October 10, 2023, at 4:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 4:00 PM; it being noted that Councillors S. Hillier, E. Peloza and P. Van Meerbergen were in remote attendance.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

Councillor S. Franke discloses a pecuniary interest in Item 4.2, having to do with appointments to the London Transit Commission by indicating that her brother is an applicant.

2.   Consent

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That Consent Items 2.1 to 2.3 BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

2.1   City of London Strategic Financial Framework

2023-10-10 Staff Report - City of London Strategic Financial Framework

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the following action be taken:

a)    the City of London Strategic Financial Framework, as appended to the staff report dated October 10, 2023 as “Appendix A”, BE APPROVED; and

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to make the Strategic Financial Framework available on the City’s website.

Motion Passed

2.2   Core Area Ambassador Pilot Program Review

2023-10-10 Staff Report - Core Area Ambassador Pilot Program Review

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, the following actions be taken with respect to a proposed strategy for the Core Area in alignment with the 2023-2027 City of London Strategic Plan:

a)    the staff report dated October 10, 2023, entitled “Core Area Ambassador Pilot Program Review” BE RECEIVED; and

b)    the Core Area Ambassador Pilot Program BE CONCLUDED at the end of 2023.

Motion Passed

2.3   6th Report of the Governance Working Group

2023-10-10 Staff Report - 6th Report of GWG

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 6th Report of the Governance Working Group from its meeting held on September 25, 2023:

a)  the following actions be taken with respect to the draft Electronic Meeting Participation Policy: 

i)     the above-noted draft policy, as appended to the Governance Working Group agenda, BE APPROVED; and,

ii)     the attached proposed by-law to enact the aforementioned policy BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on October 17, 2023;

b)  the following actions be taken with respect to the 2023 Governance Working Group Deferred Matters List: 

i)     the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to bring forward to the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee revisions to the Selection Process Policy for Appointing Members to Committee, Civic Boards and Commissions and the Appointment of Council Members to Standing Committees of Council and Various Civic Boards and Commissions Policy to enact the following:

A)    the requirement to fully complete the selections for appointments of Council Members to standing committees during the selection voting process; and,

B)    the requirement for members to fully complete the submission form(s) for consideration of appointments to standing committees;

ii)     the above-noted Deferred Matters List BE RECEIVED; and

c)  clauses 1.1 and 5.1 BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   2023 Corporate Asset Management Plan

2023-10-10 Staff Report - (4.1) 2023 Corporate Asset Management Plan

2023-10-10 Staff Report - 2023 Corporate Asset Management Plan-Appendix B

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, the following actions be taken with respect to 2023 Corporate Asset Management Plan:

a)    the report and the “2023 Corporate Asset Management Brochure” as appended to the staff report dated October 10, 2023 as Appendix “A” BE RECEIVED for information; and

b)    the “2023 Corporate Asset Management Plan”, as appended to the staff report dated as Appendix “B”, BE APPROVED;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a presentation with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

4.2   Consideration of Appointments to the London Transit Commission (Requires 2 Members)

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the following BE APPOINTED to the London Transit Commission for the term ending November 14, 2026:

  • Jacqueline Madden

  • David Little

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

Consideration of Appointments to the London Transit Commission

Majority Winner: Jacqueline Madden; David Little

4.3   Lobbyist Registrar - Councillors D. Ferreira and S. Franke

2023-10-10 Submission - Lobbyist Registrar-Councillors Ferreira and Franke

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by S. Franke

Motion failed.

Original motion read as follows:

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to conduct a review and present a report on the feasibility, purpose, and associated expenses of implementing a mandatory municipal lobbyist registry. The review should encompass the establishment of a publicly accessible electronic portal for tracking lobbying activities within the municipality, the appointment of a registrar responsible for overseeing the registry, registration rules, potential exemptions, penalties, fines, enforcement mechanisms, and general provisions related to lobbying regulations;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated October 10, 2023 from Councillors D. Ferreira and S. Franke with respect to this matter.

Motion Failed (5 to 9)

4.4   Establishing Homes Ontario - T. Kernaghan, MPP

2023-10-10 Submission - Establishing Homes Ontario

That the following actions be taken with respect to correspondence from T. Kernaghan:

a)    the correspondence from T. Kernaghan, Member of Provincial Parliament, London North Centre dated October 1, 2023 and entitled “Establishing Homes Ontario” BE RECEIVED;

b)    the Government of Ontario BE ADVISED that the Municipal Council of The Corporation of the City of London supports the house debate of the following motion “that, in the opinion of this House, the Government of Ontario should establish and fund a new public agency called Homes Ontario to finance and build 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes on public land over ten years, to be operated and/or constructed by public, non-profit or co-op housing providers”; and

c)    that this matter also BE REFERRED to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) for consideration.

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Stevenson

That the correspondence from T. Kernaghan, MPP dated October 1, 2023 entitled “Establishing Homes Ontario” BE RECEIVED.

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the motion BE AMENDED to include parts b) and c) as follows:

b)   that the Government of Ontario BE ADVISED that the Municipal Council of The Corporation of the City of London supports the house debate of the following motion: “That, in the opinion of this House, the Government of Ontario should establish and fund a new public agency called Homes Ontario to finance and build 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes on public land over ten years, to be operated and/or constructed by public, non-profit or co-op housing providers”; and

c)  that this matter also BE REFERRED to AMO for consideration.

Motion Passed (7 to 6)

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by S. Trosow

Part a), as amended, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by S. Trosow

Part b), as amended, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (7 to 6)

Moved by D. Ferreira

Seconded by S. Trosow

Part c), as amended, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (8 to 5)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Confidential

None.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 6:42 PM.

Full Transcript

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

View full transcript (2 hours, 53 minutes)

I’m going to call the meeting to order. This is the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee meeting. I’m going to start by reading a land acknowledgement. The City of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Leni Peiwok, and Adawandran.

We honor and respect the history languages and culture of the diverse Indigenous people who call this territory home. The City of London is currently home to many First Nation, Métis, and Inuit today. As representatives of the people of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. I’d also like to say the City of London is committed to making every effort to providing alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request.

To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact SPPC at London.ca or 519-661-2489 extension-2425. I will start with disclosures of the pecuniary interest, Councillor Frank. Thank you. As a member of my immediate family is applied for the London Transit Commission, so I’ll be recusing myself for item 4.2.

Any other disclosures? Okay, I’ll just note that Councillor Hillier blows an Van Merberg in participating digitally. With that, we have three consent items. I’ll look to see if anybody would like any of the consent items dealt with separately.

Someone like to move all three of them, moved by Councillor Ramen, seconded by Councillor Cuddy. Any discussion on these three items? Go ahead, Councillor Stevenson. Thank you.

I just had a question on 2.1 strategic financial framework on page 27. I was just curious, given the whole community response and the focus that we just did on the hubs being focused on the high acuity and the highly supportive housing for somewhat long-term care. At the very bottom of that page, it says where there is discretion to step in and provide new or increased investment in programs or services, traditionally the responsibility of other levels of government. The city should pause and consider the consequences of doing so.

These implications are wide ranging and include not only the immediate financial impacts, but also future financial implications, opportunity costs and the precedent that such actions may be setting. Prior to deciding on such matters, a full financial analysis should be completed to ensure that the financial impacts of the decision are well understood and communicated. So I know we’ve already gone ahead and approved that and that’s all good, but I just wondered if we had done a full financial analysis or whether that was considered at all for this plan or any part of it going forward. I’ll start with Ms.

Barbara. Thank you, through the chair. So this document itself specifically is more of the good practices or setter stage for all of this. So that is certainly something where Council is looking to go into what traditionally is done by another level of government that we’re looking to try to codify that practice going forward.

So with respect to the whole of community response specifically, that entire initiative has come through step by step through Council and committee through various steps. So in terms of doing a full financial analysis of the entire piece, that was not done separate and apart then through the reports that were brought regularly through the working tables and all of the other tables that the whole community system response was going through. So some of that initial analysis was provided through those reports that were done at those levels. I think certainly from that perspective, a lot of those pieces where they’ve looked very carefully and where there’s addictions in some of those other pieces, they’ve treaded very carefully to not try to go into taking over what is currently done by other levels of government.

I think there’s some new pieces, but certainly it’s, you know, I think that’s where some of those pieces have not been recommended and have not been brought forward to the Council because they have gone through the appropriate channels where it would be Ministry of Health, et cetera, to deliver some of those pieces. I don’t know if Mr. Dickens has anything else that he wishes to add. Mr.

Dickens, go ahead. Through your worship, that response pretty well covers it. The only thing I would add is that we are the consolidated municipal service manager in the eyes of the province and therefore we do hold responsibility as a municipality to deliver much of the services that are identified in the whole community system response. We’re not really straying away from our municipal responsibility and we are using provincial funding to fund that initiative as well.

Thank you. Just to further questions, is this section or this whole part that came before us? Is it new or is this just some revisions made to it? I was just curious.

Thank you through the chair. So this document is completely new and first time we’re bringing it forward. One of the things that we have talked long about is our strategic financial framework and a plan. So we made reference to the plan and principles that we’ve used.

If you recall at the beginning of budget last year when we approved 2023, we brought forward some key principles. This is flushing out those key principles and finally putting them into a document that Council, staff, the public can refer to as guiding principles to encompass all of our policies and really set that framework to be able to actively use this to guide some of the financial decisions that are made and under which all of our policies that we bring forward sit. So this is an entirely new document and something that we’ve been working towards and are very happy to finally bring forward for council endorsement. I just want to say thanks then.

It is quite an extensive document. It was interesting to read and thanks for all the efforts there. Thank you. Any other speakers to be creative for us?

Councilor Trossa. Go ahead. On page 14, could you say a little bit more about the risk-based approach and what are some of the elements that would go into assessing risk? Thank you through the chair.

So really in terms of this one speaks completely to compliance and ensuring that the city of London as a whole is within the compliance and what the risk levels would be of deviating from whether it be regulations, our own internal debt policies, those kinds of pieces. So from a risk perspective is really trying to look at materiality and what would cause a significant deviation with respect to something that is materially different. So it’s really trying to bring in obviously one of the key guiding principles from a financial statement perspective is all of the accounting standards that we ultimately have to abide by. If we have gone astray from those that creates risk and obviously when the auditors go through our financial statements, they calculate a level of materiality that they feel might materially misstate what is presented.

That is the concept of which we’re looking at a risk-based approach. So risk in terms of from a financial decision, what could significantly be an error or deviate from council making the right decision? What are those different levels? So those kinds of things are really when you’re looking at a risk-based approach, you start to get a sense of what could be how significant could an error or a change in assumptions make the ultimate decision that council is going to do potentially be different.

So really it’s trying to embed that thought in all of our work, how we go forward, to look at significant risk of whether it be instances of error, material changes in assumptions, deviations in terms of things that could impact financial decisions and what could ultimately change, what council might want to, what could change a decision from somebody relying on that financial information? Thank you, Councillor Frank. Thank you and through the chair. One, I just want to say thank you for including the ESG risks as you have been for the last couple of years on a lot of financial documents.

I think it’s really important that we continue to use the climate lens amongst other things on financial frameworks and processes. So thank you to that. And then I had one question regarding the target tax levy set before each multi-year budget. So I remember when we were going through these deliberations in February, I believe, I think both Councillor Frayer and I asked multiple times that the range that we said at the beginning was not going to dictate the final decisions and that staff will come forward with a list of recommended business cases as well as optional ones.

And then I know from the past multi-year budget, for example, I think the target, the final numbers, 3.4%, was at the last, anyway, I guess I’m confused between we set a range, but the range was not binding in any way as we were told by staff. And so then I guess I’m kind of confused. Is the target the final number that we pick at the end of the multi-year budget process? So again, last year’s, I think was 3.4 over four years total?

Or is the target the range that we discussed, although knowing that it was not like I said in stone one? So I guess I’m just looking for clarification on those. Thank you. Good.

Thank you through the chair. So the target is intended to be able to provide that range of which civic administration would ultimately go back and do the work ultimately through the budget process. Whatever decisions council makes are the ones that are done in binding throughout that process. The target is really intended to give civic administration a guide so that when they bring forward a budget, it is in the realm of what council is ultimately wishing to look at.

So earlier this year, when we had the target setting exercise, I believe that was in April, that was where we had looked at, of course, to give us some guidance. And certainly it was not binding, but is what we’re using as a planning to guide us in our planning in terms of those or developments coming forward to look at what would ultimately meet those targets and be able to to give council the options of how it will ultimately make those decisions throughout the multi-year budget process. So the target is really the guide and intended to be the path to be able to give some context to the work that civic administration and the business cases that are being brought forward to be able to give that guide. But ultimately, the decision-making through council is what is the final binding and what would ultimately set the tax levy.

Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to see clarity because the paragraph there sounded a bit stronger about adhering to the target. So I just want to make sure that it was completely still within our realm after that point. Thank you.

Councillor Ferrell. Thank you, and through you, I have some questions for 2.2, but I guess I’ll start with 2.1 first. I did appreciate the report report. It was very descriptive in that appendix.

I will be looking into that more thoroughly once we get before we get to the budget discussion. So I just wanted to comment on that. For 2.2, for the core area ambassador pilot program review, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. So I do see in the report, it does mention in the executive summary, 74% of survey respondents are aware and 89% have interacted with the core area ambassadors and they see value in the program.

90% see value in the program, the next line, and 65% say that the program should continue. So I just wanted to maybe get an overview of why we are taking this direction to conclude the pilot program. Through the chair. So just highlighting some of those numbers.

