Open Council

8th Meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee

Open Council

8th Meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee

June 17, 2025, at 1:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 1:00 PM; it being noted that Councillors S. Stevenson, P. Van Meerbergen and S. Hillier were in remote attendance.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

2.1   London Transit Commission Governance Review: Appointment of Consultant for RFP 2025-035

2025-06-17 Staff Report - LTC Governance Review

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by E. Peloza

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the appointment of a consultant to complete the London Transit Commission Governance Review:

a)    KPMG LLP BE APPOINTED as the Consultant to conduct the London Transit Commission Governance Review, for a total amount of $132,650 (excluding HST), in accordance with sections 15.3(d) and 12 of the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy;

b)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with the London Transit Commission Governance Review project;

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

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

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

2.2   Corporate Growth Projections Update

2025-06-17 Staff Report - Corporate Growth Projections Update

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by S. Lehman

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, and the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following report with respect to the City of London Corporate Growth Projections 2021-2051, BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (9 to 4)

2.3   Mayoral Direction 2024-001, City-owned Parking Lot Redevelopment

2025-06-17 Staff Report - City-Owned Parking Lot Redevelopment Update

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the following actions be taken with respect to Mayoral Direction 2024-001, City-owned Parking Lot Redevelopment:

a)    the City-owned Parking Lot Redevelopment update provided in the report dated June 17, 2025 BE RECEIVED;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to take no further action regarding the City-owned parking lots located at 434 Elizabeth Street and 824 Dundas Street; and

c)    that the potential redevelopment of the city-owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Ave BE REFERRED for Civic Administration to prepare procurement documents and solicit a Request for Expressions of Interest from potential partners to construct new dwelling units, to fully complete the public engagement consultations, review the long term strategic plan for the Old East Village BIA, and evaluate the associated parking needs to report back to a meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee in Q4 2025.

it be noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received communications and heard delegations from K. Morrison, General Manager, Old East Village BIA and J. Herb with respect to this matter.

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by E. Peloza

That the delegation requests for K. Morrison, General Manager, Old East Village BIA, J. Herb and M. Legault BE APPROVED to be heard at this time.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by E. Peloza

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, the following actions be taken with respect to Mayoral Direction 2024-001:

a)    the City-owned Parking Lot Redevelopment update provided in this report BE RECEIVED for information:

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to take no further action regarding the City-owned parking lots located at 434 Elizabeth Street and 824 Dundas Street;

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to continue consultation with the Old East Village Business Improvement Area regarding the potential redevelopment of the City-owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Avenue:

d)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to undertake all pre-development land assembly activities to prepare the City-owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Avenue for a mid-rise form of redevelopment;

e)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to undertake a procurement process to solicit proposals from potential partners to facilitate the redevelopment of 641 Queens Avenue; and

f)    the financing for all pre-development activities required to prepare the City-owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Avenue for redevelopment BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report as appended to the staff report dated June 17, 2025 as Appendix “A”.

it be noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received communications and heard delegations from K. Morrison, General Manager, Old East Village BIA and J. Herb with respect to this matter.

Moved by S. Stevenson

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the following actions be taken with respect to Mayoral Direction 2024-001, City-owned Parking Lot Redevelopment:

a)    the City-owned Parking Lot Redevelopment update provided in the report dated June 17, 2025 BE RECEIVED;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to take no further action regarding the City-owned parking lots located at 434 Elizabeth Street and 824 Dundas Street; and

c)  all pre-development land assembly activities to prepare the City-owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Avenue for a mid-rise form of redevelopment and related procurement processes related to this action BE REFERRED for consideration at the October 28, 2025 meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee in order to fully complete the public engagement consultations, review the long term strategic plan for the Old East Village BIA, and evaluate the associated parking needs.

it be noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received communications and heard delegations from K. Morrison, General Manager, Old East Village BIA and J. Herb with respect to this matter.

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by S. Lehman

That part c) be amended to read as follows:

c)    that the potential redevelopment of the city-owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Ave BE REFERRED for Civic Administration to prepare procurement documents and solicit a Request for Expressions of Interest from potential partners to construct new dwelling units, to fully complete the public engagement consultations, review the long term strategic plan for the Old East Village BIA, and evaluate the associated parking needs to report back to a meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee in Q4 2025

Motion Passed (12 to 1)

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the motion, as amended, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   Not to be heard before 1:00 PM - Presentation - Introduction to the Interim Integrity Commissioner - John Mascarin, Aird & Berlis LLP

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by S. Trosow

That it BE NOTED that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee heard a verbal delegation from J. Mascarin, Aird & Berlis, Interim Integrity Commissioner with respect to the role of the Integrity Commissioner.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

3.2   Not to be heard before 2:00 PM - London & Middlesex Community Housing - 2024 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder Annual Resolutions

2025-06-17 Staff Report - AGM-LMCH

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Franke

That the following actions be taken with respect to the London & Middlesex Community Housing (LMCH):

a)  on the recommendation of the City Manager, the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated June 17, 2025 as Appendix “A” entitled “A by-law to ratify and confirm the Annual Resolutions of the Shareholder of London & Middlesex Community Housing”, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on June 24, 2025;

b)  the presentation by P. Squire, Board Chair and P. Chisholm, CEO, London & Middlesex Community Housing BE RECEIVED;

c)  the 2024 Annual Report BE RECEIVED;

d)  the 2024 Financial Statements BE RECEIVED; and

e)  the communication dated April 30, 2025 from A. Forrest BE RECEIVED.

it be noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication from Councillor S. Trosow with respect to this matter.

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by A. Hopkins

Motion to add a new part f) to read as follows:

f)  the Civic Administration and the London & Middlesex Community Housing Inc. BE REQUESTED to work together to arrange a series of property inspections of selected London & Middlesex Community Housing properties to be held on selected Saturdays on dates to be determined;

Motion Failed (3 to 11)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Franke

Motion to approve part d) to read as follows:

d)  the 2024 Financial Statements BE RECEIVED; and

Motion Passed (13 to 1)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Franke

Motion to approve parts a) and c):

a)  on the recommendation of the City Manager, the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated June 17, 2025 as Appendix “A” entitled “A by-law to ratify and confirm the Annual Resolutions of the Shareholder of London & Middlesex Community Housing”, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on June 24, 2025;

c)  the 2024 Annual Report BE RECEIVED;

Motion Passed (13 to 1)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Franke

Motion to approve the balance of the motion.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

3.3   Housing and Development Corporation, London 2024 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder Annual Resolutions 

2025-06-17 Staff Report - AGM - HDC

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the following actions be taken with respect to the Housing Development Corporation, London:

a)   on the recommendation of the City Manager, the Independent Auditor’s Report of KPMG LLP for the Shareholder of Housing Development Corporation, London, dated December 31, 2024, BE RECEIVED;

b)  the 2024 Year End Report to the Shareholder BE RECEIVED; and

c)  the 2024 Financial Statements BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

4.   Items for Direction

None.

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Confidential 

None.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by C. Rahman

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 5:50 PM.

Full Transcript

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

View full transcript (5 hours, 4 minutes)

[16:04] All right, colleagues, I’m going to call the eighth meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee to order, so if I can ask Councillors to take their seats, please. I want to begin by acknowledging that the City of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabic, the Haudenosaunee, Lene Peiwok, and Adawanderan peoples. And we honor and respect the history, languages, and cultures of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The City of London is currently home to many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, and as representatives of the people of the City of London, we’re grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory.

[16:41] The City of London is also committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request. To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact SPPC at London.ca, or phone 519-661-2489, extension 2425. I think I’m going to begin by looking for any disclosures of pecuniary interest. Seeing none in chambers, seeing none online, I will let colleagues know, Councillor Stevenson, Councillor Van Mierbergen, and Councillor Hillier are joining us online.

[17:18] Councillor Ferrera has sent his regrets as he is ill. So seeing no disclosures of pecuniary interest, we will move along to the consent agenda. I have had requests to poll 2.2 and 2.3. So right now, the only item that would be on the consent is 2.1. The Councillor Frank wishes to vote differently on 2.2. There is request to amend discuss 2.3 and we have delegates. So looking to see if there is a mover for 2.1. Councillor Cudi and Councillor Plow is a second.

[17:54] Okay, so that’s on the floor looking for any discussion. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, I just want to say that I thank you to staff because I’ve received the RFP document, which gave me the information that I was looking for on this, so for others, it’s available publicly if anyone else is interested prior to council. Thank you, looking for any other comments. Seeing none, then I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote.

[18:52] Councillor Van Mierbergen. A vote, yes. Opposing the vote, motion carries 14 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. Moving along, the items that were pulled will be dealt with under deferred matters at the end of the agenda. That brings us to our scheduled items. We have two timed items today, so we’re going to stick to that to ensure that we hit the times for those items to be heard. In the event that we are finished 3.1 prior to 2pm, we can consider revisiting whether any of the items that were pulled are able to be dealt within a timely manner prior to moving on to 3.2.

[19:39] So 3.1, not to be heard before 1pm, is a presentation, the introduction to our new interim integrity commissioner, Mr. Mascarin, and I believe you’re here to give us a presentation. Colleagues, it is a lengthy presentation. You’ll note on the agenda, an hour block has been given here. Some of that will be dependent on questions and answers you may have at the end, but this will also be an information session that will provide the public some insight into the entirety commissioner process as well. So welcome, sir. And once staff have you ready to go, we’ll turn the floor over to you.

[20:51] Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you very much for having me here. My name is John Mascarin. I’m a partner with Eridan Burles in Toronto. And just to dispel the notion, it’s not gonna be a long presentation. It’s gonna be a very brief, entertaining presentation today. And also, I am not technically your integrity commissioner, your interim integrity commissioner. I am the lead for the municipality. Your integrity commissioner is technically Eridan Burles LLP.

[21:24] We do that for a particular reason so that we have insurance coverage. That’s the reason we do it. But I’m one of the member, seven member team, and I will show you the names of everyone. And hopefully explain to you how we carry out our services in this important realm for you. So, Mr. Chair, I will be happy to take any questions at the end if there should be any. And I will attempt to, as best I can, explain some of them. What I really wanted to do is I asked a staff if I could come and present and be introduced to you.

[22:03] We took over from your previous integrity commissioner. We are the interim integrity commissioner at the moment. And we look after currently, I’m not even positive, but somewhere between 70 and 80 municipalities in Ontario. We look after several school boards, sometimes on an ad hoc basis, one conservation authority, and several local boards as well. This is a realm that I fell into, quite honestly, several years ago. I was asked, I was on the faculty of the LLM program for Osgoode Hall Law School, my LLM matter.

[22:40] And I was asked if I could teach the municipal ethics course because Professor David Mullen was stepping down and wasn’t interested in teaching it again. And I said, sure, why not? So, I taught the course, and this is, I think, 2011. And you may recall, 2010, there was a very tumultuous mayoralty seat in the city of Toronto. There was the baby brother of our premier, was the mayor, and got into a bit of chaos.

