floor and that is related to receding the report. So unless there is a motion to amend that motion that’s already moved and seconded, I would suggest the committee first and deal with that and then introduce an additional motion.

In addition, I would like to clarify that the city clerk does not have the discretion about directing, the city clerk has some discretion about directing matters to specific committees for consideration. However, in the past where council as a whole has deemed it necessary or advisable to do so, they had passed a motion that would direct all related matters to go to a specific committee. And that would be my recommendation for the committee’s consideration. Back to Mayor Lewis, go ahead.

So I’m going to try and help with this a little bit. And let’s perhaps deal with these piece by piece because I will say I’m going to want to call and sending things to SPP separately. And I will speak to that if that gets put on the floor, but perhaps we could suggest if council or trust out is amenable to an amendment to the motion to receive and the amendment would be, and that civic administration be directed to remove option one from future scoping of the master mobility plan. And I think if we deal with that one first, I think we can probably very clearly get option one deleted from the future work.

And we can come back to the end and we can do that. Yes, I agree. Just looking to councilor McAllister, are you okay to add that amendment to the main motion as you did where the seconder? Okay, councilor Van Mirver, can you have your hand up?

Go ahead. I just want some clarification. So we’re going to move to receive separately from the other stuff. Thank you, are you asking for it to be separated?

Yes, please. And would this be the right time to comment on the removal of option one? Thank you, yes, go ahead. Okay, so we heard from Ms.

Sher, they were proceeding giving the whole envelope of options. And now all of a sudden we’ve decided as a committee or not decided yet, but we have this idea that the proposal should be narrowed down to what the public can comment on. I think that’s highly dictatorial and frankly anti-democratic. There are a number of people that would like to hear the range.

Like what is the range here that they can examine and see for themselves, but we’re taking this approach that we know best, the public doesn’t. And frankly, it’s just tasteful. I really, really don’t think that this is how we should be behaving as a committee going forward at this point. So I certainly will not support taking options off the table, certainly at this stage in the process.

Thank you, okay. So I’m looking to committee. I heard from Councillor VN Mirberg and that he’d like this separated. So we’re going to separate the motions into separate motions.

Any further comment or discussion before we look to open different parts of this motion? Seeing Mayor Lewis, go ahead. Yes, so what we have right now is a main motion has been moved to receive and then an amendment is on the floor to provide some direction to civic administration. So are we dealing, right now, are we not just dealing with the amendment and then we would come back to the main motion as amended?

And that would allow for a second amendment to Councilor Trussow’s other concerns. So I think if we can just deal with the amendment. Thank you, yes, we are dealing with it just as an amendment. Okay, so the amendment should be, if you refresh, you should be able to see the amendment so that everyone can take a look at it.

That civic administration be requested to remove, so that civic administration be requested to remove 2.4.1, mode, transit, target, share option one for the master mobility plan update. Any further comments, questions before we open that amendment? Okay, seeing them, that’ll be open to vote. Wasn’t the vote, the motion carries five to one.

Okay, then we’ll return to the main motion. I understand there are potential additions to that, or amendments to that motion, Councilor Trussow. I wanted to address the concern that was raised about having a broader participation from the SPPC so other Councillors could have some of the discussions built in to their agendas and I understand that the Deputy Mayor wants to, the Acting Mayor wants to speak against that. So I’d like to hear if there’s some way of accommodating both of these.

I think my personal request is something that I could speak with staff with on the side or the Mayor. So I think the SPPC, the jurisdiction question, I think is the next item on the preferred determination. And I would yield. Thank you, Acting Mayor Lewis.

Thank you. So colleagues, I’m gonna jump into this with some experience from prior term of Council. We could really land everything at SPPC. Really good, everything is a decision of all 15 members of Council at the end of the day.

When we start moving around things from specific committees to Committee of the Whole to Council, we really start going down a slippery slope. And I really want to encourage people to think about the fact that every one of us gets to attend any standing committee meeting anytime we want. We all get the staff reports. So we all get to read the same information.

We can all attend and ask questions. And at the end of the day, well, we don’t all get a vote at the standing committee. And, you know, we were starting off the committee when Councilor ramen clarified that there were six votes ‘cause I was voting on the Mayor’s behalf. And Councilor Trust, I would joke that that would have been helpful yesterday at Corporate Services if I could have had two votes, one for myself and one for the Mayor.

But I didn’t get to have two votes there. And I didn’t get to have two votes at PEC last night. I voted at Planning Committee last night because I’m a member of Planning Committee, not because I’m the Acting Mayor. Today I’m voting as the Acting Mayor.

But we all get a vote at Council. We can all move amendments. We can all vote against things at Council. We can ask for votes to be separated at Council.

So I really encourage folks to think about the fact that when you start moving one thing from a committee, in this case, the MMP from Civic Works, then you are opening the door to every other request that everything should be a decision of Council as a whole. And everything is a decision of Council at the whole, at the Council meeting. You know, the Housing and Homelessness Plan is at SPPC. That’s a huge volume of work that we are all undertaking together.

We get updates on the Industrial Land Strategy at Corporate Services. That actually reflects on potential changes to the Urban Growth Boundary, which will come through the Planning and Environment Committee. These things do land at different committees for different reasons, but we all get the information. We all get the ability to engage, and we all do get a vote at the end of the day.

So, you know, I would also remind you on the Master Mobility Plan. We see the staff in front of us right now, because these are the staff who are working on the Master Mobility Plan. If we move this to SPPC, then we are asking Mr. Mathers, and we are asking Ms.

Smith, and we are asking all the other deputy city managers and their directors who may be there for other reports to sit through SPPC while we discuss this as well. And so, we are actually not just decreasing our own productivity, but we’re decreasing the productivity of staff. So, I just really encourage folks to let the clerks make the call on what committee things land at, because we all will get us say at the end of the day. Thank you, I appreciate the back and forth on this conversation, Councillor Trossa.

Do I have a motion on the floor to this effect? No. - Okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments related to the item in front of us to receive and the communications to receive as well as the presentation?