So one of the final values that you get there as well is that about 65% of the survey respondents think thought that the program should continue as it was originally highlighted. So what we’ve done is we’ve really taken being very conscious of who we’re talking about with the objectives of the budget, the multi-year budget moving forward, and to know that there will be finite resources, of course, and try to cherry-pick the items that are within this program that people really did feel had a value. So you’ll see that it highlights that it’s part of the multi-year budget business case will be putting forward that we focus on that engagement with the business and the property owners piece of it, which is something that would require far less staff time and folks to be able to provide those services, which would reduce the overall cost by about 550,000. So we’re trying to balance what people like to see what they saw in this program, what they thought was of value, and then also what the cost pressures.

Thank you for that. I guess my next question would be for the ambassadors themselves, the individuals, the people, what happens to them? Are they going to have opportunities to work with the city moving forward? Through the chair, absolutely.

So the idea of speaking to to counsel and getting their commitment on this right now is to get people opportunities if there’s jobs that are available within the city to put through those applications. These are temporary positions and they were slated in the offer letters that were initially given to people as well. They’d say that it would be final as of this the end of this December, so it won’t be a surprise to anybody, but giving them a little bit of notice is what we’re trying to do. It will allow people to apply for jobs within the city if they choose to.

Thank you for that. And I guess my final question would be I do see some reference here for the possible position for a courier business or owner connector position. Just that would it looks to me that would be one specific role, and if that would to be connecting with all the businesses downtown, which I know is a very numerous number, I just wanted to know is that is that just one suggestion of a way to go or is there more possibilities in the future that we could look into as well? Through the chair, so what you’ll see actually in November is a holistic look at what we’re going to be doing in the core.

It’s going to be a companion report to the implementation plan that’ll highlight all the different items that we’re going to be moving forward with. This would be a component of that, so it would be a full time person that would still be visiting individual businesses similar to what some bastards were able to do when they weren’t on the street working with folks from the community. But it would only be one small component, and if it’s something that’s successful and that people feel that there’s a that’s very much a value in it, then it’s something that could be expanded in the future. Okay, thank you.

Any other speakers? Councillor Stevenson, go ahead. Thank you. Just a quick comment on 2.2 and thanking staff for their recommendation.

It’s in agreement with what I’ve been hearing, and I’m very excited to see this holistic core area response coming forward. So thanks for all the work that you’re doing on that. Okay, I don’t know how many other speakers for the three items under consent. They’re both, they’re all moved and seconded.

We’ll open this for voting. So how many check to see if they’re mics on? Councillor Stevenson. Oh, it was Councillor Trossa.

Thank you. Councillor Trossa, closing the vote. The motion carries 14 to 0. Okay, we have no scheduled items.

We have a number of items for direction. We’re going to deal with those individually. First is 4.1, which is the 2023 corporate asset management plan. There’s a presentation associated with this.

So I will invite Ms. Barbone, do you want to introduce team that’s presenting and we’ll take it from there. Thank you, Your Worship. So through you, we will walk you through the presentation.

I think this asset management plan that we’ve been able to complete an update is a very large process and certainly encompasses a lot of work led through the capital asset management team across the corporation. So the presentation hopefully will walk you through the key components of the plan and take this very, very large document and kind of give you the coals notes version and give you, I think, some explanation of the key concepts that I think will be helpful to help understand exactly what this plan is telling us and what the significant volume of work actually tells us in terms of some of our work to advance capital asset management at the City of London. So I’m going to turn it over to Mr. Shahata who’s going to walk you through the presentation.

So thank you very much. So to start, I have lots of slides here. I’m not going to go through all the slides. I’m going to try to keep it simple.

But if you have any questions after that, I’d be more happy to go through them. The three key things I’d like to highlight is the regulation requirement. How did we change from the last asset management plan that we have done in 2019 to the latest one in 2023? Overview of the asset management plan itself.

What are the key findings and how to navigate the big documents of the asset management plan that we have? Then I’m going to finalize by conclusion. I have a recommendation. The key thing in this slide is we have due dates based on the Oreg 588-17.

We are meeting all the due dates ahead of time. We are meeting all three phases July 1st 2025 today for directly own city assets. We are planning to meet it for both an agency by July 1st 2024. So we are head of SCAT.

One of the key change between the 2019 camp plan and 2023 camp plan is the level of service. The regulation requires us to report on the current level of service that we are providing and something called proposed level of service. So in one of the slides here, I’m putting the definition of the current level of service that what we are currently providing and the proposed what we use to come up with the proposed is council approved documents like master plans like council strategic plan or any regulation requirement. That is the guiding principle for us to include in the proposed level of service.

In terms of the scope of services that we have, this cityscape provide an overview of what services we have directly on. We have around 28.5 billion wars of replacement value for our assets and that’s what’s included in our asset management plan. The plan structure has introduction. Then we have 19 service area section.

Each one of them are similar. It speaks about the state of local infrastructure, what assets we own, what’s the condition, what’s the level of service, what do we mean, if it’s regulation mandated or it’s not. Large cycle management, what type of activities we repair, replace, rehabilitate our assets, then the gap and discussion conclusion. We finalize our asset management plan by infrastructure gap financial strategy to provide some recommendation to council what need to be done, then conclusion and recommendation.

I want to highlight that 28.5 billion is our replacement value and 80 or 90 percent of it is on the core infrastructure as defined by the regulation which is water with water, roads, those represent 90 percent of our replacement value. The breakdown of all the service area are listed over here. The other thing I want to speak about is the condition. Overall, we have a condition of good.

Around 89 percent are fair and above, around 11 percent poor and very poor. To give you a context, what do I mean by poor and very poor and fair, I put some slides over there with pictures. This is the linguistic description of each of the condition grade. If you look at condition one, two and three, the pipe itself is still there, no structural defects on the pipe.

Then four and five, that’s when we start seeing deterioration and we need to take some actions as a repair or rehabilitation. That’s what we mean by poor and very poor. Breakdown of all by service areas listed over here and those are based on replacement value. So those percentages are based on replacement value.

Then the other topic I want to speak about is life cycle management. One of the things that we have done in this plan is we model three scenarios to follow the regulation. The first one is based on the current budget, what percentage of our assets are going to do to rate and to what per degree. So if you look into the first graph, 20 years from now, you’re going to find over here, we are having lots of poor and very poor.

I don’t think it’s chosen in this screen, but over here, for the maintained level of service, we have less poor and very poor. For the proposed level of service, we have much less poor and very poor. That’s an indication of more investment or require to maintain a specific scenario. This is a gap projection.

Now I’m going to speak a little bit about the infrastructure gap. Historically, the first time we presented a gap was in 2014 and we projected back then we’re going to have a gap of 466 million by year 2022. We moved forward and updated our assumption in 2019 and we projected another gap for another 10 years to be 556, as you can see in the red graph over here. If we followed the same approach, we have been updating our gap.

We would have been today 290 million current gap. However, due to regulation requirement, we are presenting two different gaps. So now, this 190 is divided into 100 million current for maintained level of service and 546 for the proposed level of service. Those two gaps are projected to grow to 946 and 1.4 billion.

The concern is how quickly is the gross of the gap. That’s a concern that we have. So we are putting some recommendations to help you address the gross of the gap. How is this gap?

So the top measure can be used for the gap. Transportation is the biggest one followed by recreation parks and sanitary and London Fire Department. In terms of the options that we are providing to address the gap, something we called in financial sustainability. What we are trying to do, we are not trying to eliminate the gap, we are trying to reduce the gap.

And in order to do that, we look into different approaches. Like we look into external sources, we try to capitalize how much money we get from external sources as much as possible. We have policies like surplus and deficit policy that contribute one-time funding to addressing the gap. And then we provide options in the asset management plan to address the gap over short term or long term.

10 years from now, 20 years, 50 years, and council can decide how quickly they want to close the gap. Then we have our assessment gloss policy which is helping us for new assets. We don’t create a new gap. And the strategic plan is helping us for service improvement to not have additional gap to our budget.

In the asset management plan, we have less of recommendation. We are recommending to maintain current level of service gap over the next 20 to 22 years by 2045 for 2050. That’s going to have some financial impacts. We’re going to provide a business case to you in the multi-year budget outlining our request, balancing everything.

And at the end, the recommendation of the plan goes through enhancing the plans itself, adding more assets, doing more detailed analysis, enhancing the asset management program, and continue working with the boards and agency to help implement asset management plan for them. Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m going to ask the question first.

So I’m going to turn the chair over to Councillor Layman. I’ll go to the mayor. I actually want you to put your slide show back up because my question relates to one of the slides. Sorry, I should have headed you off there.

You go back to the slide that shows the old gap and then the new gap based on the new legislation. So this chart, stop right there for now. So my understanding of this chart having been on council almost that whole time is we had the projected gap. And then we made a number over a series of years of what I felt was good financial and policy decisions to say, listen, we’re going to not only invest in infrastructure gap in the multi-year budget successfully, but we’re going to ensure that a portion of municipal surpluses go towards it.

We’re going to ensure that we one time assessment growth into debt reduction and infrastructure gap as we kind of float it year over year when we have surpluses and then carry it forward. So we’ve been making all these adjustments. And I remember seeing the chart where I was like, we’re doing great. We were at 466 million.

We’ve got it all the way down to 290 based on some good financial decision making. And then if you kind of flip forward to your next chart here where you show the change of legislation pieces, now it doesn’t look so good anymore. So could you explain for the public what changed in the legislation that has caused us to look like we’re making a tremendous amount of progress into this steeply sloped upward trend that doesn’t look so good? So let me follow.

First thing, when we did the infrastructure gap, we are trying to be apples to apples comparison as much as possible. That’s why I presented the previous years and I presented this one. So based on council decision and the infrastructure gap reserve fund, the policies that you have established, we maintain the lower gap than what we project. As you said over here in this slide from 466 to 209.

This is apples to apple comparison. When the regulation came to effect back in 2018, it was new for us. We were trying to adapt to it. So the regulations saying, no, no, no, we don’t want one gap anymore.

We want you to present the current state that you are in right now. And what’s the gap for this and what’s the requirement to maintain this. And what’s the future state that you’d love to see that you’ve approved in your financial plans, for example, master plans? And how much money do you need?

And can the municipality afford that or not? So that’s why you’re going to see the proposed level of service is higher because that’s a choice for you. Do we want to maintain what we approved in our master plans that we’re going to maintain? Back then, maybe you didn’t have the financial impact of it.

All we want to adjust, are we happy with the current maintain level of service numbers or not? So this is why those numbers are presented differently because of the regulation required. The challenge is inflation has played also a great role. So in the past, if there’s no big inflation like we had, I would be here and tell you we even projected lower number than what we projected in 2018 plan.

But unfortunately, that’s not the case. Everything has increased dramatically. So as well, if we want to replace a pipe, if we want to replace a road, it will also increase how much money we need to replace those roads. So the number of assets are the same, but the cost to replace them or even reduce would reduce the number of assets in poor and very poor compared to 2019.

But the cost to replace them has increased dramatically. That’s why the projection is showing high. So I wanted that to be articulated for colleagues in the public because I don’t want us to lose the work we’ve done, but this has to be accounted for and presented in several different ways now. And I think when I look at how we can find out how we’re doing, there’s actually a good comparison about the percentages across municipalities because on the inflation side, that’s not something we can control.

There’s just the cost of things and rebuilding them and constructing them and maintaining levels of service has gone up, but it has for everybody. So when you see our relative comparison of how we’re doing with other municipalities, you see we’re doing relatively favorably. And it’s because we made strategic investments in the past and policy decisions that allow us to sock away money when we can in the ways that we can. So I just didn’t want that to get lost in the debate and discussion because I know you have to present this in several different ways now based on legislation, but I don’t want it to lose the incredible work that I think our staff have done in executing Council’s policy decisions and fiscal planning framework that allows us to do things like maintain a AAA credit rating, even if now the charts look a little bit different than they may have a few years ago.

So that’s all the questions I had, but I appreciate you letting me explore that a little bit in the discussion. I’ll turn the chair back to the mayor. Councilor Troso. Thank you.

I’m still trying to digest this report. We’ve only had it for a few days and there’s a lot of information in here. I assume mostly this is a reference document that we can be using that there aren’t a lot of decisions that are embedded in here that we’re making by approving this. That’s correct.

So that document that you have in front of you is helping you to change decision making based on the outcome of this. So right now we are documenting the current state. What’s our condition? What needs to be done to maintain the level of service or achieve proposed level of service?

It’s up to you to decide which way you’re going to go. That’s very helpful and it addresses most of my concerns. The questions I have though is the relationship between this report and other agencies that are either wholly owned by the corporation or are under boards or commissions. And looking through here, I don’t see the public library.

I don’t see London Hydro. I don’t see London Middlesex housing and that’s because this report only deals with the direct assets, not those. That’s correct. And we are working actually with all the boards and agencies that are included in our consolidated financial statement.

So all the ones that you mentioned except London Hydro, it’s not, are part of the board plan that we are working with them to develop their asset management plan, providing them advisory role. So by July 1st, 2024, you’re going to have a plan for each one of those boards separately that’s going to be very similar to this one. Through the chair. So could we expect then additional information about the evaluation of, for example, good, fair, poor from other entities such as London Middlesex housing?

That’s correct. Okay. So if I have grave concerns about the conditions of those buildings, this is not the place to raise it. And there will be an opportunity to do that in the future.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. I had Councillor Lehman next. I have a few questions before I go into that.