[23:16] And at one point, someone said, hey, we need to call someone to find out if this is appropriate behavior. And someone said, someone just taught a course in municipal ethics, let’s call him. And the press never stopped calling. So that actually got me into this realm here. I had been giving opinions on the municipal conflict of interest act for many years. I’ve been in court several times, both for and against members. And I’ve been an integrity commissioner.

[23:51] My first appointment was 2013. And I’m happy to say that my first two municipalities, the town of Innisfil and the town of New Tecumseh, are still my clients. We’re still the integrity commissioner in both of those municipalities. And it’s been going quite well. We have a team of seven. We started off really just me doing this, as you may recall, the Bill 68 amendments back in 2018, mandated that every municipality in Ontario had to have a code of conduct and had to have an integrity commissioner.

[24:28] Well, that opened up a whole new clientele for me. I’d been a practicing municipal lawyer before that. And now we do a significant amount of work in this area. I’m very privileged and honored to step in and be your interim integrity commissioner. And today, what I’m gonna talk to you a little about, there’s gonna be some substance, but I’d hope to also highlight for you how we just carry out the services and how we can best serve the members here, your local board members and your staff, and hopefully the whole city as a whole.

[25:03] So, oh, which one, the space bar, terrific. So how do I go back? Oh, I got it, I can figure this out. The municipal accountability framework here in Ontario, you’ve got a whole mirage of things. You’ve got codes of conduct, you’ve got a number of accountability officers.

[25:36] I don’t think the city of London has an auditor general, and you don’t have an ombudsman. So, but you do have a closed meeting investigator. That’s one, you don’t have a lobbyist registrar either, at the moment, do you? No. So, we’re lucky we’ve got the integrity commissioner. So, what is the integrity commissioner going back to where the impetus was from this? It was from the Toronto Computer Leasing Scandal back in the early 2000s. You’ll recall there was MFP did an RFP to be provided with a computer leasing work services to the city of Toronto.

[26:19] It was something like a $14 million contract. All of a sudden, without any accountability, ballooned to 88 million, and everyone was asking, “What the heck happened?” Madam Justice Denise Bellamy did a public inquiry, as a public inquiry officer, and what she did is she wrote a report, and she recommended an integrity commissioner accountability officer and codes of conduct, mandatory codes of conduct, for both members of council, as well as Toronto City staff. And she said an effective IC system provides two basic services, and advisory service to help counselors and staff who seek advice before anything happens.

[26:59] This is a preventative measure. And then of course, the ability to test anyone coming forward to saying, “Hey, I don’t think a council member has acted appropriately.” And it wouldn’t be proper if that was the end of it, right? A person wouldn’t get much of a hearing, so to speak, and the council member wouldn’t be able to defend themselves. So one of the things that an integrity commissioner can do is investigate and seek to enforce the accountability system. Now, there’s been some contention in some municipalities, and it’s few and far between, but there’s been an argument that an integrity commissioner can’t do both things, can’t give advice, and can’t investigate.

[27:43] There’s an inherent conflict. I don’t believe that that is really the case. If you look at the federal system, and you look at the provincial integrity commissioner, that is not how it is. Both systems have the conflict of interest, ethics commissioner at the federal level, and the Ontario integrity commissioner are able to give advice to members, as well as seek to enforce the code of conduct, and the members accountability act, whatever is in place. So I’ve always been a proponent that an integrity commissioner can and shall do both, but there are a few municipalities in the province that actually have two integrity commissioners.

[28:24] One is an ethics advisor, and the other is the investigator. That’s not the system that the city of London has. Now, the integrity commissioner now mandated, as of March the 1st, 2019, every municipality, including the city of London, must have an integrity commissioner. We are a statutory officer. We report directly to council. We don’t report to the mayor. We don’t report to the CAO. We don’t report to staff. We report directly to the city council, which is one of the reasons why I think I’m here.

[29:00] I have some independence, which is the second part. So when I asked, could I come to speak to council? Well, it was really like, I really want to come and speak to council. So I have the authority to do that. And yes, there have been some municipalities that have attempted to stop us from being able to do that that’s wrong. We’ve called them out and bad councils. The functions are assigned by the municipality under with respect to the Code of Conduct and the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act.

[29:32] I haven’t set out the full seven sections. But what we do is we advise members of council. We educate you, which is partly why I’m here today. We investigate complaints and we conduct inquiries. We adjudicate complaints by making certain decisions. And there’s a recent case that’s very interesting and talks about this. And then we recommend penalties as well as corrective or remedial measures or actions. And no, you won’t see these in the act. And there are some integrity commissioners in the province who don’t believe that remedial measures or corrective actions can be imposed.

[30:10] I’m really surprised with one of my municipal councils comes to me and says, is this true? And the answer is no, it’s not. Of course you can, it’s not specified in the Municipal Act. But if you read a case, a very infamous case from the Interial Divisional Court, Magda v. Ford. Yes, not Ford. It’s very clear that as part of the system of municipality, council can impose remedial measures or corrective actions. And I’ll speak just a little bit about that, okay? The functions of the integrity commissioner are set out in 223.3 sub one.

[30:48] The functions are, and on the list here, I’ve just truncated them for you. What’s always been in place, what the integrity commissioner has always been able to do is to apply and seek to enforce the code of conduct and other ethical policies, guidelines, rules, procedures. For instance, the council staff relation policy, a social media policy, things like that. Now, what’s read on the screen is what is new and what was put in place in 2018. For the first time ever, integrity commissioners were given the responsibility to, one, give advice to members under the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act.

[31:30] Before that, you had to fend it on your own. You either have to go to your brother-in-law who probably would not give you really great advice on the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, or you have to pay for someone to go and give you advice. Typically, most municipalities would not provide any coverage. Some municipalities did, but it was pretty minimal. Now, integrity commissioners are able to give you advice. And look after the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. This is very interesting because before this date, integrity commissioners never actually had to do this.

[32:06] And it came as a surprise to many integrity commissioners. And in my view, I think a number of integrity commissioners were really ill-equipped to deal with the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, because all they had to do before March the 1st, 2018 is to know that, oh, there’s an act that talks about financial interest, and it’s over there, and I don’t have to worry about it. All of a sudden, they have to worry about it, and it was a real problem. We can now provide written advice to members with respect to their obligations, both under the code and under the MCIA.

[32:39] I’ll speak about that. And actually, for the first time, we can actually provide educational information to the public. That wasn’t there before, which is really fascinating, because I always thought that integrity commissioners could do that as part of their mandate. So let me start with the issue about advice-giving. This is one of the best benefits that you have as a member of council under the Municipal Accountability Framework, where you can go to the integrity commissioner who can give you advice with respect to your obligations under the code of conduct, any policy, rule, procedure, governing, the ethical conduct, behavior of members, and the municipal conflict of interest.

[33:25] And I can’t believe how little press and notoriety this authority has. All you ever hear about in the media is, oh, there’s an investigation, and someone’s going to be challenged. Someone did something wrong. And quite honestly, my role, specifically with respect to integrity commissioner work, is not really to conduct the investigations. I usually let my team members do that. But I am the one person who typically gives you advice. We are now expressly authorized to give members of council, members of local boards of the city, advice with respect to those three things.

[34:09] So here’s what you need to know with respect to the advice. The advice must be requested in writing by the member. And this does not mean writing to me, sending me an email and saying, hey, John, can I talk to you about this tomorrow at 3 PM? What it means is you actually have to give me background facts, information, a link to a report, any contracts that may apply, or anything else that you think is appropriate, for me to be able to understand the context in order for me to be able to provide you with advice.

[34:45] And my advice must be provided in writing. Now, that’s not our requirement at Eric Burles. It’s not the requirement of the city. It’s a statutory requirement. So let me just dispel something. I don’t mind having a conversation with anyone. I really, really don’t. But if you’re asking us for advice, just think about it. You probably are asking because you can’t figure it out yourself. So you’re coming to the integrity commissioner. It’s probably a little bit complex. There’s maybe some background facts, some context.

[35:18] How fair would it be if you called me, and I was in the car, and you rattled off 10 minutes of a background complex fact situation, and then said, and what do you think? I haven’t had an opportunity to consider it. I haven’t even really digested it. So there’s a really good reason why it should be in writing. One, it solidifies what it is that you’re asking. And two, it gives me an opportunity, or one member of our team, the opportunity to actually think about it, to be able then to get back to you in writing.

[35:52] And why? Why is it need to be in writing? Again, it’s just written confirmation. I have had many times people said, hey, the integrity commissioner told me this, and I’m quite surprised, because I’m thinking like, I don’t think I said that. And that’s the problem, if you do it all orally, right? No, I didn’t say that, and then that becomes a real problem. So it has to be in writing. Now, what we typically like to do when we are the full-time integrity commissioner, and we’ve had a hand in drafting the code of conduct and the complaint protocol— and I’ll explain that in a minute— is we really like to put something in there that says, if you ask us for advice, it’s binding on you.

[36:38] Because how fair would it be if any member of council came to me and asked me for advice, and then I was to give different advice? And someone says, oh, well, that’s a problem. It would be binding on you. Now, that’s not in the statute. If you look at the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, that concept is in there in section 9 sub 2. And what we usually do is we borrow from that, put it in a complaint protocol. So anyone would know this, OK, and especially members of the public.

[37:11] So two really important conditions to the request for advice, apart from it being a request in writing, is you must provide us with all relevant facts and all background that we need to assess the matter. It’s not enough just to say, I’m a volunteer of this thing, and I want to know they’re coming to council on something, and I need to know whether I have a pecuniary interest. Well, that doesn’t help me very much. What is this thing that you’re a member of? Are you really a member?

[37:43] What kind of a member are you? Have you been appointed by council? All of those things are things that we typically have to go back to. And you can appreciate if I have to go back and ask a whole bunch of series of questions, it might delay us in getting you the advice. We have a standard at the firm. Typically, we are able to respond to request for advice once we know what the actual question is, and we have the background facts, between 24 and 48 hours. Now, we don’t issue a formal letterhead opinion on this.

[38:19] What we typically do is provide an email response, so you get it quickly. And it’s what I would call a semi-formal, quasi-formal response, which tries to explain to you not only what you want to know. Yes, you do. No, you don’t have a pecuniary interest. No, you better not accept that gift or benefit because it contravenes the code. But why we’ve come to that determination? Why do we do that? Well, to give you some context, otherwise, you may not know why we’ve come to that. And the next time the question comes up, you might say, I don’t know.

[38:54] He just said, yes or no to me. So we try to do it that way. For council members who reach out to us more often than maybe other council members— and I’m not saying that in any pejorative way, because some members may need to reach out to us more often than other members. There’s nothing wrong with that. We try to give members some benefit of how we arrived at the decision, what our rationale is, what our thinking was in order to get there. That way, the next time, you might not need to come to me. You might be able to just figure it out for yourself.