Okay, see, we’re just gonna try to buy you some time, but okay, all right. Well, with that, we’ll open that to a vote for committee. If you refresh your screen, you’ll get to see it. Sorry, Councillor Bambi, you’re working, go ahead.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. I just wanna clarify, this is the main motion as amended. The as amended. - Okay.

Or is it just receiving the motion that staff put forward originally? Thank you, it should be as amended, so we’ll make sure that’s on your screen correctly, hold on. Okay, we’re just updating that to include the amendment. Okay, so in front of you now should be the motion as amended to vote on.

Closing the vote, the motion carries five to one. Okay, thank you. So, committee master update, you would have seen there was also an added communication from Mayor Morgan, and I’ll go to Acting Mayor Lewis to present that communication. Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you, the added’s on there, I do hope that colleagues have had a chance to read it, review it.

I do hope that you will be supportive of it. I certainly am 100% supportive of what the Mayor is asking for us here. And this is really related back to the London Transit Commission and the discussion we were having a little bit earlier, as we are moving forward with the start of the rapid transit operations on the Wellington Gateway, the downtown loop in the East London Link, the electrification of the transit fleet, the housing plan and the path to 47,000 units. Our regional transportation is a part of our master mobility plan.

Our transit is a key part of our master mobility plan. And the area that we’re looking for one of the largest mode share shifts in. So, the bylaw that we currently have that constitutes the London Transit Commission will, has a language that is about consulting with municipal council on local transportation policies. The Mayor is suggesting that because this is going to be an even more important thing to have coordinated over the next few years, we need to take a few steps.

The first is to request that, and this language is in your eScribe, that the LTC be formally requested to develop a detailed plan for the next four years to provide clear information on how the LTC will be implementing our strategic plan as a council. B is that it will report back to, that they will report back to SPPC with the results of that at the October 31st meeting of 2023, so we will get that work plan on how their strat plan and our strat plan integrate. C, that we would provide minimum annual, semi-annual reports to SPPC through the terms of our council’s strategic plan, and allow that therefore for continued consultation with council on local transportation policy. And finally, the D clause is that we have staff review the current by-law and report back with any recommended changes to reflect the necessary collaboration between LTC and the City of London in delivering on councils 2023 to 2027 strategic plan.

So there’s four very important clauses. I’m happy to answer the questions that colleagues may have from the mayor’s perspective to the best of my ability. Obviously, I am not the mayor, although the amount of work I’ve put in already on a Tuesday makes me think he should give me his pay this week, but I will do my best if colleagues have any questions to the specific motion. Thank you, and I’d be happy to make the motion for you to get that pay, but I don’t think I can do that at this committee.

(mumbles) Okay, any comments or questions on the mayor’s added? Yep, looking for a seconder, Councillor Trossa. Okay, thank you, so I will, did any, sorry, Paul, were you looking to speak on that matter? We will open that for voting.

Councillor Van Neubergen. Closing the vote, the motion carries, five, or six to zero. Okay, thank you everyone for all of your participation in that discussion on item 4.3, and thank you to staff for the report as well as all the great work so far. I think we had some great discussion on how we should proceed with the master mobility plan, but I do hear committee members asking for more engagement, asking for more regular updates on the master mobility plan, and so hope to continue that discussion with staff to move that forward as well.

Okay, our next item was the added from Councillor Frank, the climate emergency action plan phase out of gas. Unfortunately, she had to run to another meeting as our meetings, don’t usually run this long, so I understand that she had something else booked. I’m wondering if committee would consider dealing with her added at a future meeting that she’s able to attend. Okay, should we?

I’ll move that this be referred to a future meeting of the Civic Works Committee. Thank you, and I have a second from Councillor Cuddy, so we’ll look to the next meeting of Civic Works to address that, Councillor Trossa. Could we just confirm that if we defer this, we will have time for it to go up to a council meeting and time for the AMO consultations? Ms.

Shear, I’m sorry, I know that some quick math there. Madam Chair, I’m checking date as we speak. I think Ms. West’s like power has her hand up, go ahead.

Thank you through the chair. If this is referred to the next meeting of the Civic Works Committee, it will be dealt with on August the 15th, and then it won’t get to council until August the 29th, which is after the AMO conference. Councillor Trossa. In which case, can we either A, try to work this out at this meeting given the time sensitivity of the matter, or I almost take to say this, B, refer to the SPPC meeting coming up.

Okay, I see Acting Mayor Lewis’ hand up, go ahead. So let me offer this suggestion. I think it’d be perfectly fine for the committee to refer it to the next CWC committee, but then for Councillor Frank to consult with the clerk given the timing of AMO to see if this could be landed on the next council agenda. She would have to make the case with the clerk that it is an urgent time sensitive, but I think given the nature of your concern, Councillor Trossa with regard to AMO, I think that there’s a way for her to make that as an emergent motion at council if she wished to do that.

I’d like to leave it in her hands just because it is her communication and motion as to which path is the best forward for her. Thank you. And I see Ms. Westlake Power has her hand up again.

Yes, thank you through the chair, just to add some procedural context again, but I believe that the Acting Mayor has addressed it. Would the Councillor like to submit it to council directly? It would need to meet some specific parameters and referring it to for this committee to refer it to the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee is not an option because that would need to go through a committee cycle in order to approve it. We wouldn’t just put it onto the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting or the following week, there’s a special meeting.

So it’s pretty specific. It’s very specific about what can be addressed at that time. Thank you. So her option would be to bring it as an emergent motion to council, which if it’s given 24 hours notice, she could put it on the floor, is that correct?

Thank you or committee could deal with it. I mean, she submitted a letter, it’s quite detailed. She’s provided the motions that she would like to have moved and she’s not a member of the committee, so she wouldn’t have been able to move them anyways. So it’s up to committee as to how you’d like to deal with it.

Councillor and Councillor. Thank you through the chair. The council has indicated that she could return at three. I don’t know if it’s amenable to recess for 20 minutes versus postponing.

Yeah, thank you. Well, we do have one more item, which is the two point item for 2.7. So we could move to item 2.7 and then see where we land in terms of timing, if the committee’s willing. And we could also take a break, which probably would also help.