I’ll move the staff report. Okay. So there’s a seconder for the staff recommendations, Councillor Cuddy. Okay.

Go ahead, Councillor Lehman. Thank you. The mayor mentioned, I referred to our credit rating, pretty favorable comparisons to the cities that you showed in the report. Can you tell me how that impacts our AAA credit rating?

Obviously, I know you can’t speak for Moody’s whoever does the rating, but just in generalities. So thank you to the chair. So essentially the credit rating looks at in terms of the city of London’s reliance on debt and the ability to pay. I mean, in a short, really succinct comment, that’s how you would look at the credit rating.

So when we make the reference to the credit rating, one of the things that we’ve done is try to ensure that we are choosing the right vehicle to support lifecycle renewal, which is not debt as an example. So that’s where each and every year over the multi-year budget, over the last couple of multi-year budgets, we’ve been putting additional investment as part. They’ve been business cases. Those are done through operating funds to support that.

Where it is appropriate for new assets and for growth assets, that’s where debt would be considered. So in some cases, and this was one of the many historical things that were done prior to getting our financial strategy in order, we had a large reliance on debt to support lifecycle renewal. That was one of the things that started early in the 70s was starting to put pressure on the city’s AAA credit rating in terms of maintenance because our reliance on debt was so significant. That’s where the work towards putting our strategic financial policy in place to limit, put in a debt cap, and start to move the amounts of debt to more appropriate choices.

So that’s really the relationship, and so that’s something in terms of future multi-year budgets, where the investment has been forward for additional investment in lifecycle renewal. We have avoided the use of debt where it hasn’t been appropriate. Legislation has been mentioned a few times as well so far. The legislation, as my understanding, is it requires us to report out on the gap?

Does it also require us to meet a certain parameter for that gap? No, the regulation doesn’t speak about meeting a specific parameter. The regulation even doesn’t speak about how to develop or calculate the gap. So there is lots of assumption between London or other municipalities, how to develop the gap.

The other thing I want to highlight is the regulations asking us to report to you to say, “How are we going to address the gap?” We don’t have to completely eliminate the gap, but what are we doing to control the gap? That’s the key thing that we’re going to be in our annual report going back to you, saying, “This is what we have done, and how are we monitoring the gap? Is it going up or down for understanding the amount?” Last question, Mayor. I just want to be clear.

You’d mentioned when we’re doing forecasting, like long range, like 10-year forecasting. That’s a challenge in itself, especially if we’re trying to figure out, let’s say, inflation, who can figure out inflation two months from now versus 10 years. But you did mention future infrastructure. Are we measuring the gap on current infrastructure needs, or are we projecting future?

Are we saying, “What’s the infrastructure gap going to be on a bridge that we haven’t even built yet are thinking of? Are you somehow working the numbers into the algorithm to factor that in some sort of way?” Through the chair. No. The information that you have in this, based on the existing assets that we currently have, any new asset would come through the development charges or any other avenue.

It’s not included in you. Thank you. Councillor McAllister. Thank you.

And through the chair, I appreciate all the hard work that went into this. We’re looking at big numbers, obviously. I’m reading this maybe slightly different than some other folks in terms of, I’m looking at the percentages of the state of our local infrastructure. And just in terms of the calculations that would go into any city of our age, my concern is, when I look at the poor or the very poor areas, are those concentrated in the older, more established neighborhoods?

Because I’m just assuming that newer infrastructure are new assets. Obviously, it’s not being classified as poor, or at least I’d hope not anyways. And I was just wondering if you could speak maybe more to in terms of our lifecycle renewal process, whether these older areas are being given priority, or if they’re sitting in those poor and very poor for a certain amount of time, or whether we factor those in in terms of future projects? Go ahead.

Okay. So I’ll take a long way to answer this question. So the way it works is we have different service area, each one of the service area, we’d have a percent of assets in poor and really poor. And that’s known.

The way we calculate the condition is not age-based, at least for the big infrastructure, we try to do condition assessment, like roads, like water and wastewater. We have some parameters to come up with the condition. So I cannot necessarily relate it to age only, as the main factor, it’s one of the factors. For sure, older assets may be in poor condition if we didn’t intervene earlier, because we have some rehabilitation techniques that we use, some repair techniques we use.

So the asset management plan, what it’s doing, is looking to all the assets and trying to assess what’s the best scenario that can be done. Should we repair or replace and come up with the list? And then we speak with the service area and compare this to the real life example. Is the projection correct or not?

Can we adjust? And we come up with the plan that goes to the budget and you approve the plan, the budget. So what the asset management plan is doing is saying, okay, based on the amount of funding we put over there, maybe it’s not enough if you’re going to maintain the same level. Maybe we’re going to end up with more assets and poor and very poor 10 years from now.

And that’s a projection that we have over there or 20 years from now. The location of those, it varies based on the database that we have, based on many conditions. So I can’t really pinpoint specific, but that’s how we calculate it. Go ahead.

Yeah, just following up. I mean, I understand the difficulty in terms of that, but to me, there’s a condition factor, obviously, as you indicated. But I mean, you could have an asset that its condition is, you know, fair, poor, very poor, but functionality-wise is not being utilized. And I think something like that, is that accounted for in this report?

Because we do have some assets that I would argue are not being utilized, but we would still count that if we’re just rating it based on condition, it would probably rate higher, but technically it’s not utilized. Yes and no, yes. For some assets, in our decision criteria, when we are predicting what need to be done, we take more than just condition, we look at other parameter capacity utilization rate, in some of them, but not all the assets are done this way. Go ahead.

I’m also wondering with this, in terms of our renewal, I mean, we’re obviously trying to encourage infill projects. Is this factoring in future growth in terms of having to build out these services to larger areas? Because I would imagine, I mean, obviously, inflation is driving that, but the more we have to build versus upgrade would cost us more, would it not? No, any gross related will be coming through the development charges or other avenues.

This looking at existing assets, when we update our development charges by law, we may have some information that come in the next asset management plan, but for now, no, it doesn’t. Councillor Frank. Thank you, yes, and through the chair, I’m a little bit confused about a couple slides, so I was hoping to pull them back up, or I have them up, and you can probably scroll through your computer. But on page eight, it has a list of the total replacement value being 28.5 billion with water, wastewater, wastewater, wastewater, and transportation, but then you scroll down to slide 19.

In that box, it has transportation at the top by a long shot, and then Parks and Rec, sports, wastewater, land fire department. So I guess I’m confused as to the numbers in just the raw numbers on slide eight, make it look like wastewater and water are so much more expensive, whereas then slide 19, transportation mobility look like the gap contributor. So I don’t know if you could walk us through that a little bit. So to start, when you look into the infrastructure gap, you don’t look into only condition today.

This is condition today. You’re looking to want me to be done over the next 10, 20, 50 years, or even 100 years. So a road over the next 50 years is going to be replaced twice, or the surface is going to be three times. For a water main, it has more replacement value, less, but it’s not going to be replaced until 50, 70 years from now.

So this is a snapshot of the condition, but what needs to be done to the road in terms of different treatment, that’s what contributes to the bigger gap that we have. Sometimes we also lose a window for opportunity. So right now, it’s good to resurface the road. It’s going to be good.

If we don’t resurface it now, the only solution for it is going to be replacement. So the cost, if I don’t do it today, it’s going to be escalating, not because I’m doing the same treatment. I have to do a different treatment for it. So that’s what contributing to the different.

The road is the biggest gap for all of them. Yes, that’s correct. Thank you. That does help.

So the slide on page 19 is like present day. Okay. And then following up on Councilor McAllister in regards to growth. So does that mean the more roads we have, the larger the specific gap will be?

Because as you said, we have to resurface them more often. Or just again, I’m trying to figure out between this and wastewater. Like, wastewater is saying right now we don’t have as much replacement, but the future there might be some big timely one-time cost. So I’m just trying to compare those two.

Sure. And maybe you want to add something about like policy decisions related to if you change the pavement quality index threshold under what you repair a road, you change the infrastructure gap. So took it from my voice. Two things I want to say.

Okay. The first thing is deciding what’s appropriate level of service for road is pavement quality index 60, 50 per port. That’s a decision that you can change and this number will dramatically change. However, we need to make sure it’s safe.

So there is regulation requirement that we need to maintain, but also how good the quality of the road is something that you can adjust. The second thing is assessment cross business case. That’s what we do. Any new road that we build, any new asset that we acquire, we have a business case that gets money so it will not create a additional burden on the infrastructure gap.

Those policies are helping us not to see this number skyrocketing. It’s actually less than what I would imagine if we didn’t do those policies since 2015 to today. Thank you. That’s very helpful.

The other area that I want to ask of it about, so I noticed that forestry is listed on here as well as parks. And I’m just wondering for valuing of nature, I know that there’s something called natural asset management, so I’m wondering the placement of value that we’re putting on forestry and parks is that calculated more than just like the, you know, this park has, you know, play equipment and some grass and a bench. And therefore, let’s say the value of it is $100,000. Is there more value being attributed to it because it’s also a carbon sink and stormwater management resource?

I’m just wondering how you are, I guess, assigning value to parks and forestry in this plan. Okay, so for forestry and parks, we consider the hard assets that you refer to, but also we consider trees and wetland, and we have evaluation approach based on the diameter of the tree, and we come up with a replacement value. What we don’t take into consideration, I think it’s the many approach where you take the service base, what’s the value of the asset of this tree bringing? We don’t do that.

We base it on the diameter of the tree or the woodland area, and how many trees per woodland. So we have some assumption, but not a full service based analysis. Thank you, and to follow up on that, I’m just wondering, has there been any internal discussions about starting to do natural asset management? I know it’s a whole new complicated ball game, but I, you know, given my background, it’s something that I think would be really cool if maybe we could explore.

So I’m just wondering if you guys have had some internal discussions about natural asset management? Yes, so we have participated in many ways to improve our natural asset management plan, and there is a study that we are doing recently that’s going to assess how we are doing it or we do not. When I compare to other municipalities, I think we are doing a good job. We may not be there yet, but I think we are doing good in natural asset.

Quantifying them and putting it in the asset management plan, we were among the first municipalities to do that and put it this way. Thank you, and that’s great to hear. Good job. Last question, my understanding is with all of our corporate asset management plans, and in general, we’re doing like for like replacement, and I’ve had this discussion in the past, but I’m wondering, for example, as we’re placing gas powered lawn equipment that staff use to do parks, and I know that we’ve had some discussions about banning fossil fuel based lawn equipment.

Is there consideration at the time of purchase decision to green and change the practices? Like, I know this is kind of the standard, but I’m wondering, I guess, in the moment for decision making if we’re making slightly different decisions. Yes, so under the proposed level of service scenarios that you have over there, we have what we call green for like. So we have an asset that can be replaced for green.

So under the proposed level of service, we are taking C. We are looking to some components for building. We are looking to some components for a fleet that can be replaced through a green approach, and we including that as part of the proposed level of service. Perfect.

Thank you. Those are all my questions, and thank you for answering them so well. Any other speakers? Councillor Stevenson, go ahead.

Thank you, and through the chair, I was just wondering on, I don’t know, what page to refer to here. I guess it’s page 18, where it’s got the infrastructure gap overview and the chart, and it’s got the old method and then the new methods. Could you just explain how we went from $290 million under the old method down to $100 million for 2022? Yeah, so the way we were calculating the gap previously, we were including a mix of things.

Some proposed level of service were there because that’s a standard that we approved through the master plan and Councillor Street direction, and some are current. And a good example of that roads, for example, the specific condition that we are in right now, if we want to maintain it, that’s going to be in one scenario. If we want to achieve what we’d like to achieve, that’s much higher. So that’s big contribution to the gap difference, is we are not using what’s approved, we are using what’s currently we have, and what we’d like to achieve.

That’s why we have the two scenarios over there. Thank you, and through the chair, so prior to that, we were using just some of the proposed levels of service, like we were in sort of, because it’s right in the middle, and we were sort of in that halfway place before. It was a mix back. Some of them, some service area were including a proposed, the majority were not including it, so it was mix back.

Transportation is one of them, including part, not the full, other areas were including part, but when the new regulation came, we had to separate them, that’s why we reported two different numbers. Thank you for that clarification. And I noticed on page, I guess it’s 12, where it lists the state of the local infrastructure and the poor and very poor, the one that really jumps out is our London Fire Department with a lot of poor and very poor. Just wondering if you could, I didn’t ask this question in advance, so if you don’t know it’s fine, I’ll send an email, but I just wondered if there was something you could let us know about that particular one, anything to be concerned about, or if that’s going to be coming up in the business cases?

Go ahead. Okay, so I think in the service area section of fire, we expand upon which one of them is poor and very poor. One of the key things that comes to my mind is the change in the useful life of the emergency fleet, so it was 20 years, now it became 12 and three, 15 years, that’s major contribution for the fire department, we use age to come up with conditions, so a lot of it is going to be poor and very poor due to age and we cannot replace it that because it’s a new strategy due to the London Fire Master Plan that we have established, that’s I think the key reason over there, but the section I’m going to go through with and if there is additional stuff I’m going to communicate to you. It’s a ramen.