[39:29] And the second point here is, when you ask for advice, you have to ask for advice with respect to your own obligations. Please, please do not write to me and say, hey, something happened at the council meeting last night. I saw this council member do this. What happens here? We’re not going to give you advice. I’ll say it again. We’re not going to give you advice on that. I can only give advice with respect to a member’s own obligations. The one slight carve out to that is the mayor. I am entitled to give the mayor because the mayor is the spokesperson, the leader of council, the chair of most of the meetings at council.

[40:14] Some benefit because the mayor might need to know what he might need to do in order to run an efficient effective meeting and to do other things as the chair, as the CEO of the municipality. That’s the only carve out. And we’re very careful there that we don’t, of course, just run rough shot over that principle that we really just give advice to members about their own obligations. So please, please bear that in mind. And don’t try the, hey, this is hypothetical. What would happen in this situation?

[40:48] Oh, we’ve come across that once or twice before. We can’t give you advice on someone else’s obligations. So please, if I can ask if you can just respect that. Now, investigations. This is the one that gets a lot of notoriety, and I will go through it in some detail. But very quickly, the integrity commissioner does not investigate on his or her own initiative, not like the ombudsman. This was actually proposed in bill 68, but AMO fought very strenuously to get it out. And the integrity commissioner has no authority to go in and investigate on their own.

[41:29] We can only undertake an investigation if there’s a formal complaint and/or if council passes a resolution and would like to see us investigate. That happens occasionally. There’s a breach of confidentiality. Perhaps you don’t know who it is. So someone can’t file a complaint and says, oh, Councilor X did this. So Council can pass a resolution and say, hey, we’d like you to investigate and find out who breached confidentiality. Okay, the code of conduct complaint protocol typically sets out the terms for how the integrity commissioner is to investigate or inquire.

[42:13] I worked with the Ontario ombudsman on their guide to integrity commissioners. Actually spoke with legal counsel from the ombudsman at not this year’s, but last year’s AMCTO conference about this. So the complaint protocol, part of the statutory scheme. We have broad and independent powers to investigate. We are entitled to get such information that we believe is necessary for an inquiry. We’re entitled to have free access to all records that belong to the municipality that we believe is necessary for an inquiry.

[42:53] We just did one where a council member vehemently denied having called the employer of a person who had filed a complaint. We looked for the records. There were government issued cell phone and we looked at the records. Her lawyer wrote back and said, you can’t do that. That is a breach of privacy. No, it really isn’t. Hey, nice argument. Probably took up three hours of our time to respond. Thank you very much, lawyer, which is going to cost the municipality.

[43:28] But that’s just not something that’s valid. The other thing that you often see pop up is, oh, I have right to freedom of expression. And I can say anything that I want, anytime that I want, any way that I want to. And that’s just not the law. Come on, everybody knows this, really. Everybody knows this. The charter builds it in. It’s inherent in the charter. You’re allowed to have such reasonable limits as are justified in a free and democratic society. I think I’ve just butchered section one of the charter, but you get my point.

[44:03] So yes, we are met with a lot of freedom of expression. I’m allowed to say anything that I want, and that’s just not the law. And we are allowed to occasionally, and this has never happened. So just let me preclude that question. We are allowed to elect to become a commissioner, a public inquiry commissioner, and exercise the authority and the powers under the Public Inquiry Act of 2009. So have you ever seen a public inquiry? Yeah, someone can be subpoenaed. Someone can be summoned to bring documents.

[44:36] We can do that. We’ve never had to do it. I’ve been doing this for 11, 13 years, 12 years. Never had to do that. We tell people, do you really want us to constitute ourselves as a public inquiry commissioner and issue a subpoena to you? We can do so. Usually you get a response. You may not totally get a truthful response, but you do get a response from people. So we’ve never actually had to exercise that. We have a duty of confidentiality, everything that we acquire, and any person who may be acting under our instructions, and typically I will work with the clerk, with the deputy clerk, but there may be others at the municipality.

[45:20] They are under the same shroud of secrecy. Whatever we’re doing is confidential, unless we decide to disclose some of it in order to conduct an investigation, or ultimately to report. And if you think, oh well, I’ll just go and file an FOI under in FIPA, it’s excluded from that. The integrity commissioner duty of confidentiality supersedes has primacy over in FIPA. Many council members have attempted to bring an FOI, complain it’s have attempted to bring an FOI, and you just can’t do that under the accountability regime.

[46:03] We report, that is the public accountability. When we report, we are allowed to override the duty of confidentiality. As an integrity commissioner, we are allowed to disclose in the report such matters as in the commissioner’s opinion are necessary for the purposes of the report. Now why would that be there? Well, if we reach a conclusion that someone has breached the code of conduct or some other ethical policy, you probably wanna know why. So for the interest of transparency, accountability, intelligibility, you need to be able to have to disclose certain things.

[46:43] Recent situation, I’ll just give you an example. Had a member of council reach out to me, won’t name the municipality. It is a public report, so you can probably find it. Member of council reached out and said, hey, John, I didn’t know we were on the first name basis, by the way. So the council reached out and said, John, I need to disclose something that the municipality is hiding in secret. My goal, how are they hiding in secret? Closed meetings, as if that was a bad thing, okay. I said, okay, hold on, let’s take a step back. Something is happening.

[47:17] Municipality decided to hold a closed meeting. Did they pass a resolution, yes. What was the matter? It was about the sale, sorry, the purchase of a property. Said, well, that’s authorized under the exceptions to the closed meeting, open meeting world. He said, well, yes, but it’s imperative for my residents to know about this because they elected me. The answer is yes, those residents in that particular district ward, yes, they did elect you. Once you become a council member, your council member that represents everyone in the municipality, okay.

[47:49] So I said, there’s a good reason. Council went into in-camera on purpose. They wanted to discuss this matter. It’s sensitive, I understand that. You are not to disclose it, okay. Got sent off the information. I thought this is great. And then I get a response back. By the way, if I do disclose anything, what’s the penalty? So you know what’s gonna come next, right? A couple of weeks later, the mayor sends me a note saying, I’ve got this email. It discloses things that we discussed in camera, and it’s from the very same council member.

[48:22] So we’re under a duty of confidentiality, right? We cannot disclose anything. The member had reached out in a confidential basis to get advice from us about something that was very, very important to him and his constituents. We gave him the advice. He decided to ignore the advice, breached confidentiality of a closed meeting. That’s a problem. We were entitled to say that. And it actually went to an aggravating factor in the report where we felt that the penalty that we were thinking of imposing, we all of a sudden said, we think we need to impose a higher or recommend the imposition of a more stringent penalty because person had the advice, was told the advice and decided to ignore it.

[49:10] So we are allowed to disclose matters in certain instances. Penalties, there are only two, really clear. There’s a reprimand, what is that? It’s a censure, public censure, that you cannot do that. You’re being denounced. Council’s denouncing the actions of the member. Or a suspension of the remuneration of the member for up to 90 days. Not a suspension of the member. You’re still required to carry out your council or responsibilities, duties, and functions.

[49:46] It’s a suspension of your remuneration up to 90 days. And no, it doesn’t relate only to matters where there’s harassment or any kind of, or I don’t know, some sort of sexual harassment, which is an allegation that’s recently been raised with us that you can only impose 90 days for those issues. That’s not true. If you look, I was able to Google and find maybe, I don’t know, six or seven reports where council members were found to have breached code of conduct significantly and 90 days suspension of pay was ordered.

[50:22] Not only for those types of infringements. The integrity commissioner provides an opinion and makes recommendations. It is council that should hold its own house in order and council imposes penalties or remedial measures or corrective actions. This recent case received some press throughout the province, Robinson versus City of Pickering. This is the municipality that decided we’re gonna go to all meetings will be virtual because of the, I don’t know, mail storm that the council member has started with a certain band of her followers.

[51:06] I’m trying to be as polite as I can about this. Anyway, there were a number of complaints made. The integrity commissioner twice investigated. She decided to file judicial review and in a very lengthy decision from the Ontario Divisional Court that dissected a number of cases that had come before, including a case that I argued in front of the Divisional Court. The court said very, very clearly, the integrity commissioner, the role that they have is an investigative role.

[51:43] So one of the things that we’re often met with as an integrity commissioner, especially if you’re investigating someone a second, third, tenth time, is you’re biased against me. So get another integrity commissioner, you are biased. Well, the law says that if you’re an investigator, the test is, and it was made very clear in Shirelli versus City of Ottawa, is you have to have a closed mind. That is the test, a closed mind. That’s an incredibly high standard. So we usually point this out and it usually goes away on the bias issue.

[52:20] The decision on the imposition of penalties or any remedial measures or corrective actions is council. Council has an adjudicated role. The council’s decision is entirely permissive and discretionary. And as the court said in the Robinson case, in the end municipal council is the real adjudicative decision maker. Now, a council can, of course, maybe I shouldn’t say that, because I’ve had to give this opinion a couple of times, council can delegate the authority to impose penalties to the integrity commissioner.

[52:57] This has occurred, in our instance, we were at one point, given the authority to impose penalties directly. Therefore, we weren’t just undertaking an investigative role. We were actually undertaking an adjudicative role. So it’s a little different standard there, but we were able to impose penalties directly. What happened when we did so? Yeah, it was removed from our ability to do so. And I’m not gonna call anyone out, North Fork County, but I will, really terrible.

[53:32] So a case where we were the integrity commissioner, John Kerr versus West Lincoln, we were the integrity commissioner in this case. The divisional court came back with these beautiful words. It is the integrity commissioner who has given the power to determine whether a member of council has violated the municipality’s code of conduct. As the applicant concedes, council is bound by the integrity commissioner’s findings. With respect to whether there has been misconduct. And John Kerr went on. Council is bound by the integrity commissioner’s findings as to misconduct.

[54:07] Therefore, in exercising its jurisdiction as to penalty, it cannot do so in any way that would seek to set aside the integrity commissioner’s findings on the question as to whether misconduct has occurred. And finally, a case that I argued in court, which was brought up in the Robinson case. And I actually am pat myself on the back, huh. This quote from the court, I think was borrowed directly from my factum. If the integrity commissioner concludes that a council member has contravened the code of conduct, the municipality has no power to contest or question that conclusion.

[54:47] And if you really wanna see an absolutely atrocious example of council ignoring this and ignoring their city solicitor three times warning council. Council, you’re stepping outside of your role. Watch the council meeting in the city of Mississauga on August the 12th of 2020. I’ve memorized that because why? We weren’t the integrity commissioner. My client was the integrity commissioner. And I said to the city solicitor, just make sure that council’s on the straight narrow here. They can’t start questioning.

[55:20] Why did you not view that video? Why did you not interview this witness? That is improper and inappropriate. And that’s what council did for two and a half hours. My client was there. By himself, yes, I had offered to go and he goes, it’s gonna look weak if I have you standing behind me and whispering in my ear. Kudos to him to stand up and say, no, I’m gonna take the heat. But he did so for two and a half hours. It was really deplorable. So no power to contest the findings of the integrity commissioner because the investigative function, it’s within our realm.