Okay, if the committee’s okay with dealing with item 2.7 right now, Councillor Van Meerbergen. Well, with regard to this, not an item that came to the agenda from Councillor Frank. I don’t see what the problem is with referring it to the next civic works meeting. Why is it so imperative that this go to AMO?

We haven’t even heard from staff on this. Like I’m not getting the concept here. Okay, thank you. Councillor Trossa, go ahead.

Yeah, the concept is she’s a member of this council who has the ability to bring forward an emergent motion and have it dealt with in a timely way, especially with AMO coming up. I think it’s well within her prerogative to do that. And I salute her for taking the initiative to try to get this on the agenda. That’s the concept.

No, I understand that this is from her perspective. But from other perspectives, we have this here. She’s not here to discuss it. It’s not relating to anything on our agenda today.

So what is wrong with referring it to the next civic works? Councillor Cady. Yes, thank you, through you, Chair. I agree with Councillor Van Meerbergen.

This isn’t pending or critical issue. Can we refer to the next civic works meeting? I don’t think anything’s gonna happen in AMO with respect to this. So I’ll see why we need to rush it forward.

Thank you. Okay, so right now we have a moved and seconded motion to defer. So if the committee would like to let me know what you’d like to do with this, Councillor Trossa, go ahead. Since we’re through the chair, since we’re not done with this meeting yet, and we at least have one other item, and she will be back shortly.

Could we just let this go until after the consent item that was removed? Thank you, Dr. Mayor Lewis. I’m willing to withdraw my motion to refer with the committee’s consent so that we can then move on to 2.7.

So we can also let the staff who are here for 2.7 provide us answers and then be free to do the rest of their job. And then if Councillor Frank is not back, we can deal with the motion to refer again. I will say that I will be leaving at 3 p.m. for another meeting myself, so I will not be here at 3 when she returns.

So let’s deal with 2.7. I will withdraw my motion. Councillor Cuddy was my seconder, so I’ll see if he’s amenable to moving with 2.7 first. Thank you, Councillor Cuddy, would you consider that?

Yes, thank you, I’ll agree with that. Thank you, okay. So we are, I’m hearing that the committee would like to move on to, so I’m hearing from the committee that they’d like to move on to item 2.7. I need your consent to do so.

Okay, seeing that the majority are in agreement, we’ll move on to item 2.7, which is the Adelaide Street North Improvement Environmental Study Report, notice of completion. To staff want to provide a quick introduction to this topic. Councillor, if you’d like a break, I’m happy to take a break, would we, okay. No, I don’t think we need, sorry, to your chair, I don’t think we need to take a break.

Why don’t we just continue on? Well, but it’s on the one. Okay, so why don’t, okay. So I’m hearing a request for a break.

Would you entertain just 10 minutes, five minutes break? Five minutes, okay. I see Councillor McAllister has put his hand up for a five minute break. Councillor Cuddy has seconded it by a show of hands, all in favour of a break, five minutes.

Okay, we’ll see you back at 2.50. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you, everyone. We are back from our break.

And we are looking at item 2.7. And I will go to staff to see if they wanted to provide comment before we start our discussion on this report. Mr. Dales?

Thank you, and through the chair. So the report that you have before you provides an overview of the environmental assessment process that has been completed for the Adelaide Street North Corridor from Fanshawe Park Road East to Sunningdale. A draft environmental study report, NSR has been completed and is available on the city website. That report details the various improvements, recommended improvements that are proposed for the corridor.

And these improvements have been identified through the EEA process with a review from a complete streets corridor lens. So essentially looking at improvements, comprehensive improvements, including active transportation, new sidewalks, cycling facilities on Adelaide Street in that major intersections. The improvements also include additional vehicular capacity improvements to the Adelaide Corridor. I would note that in 2021, we did undertake a review of major transportation projects under utilizing the climate emergency screening tool that has been developed.

And that the findings, the review that was completed was reported to council at that time. And we did receive direction from council at that time that the widening of Adelaide Street from Fanshawe Park to Sunningdale be suspended. However, we were also requested to complete the environmental assessment process in order to inform and identify the improvements to the intersection at Sunningdale and Adelaide. So in terms of next steps, subject to council approval, we would finalize the report and provide a public notice regarding the study completion.

I would note that the timing of the improvements, the corridor improvements would be subject to the MMP. However, we are looking at near-term improvements at the intersection of Sunningdale Road. Certainly happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you for the report. Now, I understand that what’s in front of us today is part of the EA requirement that the notice of study completion for the project be filed. The environmental study report be placed on the public record for a 30-day review period.

And then part A was that it be accepted. I do understand there’s some questions from committee on this item. So I will look to committee for questions and whether or not to move the recommendation that’s here. Councillor Trostik.

Yes, since I pulled this and since I’ve raised my concerns already, I think I should start. I believe that this environmental assessment is not complete and I’m going to suggest that it go back for further study. And I want to be specific. Number one, I think there needs to be a no widening option.

We have three options with respect to widen symmetrically from the center, widen to the east and widen to the west. So I guess my initial question is why is there not, why is there not a no widening option? Mr. Dales.

Thank you through the chair. So as part of the environmental assessment process, we do look at broader planning alternatives associated with our different projects and they do nothing. Alternative is certainly a viable option that is assessed as part of the environmental assessment and it has been reviewed as part of the overall process. Follow up, Councillor?

Yes, quite a bit. So through the chair, I’m not suggesting to do nothing option. And I think adding a widen option is not the same thing as a do nothing option. The reason for that is especially because you’ve got in item three, demand management measures.

And you’ve also got in item seven, accommodate other modes. And given the long discussion that we went through about the mobility master plan, the whole in this report is that it fails to take into account and at least identify as an option. And I’m not saying we pass that option now, but we at least identify it as an option. That there be a option three, no widening option, noting that item five and item seven could be incorporated into that.

And I guess my question specific is if item three incorporate travel demand management measures is done well, coupled with item seven, accommodate other modes is done well. Isn’t a no widening option at least worthy of study as one of the options in an EA? Mr. McRae.