Thank you and thanks for the report. I wanted to ask, I wanted to drill down specifically on our senior centers and equipment, so I noted that about 91% is either poor or very poor, so I’m trying to wrap my head around what does that mean with an aging population, with other factors that we have to consider in terms of our infrastructure gap and other pressures as well as I guess I was also thinking about our strategic plan and did we do enough to think about our strategy for seniors and what those needs were and then these infrastructure needs as well, so I’m just wondering from your perspective you can just speak to that senior center and equipment piece. So let me speak about two things, for the long term care, I understand correctly, we have the building itself and we have equipment decided and in the plan we are showing the distribution of the condition for each one of them. One thing you want to start with, we don’t necessarily need everything to be in very good condition, that’s not really the best use of resource, but we don’t need it to be in very poor condition.

Having a distribution, some in good, some in fair, some in poor and very poor is actually healthy for our asset management. For long term care in particular, the building itself was recently built 2011 or something like that, now it’s deteriorating, there is things that need to be done for the building, but still fair, I showed you the picture, fair is still good, it’s still okay to work, has some deficiency, we are addressing them, but they didn’t reach the point of foreign variables, I won’t be concerned. If I look into the equipment over there, the portfolio, how it is distributed, it’s actually not bad, that means we need to invest in this area, we need to make sure that assets, when they reach poor or very poor, we quickly bring them to fair or better, but I can’t say this alarming thing over here, it’s still performing, it’s meeting, it requires delivering the level of service that you want, it may be that you are eating because it’s aging, that’s normal, and we just have to be proactive and address them when time comes. Thank you.

On another topic, on page eight of the staff report, table three, where it talks about the tax supported optional infrastructure gap mitigation, average annual tax levy, and then it has the recommendation for 2045 to 2055, 2050, sorry, I’m just wondering if you can help us to better understand the guidance that you’re providing here. Okay, so in the infrastructure gap financial strategy section, we analyze a little bit more detail all the gaps, the maintain level of service and the proposed level of service. And one of the things that we are doing there is we are saying, hypothetically, if you want to eliminate the gap or want to mitigate the gross of the gap, how long does it take? And what is the tax rate that’s appropriate to put it there?

So what we have done is we did our calculation based on the numbers that we have, and we provided some alternative for you to consider. The one I highlighted over there is the 22 to 27 years. This is average when you look into other municipalities and look at us, even in the past, this is a target that we always target between 22 years, 27 years. If we’re going to base our decision solely in property tax increase, this is the percentage that we should have every year.

And that’s a lot of money. So we are trying in that financial strategy to put other options, but are the other options alone or good? Maybe not. If this alone is good, not, so it’s a balance.

So we are providing you with alternative to choose from how much or how quickly you want to address the gap. And based on your direction, we can update the asset management plan and say, are we maintaining the gap or not? And after the multi-budget, we’re going to provide you as an update showing based on the decision that you took in the multi-budget, based on the decision that you took in the business cases. This is a new gap and provided back to you.

Thank you. And I appreciate that having that perspective. I’m wondering if you might be able to comment on, as we set a target, why don’t we also set a tax support and mitigation? So why don’t we do those things before we, and in preparation for all of our budget discussions in terms of setting as a council a mitigation amount that we’re comfortable, whether that’s the range of 0.3 to 0.36.

Or if it’s like, do any councils do that? Is that something that you’d recommend? Good. Thank you through the chair.

So that’s really what this is intended to do, is to provide that guidance of roughly this would be an ideal amount to invest, to begin to mitigate that gap over that period of time. The reason we don’t do this outside of the budget process is because ultimately council might choose to change that number based on what the holistic tax levy requirements and business cases, which basically link to all the other needs and requirements of the municipality. So that’s where some of that balancing is there. I mean, this is ideally what would give you that range.

So $7.5 million is 1%. So you can start to get a bit of a sense of the magnitude year over year. It can be certainly higher than council might wish to ultimately invest. So that’s where the tax levy really is intended to give that target setting where we did earlier this year to look at that broader sense for the budget as a whole, noting that there are many, many business cases that ultimately are going to be before the council to make the decision.

This is one of many that will come forward. So council will need to, as they have in other previous small-tier budgets, determine what that level of investment is, the council’s comfortable with noting what the overall tax levy is going to be. And it may not. And I think a perfect example is the last multi-year budget.

What was approved in 2020, for example, was updated through some of the further updates in light of the other pressures and that we did decrease it slightly over the period of time. But we did also have additional investments that were made through the policies that council has already supported that continued to allow that gap to be mitigated, even though the overall incremental amount that went forward through the tax levy was decreased through council decision. So it’s really a balancing act. This is one pressure of many that the municipality and that the municipal council have to determine how it wishes to spend its resources.

So that’s really, this is the guide. But when we bring the business case before you as front of the budget, that will be when council will weigh that investment in light with all of the other business cases before it. Other speakers. I’m just going to add one piece at the end.

First off, I want to say very good discussion. I appreciate all the questions people had. This is something that is very important, the long-term assets of the city, but also something that’s very complex. And the intersection of the current state of our assets, the level of service, and the interplay of those, as well as the number of policies that we have that can impact the infrastructure gap is important.

But also that we set the level of service. And so the infrastructure gap is set by changes that we make in the level of service as well. And as well, when it looks at one of the major components roads and transportation, it’s also, as Councilor McAllister tried to get at, you know, where those assets are deteriorated, where they’re not, can play a factor as well, right? Where, where major arterial roads may be needed to be repaired, others may be able to wait a little bit longer because they’re, yes, less travel, yes, less utilized.

And so the different assets in different states of condition is not necessarily a bad thing, but that there’s a lot of interplay here with many other decisions we make. So I want to just commend colleagues on the questions that you asked from the comments you made. I think they’re very astute and thoughtful. And this is a complex topic that we’ll talk about many times and again at the budget process.

So this is moved and seconded. I will open, I’ll open this for for voting. Okay, thank you very much. And thank you to our staff for the thoughtful answers to our questions.

4.2 is consideration of appointments to the London Transit Commission requires two members. So colleagues, all of them are loaded into the system as per the way that we make these selections. So we can proceed with with voting as we normally do, which is just the preferential voting system to see who the potential top two candidates are, but we still need a motion to approve those. Of course, there is the opportunity to make a pitch for different candidates.

If you’d like to do that before we even start the voting process, you can advocate for some or others. We could certainly go about it that way. So maybe I’ll just before we get to any sort of preferential voting, I’ll open it up to colleagues who might want to make comments on the process or comments on any specific candidates that they’d like to advocate for Council for you. You have your hand up, so go ahead.

Thank you, through you. I’m going to personally advocate for Jackie Madden. She is an outstanding individual. She comes to every single commission meeting, I believe, and she’s just been a very good advocate, especially for specialized and the paratransit services that we’re trying to bring forward.

She is someone who knows exactly what’s going on, and she would be able to literally hit the ground running and bring the ideals and the values that we would like as the whole of Council to the LTC. So I do hope that everyone can consider her and hopefully vote for her. So that would be my pitch for Jackie Madden. Great.

Thank you, Councillor ramen. Oh, sorry, I had Councillor Cudi first and then Councillor ramen. Thank you, and through each year, I’d like to advocate for David Little. My experience with David is he’s been with TD Bank for a number of years.

He’s now retired, but he’s very strong in the service component area of TD. But from a volunteer perspective chair, he’s worked as a, he was the board chair as of the Friends and Environmental Foundation for several years. In fact, they won an Environmental Leadership Award. The London chapter of FEF is one of the largest and most active chapters in Canada.

He was also involved in Sunfest Children’s Water Festival, a reforest London, and I know him through the YMCA, where he’s an active member. He has been a volunteer in a number of different organizations and agencies, and I would advocate strongly for him. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor ramen.

Thank you, and through you, I just wanted to go back to our earlier conversation on LTC. We had discussed whether or not we were looking at two members that would be citizen members or potentially having a member of council and one member from the public, and I just wanted to just have the opportunity to talk about that here today. So I wanted to do that first by way of maybe asking our Councillors that are on LTC if they could maybe share some perspective on the current membership, and perhaps also provide just their thoughts on competencies that they think are needed at the table as well. I’m going to have the colleagues on the transit commission respond to the Councillor’s question, maybe starting with Councillor Pribble, and then I’m going to get you some information about your first question.

Go ahead, Councillor Pribble. Okay, so currently the commission is made up of five members and besides the two Councillors, if I were to say we have three representation, one, I would say business, second one legal, and the third one would be kind of public/non-profit. So that’s the current makeup. As we all know, we are proposing to go from five to seven members, and I think that answers the question of my colleague.

Thank you. As the Councillor said, we are looking to expand the conversation mainly kicked off because we were looking for more representation on the accessible transit side. But considering with the numbers, I believe because we didn’t want to have the possibility of a split vote and having an even tie, that’s why we went for the extra two to keep the numbers odd. I would be at the will of council on which way we go when it comes with respect to the question that you’re asking of another Councillor coming on board.

In the end for me, and for, I believe, the majority or almost everyone on the commission, it would be for just looking for a more dispersed representation of the population that the commission is trying to serve. So I would be at the will of council when it comes to if we were to decide who would be, I guess, the seventh member. Okay, thank you. I just need one more second on that.

Councillor Ramen, do you want to continue on? Will I look that up for you? Thank you, and through you. So just to go back to the competencies, you mentioned that they were looking more for diverse representation.

So I’m just wondering if you can clarify that and then from a competency’s perspective, if anyone could share any additional competency pieces that they think are needed at the board. Do you want to start? Sure. Go ahead, Councilor.

Through you. Yes, it’s from the discussion and from my memory and for my own personal goals, we’re looking for more of a diverse representation on the commission, which is why you see this before you today. Councillor Pribley added something out there. Yes, I would just like to say that this topic actually came up and when we say diversified, it’s specifically one group and it’s the representation of the group using the prior transit and as we had various representations from this group and certainly the person that has been the most involved and instrumental in this is the one that my fellow Councillor Farrah mentioned, which is Mrs.

Madden. So she certainly is the one who would be representing the interests of this group and what we felt was certainly a group that needs to have a voice at our commission. I’ll just add to that for the Councilor. When we passed the by-law on August 29th of this year, we added this piece, an accessibility lens shall be used for the selection of at least one of the members who is not a member of Council.

So we we provided that recommendation to ourselves how we apply that lens is up to each of us and how we assess the applications and do that vote, but it was the desire of Council to to achieve that that addition on the commission. I’m just looking up the piece about whether or not one of them could be a member of Council or a citizen member. We just need to look up the piece where we deleted the words three and replaced it with four, but it doesn’t reference in the by-law, so the clerk is looking up the actual by-law on what the pieces that we changed from three to four. Go ahead, Councilor McAllister.

Thank you. And through you, while you’re still looking at that off, I have some questions to follow up from Councillor Raman on to our two Councillors who sit on the commission currently. I also had questions in terms of the makeup, in terms of what you’re looking for on the board. And just speaking from my experience from fundamental sex housing, I found it very valuable to have the tenant perspective.

I was wondering in terms of ridership perspective, do you feel like that’s adequately met right now, or is that really what you’re looking for? I know obviously paratransit really do need that representation, but would you say by and large the board needs more from that perspective? Councillors, again, I know you sit as Councillors here, so you’re welcome to answer if you like, but you don’t have to if you don’t have the information as well. Go ahead, Councillor Pribble.

I guess first. For representation of ridership, I think that’s a good point. I wouldn’t be able to necessarily accurately answer the question on just who sitting on the board uses the services to that question. But we are looking for more representation when it comes down to it.

And this did get kicked off by the specialized transit portion. So that’s why you hear me speaking of Jackie Madden thinking that she would be the most ideal candidate because some candidates, you know, they have the ability and they have the knowledge and Jackie is one of those candidates. Like I said, she has been very instrumental in a lot of the discussion when it comes around specialized transit. I met with her early on in the term.

She’s been around for years. She’s been trying to push the increased capacity of the services for specialized transit for over eight years, I believe. So she has been around for a while and I think that she’s very well suited for the position and she will she’s needed as far as I’m concerned. When it comes to ridership on the other services, yeah, I wouldn’t I don’t necessarily have that information on me, but it would be it’s a good question.

And I do feel that we should be trying to to place people on the commission that actually uses the services to represent the ridership. Go ahead, Councilor Provol. Just to add to it, we do have the chair and also one commissioner that actually used the public transportation more than a car and one of them solely. So we do have actually a really good feedback from two of them because they use it on a regular basis.

Right, Councilor McAllister. Thank you. And through you, just a follow up. I’ve just noticed some of the other, you know, boards and commissions have subcommittees, right?

And I’m just wondering, I feel like that would be invaluable to something like the LTC to have a subcommittee for ridership, right? Because those are key voices in terms of a service we’re providing that we want to hear from. And so, you know, with the makeup of yours moving from five to seven, that would be something that I would also recommend you might want to look at is to have a subcommittee that focuses on the ridership and the experience itself and the service standards. Okay, let me interject.

And then I have a speakers list that has the Deputy Mayor Lewis and Councillor Trossa on it. So there’s two things. One is in the bylaw. We change from five members to seven.

However, part three of the bylaws says two or two or three members of the Commission as determined by Council that are the Shelby members of Council. So we have the choice between two or three that we can appoint. When we directed our staff to advertise, we directed them to begin the recruitment for up to two members of the public to support the above noted proposed new members. So the answer is yes, under the bylaw we have the option.

We recruited for two. That’s why the report says two, but it would be our discretion if you wanted to make one of those members of Council given the Commission would allow us to point up to three members of Council. I can come back to you, Councillor Roman. Maybe I’ll go through the speaker’s list first, and then I can get you back on it.