[55:54] Okay. So the Toronto integrity commissioner annual report, you can see that this has happened one too many times from the integrity commissioner in Toronto, Val Jepsen at the time. It is plain to see that any value gained by assigning a neutral, independent expert officer to investigate misconduct on council’s behalf is lost when council attempts to go behind the findings or challenge the lines of inquiry or analysis undertaken. It is also unfair, procedurally unfair to the parties and others involved and has the overall impact of undermining the accountability framework of the office of the integrity commissioner themselves.

[56:32] Okay. You can see that she had been cross examined on the floor council one too many times. I remember her colleague, sorry, her the predecessor, Janet Leeper, now Madam Justice, Janet Leeper. And I’ve seen this happen numerous times. Janet and I had met many conversations about Toronto City Council when she was cross examined. By the way, what happens if you don’t like what the integrity commissioner has done or what council has imposed as a penalty? Or, or, council doesn’t impose a penalty. What can someone do?

[57:05] No right to appeal. Why do I say that? If there’s a right to appeal, it’s in the statute. There’s nothing in the statute that grants the right to appeal. However, the decision of council and the integrity commissioner’s report which often stands as council’s reasons for possibly making its decision can be judicially reviewed pursuant to section two of the judicial review procedure act. It’s done directly to the court of a panel of three judges. So let’s just be clear here.

[57:38] It’s a judicial review. What does that mean? It means that if you’re going in front of a panel, you’re asking them to make a decision that the integrity commissioner’s investigation and report were unreasonable. Not that they were incorrect or illegal or inappropriate. They were unreasonable. And that the council itself’s decision was unreasonable. That’s not easy to do. By the way, there’s been, I stand to be corrected, but I think there’s been nine judicial review applications all brought by members of council on integrity commissioner reports and council decisions.

[58:21] Not one of them has overturned the decision and said the decision was wrong. There’ve been a couple of them that said, you know what, those remedial measures were actually not remedial measures, but not one has been overturned. I think in the next few years, you’re actually gonna see a well-heeled complainant come forward and do this. I’m going to file a complaint, or sorry, judicial review application that council looked the other way and didn’t follow the clear, concise, comprehensive report of the integrity commissioner.

[58:56] You might see this possibly happening because there’s been a lot of protesting, Mayor Leo in the city of Pierbrough, where council decided not withstanding the integrity commissioner’s very, very clear report that he had harassed two other members of council to look the other way. This happened to us when my partner, Laura Dean, was in front of the municipality of central Algin. She brought a report, there was something like 36 allegations. We ended up determining in a maybe 40 page report that there were nine separate instances and probably on the fence border line a number of other possible contraventions.

[59:39] And she was asked one question, Ms. Dean, do we have to follow your recommendations? And of course, my partner says, of course not. Council can make any decision, it could go the other way. And the member said, we don’t even want to accept your report. Well, thank you very much, council. We really appreciate the opportunity that you listened to us, right? And what was really interesting, the next council member said, oh, and we want to bring a judicial review of your report. So I was going like this. So the next day, the CEO calls me and said, John, we need to talk.

[1:00:12] I go, you sure bet we do. She goes, I’m really sorry about what happened. I go, yeah, that was pretty pathetic. She goes, kiss, you know, you probably don’t like where this is going. I go, I love where this is going. We’re going to court. And she goes, what? I go, yeah, I said, I called my lawyer. She said, what? I said, yeah, I called my lawyer. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t like represent ourselves, right? I can see there’s the disconnect. I go, one thing I should tell you. Did you know that there was an indemnity provision in the municipal act? She goes, what? I couldn’t have done any provision.

[1:00:44] Anytime that we are challenged, we are entitled to stand up and defend our investigation, report, whatever we do. And by the way, the cost is paid for by the municipality. Of course, I got to say what? Yeah, that was the case. So what happened? She said, can you give me a week? I said, sure. There was a close meeting of council and I got a call a week later and say, council’s going to repeal the request for judicial review. To that, I would have liked to have gone to that judicial review. The second way that you can possibly challenge the investigation of a integrity commissioner is to file a complaint to the Ontario ombudsman.

[1:01:25] The Ontario ombudsman will look at the matter and will basically go, did you follow proper procedure? Is your reporting? Is your investigation transparent and intelligible? Did you come to a reasonable decision? And that’s typically what the integrity commissioner— sorry, the ombudsman will do. The ombudsman has no authority to override what the integrity commissioner has done. They can only write a report that says, well, the investigation could have been better handled. The investigation was wrong, potentially. Has the ombudsman done that?

[1:01:58] They’ve had this authority, by the way, since 2018. No, not once. They’ve not done that once. So really quickly, I’m going to wrap it up, Mr. Chair. Just talking a little bit about the code of conduct, the MCIA, and then something at the end here. So code of conduct, of course, are mandatory. Every municipality shall have a code of conduct for members of council and local boards. Now, this is where I may differ slightly from your prior integrity commissioner, where I don’t see a code of conduct as being a policy.

[1:02:38] I don’t— policy connotes something that might need to be followed. I look at it. No, this is more akin to a by-law. A legislative enactment, where you have to follow it. So I look at it quite differently than— well, at least you’re prior integrity commissioner. And with all due respect to them, there are other integrity commissioners who refer to codes of conduct as policy. I don’t look at them like that. Now, I think yours is under your policies, which is really interesting. So I come back to, well, hold on.

[1:03:11] Is it a by-law? No, it isn’t. It isn’t a by-law, OK? But it’s often adopted by by-law. Is it a policy? Well, if they wanted to make it a mandatory policy, why didn’t the provincial legislative drafters put it in section 270 of the municipal act that says, these are the policies that every municipality and local board must have? It didn’t put it in there. It put it in its own standalone section. And what other kind of policy under the municipal act can there be a monetary penalty that’s imposed? I don’t see one.

[1:03:43] So my view is, I really do think it’s more akin to a by-law, a legislative subordinate enactment than it is a form of policy that may guide somebody and may be followed in some instances, but not in others. The Divisional Court in Robinson and Pickering, the Code of Conduct is a governance document. The Code of Conduct reflects, if you will, a social compact amongst members of council. It reflects the standards of behavior and ethical conduct that the councillors set for themselves and that which they expect each of their colleague members to uphold.

[1:04:25] I think that’s an important statement. Some municipalities have certificates or attestation clauses at the end of their codes of conduct. I don’t care about those. Like, if council passes a by-law, it applies to everyone. You have to have someone sign on and say, oh, yeah, I agree to it? No, you don’t. So it applies. And it’s council’s own standards that have been put in place. So just recall that. There are four prescribed subject matters that must be in every code.

[1:04:57] They are in your code. Gifts benefits hospitality. It’s writ large. So just be careful. They are gifts, benefits, and hospitality. Don’t go get free legal advice. Because that is a problem. We’ve run across this several times. There’s a suspicion. We are acting on behalf of an integrity commissioner right now. And there’s a suspicion that the council members’ legal fees are being funded through some other source. That would be a benefit to the member of council. You can’t receive that.

[1:05:31] Or you should at least disclose it. And/or have something in your code of conduct that provides for an exception there. Respectful conduct. One that has raised its ugly head many times. As you know, there is this statute or this bill right now that’s seeking to strengthen municipal accountability. I won’t say more than that. But respectful conduct. There’s a case right on point. Villeneuve versus North Stormont. Did you know that there’s a power and balance between council and staff?

[1:06:06] Yes, the divisional court says this. And why is that important? Because the role of staff is to be respected because there is a power and balance. Counselors always have the last word. Council has the last word. Members of staff, they can speak when spoken to, right? They don’t have the same power. So their obligations, duties, a role must be respected. Confidential information, something that comes up all the time. There is a case on point. Fallis versus Aurelia on this.

[1:06:40] What is set in a closed meeting, like Las Vegas, it stays in the closed meeting, not to be released. However, if you have any concern that something needs to be released for some reason to your own lawyer, for example, because you feel maybe you’ve been defamed in the closed meeting, why don’t you reach out to the integrity commissioner? We’ll give you advice as to whether you might be given some special dispensation to get away with— sorry, not get away with— but to be able to disclose some snippet, some modicum of information dealing with confidential information.

[1:07:23] So you can use us to protect yourself. And then the use of property of the municipality. Property, again, large, it’s not just real property. It’s not just personal property. It could be intellectual property. The brand of the municipality, being photographed in front of that for your election campaign photo. That might be a problem. Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. This is going to be very brief. I usually do a nice, concise two-hour session on the MCIA.

[1:07:59] The obvious purpose of the act is to preclude any member of council who has an economic self-interest in something that council is deciding to step away and not take part of the decision-making process. It’s as simple as that. But sometimes, a pecuniary interest can be direct, indirect, or deemed. And let me tell you, the indirect ones are the ones that cause a lot of headaches for councilor. So please, let me know if we can help with that. There was a recent, what I would call, a pretty comprehensive report in the city of Woodstock that I investigated.

[1:08:40] I don’t typically do this. I don’t typically get involved with the investigations, but I took this one from beginning to end because it was quite complex and it dealt with a downtown redevelopment where a council member had a shop. And the whole question was, she hadn’t declared a pecuniary interest earlier, but then she reached out to ask us because there was a change in integrity commissioners. I said, you do have to declare a pecuniary interest. And that started a whole avalanche of complaints coming in.

[1:09:13] And it was a little complex, but there was a lot of, I think, good guidance in those reports. So please, again, feel free to ask on that. So members obligations, I’ll go through really, really quickly. 5-1-A, you have to disclose the pecuniary interest. What is the— you can’t just say, I’ve got a conflict of interest. You have to say, I have a direct, I have an indirect, or I have a deemed pecuniary interest because my son works for the applicant, that’s before council, asking for, I don’t know, a grant, or a license or something.

[1:09:53] You have to be specific, OK? You cannot participate and you cannot vote. That is the most common, sensical one. This is the one that trips people up. No influence. You cannot attempt to influence the voting in any way, either before, during, or after the meeting. So I’ve got a really great example. I had a council member a number of years ago come up and say, hey, John, I look at this adult retirement community here, and there’s the golf course next door. And they want to do something. And I go, OK, what is it? And they want to do this. They want to start grass cutting early.

[1:10:26] That’s going to wreck some problems. It’s going to create a lot of issues with our retirement community right here. And I said, OK, how big is it? She says there’s 1,400 people live here. I go, that’s significant. I go, well, you have an interest in common with electors generally. They go, well, I don’t have an interest with everyone else in the municipality. I go, there’s actually a definition of an interest in common with electors generally. Did you know that? She goes, no, I didn’t. I go, if the class is smaller, if the geographic area is smaller, then it’s that class. I go, I think that’s a large enough class.

[1:10:58] And she said, oh, OK, well, she says, I want to be upfront about this. I’m going to declare up a cuniary interest. All of a sudden, go, whoa, whoa, whoa. I said, hold on. Are you going to abdicate your responsibilities? Like, I’m just giving you advice, right? Anyway, she says, no, no, I’m going to— I feel like I should declare up a cuniary interest. So this is what she does before the council meeting. She goes to the council meeting. And there’s two members of council there. I guess she thought they were her friends, but they were her frenemies because she said, I’m going to declare up a cuniary interest on this matter. I really like it if you could support it.