Certainly all seven of those planning alternatives are worthy and that they’re considered through the process. And the recommendations coming out of it were based on a combination of technical analysis and public consultation. And also the recommendations of the previous transportation master plan, the smart moves, transportation master plan, the climate lens direction to further consider this project, like the corridor widening of Adelaide Street under the MMP is another chance to reconsider, I think what you’re getting at. But through the process that was undertaken, the recommendation was the combination of plan and solutions three, five, six and seven.

Thank you, that’s very helpful. So through the chair, in addition to a no widening option, I think the other matter that I think is deficient and why I would not be willing to support this at this time is if we are just going to go with here’s one widening option, here’s a second widening option, here’s a third widening option, we’re gonna have widening. I would at least like to see, and I think it would be appropriate to include at the stage of an environmental assessment report what some of the mitigation measures would be downstream because we know from the learning that we have accumulated on induced demand that this is going to increase traffic. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, the point of the widening is to increase traffic.

And we already know through a variety of studies that we’ve done already that Adelaide North, and we can go down Adelaide North past Fanshawe Park Road, we can go down over the river, we can come down past Huron, we can go down to Oxford, we can go pretty far down. There are going to be negative environmental effects from a road widening option. So I think at the very least, in addition to including the no road widening option, which isn’t to say that that’s what you adopt, but it’s in the consultants report. I don’t know how long it would take for the consultant to fix that, I imagine not very long, that there will also be some mitigation measures identified.

So I’m going to, I’m going to take the position and I’m going to move that the Adelaide Street North Environmental Assessment Study be referred back to include a no widening option. And that number two, that it also include discussion of downstream mitigation measures. And I don’t know if downstream is the right word to use, but I’m thinking of what happens to the traffic in between Fanshawe Park Road and say, for example, Oxford. So I’m using the down, the word downstream.

So those are my two, those are my two amendments. Okay, thank you. So you’re looking to move those amendments. We haven’t moved and seconded the initial motion.

So are you looking at moving that separately? I think we should deal with the recommendation first or and then look to amend it if there were any, if you had a seconder to do so. Well, if so procedurally, if we do it that way and the main motion passes, then do my, do my amendments become moot or can they be added on? Okay, thank you.

So the clerk is saying that that’s a motion and not an amendment. So we would need a seconder for your motion. Is there a seconder? Councilor McAllister, are you seconding?

Do you need the language or are you just getting the language prepared? Councilor Vamir, we’re going to have your hand up as well. Yeah, this is going to speak to the amendment. Go ahead.

You want to speak to the motion? Go ahead. So I’m prepared to support the staff recommendation, but not this amendment. This idea that we always need to take the position that we can’t widen any roads in London is just high in the sky thinking that the people of London are demanding it.

Each and every day that they’re driving around, they want some relief. And then we just come up with ways to get ourselves. We just heard a few minutes ago. Oh, you just want people stuck in traffic jams?

Well, that’s how to do it. You don’t widen the road and everybody’s stuck in a traffic jam. So let’s get realistic and get into reality here ‘cause they’re needed all over the city. Thank you.

Okay, I know I had a bit of a speakers list going. So I’ll go to Acting Mayor Lewis and then I will go to Councilor Perbal. And anyone else let me know if you want to be on the speakers list. Thank you, Madam Chair.

And through you, I’m gonna keep my preliminary comments brief. I won’t be supporting the motion to change the EA. And through you, I would like to ask Ms. Share if she could explain what happens in terms of our timelines on projects when we start amending EA’s that are ready to be filed with the clerk and put on the notice for the public for the review period.

Thank you, Ms. Share. Madam Chair, I can certainly start. Then Mr.

McRae may have some information to add. Amending an EA does require that we meet certain processes with respect to consultation. There is some urgency from a staff perspective to advance this work with respect to the intersection of Sunningdale and Adelaide. With respect to the ultimate corridor widening that is included in the rest of the report, approving the CA and going through the provincial approval process does not tire hands or require us to do so.

It gives us the ability to do so in the future, should we so choose. Our intent to staff is to continue with the active project at Sunningdale and Adelaide should this pass as submitted. And then the decision around the ultimate corridor widening would be reflected in the mobility master plan as part of the larger strategy around where we would want to do strategic and just gesture relief and where we would want to employ other measures to help people move around safely by all modes. Follow-up?

No, I will say thank you. I think that that makes it very clear. We are not committing to a widening, but we are leaving the door open because there may be future need for that. And we are also putting timelines for an existing project at risk if we start amending the EA now and going back through those processes.

Thank you. I have Councillor Pervall next. Thank you and comment to the fellow Councillors. I do hope that the motion that’s currently on is gonna be defeated and we will go with the recommendation of the staff.

I’ll go further. I agree with everything but the acting mayor just said and I will add on to it. I really think if I look at the distance between on Adelaide between Fanshawe and Sunningdale and going down south of Fanshawe is four lanes. So this one is currently one and one.

And if I look at the growth projections, what we have on the northeast northwest corner of Sunningdale, I really think in terms of this distance, it’s a very good proposal. It makes sense going into the future Sunningdale as well. And I don’t want to miss this opportunity. And there are even, if I look at the Adelaide, go heading north, northbound, there are two lanes and already currently there are dangerous situation right now because of the cars trying to pull into the left lane.

And I do think that I actually think that this is a great vision in terms of going for lanes and the bike lanes that are proposed and also north of Sunningdale. It’s a perfect transportation master plan. And the only thing is that I would ask when we go further to make sure when we are widening to four lanes that the sur capacity, if you look at that and also the curved island in the middle, I just hope that when we go on widening to four lanes, that there won’t be any planters and anything high to grow. But I really like thinking to the staff for this proposal.

And I hope current motion is defeated and the committee is going to vote for the original recommendation of the staff. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Cuddy. Thank you, Madam Chair and through you, I’ll be supporting the staff recommendation and voting against the motion.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other Councillors, visiting Councillors looking to weigh in on this before I call the vote? Councillor Trosto.

Yes, in summary then, I think we have to distinguish between legislating a result and leaving options open in an environmental assessment. And in terms of the amount of time it takes, we just did a change, a substantial change to an environmental assessment. And it came back at the next, it came back by the council meeting, it didn’t even take that and didn’t even take that long. So I really don’t think it would, I don’t really think it would necessarily add to the timeline for the intersection.