Councillor or Deputy Mayor Lewis, you’re next. And then Councillor Trousa, you’re after. Thank you, Chair. So through you, I will say I first of all concur with Councillor Ferrera and Councillor Pribble on Ms.

Madden. I think she’s an excellent candidate. I’ve met with her many times. I know she’s been around the block more than once with transit issues, and I think she would add a valuable perspective, particularly as somebody who’s got a great deal of experience in dealing with paratransit service in our community and how it has been frankly falling short.

So I very much agree with what was said about Ms. Madden. I will say when I reviewed the applications on the weekend, I didn’t think much about the option of another Councillor, but I’m open to being persuaded on that. I do want to take the opportunity, though, to speak very briefly to Christine Wilton, who’s an applicant here.

And by the way, I should say I was really impressed with the pool of applicants we received this time. I think there’s really some excellent candidates on there. I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to Melissa Sheehan, who’s in the gallery listening today back to being one of our regular gallery visitors now that we’re back open to the public in that capacity. But I wanted to speak to Christine because I think as somebody who is leading the workforce development work at LADC, I think it’s very, very critical that we don’t limit ourselves to just the perspective of the paratransit service.

But actually, the really important conversation we need to have in this community about how people, regardless of whether they’re renters or homeowners, because I think we actually want homeowners to take the bus as well when they can leave their car at home, but how they’re getting to work. And, Chair, through you, you know, you and I were at Bosco and Roxy’s this summer to make sure that there was a public announcement about the transit service that was coming out to the industrial, to Innovation Park Phase III, I believe, is that parcel that was getting people to work at that plant, which was going to save 60 jobs, because as this employer expanded, their new location did not have transit service. And this has been an ongoing issue in this community for more than a decade. The complaints about people’s inability to get to work.

They believe food put in a specific transit turnaround in the entrance to their building, and there’s still no transit service there. The bus drops people off more than a kilometer away from that front door. So I think having somebody from the LADC who’s specifically involved in workforce development issues would be a real asset to the commission. That said, I can also see some value in there being another council voice.

So, you know, I’m open to being persuaded, but I think we cannot continue to just look at transit from the perspective, from one perspective. And I think that that important perspective of how people are going to be able to use transit to get to work needs to be considered as well. Okay, Councillor Troasau. Thank you.

Are we permitted to appoint two members from the public, from the pool, and the third person who’s a Councillor? No, we changed the bylaw 2.7 total, so we would have to change the bylaw again, do so. In that case, I was very interested in doing this, and I think I said that in an open council meeting. However, somebody else that might have been Councillor Palosa made the excellent point that we really need to have somebody with a very strong rider background.

Not just somebody who takes the bus, because sometimes you take the bus. I mean, I take the bus, I cycle, I drive, it really depends on a lot of things. I want somebody who is absolutely dependent on this sort of mode shift. We’re going to be talking a lot about mode shift under the transportation, under the mobility master plan.

And I think this would be a very good opportunity for us to try to get somebody that has a lot of experience as someone who uses transit because they have to every day in order to do the things they need to do in life. So while I’m, thank you for some of you who have asked me if I would be interested, but I think at this point, I really would prefer to have another citizen appointee. And I’m going through the applications with the lens towards experience, riding the bus. And I’ve come to the conclusion that Melissa Shehan would be the strongest candidate from that pool.

So I am prepared to support her and, of course, Jacqueline Madden. Should the position come open maybe later in the term or we decide to add another person, I will certainly consider the honor of serving on this board. But I think for now, I really want to have somebody who has a better grounding in using transit every day because they have to. So that’s where I am on this right now.

Other speakers. So in the absence of any sort of further direction from colleagues, we’re going to go ahead. Councilor Raman. Thank you.

So I guess to my earlier point around a council appointee, and by the way, I’m not, I’m not offering. I guess my point around that is really about the fact that we’ve been talking about needing a large system change at LTC. And then concerns around we’re kind of diluting our interest by then having adding two more voices to the table and not one of them being a counselor. So I guess that that’s my main concern right now is if we’re confident that we’re in what we keep hearing and what we’re hearing at Civic Works is, you know, we want them to return to the table.

We want LTC to report back. We want them to talk to us about about why they’re saying that their services are okay. And we’re saying they’re not. So I completely agree that we need a perspective from paratransit around the table, somebody that’s been knowledgeable of the service and agree with my colleagues on that perspective with Ms.

Madden. Absolutely. But I’m just wondering, do we need to think strategically as well around our own interest at LTC? And that’s why I’m bringing it up for conversation.

I put myself on the list. I’ll have Deputy Mayor Lewis chair. Thank you, Your Worship. I will recognize the mayor.

So through the presiding officer, I think Councillor Roman raises an important point about the importance of LTC moving forward. And as she referenced at Civic Works Committee, there was a report that was brought forward about the important work that the master mobility plan is going to do to set a 25-year direction. And the importance that LTC will play in not only the implementation of whatever comes out of that plan, but also the integration of the new rabbit transit lines that we’re constructing. And if colleagues recall, I added and I appreciate the support, a motion there to take a look at the governance by-law.

Because I think there’s two ways to do this. And Councillor Roman correctly points out that one way is we could add more Councillors to the committee. Another way is we could change what is a by-law that hasn’t been updated I think since 2009. Okay, I get kind of a sideways nod, so maybe I’m in the right ballpark.

Just to allow Council to have a little bit more direct engagement than otherwise occurs, particularly on areas of, you know, key priority for us in the strategic plan. And so I don’t know what those suggested changes will be, but certainly, you know, we have two avenues before us. Put a bunch of us on the commission, of which, you know, if you wear your commission hat, you should be acting in the best interest in a fiduciary responsibility of a commissioner. Or we update the by-law and add a different type of relationship back and forth between Council and the commission in perhaps a strengthened and collaborative way, I would say, and this is not to force them to do things, but I think to update the ways that we can engage and work with colleagues.

And I think that we’ve already set the stage for that work to happen through the previous direction we’ve set as a council. We just have to ensure that when that comes forward, that we’re clear about what our intentions are and what we’d like to have to look like. And I don’t even know what that looks like structured in a by-law. I just know that there’s potential there to modernize the way the council can provide direction to the commission then currently exists in by-law.

So I think there’s a number of options that we have before us. I think I’m comfortable pointing to citizens at this time, but I will be looking closely at the work we do when we modernize the by-law that oversees on the transit and how we want to have, what sort of relationship we want to have from that decision-making of Council, decision-making of the commission perspective of which I render no judgment now. I just think that there’s an opportunity there to look at that relationship in a different way. Thank you, Your Worship.

I’ll return the chair to you. I don’t have anybody else on my speaker’s list, but you may have a speaker’s list going over there that I’m not aware of. I may have inspired someone to refute me or something. So who knows?

Councillor Stevenson. Thank you. No, I just wanted to thank Councillor ramen for bringing this up and having the discussion around it. I think it is an important one and I appreciate the discussion.

Thank you. I don’t have any other speakers. People have advocated, so we’ll proceed in the absence of a further direction with considering an appointment of two. I would ask that you select two.

There are two spots, so everybody should select two. And you can do that in eScribe and it will come up. Again, this is not just for clarity. This is not a vote with a winner.

This is to determine the collective preferences of Council. And then at the end of that process, I would seek someone to make a motion to do an appointment based on what comes out of the preferential system. All right, so we’re going to open that you have, you can select two. The results of the election.

Nuno Diaz. Zero votes. Eric Frank. Zero votes.

Treek Khan. Zero votes. David Little. Seven votes.

Jacqueline Madden. Thirteen votes. Angie Ryan. Zero votes.

Mal Shian. Three votes. Christine Wilton. Three votes.

Lisa Worsfold. Zero votes. The result is election of Jacqueline Madden and David Little. Well, we’re not going to call it an election, so that’s what the preferential system put it.

Council Stevenson. Thank you. I’d like to put forward a motion to appoint David Little and Jacqueline Madden. Okay, is there a seconder for that?

Okay, that’s seconded. Any discussion? Deputy Ray Lewis. I alluded to this in my earlier comments, but I just want to say again, how impressed I am with the field of candidates that came forward.

I think, you know, really, we could have been well served by any of these names being appointed. So, I want to thank everybody for their interest. And genuinely, this is a really important file. So, I’m glad to see it’s attracted the interest that it did, because I think it’s been overlooked in our community, I think, for a long time, and to see the quality of the candidates that have come forward with both their lived experience and their backgrounds, I think, is just a great thing to see.

So, I want to just say to all of the candidates, thank you for putting your name forward. Thank you for sending that. I appreciate it. Any other speakers to the motion before us, which is the appointment of the two individuals?

Okay, we’ll open that for voting. Sir Trossa opposing the vote, the motion carries 13 to 0 with one reduced. That concludes that item. We’ll move on to 4.3, which is a letter from Councilor Ferreira and Councilor Frank.

I don’t know where other of them are. Oh, just in time, I’m talking about both of you. So, the two of you have written a letter to us. I don’t know which one you want me to go to to present the letter in any possible motion.

You want to make Councilor Ferreira? Your worship. So, Councilor Frank and I have obviously are bringing a motion here to the SPPC today. It’s for the lobbyist registry.

We’re trying to put this taboo subject to bed. And basically, we’re bringing it here because, as everyone here agrees, I’ve heard it come out of all of our mouths. We’re not a small city anymore. We’re a big city.

And things are moving very fast, especially considering all the initiatives that we’re trying to bring forward with the needs of the city as they demand them. So, we need to start thinking like a big city. And considering the sheer magnitude and speediness of the work, we believe that a second window or porthole into the mechanisms of how our government is operating is appropriate and necessary. So, we would like to give the public another view into the world of their municipal government.

And we believe that the current format is not able to keep up considering where we stand today. So, speaking to engagement, we had a 25% voter turnout, very low. And we all know that that is an issue that we’re trying to bring, we’re trying to increase. And some of the tools that we can bring to increase that engagement would be giving that extra window into the public so they can see what’s going on.

So, I would like to engage the public and let them in. I’d like to get people interested, getting them, getting people talking about what’s going on, what’s going on at their municipal level of government. And this is why we believe this is something that would be very appropriate to bring to the table right now. As for costs, this is why we are referring, we are asking staff to come back with all these questions because we don’t necessarily know what the cost will be at the moment.

So, we feel like it would be appropriate to have the staff look into that and bring back exactly what it is, what it would take and what it would entail to bring a register and a registrar to counsel here. So, that’s why we’re bringing this motion to the floor. I would like to hear what comments are of my colleagues and if I’ve given the chance, I can speak to any questions. Okay, do you want to move the motion now?

I will move the motion. Okay, so as written in the letter, is the wording you’re using? Exactly, as written in the letter. Could you just read the motion if you put it up because I like the public it there?

Actually, I can assume, Councillor Frank, you’re seconding. So, seconder. I can read the motion if you need. Yes, please read it for me.

All right, just give me a second. Yeah, but I’m looking up. All right, so that civic administration be directed to conduct a review and present a report on the feasibility, purpose, and associated expenses of implementing a mandatory municipal lobby registry. The review should encompass the establishment of a publicly accessible electronic portal for tracking lobbying activities within the municipality.

The appointment of a registrar responsible for overseeing the registry. Registration rules, potential exemptions, penalties, fines, enforcement mechanisms, and general provisions related to the lobbying regulations. Okay, moved in second. I look for speakers list.

Councillor Frank, go ahead. Thank you, yes, and I just wanted to echo a couple reasons why I am supporting this and was working with Councillor Freire on it. First of all, this is simply just a report from staff to understand what the cost and process would be. We’re not necessarily saying today that we necessarily need one, but we want to understand more information.

And the reason why we’re asking for it, but personally that I would like to see it, is I think we actually need it now more than ever. In London, as Councillor Freire said, we had a 25% voter turnout, but also I’ve seen it continue to mark decline in public faith and trust in our government institutions. And I think given the recent issues we’ve seen at the provincial level with lobbyists in the Greenbelt, I’m not totally surprised. A lot of this kind of corruption fuels public cynicism and degrades our ability to do our work.

And I think that more often now, when I’m talking to residents and online, I do see a higher level of suspicion in how we’re making our decision and who is influencing us. So I think that the more transparent information we’re able to provide to the public, the better. From my perspective, lobby registries increase transparency and accountability, holds public officials accountable for actions and decisions, and lets the community know what is going on behind closed doors and gives people more information about who is speaking with you at what point. I think it sends a clear message to residents that we’re being committed to openness and fairness and transparency.

And again, given the reasons why we’ve seen a decline in public trust, I think that this is a good time to demonstrate that confidence. I also think it levels a playing field, so providing equal access to people who are lobbying us provides other stakeholders the opportunity to put in their two cents. Recently, we did see a request to review the urban design review panel, and we saw two letters submitted from the development community, but we did not necessarily see anything coming in from the urban design review panel themselves or architects locally. And I think understanding what might be coming would level the playing field for the rest of the community.

We could learn from other cities, so as listed in the letter, many other municipalities are already doing lobby registries, so we have the opportunity to build on best practices and design one that would work for us. I also think it can enhance decision making. Again, it shows that we are considering broad perspectives and the community can provide more information if they’re seeing perhaps one perspective is being shared more than others. And lastly, I do think it could be fairly cost efficient.