[1:11:35] Oh, well, they filed affidavits, and there was an application to the court. The court luckily said, well, you know, she got advice from the integrity commissioner. I actually agree with the integrity commissioner. There’s an exception that applies for an interest in common for electors generally. But for that, you can’t do this. It breaches section 51c of the municipal conflict of interest act. You can’t go and try that. Currie the favor of other people when you’re going to declare up a cuniary interest.

[1:12:08] You just can’t do that. Next one. Ontario is the only— sorry, one of two jurisdictions in all of Canada where a council member does not have to leave the setting of the council meeting in an open session. Section 5.2 says you have to leave the setting of a closed meeting if you have a cuniary interest. That’s, again, Ontario is the only one of two jurisdictions in all of Canada. All the other jurisdictions require the council member to leave. Best practice?

[1:12:39] Wouldn’t be a bad idea if you leave, because why? If you stay, anything that you do, rolling of the eyes, I don’t know, something like this might be seen as an attempt to influence. So you have to now file a written statement. Please be really, really nice to your clerk and deputy clerk. You’re supposed to file it at the meeting or as soon as possible thereafter. Don’t make them chase you down two weeks later. And the Hazel McCallion Amendment, section 5.2, you cannot use the status of your office, because whether you actually have the authority to direct staff to do anything, which typically you do not, the mayor does, you do not, as members of council, you cannot use the status of your office to influence any recommendation or decision that staff have.

[1:13:36] And that takes you out of a meeting context, OK? So that’s what I call the Hazel McCallion Amendment, which was made as a recommendation of Justice Cunningham and the Mississauga Judicial Inquiry back in 2011, maybe 2012. The integrity commissioner now has a role with respect to the MCIA. People can file complaints for applications with us to say the council member breached the MCIA. Any elector or person demonstrably acting in the public interest, what is that?

[1:14:13] We don’t know. There’s no definition of the term, and there’s no judicial determination of what demonstrably acting in the public interest is. I guess that’s sort of a public interest litigant. We’ve had to grapple with that several times when we see the person’s filed a statutory declaration, but they’re not a person who lives in the city of London. So what do you do? It’s up to them, really, to say, I’m not an elector. I’m a person demonstrably acting in the public interest. And here is why I’m saying that so we can determine that. So we often have to go back and consider that.

[1:14:48] The inquiry must be completed within 180 days. And upon completion of our inquiry, I know 180 days, that’s a long time. Our standard for code of conduct complaints and reports, once upon a time, used to be 90 days. I tell you, it’s become more litigious now. It’s become more legalistic. And I say to you, even on things that are not really complex, we’re hard pressed, and this is the truth, we’re hard pressed to even from beginning to end to report to do it within four months.

[1:15:23] That’s how more complex it’s become more recently. So I’ve been telling most of my clients, you know, when we applied, we said we do it within 90 days, typically. We really don’t think we can hit those deadlines anymore. It’s become longer. But you have 180 days if it’s an MCIA application. And at the conclusion, we come to council and we report. We can decide to go to court, to have a judge make a decision, or we can decide not to go to court. By the way, that’s our decision to make, not councils.

[1:15:57] And if you wanna hear, if you wanna see something about this, look at the city of Elliott Lake, and the contention that was there. The city of Elliott Lake, yes, my client, attempted to direct their integrity commissioner not to go to court. The integrity commissioner said, yeah, we’re going to court. The first time, it didn’t go so well. The second time, it didn’t go too badly. The integrity commissioner was able to get the member removed from council. So Mayor Chris Patrick, on January the 9th of 2023, if you will recall, that’s just what, five, six weeks after being sworn into the new term of council was removed from office for breach of the MCIA.

[1:16:42] The penalties for contravention was the MCIA is so important while you can be removed from office and disqualified. By the way, how many times has this happened in the whole history of the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, which has been in place since 1972? So 53 years, a handful of times. That’s how often it’s happened. The last time of any huge notoriety, it was when Justice Hacklin sought to remove Mayor Rob Ford from the city of Toronto, but gave him a two week stay in which to apply for a stay which he ended up getting and then was let off the hook by the Ontario Divisional Court.

[1:17:24] The last three times that an integrity commissioner has gone to court to ask for removal of a member of council. The last three times this has happened, the members been removed. And in one instance, not only removed, but also disqualified, that was Elliott Lake. Full disclosure, we had involvement in two of those three cases. In one instance, we represented the integrity commissioner and we got Councillor Van Alstein from Espinola removed from council.

[1:18:00] And in the second, we represented the city of Elliott Lake because there was a question of was the integrity commissioner properly appointed? It didn’t maybe appear so on the surface. So what we are advised to the council, by the way, this is a freebie. Our advice to the council is, you know what? There may be some question as to the validity of whether you actually did appoint or retain the integrity commissioner. And this is a problem because the integrity commissioner investigated and the integrity commissioner is going to court. This is a real problem.

[1:18:32] Pass a retroactive by-law. Clerk said, we can do that? Hell yes, you can. You can pass a retroactive, did you know that? Oh, this is gonna go like wildfire now. Oh, so I’m sorry to do this to you. Retroactive by-laws, yes, you can do it. If you express in stating that you can and there’s nothing to precluded in the legislation. So for instance, could you pass a retroactive rezoning by-law? No, because the planning act itself says when it comes into force and how that works, okay? Anyway, okay, that’s a freebie.

[1:19:05] Common law, conflict of interest. And now at the end, Mr. Chair, so coming towards the end. In the Mississauga judicial inquiry, again, the whole thing centered on conflict of interest. And what did Mayor McCallion say? I always complied with the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. Any time that the Hotel and Convention Center development came up at Council or at a committee, because my son was involved, I would always declare a pecuniary interest. And Justice Cunningham said, well, that’s all great. But the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act is not a complete code dealing with all conflicts of interest.

[1:19:44] It only deals with financial conflicts of interest. So what’s the corollary to that? It means that you can have conflicts of interest that are non-pecuniary in nature. And I would really recommend that anyone who hasn’t read it, look at this report, but also the Collingwood Judicial Inquiry Report from Justice Morocco from 2020, where he says the same thing. And he recommends an amendment to the MCIA to broaden its scope beyond just deemed pecuniary interest and family members to apparent real or potential conflicts of interest.

[1:20:23] And you’ll see that there’s a harkening back to the Sinclair Stevens reports at the courts on that in the federal jurisdiction. So integrity commissioner team, our team, I teased you right at the beginning. It’s not just me, there are, yes, seven of us on the team. You will not just see me, but I’m gonna be typically the one person that liaisons with staff on most things. I will be probably the person that you may interact with if you need any advice.

[1:21:03] I generally do the advice giving myself. And I am the person who typically does the education and training on this stuff, which is part of today. I have two partners on here that are both employment law lawyers, but they both work with my municipal clients. The first one, Megan Cowan is the lead investigator for all complaints. Both Megan and Dasha have received training on for vulnerable victims. So they know all about that.

[1:21:37] So we often get, do you have a trauma-informed investigator? And so we do. We use them for those things. My other partners, Lauren Dean and Megan Barrett, have many years of experience working with me. I like to think of them as being trained by me. And then we have two associates, which do a lot of the late work on our investigations. Why? Because the investigations are typically the most time-consuming and most detailed things. And you really don’t want me to be doing it from bottom up. So, Mr. Chair, I’ve come to the end.

[1:22:15] I hope I’ve kept you just a little bit over time. But I’m pleased to take any questions that you or any members of committee may have. Thank you, Mr. Basker. And I will say that that might be the longest short presentation that we’ve had at committee in a while, but we have had some legal folks before us before. And we know that expressing and sharing some examples from real life is helpful to our understanding. So, before we look to move to questions, I just want to see if I can get a member of council to move in a seconder to receive the delegation.

[1:22:53] Councillor Cudi and Councillor Trussau, thank you both. So that’s now on the floor. And we can go to some questions. And I’ll start with Councillor Hopkins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Mr. Mascaren, for your presentation. Really appreciated it. You reminded me of when I came onto council, I had to hire a lawyer myself to get legal advice. And it’s really good to see integrity commissioners being applied to all municipalities in the province. So, I have two quick questions.

[1:23:30] The first one is on education to the public. How does that look like? And the second question I have is around the code of conduct, you said that you understand it’s with the provincial government right now to strengthen the code of conduct when that is wherever that goes. What do we then do as a municipality to apply any changes to the code of conduct or what can we, as a council, say and do to strengthen our own code of conduct?

[1:24:10] Mr. Mascaren? Yeah, through Mr. Chair to Councillor Hawkins. Thank you very much for that. On the first question, education. This is part of the education function. This is why, first of all, I wanted to introduce myself to speak to you, but I also thought some substance was important, not only for you, but also for the public to hear. Now, do I suggest that we do this like once every six months or even once a year? No, no, not. I would say a one good thorough training session, education session throughout the term would be a really great idea.

[1:24:49] I think it’s, and with all due respect, I think it’s probably too late for me to step in. You’ve bought unless there’s a need. I’m pleased to do so. We have training modules on all of the things that you would want to know about, but I don’t know that you need more training. You probably had it at orientation. You probably had it when Mr. Stewart moved away and principals’ integrity came. You probably may not need that, but so, so that’s my view on it, on education training, but I do think it’s important to hear it once from your integrity commissioner to understand how they approach things and how you need to look at things from perhaps their worldview.

[1:25:29] On the second question on the, I’m gonna try to be as polite as I can, on the rather laughable attempts at the province to bring forward a strengthening of the municipal code of conduct and scheme. I think it’s ridiculous what they’re proposing. I find it offensive that the province is trying to put in place another integrity commissioner. What does the integrity commissioner from the province actually know about local government? I mean, really? I asked Mr. Schulteis, I said, hold on, you’re a really great clerk here at the municipality.

[1:26:07] What if someone said to you, hey, you’d be greatly qualified to be at the provincial legislature and to do your role there? You said, I don’t know the first thing about how the provinces run, really? Sorry, Michael, that’s roughly what you said to me, right? But that’s how I view it, or how would the provincial integrity commissioner really know what local integrity commissioners actually do? They are investigators. They give advice on the members integrity act, not the municipal conflict of interest act. So I really have some issues with what’s proposed, including the, hey, we have to have unanimous council approval.

[1:26:44] Now, when do you ever get that? Do you get that? Oh, I saw a 14-0 vote before. But on something that’s kind of serious, do you really get a 14, or I guess more than that, at your council? No, you don’t get unanimous votes. And so that means that one member may be playing to one person on a large council, hey, save my bacon so I don’t get removed. I think the province is actually listening on that. I think it’s kind of ridiculous. My view is, why didn’t they just put in place what is in the municipal conflict of interest act? The integrity commissioner thinks that there’s a serious breach of the code.