And furthermore, if we’re going to pass this, basically what we’re doing is we’re passing an environmental assessment that’s being filed with the province that on its face, on its face does not include a no widening option. So I hear what you’re saying about, that doesn’t preclude us from not widening, but why wouldn’t we include that even superficially as an option? So at the very least, I think that if we’re going to vote down my amendment, which seems that’s the direction this is going, there should at least be some language in there making it very clear that this does not preclude council from adopting a no widening option. I am not trying to hold up the intersection, but I am trying to protect the people who use Adelaide all the way down, who have reported just terrible conditions.

And you know what they say, you’re just not sitting in the traffic, you are the traffic, and we’re just going to create more traffic. So I think this assessment needs to leave that option open. And if that gets voted down, I think there at least needs to be some language in adopting this that says this does not preclude council. Because the way I read this environmental assessment, those are the three options you’re adopting.

So I want to see some additional assurance language in there. Thank you. Does staff want to provide any additional comment? As a suggestion to committee, if it acknowledges the concern possible amendments to the staff recommendation could be the addition of a fourth clause and it being noted that the corridor widening of Adelaide Street North is subject to the outcome of the mobility master plan and future development charge background study.

Thank you. Okay, so we have a current motion on the floor right now to deal with first. So I will look to the mover and seconder that to any further comment before we call the vote on that. Thank you.

I would like to have the vote on my motion. And if it’s unsuccessful, then I’ll come back with that other amendment. But I do feel that as a matter of what an environmental assessment should include, this is deficient and it should be fixed. So I stand on my motion and I’ll reserve coming back with some other language afterwards.

Thank you. And if the committee will allow me to speak from the chair, just when I was reading through this, I think the context as provided on page 55 is really essential to how we understand this EA. And I mean, for me, when I was looking at it, this was not a matter of an egregious road widening. This was making for more of a complete street design in my mind as it relates to the completion of Adelaide.

Being somebody that uses this roadway, I can tell you I do see opportunities for conflict with pedestrians as well as cyclists in this corridor right now. And so I do see the need for this type of mitigation. And then I look at the growth in the area. And again, as Councillor Pribble has mentioned, I mean, there’s substantial growth happening up at the Sunningdale and Adelaide corner, including big apartment buildings and condominiums as well as many, many single family homes that have been added in that corridor.

So I understand that there is this desire from other Councillors to not widen the intersections and in our roadways. However, I do in this case see this as a minimal widening and also connecting into the Sunningdale road widening. We have, as a previous council, committed to a lot of growth on the outer periphery of our city right now and still within the growth boundary. And we have to help address the traffic that has been created by these developments in this area.

And I know many people that use this corridor to get into the northwest part of the city as well. And it is a traffic nightmare on a good day. So I welcome this study. I welcome the opportunity to see this completed and I thank the staff for bringing this forward.

So I will not be supporting the motion that’s on the floor. Okay, seeing no further speakers, I will call the vote on that item. That is non amendments to separate motion that the Adelaide Street North Improvement Environmental Study report the administration to include a no widening option as well as a discussion for downstream mitigation options. Closing the vote, the motion fails one to five.

Okay, thank you. So committee, we still have the main motion to deal with. That was the recommendation that was provided in the package. I’m looking for a mover and seconder on the recommendation.

I have Councillor Cuddy and Acting Mayor Lewis and Councillor Chassette, go ahead. I’d like to amend that motion to include the, what they said before. Could you repeat that so the clerk has it nicely? About how this does not mandate the widening.

Does not preclude the council from considering this or something about the mobility master plan? You said it well. Mr. McCryk.

Thank you. Yeah, my suggestion was a fourth clause. It being noted that a corridor widening of Adelaide Street North, the subject is subject to the recommendations of the mobility master plan and future development charges bylaws. Okay, so I have that as a amendment, I’m looking for a seconder.

Okay, Councillor McAllister, a seconded that and Councillor Pribble, you have your hand up, go ahead. Thank you, sir, the chair to the staff. We just talked about the mobility master plan throughout the next year. And we are talking about 2024.

Would this mean that we are gonna wait first based on this motion? Are we gonna wait till the master plan is completed? And then we would revisit this because we are looking, we will be looking for another year and a half of delay in this project. Mr.

McCryk. The intersection improvements at Sunningdale Road are active approval of this environmental assessment enables this environmental assessment to inform the design of the intersection for the Sunningdale Road project. The Adelaide corridor, that is a, I think it’s currently scheduled 2029. So there would, you know, waiting for the outcome of the mobility master plan and development charges by-law should have minimal effect on that project given that it is a later phase.

Councillor, follow up? No, follow up, thank you. Councillor Van Mirbergen, did you have your hand up? I was adjusting my to pay, but I think I will speak.

I don’t support this amendment and I’ll just leave it at that, so I’ll be voting against the amendment. Okay, thank you. So we have any other speakers to the amendment. Okay, so we will open the amendment first and then we’ll look to deal with the main motion.

I was thinking about the motion carries four to two. Okay, thank you. So now we are dealing with the main motion and that’s in front of you, any further discussion from the committee. Okay, Councillor Chaucer.

In light of what I think is a very reasonable compromise through the chair, which I thank the staff for. I’m gonna be supporting this motion. Okay, thank you. Any further comments from Councillors?

Distant Councillors? Okay, seeing none, we’ll open that for a vote. We just have to add the amendment. I’m logged out of eScribe, so I’m just gonna verbally vote yes.

Thank you, we’re just adding the amendment. Closing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. Thank you, okay, so that takes care of our items for direction. We’re now moving back to the, sorry, the communication from Councillor Frank.

That was on our added 4.4, the climate emergency action plan phase out of gas. Madam Chair, I’m just gonna advise committee members that I am now late for a pre meeting before. So I am going to have to, hence my logging out of eScribe and I will be leaving the meeting. And for those of you joining CAPS at 4PM, I’ll see you then.