Again, this is why we’re asking for report, but I know that we have user fees to recoup expenses, so for example, we asked builders to pay building permit fees. It could be an opportunity for us to have lobbyists pay lobby permit fees, although we probably would want to waive charities and non-profits. But this is why we’re asking for the report, because I do think there are ways that this could be not cumbersomely expensive to residents, as it is an opportunity for us to look at how we could pay for it. So in summary, I think that this is a crucial opportunity for us to foster transparency and a better sense of public trust, and I would love your support on directing staff to at least investigate this and give us a report on process and price points.

Thank you. I have a speaker that’s started, Deputy Mayor Lewis, and then Councillor Layman. I’ll add others as we go. Thank you, Your Worship.

So with all due respect to the Councillors who brought this forward, to me, this is a solution in search of a problem. It is quite honestly, and I don’t mean any disrespect to the Councillors, but to me personally, this is just political theater. When we look at the 10 municipalities that the Councillors have listed in their letter that have these lobbyists registries, none of them have radically better voter turnout than London. Lobbyist registries don’t increase the public’s faith in their democratic institutions and encourage them to participate in voting.

If that was the case, you would see differences in the voting turnout in these cities and you don’t. I certainly would not be open to waiving lobbyist fees for charities and not-for-profits if we were going to go down that road. If we’re going to talk about a level playing field, it’s a level playing field. Everybody pays.

But there’s also the question of you start to get into these ridiculous gray lines for me of what is lobbying? I was at the night’s game on Saturday night, and Jim Graham from the London Air Show was there. Well, do I now need to fill it a form to give to our staff to say that I was lobbied? I do know this.

There will be a cost. I know that there will be a cost to an FTE position in the counselor’s office alone, and then there will be a cost to whoever the registrar is that we will have to pay for. Those are billable hours as well. We’re not in a position as city counselors.

We’re being lobbied on a 350 million, but probably it’s more like billions when I’m talking about the federal government. We’re not being lobbied on a fighter jet contract between Boeing and then Lockheed Martin or something like that. It’s just not happening in the city of London. The most frequent complaint we hear from residents, and we heard it again last week at a planning committee.

Well, such a counselor shouldn’t be voting because they received a donation from somebody. The integrity commissioner that this city has had for a long time, and now the new one, well, I’ll tell you the same thing. A campaign donation does not constitute conflict of interest, and yet that has been in and that’s the other pieces. Where do you have an integrity commissioner?

If people think that there is misconduct wrongdoing, conflict of interest that is not being observed by a member of council, they have the integrity commissioner path to go down. All this would do is add another layer of bureaucracy to the system at a cost of the taxpayers. You know, the urban design review panel motion was raised. Well, that was a motion on a regular agenda, and then we received communications on the added agenda afterwards.

But it was on the added agenda for any member of the public to see, be they an architect, be they a member of the review panel, member. It was on the public agenda, and anybody could respond. And that is fair, and that is a level playing field. That’s why our agendas are public, and that’s why there’s an opportunity for added communications after the agendas are issued.

So really, to me, this is just not something I’m going to spend any staff time on. From my perspective, this is a council that conducts itself with good intentions. It conducts itself professionally and cordially. But I also think beyond that, Londoners, and I hope London councillors have learned from the mistakes of past councils.

And I’m not going to go into any restaurants that might be out of business now on Highbury Ave, or the former councillors who might have had dinner in a private room there. But I think we’ve all learned from that example. And so I’m, I’m, I don’t think that we see that happening in our councils, and I don’t see a need for us to go down that road of adding another layer of bureaucracy to our system. So I won’t be supporting this.

Okay, I have Councillor Neiman and Palosa, and then Trossa. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so what I guess is follow on the deputy mayor’s comments. What is a lobbyist?

When I hear lobbying, I think of paid professional lobbyists that perform a function on big levels of government that we see, you know, probably at the federal level, provincial level. My door is always open to speak to anyone. The thought of having to record every individual conversation I have with constituents or people out and about, whatever issue is before us in the day or whatever people are concerned about strikes me as a pretty high level of bureaucracy. We can’t keep up right now with the assistance that we have in our office.

You want more people to run for office? Don’t make their job harder. The thought of people having to have paid access to me gives me concern. There’s no paid access to me.

My door is always open, and I encourage communication at all levels, and we want to speak to people at all levels about issues at hand. And finally, we do have quorum rules, very strict quorum rules that we all follow, and we’re all aware of. I mean, I think we already mind each other constantly, more than even in the last council that I heard, that we follow very, very closely. So I will not be supporting this motion.

And Councillor Ploza, next. Thank you, Your Worship. On this, I appreciate where the Councillors are coming from. I haven’t had these concerns from local residents.

I would say certainly as Councillors, we get unsolicited pitches all the time in our inbox, waste, waste management, and certainly they vary depending on what committees we serve on or what our interests are. You know, those ideas I just board on to staff, realizing we do have a process, and as Councillors, our time is pretty limited, and I have to be very invested in an idea before I start doing staff’s job of looking at potential service providers, which I don’t do because we do have an RFP process that’s very clear. Even as we host things like AMO, and we talk to exhibitors at those conferences, and they follow up with the information package, you know, are they now lobbyists because they’re offering a municipal service that we had at our own conference? I’ll just share that this would be, to me, an added staff expense, for sure, undoubtedly, and I’m sure the mayor’s office gets a lot of requests, too, as they go right to what they perceive as the head of council.

So I’m assuming his office would need something. We would see something. Even what do we have in our toolkit for enforcement fines? Is this more in FIPA requests coming in if people want to know who even may or may not be talking to you?

But I will share that I did dig through the City of Toronto’s website for this, and I took the opportunity to dig through what the registrars, the lobbyists registrar’s expense reports are for the person actually administering this program. And in addition to their salary, the City of Toronto is covering fees such as conferences, travel, online webinars, globe and mail subscriptions, Hanva, like, there’s a lot in here. In some months, it’s $5,000, and it varies month to month, but just realizing those costs would be born and shouldered by the residents and the taxpayers. So for me, this isn’t something at this time I’m able to support.

Thank you. Councillor Trussa. Thank you very much through the chair. Thank you very much, Councillors, for bringing this forward.

My opinion has not changed since this piece of legislation came into effect many, many years ago, and I’ve watched councils come and go, and I’ve often been very involved in compiling statistics. I remember back in 2003, I did a comprehensive spreadsheet. I sure wish I could find it. And it was a lot easier back in those days, because when you’re searching contributions in those days, there was a corporation.

It was right there. I think we need this very badly, and I think we need this to restore a certain element of trust. It’s true that the integrity commissioner has made it very clear that accepting a campaign donation, which is specifically allowed within certain limits under the provincial law, is there’s nothing wrong with that. And one of the foundations of a lobbyist registry is we recognize that lobbying is a legitimate interest.

There’s nothing wrong with it. But we want to have more information to the public understands who’s lobbying who about what. It’s a fundamental component. This is why the province gave it to us.

It’s a fundamental component of people’s ability to do more research and have more information about what goes on inside of that black box that’s called City Hall. Now, we decided to opt in to having the integrity commissioner. And we could do this too. And there will be the opportunity to review the costs.

And I’m glad that the proponents put that in there explicitly, because I’m hearing people say, I don’t want to get a report on what this is going to cost, because it’s going to cost too much. Get the report and then vote against it if you think it’s going to cost too much. Get the report and vote against it if you think it’s redundant. Get the report, get the information and vote against it if you think there are all these other avenues that take care of that.

And in terms of the question of what constitutes a lobbying event, we could look through the law, we could look through the other cities and see there are very well developed criteria. And since this is a municipal opt in provision of the act, we can create our own set of deviations from that if we want to. But to just say, no, I don’t want this. I think that’s very bad policy.

And I think it’s really flying in the face of our commitment to the public to be as accountable and transparent as possible. So I am fully unqualified without hesitation in favor of moving forward with the report. And I’d like to see what the report says. But I think having a lobbyist registry, and I know we’re a municipal level of government.

We’re not doing fighter jets. But we need to do this. We need to consider doing this. And to shut yourself off from this right now, it really makes me wonder, really makes me wonder.

So I’ll be voting yes on this motion. Councilor Ferra. Thank you. Through you.

So listening to the comments, I, I got to say, like, this is not in search of a problem. This is a solution to the problem. This is not virtue of signaling. This is something that we need.

The problem is the some, there’s a lot of people who I have spoke to who don’t necessarily have trust in their municipal government. It’s that is a fact. You cannot deny that. Anybody who says that you’ve not heard that before, I just don’t believe you.

There’s plain, plain stop. We’ve talked about the level of trust at many forums. And here, we’ve spoke about it with the whole of community system response and outreach workers and trying to build trust with, with individuals that they serve. We’ve talked about trust on many aspects.

So this is, this is simply something to increase the trust. Will it increase voter turnout? I’d like to believe so, but I’m not sure. But it’s the trust that we’re really trying to, to bring here.

We’re trying to bring that transparency back to our municipal government. For unsolicited pitches and a meeting with Jim Graham about over at Budweiser Gardens, if you were to have a conversation and strike a deal in that amount of time, I, I would say, I applaud you because that would be amazing. But most likely you’re going to have a meeting with someone if you run into them. That would not be captured under the lobbyists registry, because most likely you’re going to have to have a follow up meeting in the future, or you’d have you already had a meeting before that interaction.

So that would be captured under the lobbyist registry. For pay to access, I don’t know exactly how that portion would work. That’s why we’re asking staff to come back. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with having someone who is trying to bring some type of business to the city to have to pay to have access.

But that would be something that we would have to have staff bring back to us. That’s why we’re looking for staff to come back with, with a report. And I would also want to add that any kind of vexatious behavior that might come into that with anyone trying to throw mud on the wall with a lobby registry, we should look into that as well. We should make sure that there’s some type of areas within whatever comes back.

If we do approve this, that would, that would counter against that. As for the cost, I’m hearing a lot of people speak about costs. We don’t know the cost yet. So this is why we are asking for this report.

So this is, you know, stopping this report now is not wise as a council. We should at least see what staff can bring back to us on the report. The bureaucracy part, I understand it’s, I hear a lot of red tape, red tape. This is a lot of red tape that we’re bringing to the table.

This is not red tape. This is clear tape. This is the type of tape that we need. This is the type of tape that will allow individuals to be able to see into the city.

So please, we should pass this motion as it is now. And we should see what staff can bring back for us. I have Councillor Ramen next. Thank you and through you.

And first, I want to say thank you to my fellow Councillors that have brought this forward. Much appreciated the opportunity to have the conversation around this. I do have some questions for staff if it’s okay regarding the motion. Specifically, do we have the expertise or knowledge in the house to conduct this type of a report?

I haven’t had the clerk start and feel free to go to wherever you like. Thank you through the chair. I would say based on the motion as worded, we could do the environmental scan. One of the Councillors mentioned that there’s preexisting examples out there.

There’s at least 10 identified in the letter itself. As a starting point, if directed by council, we could bring back a report that does that environmental scan, addresses many of the items that are listed here. However, there are going to be some decision points based on what I’m seeing here for council based on that report back. Go ahead.

Thank you. Just to follow up. So this does have a municipal law angle to it as well. Just wondering, do we feel from a legal perspective, especially around some of the things with whether or not there will the fines that exist and how those fines are applied?

And when you look at comparatively across those cities that already have the registry, there’s vast differences on how they capture information what they’re capturing. So to your example of, you know, a conference, you’ll see in one city, Brampton, for instance, you’ll see that, you know, when they attend a conference and they go to a booth, they record which booths they went to and who was lobbied. And then you go to another city and it’s a different interpretation. I don’t think it’s just the way that the council interprets interprets it, but it’s also how they’re looking at it from their legal standpoint.

And it also noted that a lot of the staff that work in the lobbyist registers have legal backgrounds as well. Some are done by clerks, by clerks without legal backgrounds, but some are done by those with the legal background as well. So I’m just wondering, from our perspective, do we have the ability to pull that information together on the legal side if there’s any needs there? And I’m wondering around timeline as well around when a report could come back.

Okay, timeline’s probably the clerk legal question more Mr. Card. So maybe I’ll go to Mr. Card first.

Thank you, Your Worship. I believe we do have the legal skill to prepare a bylaw with the assistance of the clerk. There are several of those extant they take back actually more than a couple of decades. I believe we have seen them looked at them, never had reason to use them.

But if we were instructed to do so by council, we certainly would. You asked about timing too. Yeah, thank you through the chair. Given where we’re heading into a budget very soon, although it doesn’t feel like it, but it will be soon, soon upon us, there are some other items that the clerk’s office is looking at.

With clerks and legal, I wouldn’t anticipate this will be ready for the next cycle. At the very least, I would give us the first quarter or possibly beginning of the second quarter of 2024. Councillor. Thank you.

That helps, I think, in the decision making just to have that information. While I understand the purpose of a lobbyist’s registry and potentially the value, I do feel like we could be, we’re almost a step ahead of perhaps where we may need to be, where we could do some interim measures before we go, the registry route. I mean, right now, our calendars are all available. If somebody wanted to, and Thippa, our calendars to take a look at who we’re meeting with, that is a possibility if someone had that interest.

I agree that there is the possibility of putting that and making that available online even. And I know that there are Councillors in previous terms that did have that, where they had their calendar available online. You could view it on their websites. I did look into that myself, but the cost was prohibitive to do that myself and to keep that up.

So if, for instance, as an interim step, we wanted to look at something where we had more accountability and transparency on ourselves. I’m open to that discussion while we see what’s possible later on. But I can’t see agreeing to this if it did have exorbitant costs or increased costs. So I’m willing to get the report and find out more.