[1:27:20] Allah, Rick Chirelli in Ottawa, or Lisa Robinson, or perhaps, I won’t name the other one because I’m involved in the case. Yeah, I won’t name it. Why do you have to go to another level of government? And why do you have to have unanimous counsel? Why don’t you just say, hey, the integrity commissioner can apply to a judge, just like it is in the MCIA? Those are my comments. Councillor Hopkins, you’re good. Councillor Truss, I would like to start for thanking you for that presentation.

[1:28:02] I feel like if we unraveled your tape, your entire course syllabus would be there, including the sites. And to do that in an hour is amazing. But the main point I want to make is, I think it was so important that we did this session in public. We did this session in public. We did not have to do this session. In public, there’s an education exception under the act. And the fact that this council, and I assume someone on this, maybe it was the mayor, maybe it was the Kirk, made the determination that we’re going to do this in broad public, in front of the press and the gallery.

[1:28:37] And I think it’s so important for members of the public to understand the parameters of this law. ‘Cause one of my worries is that people will indiscriminately use it if they don’t like the decision that a particular council, or a particular councilor made on a particular matter. I’m wondering if off the top of your head, and I won’t hold you to this. Can you give me some idea of the general numbers in terms of complaints that are filed, versus complaints that are considered to have enough merit to proceed to an investigation?

[1:29:15] Mr. Mascarin? Yes, through you, Mr. Chair, to Councillor Trussell. That’s a great question. And I actually should have brought it up before, my fault. And I say this, and many, many councils are surprised when I say this. I think that we summarily dismiss, or terminate after a brief inquiry, that’s not an investigation, somewhere about 60% of all of the complaints that we get. And you’re right, Councillor Trussell. Many times what we get is, people are upset at a council decision.

[1:29:51] And perhaps you would stood up, and maybe you would have been the proponent of whatever council did, or have been the opponent and council decided not to do. All of a sudden, you’re marked as the person who did something wrong. Well, we’re quite aware of our office being potentially weaponized. And so we look at that. We do not look after councils decisions. We just don’t. So many times councils decisions are what they are, and there’s ways of challenging them. Judicial review, application to quash, applications to the courts, right? But we typically will not investigate in any great detail.

[1:30:30] And sometimes I say inquiry. Or we will summarily dismiss after an intake, after a review, after some assessment, perhaps going and looking at a few more documents, probably 60%. How many do we actually investigate and go forward? You’d be surprised, it’s probably like 15%. So it’s not a huge percentage. We often will make a decision at some point. You know what? We could investigate this. We could write a full report, cited, referenced, go in front of council.

[1:31:05] Is it really necessary to do that and to have the taxpayers charged for that? Because ultimately your residents pay for this. So no, we’ll often issue a summary dismissal or termination notice to the complainant or complainants. We will always do that. We will always let a complainant know why we haven’t proceeded. Because you can imagine a complainant feels they have a great case. And the last thing that they expect is we’re not even gonna investigate. You can imagine how upset and turmoil they are by this.

[1:31:40] So we always write a letter, a notice, actually a formal notice, to explain exactly why we’re not moving forward. One, it may be de minimis, it may be trivial, it may be an abusive process, it may be frivolous, it may be vexatious, or some other reason. It’s just not within what our jurisdiction is. We will do that one, to protect ourselves. And two, if it ever gets a complaint, believe me, when people receive these notices. The first thing they wanna do is complain to the ombudsman. The integrity commissioner is not a watchdog.

[1:32:13] They’re a laptop because they didn’t even wanna watch it. They just wanna be reappointed. And I’ll tell you, in all honesty, my worry is not to be reappointed. I mean, I’m not doing my job if I’m just worried here about, oh, I gotta make the majority of council happy, right? I mean, look, I’ll be honest, and I’m not saying this with any egotism, but we have a number of clients. They’re not all gonna walk away from me if I make a decision somewhere. If council wants to walk away, okay, so that’s fine. So anyway, I hope that answers your question, Councillor, thank you for it.

[1:32:47] Councillor Truss out, anything further, nothing further? Okay, looking for any other speakers. I don’t see any, so just a final call, and there’s no one online with their hand up, so just needed to check there. So thank you, Mr. Maskeren, for that presentation. We do have a motion on the floor, colleagues, so I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote to receive our delegation. So votes, yes.

[1:33:31] Housing the vote, motion carries 14 to zero. Thank you, colleagues. And I know that the clerk will circulate the appropriate contact information for us with regard, and I think it’s been done once already, but we’ll make sure that’s circulated again. So if colleagues need to reach out to you for advice that they will have that direct contact. Mr. Chair, thank you very much. Thank you to members of the committee. It was my pleasure, my privilege to be in front of you today, and I hope that we can certainly help you as the entire commissioner. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

[1:34:03] Well, thank you for coming to see us today. We hope we don’t actually have to see you again in an ideal world, but we welcome you back when that is necessary. So colleagues, moving on our next item on the agenda, 3.2, this is the London and Middlesex community housing 2024 annual general meeting of the shareholder annual resolutions. I know we have Mr. Squire and Mr. Chisholm here as the CEO and the board chair in the room, so I’ll invite them to come to the podium. I believe we’re gonna need just a minute or two for IT to get set up for them.

[1:34:42] So while that’s happening, I’m just gonna seek consensus. I believe the presentation will run about five minutes, but might need a minute or two over that. So I’m just gonna see if there’s any objections if we allow the presenters to finish their report. If it runs a little over the five minute time, I’m not seeing any objections in chambers or online. So I’m gonna take that as consensus of the committee to move forward with that. Councilor Palosa has advised me she’ll be returning.

[1:35:20] Councilor Trussa. While they’re setting up, may I ask you if the clerk would be able to load my amendments part A and B into ESCRIBE, so it’s there and ready to go? That’s already, I believe, already been done. Thank you for your preparation. If you’re ready to go Mr. Squire, Mr. Chisholm, I’m not used to standing here.

[1:37:00] I’m really pleased to be here today. I’ve been on the board now for, I think, three or four years. I thought it would be a good idea from my point of view as a chair to just talk about where LMCH was, where it is, and where it’s going. This will take, I think, about 20 to 25 minutes. Last year I didn’t ask for enough time and Mr. Chisholm ran out of time, which I felt bad about for about five minutes. And so I wanna make sure he has enough time to do his presentation. Before I start, I wanna thank all the staff from LMCH who are here. Interestingly, I think everyone who is here as a staff member came since I’ve been on the board, including I was on the board when we hired Mr. Chisholm.

[1:37:41] And so I know them, we have confidence in them. They are doing the best job that they can, and I’m more than prepared to stand behind them in the work they do. I also wanna thank City Council. The funding that you have provided over the past years has been indispensable in allowing us to perform the duties that we have to perform. I also wanna particularly thank Councillor McAllister and Deputy Mayor Lewis who sit on our board. I can assure you they are active and involve members of our board.

[1:38:16] Our board does not usually have internal conflict about the road that LMCH is supposed to be on. We are usually at edem on that, which is an extremely effective way for a board such as ours to operate. So when I came here in 2014, and I saw the first presentation from what, I don’t even think it was called LMCH, I saw what I thought was a very almost depressed group making a presentation about how difficult their work was, how underfunded they were, and really there was no looking at what the future held for them.

[1:38:50] Not their fault, it was just the nature of where they were at that time, dealing with buildings that effectively were approaching 50 years of age. And quite frankly, a very challenging tenant group to deal with. Since that time, I think there’s been a lot of changes. I think the last council realized the challenges and started providing funding to LMCH that was commensurate with their duties. And in that way, we started with the reimagined London project, which we’re very proud of.

[1:39:25] But I wanna make it clear that wasn’t just this board, that was previous boards that did that, the best that they could do. So what do we have with reimagined London? We have what we think is the model for the future of LMCH. It’s obviously the first new project that LMCH has done since the early 1970s. We’re taking a three-town housing project, or a 63-town house project, replacing it with 265 units. And for the first time really in our history, we are going to have a mix of rent geared to income housing and other affordable housing.

[1:40:03] What does that mean? That means that we’re gonna provide an opportunity for people who are perhaps working at jobs that are not paying a high wage to have safe and affordable housing. We think that’s the future of LMCH. It’s a future for a couple of reasons. We all know that mix in housing is a good thing. We’re gonna create that mix right away at that residence. What does affordable mean? It means people will be able to rent a one-bedroom apartment for $960. And it means they’ll be able to rent a four-bedroom residence for $1,600.

[1:40:39] Now just think about that in comparison to other rents in the city of London. So we’re gonna be in a position of offering rent geared to income for those in need, social housing. But we’re gonna really hopefully make a dent in what is needed in London in terms of affordable housing. And we think we should do that. It also makes us more financially responsible. We are gonna generate more income. And quite frankly, we won’t have to be coming back to council all the time for money. We’ve also with your assistance changed the way we put people into our buildings.

[1:41:13] Used to be nine out of 10 people came from, quite frankly, areas where they could not manage unsupervised housing. We’ve reversed that. And for the first time, we’re starting to make head roads into our inroads, into our waiting list, providing those people with housing. And we thank council for that. What’s next for us? Ladybook is next for us. We’re currently managing that property for the city of London. It’s another underutilized site. And presently we’re in discussions with the city to do the same thing there as we’re doing out at Reimagine London.

[1:41:50] We’ve also, and I’m sure some people are very happy to hear this, we’ve completed a complete organizational review of London Middlesex Community Housing. What does that mean? We’ve looked at all of the roles in London Middlesex Community Housing, the effectiveness, breaking down silos. And we are currently undertaking that plan. The first step in that plan is that we’ve separated the role of CEO into CEO and Chief Operating Officer. So we’ve got somebody who’s gonna be specifically taking care of the on-the-ground challenges that we have, leaving Paul as CEO to deal with some of the other matters, such as financing grants and those sort of things.

[1:42:30] The most important part is coming and that’s the regeneration plan. And we’re gonna be meeting this Thursday for the first time as a board to hear back about the regeneration plan. What’s important about that? The buildings are no longer really viable long term. The average age of LMCH buildings is 54 years. That is not good. And you will know the condition of our buildings is poor. Unsurprisingly, it’s poor. We have $1 billion in assets. We have 5,000 tenants.

[1:43:04] And it’s time that we rejuvenate what we’re doing. That’s in its early stages. There’s gonna be lots of talk about that. The city’s gonna be directly involved in that, as it always is. I’m optimistic about the future of LMCH. It does not have to all be done in a day. It won’t be done in a day. I wanna talk about complaints. We get lots of complaints. We get lots of media about complaints and people who are unhappy in our buildings. We acknowledge that, we own that. But what we don’t do is this.

[1:43:37] When someone complains in a public forum or privately in some manner, we do not drag them through the public. We deal with it as best we can. And you’d be surprised how many times we find out that these public complaints we’ve never heard from the person before. Or we’ve already dealt with the complaint. But that’s all, we’re always going to protect our tenants in those circumstances. So we can take the heat. I can take the heat. Public can take the heat. But I don’t want anybody to think that we don’t understand that. I’ll give you an example.