Thank you, okay, so I would like to, Councillor Chaucer, you have your hand up, go ahead. Even though I should defer to Councillor Frank because it’s her motion, I just wanna put it on the floor. Okay, so there is communication from Councillor Frank. It included a motion with it and Councillor Chaucer looking to move that motion.

Is there a seconder for that motion? Councillor McAllister, okay. Thank you for putting that forward so that we can have some discussion. Would either be like to speak to it before I go to Councillor Frank?

Oh, and then I’ll go to, actually I’ll go to Councillor Van Mirbergen after the mover and the seconder, if they’d like to speak to it. And then I’ll go to Councillor Frank. I’ll go to Councillor Van Mirberg and then back over to you, Councillor Frank. Well, that’s fine.

Defer to Councillor Frank and I’ll speak out there. Thank you, I appreciate that. Go ahead, Councillor. And thank you for putting this letter forward to committee.

Thank you. And thank you very much for making some time for this. I really appreciate it ‘cause it is somewhat time sensitive and I didn’t include that in the letter, but I am hoping to see direction and hopefully this passes and goes to Council next week. So if we’re able to, we are able to engage in some delegations at AMO, that being said, I just wanted to provide a really quick overview of why I’m submitting this letter.

So essentially for those who aren’t familiar, the federal government is coming out with clean electricity regulations, helping provinces and territories across Canada make sure that we’re on track to meeting federal targets. Of course, London has our own targets of net zero by 2050. And as we saw in our climate emergency action plan update in May, despite us reducing our fossil fuel use, our energy use is still going up. And as such, our electricity, when it goes up with the further carbonization of our electricity grid, our emission profile goes up.

So as I mentioned before, we already currently use gas to power electrical grid. There’s about 7% natural gas in the grid at any given time, although that has been steadily increasing under this current provincial government. So this letter is advocating towards a provincial government to try and phase out fossil fuel use in our electricity grid in the same way that we’ve phased out coal use in our electricity grid. That was a huge success for the health of Ontarioans.

There used to be smog days. When I was little, I can’t recall the last time we’ve had a smog day. So that was really successful. This is the next step.

So with our electricity grid, we want to be moving towards renewables, hydroelectric. I’m fine with nuclear. But essentially, this is a letter advocating to try and get to net zero carbon by 2035, which is consistent with the federal targets. So that’s part A.

And that’s having the mayor submit a letter. And I’ve already spoke with Mayor Morgan. And he’ll be OK with that if this passed through council. And then part B and C are more directly linked to our emergency action plan.

And that is directing staff to work with those in London who are using fossil fuels to provide electricity at their facilities and engaging in bridge and London hydro to talk more about how they’re going to be on track to be meeting our climate emergency action plan targets, which both those items are in the climate emergency action plan, but this pulls them front and center and makes sure they’re being dealt with in a timely manner. And that is the main couple points. I’m happy to answer any questions. But as you can see from the submission, there are a lot of good reasons why we should be doing this work and doing the advocacy, and I find it actually very similar to the work we’re doing with homelessness, where we are taking our stance in London and trying to encourage the province to meet the needs of our community.

And really, again, we’re trying to meet the needs of Londoners. So happy to answer any questions zone. I appreciate the mover and seconder. Thank you.

Councillor Van Meerbergen. Thank you, Chair. We are very, very fortunate to be in the province of Ontario with our ability to generate such low CO2 emissions on such a wide plane, servicing the millions of Ontarians, residential and industry included, where we come to the point where it’s about 93% CO2-free, with the current myths that we have. Now, because of the increasing demand, there’s going to be a time where they have to increase with natural gas.

Until such time as the additional nuclear capability is on line, coupled with the nuclear capability. Some renewables like wind and solar to help with peak demand. I think the province done a very responsible job in terms of how they’re moving forward with this nuclear, which of course is key, along with downers at the moment, to keeping our base loads capable and have the capacity. That is so key.

The last thing we want in our province is to start having brownies, because we start relying renewables, such as wind and solar, to be in part of our base load, or our continuous electricity supply. You don’t want to signal the potential investors or potential industry that’s looking at London, come to London, want to have an unstable mix. That’s the last thing we’ve gassed as far cleaner than coal. That’s the current levels that we’re talking about, and even the projection for the intro.

Until we get the CO2 cleaner nuclear on line and cable, that’s a reasonable step. I will not support, certainly just going on for the floor like this, without any kind of staff review or staff sharing this. So I will move the motion to refer to the administration, because I think this is worthy of not all good to have an individual council or send this in on a good job, because somehow it has to be anecdotal. Well, I’d like to see the review, and I’d like to see commentary from staff on this.

So I’m moving referral, and I believe the referral takes precedent over my motion. Thank you. OK, so I have a motion to refer in a seconder in Councilor Cuddy. But I kind of heard a question in there, which was, has staff provided any input into this?

So you may want to ask that question to staff, as well, Councillor Veen. I’ve got a written response, and I think that the rest of us in Council deserve it as well. This is a big issue. We are not the provincial government.

This is out of our lane in many aspects. But I do want to hear about from the appropriate areas of civic administration. Thank you. So we have a referral on the floor right now.

And as you know, as Councillor Van Merebergen stated, the referral takes precedence. I’ll go back to Councillor Frank, because she had her hand up. And then I’ll look for other speakers on the referral. Thank you, yes.

I’d actually like to pull Councillor Van Merebergen’s question and ask staff if they’ve had a chance to review this, and what comments they’ve added. Thanks. Thank you to Mr. Stanford.

Thank you, and through the chair, when I look at the on page two of the package, I’m not sure on your agenda, possibly when 88 at one time, it refers to three bullets. Regarding the last two bullets, both those items are very much in keeping with the Climate Emergency Action Plan. The large generators in London, we actually receive information annually from them right now. So obtaining further information, that is a doable item.

The second, or sort of the third bullet, which is ongoing dialogue with Enbridge and London Hydro, we actually have established relationships on the Climate Emergency Action Plan right now. And furthering those discussions on an item, such as this, very easy to do. I think the key part in all of this is that this has actually been an ongoing discussion. It’s been driven by the federal government.