But I don’t see supporting it if there was an increased staffing requirement, and especially to Councillor Layman’s points right now, I can’t see adding the need to put more information somewhere else to any of our staff or to ourselves right now in order to facilitate that registry. Any other speakers? Seeing none, so this is moved and seconded by Councillor Ferrera and Councillor Frank. Good discussion, so I can open that for voting.

Voting the vote in the motion fails five to nine. Okay, that brings us to 4.4, which is an item of communication from MPP Terence Kernahan. So you see his communication before us. I would look for any action colleagues want to take on this from an action to a note and file.

Councillor Cuddy. Thank you, Your Worship, and through you, I would like to propose that we accept the letter and no further action at this time. And Councillor Stevenson, you want to second that? Okay, we’ll get that language.

Do you mind if I go to his speakers? Listen, in the meantime, I think I looked over here. Councillor Ferrera, you’re going to be first Deputy Mayor Lewis, then Councillor Trossau. Thank you.

Through you. Again, tools in our toolbox that we should be utilizing here. First things first, the MPP that is going to bring this to the Queen’s Park, that is a big deal. And I’m very thankful for that.

Because as we were speaking before, I’m not going to go there, but I’m just saying we need to think big. If we’re going to get out of this housing crisis, we need to have the type of thinking that doesn’t restrict what we have in our toolbox to be able to use to address the situation that we’re in. I’ve been asking, and I know a lot of you have asked as well, like, how are we possibly going to build 1.5 million homes? Like, if we are going to be just using the private sector to do that, we are already, we’re already losing.

There’s no way that we’re going to do that. We need to utilize every single thing that is at our capacity to bring housing forward. So when I see something like this bill that will be brought through, I appreciate it. Because in my experience, in my short experience that I’ve seen, the type of housing that we need to bring is not just housing.

It’s housing that people can afford. It’s not just affordable housing. It’s housing that people are able to afford and get into. And when you look at private sector and everything that goes into that and how complicated it can get, and then loans and the profit aspect of it, that slowly crowds people closer and closer out of not into the door, I guess, so to speak.

So our provincial government has much more access to low-cost financing than the private sector. And it wouldn’t have to tie into repayment of loans. And it won’t have the same costs and barriers of acquisition with respect to land. This is the big part that’s in this letter.

The regulatory hurdles and the growth and infrastructure planning would be reduced, and it would just be more cost effective for the provincial government and nonprofit providers to build affordable housing than the private sector. So that tool is in our toolkit. That tool is in the province’s toolkit. And we have this thing before us that is asking for our endorsement to help pull that tool out of the toolkit.

If we are going to say no to that endorsement and not allow that, how are we supposed to hit our goals? So that’s why I would say not receive, but we should give some type of endorsement. If approved, this would build 250,000 new affordable housing units and non-market rental homes at cost on public land. It would address the broader needs of Ontarians and Londoners.

And it wouldn’t, it would build affordable housing. It would build, like I said, housing that is affordable. So I would hope that we can all be pretty innovative here because we have been pretty good at that. We’ve been very innovative, very outside of the box thinkers up to this point.

I feel like this is something that would just continue on on that course. So I would like to continue to be innovative when we have to be, and not innovative when we want to be when it comes to this. I believe housing is a human right. And young people should be able to find a safe, affordable place when they’re ready.

Folks should be able to rent without constant threat of evictions and rent hikes. Families should be able to stay in the community they love and seniors should be able to downsize where they would like to be. This would help people do that. This is that extra tool out of that toolkit that we need to reach in and pull out.

So we need to give this an endorsement. So I would hope that the receive and take no action, or I’m not sure how that motion was read, but the receive does not pass. It gets voted down. We should give this endorsement.

We should pull that tool out of the toolkit. We won’t be successful for 1.5 million homes if we don’t utilize everything at our capacity. So I would ask you to consider that. Okay, thank you, Councillor.

I have a bit of a speaker’s list. I have Deputy Mayor Lewis, Councillor Trostall, Councillor Frank, myself, and Councillor McAllister so far. Thank you, worship. I’m going to try not to use up all my time in case I want to come back and go again, but I will say for me, I’m not keen on the take no action piece.

I might be okay with receipt, but this is going to be debated in the legislature and there may be some progress made, and I would not want to tie our hands to saying we’re not going to deal with this any further. Our local MPP may come back with some additional asks or looking for some more consultation with the city or anything like that. And so I wouldn’t want to just take no action. For me, I’d like to leave the door open for some follow-up.

I will say that I did express through his office that I had some questions for MPP Kernahan. He did try and reach me on the weekend. Unfortunately, we played a bit of telephone tag as people I wanted to do on a holiday long weekend with family dinners and such. And so I wasn’t able to connect with him directly.

I think the goal of building 250,000 new affordable homes on public lands is a very laudable goal. And I factually, the arguments that are laid out about the post-war efforts are accurate. And I think that there’s some merit in evaluating things going forward. I am not entirely convinced that a new public agency and all the bureaucracy that comes with a new public agency is the way to achieve that rather than through the existing ministry and some legislative changes that way.

So I support the spirit of the motion, although I have some concerns about some of the details. I think that when you’re talking about unlocking public lands, you know, a large piece of public land was just unlocked by the province here in Ontario not that long ago in the London Psychiatric Hospital lands, but that did go to private market. Is there an opportunity for there to be some of these lands unlocked for not-for-profit and affordable and co-op? Yes, I think there is.

So does there need to be more of a balanced approach to that? We have acquired as a council during my time in this chamber more than one former school property. And in fact, there will be another one coming back to the planning and environment committee at the next cycle in my own ward where we have redeveloped for housing or looking to redevelop for housing. And I think that that’s an excellent example of how legislation can be changed to unlock public land without necessarily creating a whole new public agency because the province has given us a right of first refusal on those lands, which we’ve done, but we’ve created our municipal housing division that allows us to be ready to go.

Other municipalities may not be in the same position, so whether they can take as effective advantage of that or not, I don’t know. So that’s one of the follow-ups that I would have in terms of dealing with this in the future. So I can understand why colleagues don’t want to necessarily, some do, some don’t want to necessarily provide a wholehearted endorsement, but I would really encourage colleagues not to close the door for some further discussion on this because I think that there is opportunity here. So I’m going to stop there for now, your worship, and see what other folks have to say, but that’s sort of where my head is, other than to say, finally, that the buildings are still going to be built by private business because we only have so much skilled labor in this province, so it’ll still be contracted out to private construction companies to do the actual work.

Okay, I have Councillor Trostan next. Thank you very much and through the chair. I’m having a very difficult time understanding what the downside is of endorsing this because really, when it’s introduced, they’ll be first reading, then the first test will be second reading, and should that be successful, then it’s probably in all likelihood going to go to a legislative committee where exactly the kinds of questions that the deputy mayor is raising. But I think they just come out of the gate and say, I don’t, don’t, we’ll receive this and not take further action.

I’m having a hard time understanding what the, what the, what the rationale for that is, other than perhaps pure pardon partisanship. And I think we have to get beyond the one of the movers of the motions on the list. So they’ll be able to speak to it. So let’s not project what we think their motivations.

Okay, well, I certainly hope that this motion is voted down and we can proceed to a discussion of the merits of this. We need to be doing this. We need effective government action. And yes, it will be there will be contractors and subcontractors who are going to be from the private sector.

We all understand that. But I think in terms of acquiring the land and getting this going, we can jumpstart a lot of the affordable housing that we really need, which quite, quite frankly, the private sector itself is not really providing time after time. We see the private sector come in here. And there’s just not an adequate, there’s just not adequate consideration for public housing.

And I really, I really think it’s important to look back historically at where there have been successes both in Canada and in the United States. And there’s someone who grew up in the in the in the 50s. I saw firsthand what what having effective government action really effective government. This is in the United States, by the way, what having effective government action meant for the lives of people who were who were low and moderate income.

Of course, there were problems with that in terms of discrimination. But the amount of housing that was affordable that people were able to with with just not really high paying jobs were able to get into was just massive. And it ushered in a period of prosperity that we really we really miss right now. So I’m really in favor of this.

I really want to applaud the MPP for bringing this forward. And I hope we vote this down and then go on to to a further discussion. And, you know, again, in closing, who knows what will happen between second and third reading if it if it gets that far, because there could be quite a bit of there could be quite a bit of activity. And I really want to see AMO get to get the way in on this too.

So I think just say no further action is is is a very very very bad policy choice. Councilor Frank. Thank you. Yes.

I’m wondering regarding amendments. Are we able to make amendments on this motion? Or do we have to vote this down and make a new motion? Can’t imagine what amendment you want to make.

You can make amendment as long as it’s not counter to the fundamental piece of the motion. So if you want to strike take no action, that would be counter to what the colleagues are trying to do. So you just vote this down and do something different. See, I thought be received was the main part.

And then the second part was to take no action. So then amendment on the second part could be possible. No, I would say that’s counter to the colleagues intent. So just vote it down.

And then you can move a motion to proceed after if that’s what you want to do. Actually, have you on the list after me? You want to go now though? Well, if he’s going to need to do something with his motion, the motion is on the floor.

So I’m going to consent from everybody if we’re going to change the motion. So I can go to the colleagues. So if you’d like to, if you’re looking to change the motion, I’ll work with my colleague and I’ll change the motion. Okay.

So how do you want to change it? We’ll strike the take no action. Take no action. And no action be taken.

Okay. So given this is on the floor, the consent of the seconder, is there consent from every member of council that we can adjust the motion? Does anybody object? I’ll ask it that way.

Does anybody object to removing that from the motion? Okay. No one objects. That’s how we do it.

So we’ll take that part out. Councillor Frank, you’re still speaking. Thank you. And then I’m wondering if there could be a further amendment that would be directing it to AMO because we’ve done that in the past.

So I’m just wondering if that would be a consideration. So maybe I’ll leave the floor for councillors to percolate. We did that with the motion that I brought forward about directing something to the province regarding the energy grid. And then we directed instead to AMO to work on a position across all municipalities.

So I might leave that to percolate, but then I’d like to maybe quickly speak in favour of why I’d be happy to either send it to AMO or to support having the city of London send us a letter of support. But regardless, overall, I really love the letter from the MPP. I think that we’ve talked to this council a lot of times about wanting the province to step up and do more. And I think this would be an incredible step towards addressing the affordable housing crisis.

Considering that we don’t have the ability to do bonusing anymore and are unable to mandate affordable housing in new private development, I really think it’s the responsibility of the province to find solutions to fill that gap. And we hear time and time again from developers that it’s too expensive or the pro forma won’t work. And so that’s why they’re not including affordable units in their building. I think maybe I’ve approved 15 affordable units in the last year in private development, which is not really meeting our 6,000 people that are on the affordable housing waiting list.

And as much as I love the nonprofit sector, I don’t think we can expect them to build the thousands of units that are required. And as much as I think that our staff are doing a really great job at trying to build affordable housing units through the municipal housing development corporation department, I think that also alone we aren’t able to do it. So given we have over 6,000 people in London on the affordable housing waiting list, I think that getting appropriate and affordable housing built as quickly as possible is really important. And it would be, in my opinion, more cost effective for Ontario and nonprofit builders and municipalities to keep building more affordable housing.

They don’t have the same requirement to create profit in that process. And so we don’t have to set aside that significant amount of margin. So overall, again, I would have been happy to send a letter from the city of London to support this. But I also be happy to send this to AMO to develop a position as well.

Okay, so you want people to percolate on that? I can come back to you. I’m next to the speakers. I’m going to turn the chair over to Councillor Layman.

I’ll go to the mayor. Okay, colleagues, I’ll be brief. You know, I work with the government on their initiatives all the time. And I think, you know, I work with the opposition on initiatives that they do as well.

In this case, it’s not just the opposition opposing government legislation. They’re actually pitching an idea to bring forward for debate in the legislature. And I have absolutely no issue supporting our local MPP in bringing forward or supporting the motion for the discussion. I actually think what he’s outlined here is pretty easy to get behind.

It’s up to the government on whether they want to create a whole new agency. That’s something they’ll debate. But the idea that you want to build a quarter million affordable homes and that they want to take the lead and ideally finance it. And they actually want to get back into the co-op business, which both the provincial and federal governments, I think, should be getting back into because it’s a tremendous opportunity for affordability, for people to participate in co-ops.

Like, this is the kind of thing that I actually, I personally want the government to be considering because we can’t get into the co-op business in any meaningful way with our resources that we have. But provincial and federal governments can. So, the MPP is raising, I think, an important discussion that should occur in the legislature. And it’ll be up to them on whether or not they pursue it or not.

So, you know, maybe there’s a motion to refer this to AMO. That’s fine. I can say I personally don’t have a problem supporting the very short paragraph that MPP at Kernahan has put forward. I think it’s worthy of discussion in legislature.

And as Councillor Trozall said, it’ll get changed and adjusted should it navigate its way through. Or what often happens in these things is sometimes an opposition motion turns into a government bill itself simply because it was raised on the floor and discussed in a meaningful way. I think we should support the discussion. So, I’m not going to support just receiving this.

I’d be happy to support a level of endorsement of this that Council’s happy with. So, I’ll return the chair to the Mayor with Deputy Mayor Lewis who’s added to the speakers list. Okay, well, I’m going to continue with the speakers list. So, I have McAllister, Councillor McAllister of my apologies, Councillor Cudi, Councillor Layman, Deputy Mayor Lewis, and then Councillor Trozall again.