[1:44:10] I went to the Warren Click properties one day to visit because I wanted to see what it was like. I went to a very nice apartment that had been regenerated. But as I left the building, a gentleman came up very close to me. I didn’t really recognize him. But I said, oh, nice to meet you. Phil Squire, he quickly said to me, I know you. You’re bad, blank, blank, blank. Who used to be a city council? I said to him, great, it’s nice that you remember me. And then Mayor Grantham was there, said to the fellow, don’t forget he’s also a lawyer.

[1:44:45] So that started the fellow up again on blank, blank lawyer. And I then realized, I then asked him, I said, how are things going in the building? And his answer was terrible, terrible here. And as I was talking to him, I realized it was about 10, 30 in the morning. He was severely impaired, severely impaired in terms of alcohol. And I realized how difficult that was for him to manage that addiction of alcoholism. So that’s what we deal with.

[1:45:18] That’s what we try to help. That’s what we try to deal with every day. So rather than dealing with those people in a negative manner, we always strive to deal with them in a positive manner. But it is not easy work. It is just not easy work. All right, thank you very much. I really appreciate that, and I’ll let Paul speak to you. Thank you, Mr. Squire. And welcome, Mr. Chisholm. We’ll let you continue where your board chair left off. Thank you.

[1:45:52] Good afternoon, chair, members of council, city staff, members of the community, tenant, staff, and neighbors of London Middlesex community housing. Thank you for joining us today as we present the annual report for London Middlesex community housing. It is my privilege to share with you the progress we are making, the challenges we face, and the focus as we continue to take action and strengthen the accountability with the tenants we serve. As the largest provider of affordable housing in London Middlesex, our mission is to provide clean, safe, and well-mattained homes to the need that meet the needs of the people we serve in the communities.

[1:46:27] That’s something we take very seriously. That is the simple approach we take to making every decision operationally across the organization. The other focus for us is our vision to build an inclusive community where safe, affordable, and accessible housing is the foundation for positive change. That is what the regeneration plan will pull out. How do we think about the next 50 years of London Middlesex community housing? What is the needs in the community? What’s the needs for social and affordable housing? So as we sit now, LMCH owns and operates about 3,200 homes serving more than 5,000 tenants.

[1:47:05] We provide housing to a diverse cross section of low to moderate income households, including families, seniors, adults, and new Canadians. We have five strategic priorities built to meet our mission. The first is improving the tenant experience. We remain focused on this. And there’s three key pillars I’ll talk about, which is maintenance. We have over tens of thousands of interactions with our tenants annually. We’ve got about 25,000 work orders received. That’s about 70 a day.

[1:47:37] About one third of those are urgent emergency work. With an aging asset, that’s no heat, no water, electricity, those things that someone won’t get out of the bed at two in the morning and go respond to. And it took an average of about 19 days in 2024 to complete that work order. That includes the ones we do in two hours, the ones we do in two days, and the ones we do in two to three months. It is a complex work. The emergency work supersedes the routine work that we need to do. But happy to report that as we looked at this data again in May, about 99.6 of all work orders submitted in 2024 are now closed.

[1:48:18] So we’re moving through any workload backlog. Pest control is an issue at the top of minds with our tenants. It remains a challenge. As we continue to focus on approved service delivery and reduced infestation rates, through 2024, we rebuilt our program from the ground up, improved access to the units for our providers, strengthened supports for tenants, updated our unit preparation approach, and added additional providers to increase their capacity. So we’re seeing the number of units cleared, increasing on a monthly basis, which is the trend we need to see.

[1:48:52] And in 2025, we’re rolling out our tenant education sessions and strengthening our other internal processes to deal with escalated issues. Our first tenant education session was held today. So we’re trying to continue building on the successes. Community safety is top of minds for many seniors. It’s usually their number one concern, but across all of our communities. Through the course of 2024, we’ve improved our data collection, reporting and response on issues across LMCH. With thousands of sidewalks and community patrols, we’re improving community safety.

[1:49:26] We escorted trespassers off our properties 3,200 times last year. We’re preventing 1,100 people who shouldn’t be in our buildings from getting in our buildings. Responded to over 200 noise complaints, 188 police assist calls, and 287 disturbances. We’re also there to support the fire service should they arrive, EMS if they need access. We’re there to support our tenants and support the community. Increasing our visibility and responsiveness while strengthening our connection to communities. In 2025, we’ve increased our service hours, which will continue to improve the service levels and visibility across our communities.

[1:50:01] We’ve been focusing on developing an enhanced service model. Part of that is tenant engagement. And across our portfolio, we’re focused on engaging our communities in discussions. We’re working with our partners and directly with tenants at our sites to create social circles, community gardens, food programs, and events to build a sense of community for our tenants. And to point out that we’ve created a housing stability program that’s been running now for about four years, where that program is successful in supporting eviction prevention for 97% of program participants.

[1:50:35] So the people that go into that program maintain their housing in the past, that would lead to eviction. So supporting 50 crisis interventions, over 600 referrals to partners, and more than 1,200 home visits. Investing in our communities, as you see, we have capital work and progress around $50 million from elevators to electrical systems, energy efficiency, and accessibility. We’re investing in our buildings at unprecedented levels. We broke ground on phase one of reimagined self-thale project in early 2024, and it’ll be ready for occupancy this fall.

[1:51:09] We’re breaking ground on phase two of reimagined self-thale this summer with funding approved in the 2024 multi-year budget. LMCH completes about 100 requests a year from tenants that need specific accessibility improvements in their unit. So we spent about $300,000 to make sure tenants can maintain their current unit. Combine this with the work we’re doing to make more than 400 units meet a universal accessibility standard, building our first accessible family units, and improving accessibility in common areas across the portfolio.

[1:51:45] We’re ensuring tenants are better able to live independently and connect with their community. In partnering with London, an environmental network, and others, we’ve completed energy audits across our communities, bringing in new fridges, improved installation, other measures that improve the tenant experience. As mentioned by Chair Squires, in 2024, LMCH completed an organizational review, which made recommendations to improve operations, including both the organizational structure, but also the organizational effectiveness, how we do our work.

[1:52:26] The initial step was to introduce a chief operating officer role, which we’re pleased to say is now filled, which will have accountability in all areas of tenant services and property services with three teams supporting a positive tenant experience, building and property services, and community safety and well-being. We strengthened our approach to health and safety in the workplace, and for our staffs done completed safety audits to inform plans to improve staff safety across our properties. Looking ahead, we’re moving forward with our plans to realign LMCH operations to complete tenant journey mapping and updating our service standards.

[1:53:06] We’ve updated our asset management plan, and we are creating a master regeneration plan that will guide investment recommendations for LMCH. This will create a long-term investment plan to support increased affordable housing options and increase the state of repair at LMCH. By continuing to leverage our existing technology, we will be able to improve data collection and reporting and be in a position to provide real-time tracking and work orders for tenants. We’re investing in our staff to provide training and support that leveraged their skills and experience while acknowledging the difficult working conditions across our communities. And work is ongoing with the City of London to identify ways to continue to collaborate and improve operations along planning and ensure our work contributes to the broader objectives across our communities.

[1:53:50] Financial overviews, we continue to deal with cost pressures in many operating areas, as does the City and other ABCs. Despite these pressure, we continue to strive to bring it a near-balanced budget. Our capital funds are being invested in priority areas based on approved capital plans. And I think while we’re reporting dollars expended to the City on a regular basis, that’s what you see before you, we know there’s many million more dollars committed on projects to address critical capital need.

[1:54:27] I think in closing, just like to thank staff at LMCH, LMCH for the work they do every day to support tenants, respond to requests, connect with family, friends, and community agencies, complete repairs, and all the unseen work required to keep LMCH moving forward. I’d like to thank City Council and City staff for their ongoing support, and we are committed to continue to do the essential work needed to achieve the priorities we have identified and continuously strive to improve the tenant experience. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chisholm.

[1:54:58] So we’re gonna ask you and Chair Esquire to not go too far. So just how I’m gonna proceed, colleagues, is I’d like to get the recommendation to receive on the floor. Councilor Trussa, I know you want to move an amendment to that. I’d like to get the motion to receive on the floor so that Councillors can then ask questions of our presenters, and then I’ll come to you for your amendment, if that’s amenable, in terms of the order of, so seeing a nod from Councillor Trussa on that. Can I get a mover and a move by Councillor Hopkins and seconded by Councillor Frank?

[1:55:30] So the motion to receive is on the floor, and I’m gonna look to colleagues now for questions or comments that they may have for Mr. Chisholm or Mr. Squire. Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, on the presentation, thank you very much for being here, and my thanks to the Chair as well as to staff and the board for all of the work that you do. I know it’s been an ongoing re-imagining of London Middlesex community housing throughout my terms on Council.

[1:56:06] And I really appreciate the work that’s going on with the housing projects and the mixed housing. I think that’s another opportunity on how we can create housing for more people. And where we’re going forward with the regeneration of our buildings, I know they’re quite old and that is going to be a conversation, I think, going forward for the board. I do have a question around the tenants, the pillar that you have, which is nothing about tenants without tenants, and I know the facts are here in the presentation that we’ve been provided, but if you could just explain a little bit more about the decision process for tenants, where have we come and where have we been with the tenants being involved in the decision process with committees or if they’re members of boards, if you can give us a bit more of an update.

[1:57:13] Mr. Chisholm or Mr. Squire, whichever, or both of you? I will start with that. That was something I should have mentioned. We have two tenant members on our board, and quite frankly, they’re fantastic. They bring a very reasonable perspective to board meetings. They involve themselves in board meetings. They serve on it. We have two committees now and they sit on the committee that’s more related to tenant matters. And quite frankly, they’re always sort of willing to share how their personal life experience relates to the work we’re doing at the board, which is really valuable.

[1:57:48] And I know that was something that was done during the term that I was on council. I think it’s when people may think that that’s not the way to go, it really is the way to go. It’s tremendously helpful. So the answer, short answer is they’re involved in all aspects of decision-making as the members of the board and committees. And Mr. Chisholm, did you wanna add to that? Yeah, and thank you through the chair. There was, when I first joined LMCH, we had a tenant advisory committee, and we were getting that up and running.

[1:58:21] And what we found through that process is it wasn’t working for the tenants. They weren’t having the conversations they wanted, the way they wanted. It wasn’t working for the organization. And we had a couple of resets, we were at Pailarian and sort of, and we realized that we were putting too much of a structured governance approach to really talking to tenants. So we focus now more on the social circles on the smaller community building work. And what we’ve started to do will be tenant talks and town halls are something we do annually. And that those are event-based communication, really.

[1:58:57] What we’re looking to do is bring that tenant voice into our policy decision-making. We’ve done that when the master regeneration plan, we reached out to all of our communities and different lease, or seniors got a mail-in thing they can respond. So we send that out to 1,200 seniors, and we get 200 and somewhat of responses. Family sites, we got about 50, and we did door and oxen some of the other buildings. So we’re finding ways to engage in the conversations where we think their input is helpful, but we need to build a more structured way to sort of bring that policy work in. So as we do tenant-facing policies moving forward, we’re gonna try to have those conversations at a building level or a virtual level to get some of the feedback so that we understand the impact of the decision.