And the federal government has made a commitment to be dealing directly with the provinces. So the heavy lifting actually doesn’t really involve city staff that much. We’re just following the progress of what’s occurring at the provincial and federal government levels. There are definitely differences of opinion across Canada on this.

But the federal government has proposed legislation and regulations associated with a clean electricity regulation for Canada-wide use by 2035. So on the first bullet, subject to committee and council and, of course, the mayor, there’s nothing there that we would actually disagree with at this point in time, because it is just furthering the dialogue on an important subject matter. And what we’ve read to date, the items that have been raised by Councillor Van Reubergen, are the same items that are being discussed with the federal government and the provincial governments across Canada. Councillor?

Thank you, yes. And just to reiterate, I did send this letter, about a month ago, to staff for their review. And they’ve added some items to it that strengthened a lot of the work that they’re already doing. I did want to also just add— just pull this up.

In more general terms, I just wanted to highlight the cost of doing nothing is significant. And again, I hear from folks that this is the responsibility of the provincial government. At the same time, London is only really able to plug into the provincial energy grid. And since, essentially, they are the provider of that, we have a duty and an ability to ask for them to change the composition of the energy grid.

And that’s what we’re doing, if this is approved. And I think we were talking a little bit earlier before, but if we do nothing, we’ll see grid lock in London from a traffic perspective. But I also wanted to highlight, and I’m kind of topical. I don’t know if you guys have noticed in the last month, but there’s been lots of days where people have had to stay inside because it’s too hot.

It’s been raining, thunderstorms. We’ve had air quality advisory issues. As we move forward, there’s research that shows more and more we’re going to be experiencing these extreme weather events. And just coming up on my page, it started to show me actually by 2071, if we do nothing, and we rely on a fossil fuel-based economy, we’re going to be spending at least 90 days inside because we’re going to see temperatures of over 35 degrees Celsius, plus when you layer on the humidex.

That’s you really— most people aren’t able to go outside at that point. So if we’re doing nothing, we’re going to be looking at summers where people spend three at a four months of summer inside in air conditioning. And that means they’re going to be running their electricity to ensure they have air conditioning. So the cost of doing nothing is way too much at this point.

I’m probably still going to be here by 2071. I’ll be 80, but I’m still going to be here. And I don’t want to have to spend three months of the year inside in the summer when I want to go outside in air conditioning because we did absolutely nothing at this point to change that. And that’s not even including winter.

I’m just talking about during the summer. So I just would urge people to think to the future, to 2050, to 2070, if we do nothing with our fossil fuel use, we’re going to be handing a big problem to future generations. And again, this is just one of many ways that we are trying to improve the lives of Londoners now and in the future. So again, thanks to this committee for the consideration.

Councilor Van Meerberg. Yeah, I just need to respond. I mean, nobody’s saying do nothing. What we’re saying is we have a situation in Ontario, which is actually, it’s envied around the world in terms of its low CO2 content.

The fact that we’re looking at new nuclear, which has no CO2, is obviously a fact that we’re taking steps in the direction of lower CO2. So far from doing nothing, the province is doing a lot. And again, when I tell, for example, a company that I’m with, our largest customers, European base, when I tell them that we have a 93% CO2 free content in our electricity. Amazing.

Germany made the huge mistake of decoupling from nuclear. And now to keep things moving and they can’t access gas because of the Ukrainian situation, the burning coal. So they are through the roof on CO2 emissions. Well, thank God we’re in Ontario.

We’re in a good place. The province is responsibly being ahead. There’s gas, a component, yes, very minimal. And for comments like this, let me, you know, that we’re doing nothing and to make up as old people who can breathe.

You know, let’s talk to China. They’re the world’s largest emitter and growing. They’re double what the United States puts out. They’ve got plans for more and more and more coal-fired coal-fired electricity generation units.

Now that all moves around the world, but including London. So that affects London’s air. So the little bit of natural gas that we’re burning in Ontario is not the problem, always for you to tell you. Thank you, Councillor.

Okay, Councillor Frank, you said you had a tiny comment. Go ahead. Just one last tiny comment. Seven percent is a historical amount that we’ve had of natural gas that’s in our grid.

It’s going up because this current provincial government is investing more money in the natural gas factories. Currently, you can Google searches Ontario electrical grid current use. We’re using 27% gas right now in this very moment in our electricity grid. So 27% of the lights right now are being powered by gas in this room.

So I just wanted to highlight that we’re going up in our usage if we continue on this path that the provincial government has decided for us. And as well, maybe a future meeting. I’d be happy to have the Mayor write a letter to China about reducing their use of fossil fuels as well, because I hear Councillor Van Mirbergen, everyone needs to be doing their fair share. So if that is an advocacy tool that we’re looking at from this council, that is something I would happily work on with Councillor Van Mirbergen.

Thank you. Any other members of committee that would like to speak to the motion? Okay, Councillor Van Mirbergen, go ahead. I’d like to also state for the record.

I mean, the staff that we hear in terms of candidates, as an entire nation, our contribution to CO2 worldwide is around 1.6%, 1.6%. And of that, a good chunk is from the Alberta tar sands. So then we lose the meaning of the water material, which is what maybe less than 1% of the Canadian population. And we look at, I can’t wonder why I’m wondering really because of climate change.

We can’t use dams to provide electricity to Ontarians because of climate change. It doesn’t mean a bill of means in terms of the climate change situation. And it’s just a simple fact. When you’ve got these huge emitters that are pumping out billions and billions of CO2, and then we start with our plants focusing.

We try to tell the province what to do as an municipality because they’re going to have to use some gas until the nuclear is ready. Well, what are we supposed to do? Are we going to just rely on the winds of the wind and the sunlight and the risk grounds? We need something substantial to provide industry and residents with the continuous power that they require.

Thanks. Thank you. Go to Councilor Frank and then I also have some questions. Go ahead.

Thank you. Sorry if this continued back and forth, but I feel like if we’re stating various opinions, I just wanted to make sure that this was on record as well. Canada has some of the worst emissions per capita. We have, based on this is on 2021, on average in Canada, an individual per capita will be using about 14.2 tons of CO2 a year.