Okay, Councillor Cudi, you’re good. Okay. So, Councillor McAllister, go ahead. Thank you.

And through the chair, I really do appreciate all the good discussion we’ve had. I’m also in favor of taking more action. I think we should endorse the original motion as it was put forward. I want to applaud the MPP for coming to us with this suggestion.

I’m a firm believer that sometimes you can actually look to the past for some solutions to current problems. And I definitely see a lot of benefit in terms of what we were able to achieve in the post-war period. I look around my ward and I see a lot of post-war builds. And we were able to mobilize a population to build housing on an incredible scale.

I mean, not only during the war, but after the war in terms of what we were able to build. And I want to also applaud, I mean, our current government in terms of what they put into the trades and trying to get people back into that because we need that. We need more of that. I applaud our post-secondary institutions for pushing that as well.

And honestly, we almost need to be on that war footing again in terms of mobilizing our population to build. Because we need people to build, like they’ve never built before, honestly. I look at my ward and yeah, we have a lot of those old two-bedroom small houses that were built for returning veterans. Those were humble homes that a lot of people had as their first home and they’ve gone up a ridiculous price.

When I look at them now, I would dare say that most current veterans couldn’t afford what the World War II veterans were able to start their families in. So I’m in favor of pushing this little further and actually endorsing this. I think it’s a conversation they need to have in the legislature at Queen’s Park because honestly, we need to use, as being said before, every tool in the toolbox. And if we have to dust off an old tool, I think we should utilize it.

Thank you. That’s sort of laymen. Yeah, so great, great arguments from future MPPs that will be, I’m sure this conversation, those arguments will be at the legislature. But this is not the legislature, this is a city council.

I think Mr. Kernahan is to be applauded for coming up with original items here, but just as a matter of principle, I don’t want to get involved in bills that are about to be put in front of the legislature. So I’m happy that there’s take no action. I think that’s great, not that I think that would affect it anywhere.

And I’m excited to see where Mr. Kernahan will get to on this. And Amo, for sure, should pick up on this. That’s the appropriate body that should be speaking to this.

Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Your Worship. And I don’t think I have provided time for her to actually reply. But I do note that Mr.

Kernahan’s assistant is in the gallery. And maybe if she can just indicate with a thumbs up, this is not a private member’s bill. This is an opposition date motion. So I think it’s important that colleagues understand the difference between a motion in the legislature and a private member’s bill.

So a motion doesn’t trigger a second and third readings in a legislative committee. What would follow is if the motions passed, then legislation would be introduced and all those processes would happen. So as I was listening to the arguments, that makes me feel more comfortable about being supportive because this is a first step. And there’s lots of time for some of those other questions to be answered.

But I thought I’d take that opportunity to clarify having in a former life done that kind of job for a federal member. I know that those details can be important. Little details for colleagues to note, if you’re not familiar with the federal or the provincial processes. So as an opposition day motion, I’m much more open to the idea of being supportive because as I said, I support the goal.

250,000 affordable homes, very laudable goal. How we get there? I don’t know if the new agency is the right way to get there. But that is for the legislature to debate.

And for me, it’s the goal of those 250,000 homes that matters. And I do look forward and I will let his staff know that I will be following up on that phone call. It’s been a bit phone tag, but I recognize he’s a busy fellow. So I will take him up on that offer to call him back and get my questions answered directly.

And you’re approaching the end of your time. Okay, Councilor Trossa. He got, I think, about two minutes of time left. I’ll be very brief then.

I would like to move the motion in three parts. Number one, that it be received, which is already on the table. And number two, that we adopt the language that was provided that the government in Ontario be advised, that paragraph. And number three, that we further, we further refer this matter to AMO for their consideration.

So there will be three parts to the amended motion. If I can get a seconder, that is number one, it be received. Number two, the text that was provided in the letter. And number three, that it further be sent to AMO.

I don’t think we have to choose between sending it to AMO and dealing it with it ourselves. And thank you very much, Deputy Mayor through the chair, for clarifying that for me. And that’s what I have to say. This would be a good package.

Well, now I’m going to say, because the mover and the second are removed, the take no action. And it’s just received. I actually don’t see additional clauses as contrary, because just receiving it doesn’t preclude an action. So people want to vote on those clauses separately.

They can. So I would say your your your motion would be in order as an amendment to the existing motion. And I’ll look for a seconder for that, Councillor. Your worship.

Yeah. Excuse me. That’s my motion on the floor now. Do I have the right to choose whether or not my motion goes forward?

No, your motion is to receive. A receive and take no action is a very definitive thing to say we’re not doing anything. You chose to remove and we saw consent of the take no action. So there’s nothing precluding you from achieving what you wanted, which is receive it and us adding additional directions to it.

If you didn’t want to do that, the take no action was indeed the way to go. So, I mean, you can challenge the chair, but the take no action was there. I would have called Councillor Troz has motion contrary, but given you can receive this and subsequently take actions that there’s nothing precluding that from you achieving the written text of your motion and additional actions being taken. So you can challenge the chair if you like.

That’s that’s fine. Or you can also divide it up. If it gets amended, you can vote against the second two pieces if you like. And the idea that you can’t withdraw is the clerk has pointed out it’s in the procedure by library motion.

So we deemed in the possession of the standing committee for debate once it’s been accepted by the chair and move the second. So I know it’s your motion, but we’ve all taken ownership over it now that it’s been seconded on the floor. Okay, so Councillor Troz have there was a seconder for your motion. I’m just going to get the language up so people can see.

We’re just working on that just ever so slightly. And this is an amendment. So this is like, so Councillor Cady, just so you know, Councillor Cady, so this is an amendment to your motion. So if you vote against the amendment, your original motion stands.

So we’re not, I just want you to be clear, we’re not changing your motion. There’s what I’m ruling in order is that it can be amended. Okay, thank you. So if you don’t like it, you can vote against it and then we go back just to receive.

So the amendment is just the addition of the just the two pieces that the Councillor referred to. I look for speakers list on the amendment. Councillor Stevenson and then Councillor Ronan. Thank you.

For me, I appreciate getting the letter. I appreciate the efforts around looking for solutions to do housing. Certainly always open to that. I don’t think that I agree with Councillor Layman that this is not a provincial matter.

And you know, I trust the governments to come up with something great. All parties have prioritized housing. So there’s no partisanship there, I don’t think. And as far as co-op housing goes, the federal government announced 1.5 billion just last spring.

And I know I’ve had a developer try to use that and we still don’t have or there’s still don’t have it in process yet that it can actually be used. But I think all levels of government and all parties are committed to housing. And I appreciate getting this letter. I appreciate knowing what’s going forward.

But I don’t feel that there’s any need for us to do anything further than just receive it and see what happens. Councillor Ronan. Thank you and through you. I’ll be brief.

So I will be supporting the amendment. The main reason is I see alignment with MPP current hands letter and the report of the Ontario housing affordability task force. I think particularly the point is, you know, we need more land to build and we need to be innovative in how we find that land. I think, you know, within that report, there’s a number of steps and actions that should be taken.

And I think 11 is very applicable to what we’re discussing now. And for us, I think our interest is in number 49, which is again that, you know, we can be penalized if we don’t hit the target. So finding land so that we can hit the target is actually really important to us. So ultimately, there is a financial implication for us if we don’t meet our target, whether that’s on provincial lands or not.

One thing I wanted to add to the conversation is around the piece in the letter that talks about our schools. And one of the things that I think we also have to advocate for is the removal of the moratorium on school closures. Because right now we’re sitting in a position in the city where we have schools that could be used for housing potentially. But because of a moratorium, we can’t even entertain the fact that we could be consolidating schools within our city.

And where we have under capacity issues, we also have the over capacity issues. So it would really help to address not only the under capacity issue and housing, but also the over capacity issue in our schools. So I know I did have some back and forth with the MPP’s office about that as well on that piece. But supportive in general, I will also say in the report of the Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force, it does talk about an all-party committee.

It does talk about this being something that every part of our government needs to be working on. So I applaud the MPP for bringing this forward. Okay, I want to put the motion up, make sure that the mover and second are okay with it. Yes?

The only change I would make is see that this matter also be referred. Okay, that should be updated. Okay, so all good. So any other speakers on this motion?

Councillor Pribble? Oh, yes. And then Councillor Vamever and you’ll be next. I’ll go Councillor Pribble first.

Just two points. The first one is that I thought that the motion was not the supports, the house, the word supports. I think it was that we do receive it, accept it. And the other one for the second part is the Home Ontario because to fund a new public agency called Home Ontario, I really don’t.

First of all, as it was already stated here on the horse shoe, then never guarantees any success, potentially additional costs. So I will not support the way this states. I just wanted to say that. Councillor, let me clarify what’s happening here is.

The other piece is still there. The receive piece. This is an amendment data B and C. The effect of this is not that we were necessarily supporting each and every one of these pieces in the letter, but that we actually support and encourage the debate in the house about these matters, knowing that they’re going to come up with their own options.

We’re supporting the MPP bringing this forward for discussion in the house, whether it passes or not or gets amended. So we’re not tied to supporting a public agency of Home Ontario to do these specific things in a specific way. That’s why it was worded in this way because based on the discussion, it seemed like everybody wanted to encourage and support the MPP bringing this forward for debate and discussion recognizing that it could get changed. So I just want you to see the way that the wording is crafted so that we’re supporting this discussion that the MP wants to bring forward and the debate.

But we need not tie ourselves to any components of this down the road. We’re generally supportive of this being the types of things that legislature should be discussing. That’s the way I read the motion. Okay, just to add to it, the way it reads is the government of Ontario should establish and fund a new public agency.

So because of this part, I personally will not support it because I don’t think that that’s first of all our position to take and the second, as I said. So this is the only part that I certainly would note. So that second paragraph actually should be in quotations because that’s the wording exactly from MPP turn of hands letter. So that’s why it says the following motions to have a colon there and say and then in quotations that wording that he put in his letter.

That’s the motion that will be before the legislature that he’s going to move. I do have Councillor Stevenson your next go ahead. Okay, thank you. I will not be supporting this amendment.

And the reason really is actually Councillor Stevenson my great apologies. I told Councillor Vamehir Bergen that he would be next and I then I skipped them. Sorry, Councillor Vamehir Bergen. You’re up on the screen now.

Again, I’m in the cheap seats. I get it. It’s no, the B and C are certainly B is problematic. I have to agree with Councillor Pribble.

I mean, it’s right there in black and white that we are endorsing the establishment of what is probably going to be a very large bureaucracy to set up this homes Ontario. And I certainly can’t support that. It’s right there embedded into the motion and we’re going to put our names behind it. So I can support A, but certainly not B or C with that new bureaucracy being the highlight of the motion.

Okay, Councillor. And just so I’m clear, just the addition of B and C are on. So if you’re against B and C, then you can vote against the amendment. They won’t exist anymore.

Yeah, I will be voting against that particular amendment unless of course the movers see it clear to take that part homes Ontario to fund homes Ontario to take that part out that would make it much more palatable. Okay, that’s not something they’re willing to do. So we’ll just proceed with the debate. That’s fine.

Just vote against it. Yeah, Councillor Stevenson. Thanks, Councillor. I won’t be supporting the amendment.

And as I said, I appreciate getting copy the letter. I appreciate ideas going forward to the provincial government, anything we can do to support an increase in housing. All parties are looking to do housing. I trust the government that they will engage in a motion and discussion if they feel that it’s worthwhile.

And I know I personally do not want to receive letters from various organizations and commissions asking us to please have discussions over issues that they feel are important. We are going to do what we think in this Council. And I trust the provincial government to do what they need to do. And I don’t think it looks good on us to try to tell them what conversations they should have.

So that’s that’s my stance on it. And I appreciate it. And I’m looking forward to receiving it. I will not be supporting the amendments.

Any other speakers to the amendment, which is the additional of the two pieces B and C? Okay, seeing none, we’ll open that for voting. This is on the amendment to add B and C. Putting the vote in the motion carries seven to six.

All right. So now the as amended motion, I need to move on to seconder. Councillor ramen, seconded by Councillor McAllister. Okay.

So this is the as amended motion. This is the effect of the entire piece. Councillor Layman, are we going to be splitting ABC? Only if it’s requested, which I’m requesting a split ABC.

You want each one individually. Okay. We can do that. I mean, everybody’s ready to vote because we can just do them ABC.

Lots of debate. There’s food ready. I know other people got to get somewhere too. So we’re going to just open those for voting.

I just I’m going to use the same mover and seconder for the as amended motion, which is who would like to do that? Councilor Ferra, seconded by Councillor Trossau. So if you’re comfortable, I’ll use you for A, B, and C. And we’ll open just A first, which is the receipt, just receiving the correspondence.

Councillor Cuddy? Yes. Closing the vote in the motion carries 13 to 0. Okay.

Next we’ll deal with B, which is us letting the government know that we support them having a debate on the following motion. So I’ll open B for voting. Closing the vote in the motion carries seven to six. Okay.

And now part C, which is referring the matter to AMO for their consideration. Open that for voting as soon as it’s ready. Voting the vote in the motion carries eight to five. Okay.

That ends that item. Hopefully, the debate in the legislature is equally as efficient. And we’ll move on to deferred matters in additional business. Does anyone have any?

No. Seeing none, there’s no confidential items for this session. So I look for motion to adjourn. We would by Councillor Frank, seconded by Councillor Ferra, we’ll do this by hand.

All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.

We’re adjourned.