In China, an individual will be using about five tons of CO2 per year. So per capita, actually Canada is doing terrible. And as a significant emission profile, a lot of that is due to transportation. In fact, over half of that per capita is due to transportation, so personal vehicle use.

So yes, we are population-wise smaller per capita. We’re using significantly more resources than other countries, including China. So I think that it is our everyone’s responsibility, each municipality, each province, each country needs to be working on reducing their emissions. And we have control over a London’s profile.

And that is, again, why we are here to discuss this issue. Thanks. Thank you. And I just want to steer this conversation back to where we are, which is the referral.

Okay, so that’s what we’re dealing with right now. I feel like you’re arguing more of the previous motion than the referral right now. So I’m going to steer us back to the referral. Before I go to you, Councillor Van Mirberg, and I just wanted to comment on this and tell you where my thinking is on this.

So I heard from Mr. Stanford on items two and three, bullets two and three in this motion, of which I’m supportive of getting more information from our community partners and to find out more about our other facilities in town that are also using gas in their operations. So definitely I see those two as valid. Where I’m, and I see number one as valid as well, I should say, but I do feel like I need more information because I have a series of questions and we’re at 339 and we have another committee starting at four.

So my questions one, and I could get into some of them, but the first being, my understanding is when we look at renewables right now in Ontario, we have to back up those renewables with another generation source in theory. So if we were to all of a sudden make a decision to add more renewable, let’s say more wind to our grid or to our system, at that point, would we then have to increase the generation of electricity to within another form in our grid because of reliability issues as well as what the requirement is right now? For me, Madam Chair, we’re getting into an area that is almost beyond what I have access to at this point in time. It’s a very good question.

What the federal government is doing with the provincial counterparts is making sure that Canada can function exactly as is today, but puts in place the necessary changes. They’ve announced the time from 2035 to work towards. What I see before you today is encouragement to find out what is the plan for the provincial government. The provincial government has indicated that it has to work closely with the independent electricity group, IESO, and the plan has been produced, but the plan doesn’t necessarily meet the terms and conditions of the federal regulation.

So the challenge that could occur is infrastructure could be built in the next five to 10 years that is not compliant in 2035. So this is why all parties have to be together and working on what the infrastructure looks like as we look at more renewables, as we look at more nuclear, as we look at more hydro on a Canada-wide basis. So as I see something like this moving forward, our folks with London Hydro have expertise. Enbridge, a local tax paying business has expertise.

All that expertise is required, but we do have a date of 2035. So when we start announcing that things need to change by then, it suggests to me and the staff I work with here, we’ve got 12 years to continue to work with these partners on major concerns at the local government level, but much of this does rely on provincial and federal government working hand-in-hand on infrastructure solutions to make sure our economy stays strong. It is difficult for us at this level of government to get in the specifics, ‘cause we just don’t have access to those technologies and knowledge. Thank you.

And I appreciate that honest and candid response to that question. And I think that is my reason for wanting to support a referral. I do feel like we need more information. And we do have the ability to get that information from some of our partners as well.

I think that they can add to this discussion. For instance, if a way to look at moving forward with more renewables is also to look at battery operations and opportunities for more battery storage, for instance, although it is expensive, if that is more of an option to back up some of our energy as well, I mean, that’s something we have to consider and something we have to have more conversation with as far as I’m concerned as a council in the future as well. I do also think that we’re talking about gas-free, but I do think there’s more of a conversation to be had about how do we use gas appropriately and judiciously as we continue to move toward more renewables. And I understand the desire to move there for 2035.

I understand where the federal target is, but we are kind of caught between the federal government and the province on this. And I would appreciate having government relations weigh in on this as well as to our path as we advocate for change. How do we do that within the parameters of our government relations portfolio? To me, if we’re meeting with the Minister of Energy and we’ve got a letter from the mayor that’s directing this approach, I would expect that we’ve given our government relations folks enough tools to address these concerns as well and how we get there.

And considering we don’t even have the information on how much, I know there’s an estimate of three to 11% of the co-generation facility emissions that are there as well. I do think that there’s just too many unknowns right now for me and I’d like more information before I make a decision. I’m happy to split pieces of this as well, but I think just with the timing with 15 minutes left before the next committee starts as well, I think I’d support a referral at this point to allow for more opportunity for discussion and more information. Councilor Villamureberg, can you add your hand up?

Go ahead. Thank you, Chair. I think that’s an excellent idea to bring the government relations people in on this as well from the city. And then through them, the appropriate areas of the provincial government, such as the Ministry of Energy, the IESO, et cetera, could also give us feedback and more information about what their plan is and why they’re doing it.

And I think, yeah, the more information, the better. And then I just want to quickly, I’m just going to finish quickly comment on the per capita statement. I mean, it’s just simple math when you’ve got 40 million in a large northern country with what? Five time zones, as opposed to a country like China with 1.3 billion, when you take your aggregate numbers and divide by 1.3 billion, it’s going to, there’s a really good possibility it’s going to be less than when you take the aggregates in Canada and divide by 40 million.

So you got to be careful when you start throwing out stats like per capita, when you’re dealing in a situation like this. So anyway, thank you again, Chair. Thank you. And I’m just asking the clerk if it’s possible to split a referral.

Because for me, again, it’s the first part, first bullet where the mayor’s being asked to write the letter that I personally would like to have more information, the other two pieces, which are asking for us to collect information and bring back a report I have no issue with. So it’s just the first clause that I’d like more information. Okay, so I’m looking to split the referral and with no further speakers in our time winding down, I’m looking to open this to vote. Okay, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to split the referral for part A.

Okay, so to split the referral for part A, do I have a seconder to split that? So I guess we’re not splitting it that way then. Okay, so we’ll deal with all of the referral then. So it’s open in front of you that the communication included on the added agenda from Councillor S.

Frank related to the climate emergency action plan phase out gas, be referred to civic administration for review. It’s open. Let’s bring the vote, the motion carries three to two. Okay, thank you.

So that deals with the final item on our agenda. And with that, I’ll look for a motion to adjourn. Councillor Cuddy, Councillor McAllister, I have a show of hands and thank you everyone. Appreciate your time.

Thank you to staff for the very long meeting.