[1:59:39] So it is a work in progress, but this year alone, we’ve engaged, or in the last 12 months, we’ve engaged, and two big outreaches to our tenant community to get their input through building meetings, through mail-outs, through whatever means we can. Councillor, thank you. I have Councillor McAllister next. Thank you, and through the chair, thank you to LMCHS staff, board members, the feedback we received from our tenant community as well. I serve on this board, and I’ve seen firsthand the hard work that goes into this.

[2:00:16] It’s very difficult work, but I think you’ve got a really passionate group of people who care about what they do. They’re trying to improve the tenant experience every way they can. I sit on other boards, and I’ll say this board, more than any I’ve seen, really gets into the weeds in terms of the operations. It’s not necessarily something we need to be doing as a board, but we do try to improve the experience as best we can. I’m sure researchers won’t be happy to get a CO on board, so a lot of the operational issues won’t necessarily fall on his desk, but I just want to speak just broadly in terms of my experience as a board member.

[2:00:54] I’ve seen marked improvement. Like I said, the difficult work, a lot of the challenges I’ve already been spoken to, but there is a clear plan to move forward. You’ve seen that with regeneration. This is something that we absolutely need to stay the course on. These are very old buildings. The bones are frankly crumbling, and we’ve seen the capital investments in terms of repairing, you know, whether it’s the underground infrastructure, the roofs, the elevators. The bones have to be repaired in the short term, but in the long term, there is a plan in place to rejuvenate these aging buildings.

[2:01:30] You’ve seen it with Southdale in terms of tearing down townhouses to build mid-rises and get more units online, because I think as a council, we can absolutely agree that we need more affordable options across the board, and you’re seeing that firsthand with LMCH. It’s not something, as Councillor Chair Square had said, in terms of it takes time. I do receive a lot of inquiries, you know, from current tenants in terms of, you know, a lot of folks want to see things change immediately, and we do our best to address immediate concerns, but it does take time.

[2:02:04] And again, I want to reassure everyone that there are plans in place. You are seeing those investments, and the large part of that is thanks to council in terms of endorsing that plan for those long-term investments. But you are seeing action, and I do think we’re moving in the right direction. So I’ll leave my comments there, and if there are any questions for myself or Deputy Mayor, I’m sure we’d be happy to answer them. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor McAllister. I have Mayor Morgan, and then Councillor Perbal next. Yeah, thank you. So thank you for the presentation to both of you. I really appreciate it, as well as the overview of, you know, where we’ve come from and where we’re headed.

[2:02:42] I actually really appreciate the presentation, and I wanted to touch on a couple of things. I know we’ve, Council talked about budgets a lot, and then the investments of the multi-year budget is made in a number of areas. I mean, the major ones have been public safety, libraries transit, and housing, component of which is London Middlesex Community Housing. So I recognize that there’s costs going up on utilities, building repairs and maintenance, and building new buildings actually can help alleviate some of those costs.

[2:03:16] I also, in just looking at your numbers, ‘cause I know I add the budget numbers, but I appreciate that you put some numbers in front, you know, year over year, municipal-based funding has gone up 2.1 million or 14%. Recognizing that yes, you pay property taxes and those have gone up 7% or about 408,000. But I also see that the capital contribution from the city from 10 million to 18 point million, which is about a 77% increase. You know, these are recognizing that you have critical investments to make, and I think we very much support that. And so I guess I got two questions for you.

[2:03:52] First is, is the pace of support adequate for the operations that you’re doing at this time? And second, on the capital side, I know that you were able to deploy pretty much all of the capital dollars in 2023. And in 2024, capital revenue coming in exceeded the capital expenditures, but you might have projects on the go. So I just wanna make sure that we’re capitalizing the organization at a pace that you can actually deploy the money, you know, because I know you can only get so much money at the door at any given time.

[2:04:24] And when you have large projects coming forward, you may be preparing for those. So first, so my second question I guess is, is, you know, do we have a good capital plan so far? Recognizing that, I mean, in your final chart, there’s significant amounts of money in the capital plan up to 2027. You’ve expended about just under half of that, I think, across the board, we’re in 2025. So we’ve got, you know, money coming in the future. Given the capital needs, given the challenges we have, given the need for the buildings, do you feel satisfied that we’re kind of on a good pace on the financial side of things where we are right now to kind of meet the needs?

[2:05:03] Recognizing that we’re obviously gonna tweak those, you know, each and every budget year as different needs arise. Mr. Chisholm. Thank you and through the chair, yeah. I think it’s a challenge in dilemma. I will say that over the last 12 months, we’ve reorganized how we deliver capital. So, you know, as an organization that used to deliver $2 million with some grants on top, we were very light. So we brought in a director of asset renewal, and, you know, over the last 12 months, really get a really good picture of what’s going out the door, what’s the slow projects, and we’re trying to work on that piece.

[2:05:40] I do believe we can deploy more capital, but one of the things that we have to be thoughtful of, we have just delivered an asset management plan that says to get to good state of repair, we need about $23 million annually. We’re doing a master regeneration plan that’s gonna look at each of those assets and really help us make a decision, do we invest in that asset? The way, you know, in swapping out parts for a simplistic approach, or do we take a different approach to regenerate that asset and things like that? I think that’s really, as we continue to our sort of capital plan through 2026, that’s the decision we need to make and be prepared to make that ask.

[2:06:19] You know, if you talk to tenants, the work we don’t do is in their units. It’s the kitchen cabinets, it’s a bathroom redo. These, you know, some of them have, you know, original cabinets. That is great for us, but they’re well past lifecycle. So what we need to think about as we deploy with capital and do the critical electrical plumbing and make sure everything’s running is how we address that hidden capital within the units and behind unit doors that have a positive impact for tenants. And that’s what we need to come back with a program approach for through the regeneration plan and the asset management plan.

[2:06:52] So we expect to sort of do that thinking this fall and come back to council with that. So we will always do more and take more because, you know, we have a scalable plan. We have capacity to put more up. But we want to make sure it’s the right thing and it’s the right priorities. Balancing what’s behind the walls, the tenant doesn’t see and they just expect electricity versus things like playgrounds, laundry rooms and other things that people say, this has a positive impact on my life. So I’m not sure if that gets at the second piece. And Mr. Squire, you look at it.

[2:07:25] And I just, thank you very much, Mayor Morgan, for bringing up those numbers. I would always say that this city has been more than generous with us. And I think people should know that. So we’re very happy about that. The challenge, there’s two things that we think we have to do. First of all, we have to increase our income. And that’s the whole market brand. Still helping people, but generating some more rent. But the rejuvenation plan is gonna be key. That’s a, you’ve got a billion dollars in assets and people are going to be saying, do we tear some down and sell the land?

[2:07:59] Do we leave them as they are and fix them? That’s gonna be massive. And so I think that’s when we’re gonna have really difficult discussions. And I think the shareholder, to some extent, has to drive that. You represent the taxpayers of the city of London. I don’t think we’re gonna do anything in that regard without getting the full ascent and on board with elected officials and staff with the city of London. So that will be an interesting discussion. You’re fortunately, you’re the council that’s gonna, fortunately or unfortunately, you’re the council that’s gonna have that discussion.

[2:08:35] And I know it’s gonna be a discussion between who is preparing to report us and your council. So thank you. And a follow-up, Mayor Morgan? See when I sit in the middle, you can stop my mic. So feel what I’d like to do that on council, I’m sure. I really appreciate the response. And also the thoughtful approach you’re taking to being strategic about the assets, right?

[2:09:10] You could repair everything all at once and then later have to rebuild the buildings or you can do strategically what you’ve done with Southdale and actually create some net new units with a different model in place. And I’m very supportive of the thoughtful approach that you’re taking to that. I will say the reason why I’m asking is not ‘cause I’m trying to say like, hey, we wanna give you less money or we wanna give you more money. It’s that I know that we’ve made substantial investments in the past. And I want you to know that in Ottawa, at the most recent big city mayor’s meeting, which I had the pleasure of sharing, I got to sit beside the new federal housing minister.

[2:09:46] And one of the main things we talked about with them was the substantial amount of money that the federal government is gonna put into their desire to build 500,000 homes a year. One of the conversations the mayor had was that’s great, but how much of that is gonna help us with some of the most needed stock across the country. And that is in housing corporations that municipalities are shareholders of, where they have both needs for additional spaces, as well as significant needs on the repair, as well as maximizing the use of those lands.

[2:10:20] So I wanted to tell you there’s a very strong interest from our conversations there and the minister in pursuing that, especially as they create a new federal entity that’s going to oversee this. And we wanna advocate in the right way to ensure that housing corporations can receive in some way some of that federal money in a way that utilizes an existing public asset, very strategically to not only create new housing across the country, but create housing for people who we know have a desperate need for the type of both RGI and below-market rate-run to housings that you can provide. So my question isn’t just more money from us. My question is, I think there’s gonna be a lot of federal money on the table, and we’re actively advocating to figure out how much of that needs to come into the kind of work that you’re doing as well.

[2:11:00] So I appreciate the presentation today. Thank you, and I’ve got Councilor Perbal next. Then I’ve got myself and I’ll ask Councilor Roman to take the chair for that, Councilor Perbal. Thank you, and thank you both, and thank you to our team as well, because this is a no doubt very, very challenging portfolio. I do wanna ask you through the chair, through our delegation, and maybe it’s to our staff, maybe it’s to either one of you municipal-based funding. And from 22 to 23, we have increased it by 5.6%, 780,000 last year, 23 to 24, over 2 million, which was over 14%, how is this amount determined?

[2:11:43] Mr. Chisholm. Thank you, and through the chair. This was through the multi-year budget process. So we identified areas where we expected extraordinary increases above inflation, early on in the process, which for us included snow clearing, insurance, and community safety, and I think our gas as well. So we identified there’s a change in the environment that’s gonna increase those costs above average. So that was flagged to the city early on in the process, and we built expected increases into those budgets, as long with inflationary increases and staffing costs and those types of things.

[2:12:25] So that base budget, as what we’re calling it, is sort of that first multi-year budget. In addition to that, we submitted two business cases. One was a capital case to fund, reimagine self-dell phase two, and other redevelopment work. And the second one was a service improvement plan, which brought in additional community safety staff, communications, human resources, and other frontline staff to sort of improve service to our tenants. So that’s in the other piece of that, which is the business case 22, which is outlined in the financial statements, I’m not sure which document you’re looking at.

[2:13:03] Yeah. Sir Pribble, thank you for that. In this year’s CapEx total amount for 2023, it states 10 and a half million dollars. In last year’s for 23, it was stated almost 14 million, 13.9 million. What is the difference this three and a half million? Because it is the same year. Thank you. Can you just point out the exact figure you’re looking at the page so I know what document? I do have an answer.

[2:13:36] I just want to make sure I answer. Councilor, it’s a page 48, capital expenditure. Total 2023 is 10.5 million, 10, 5, 8, 9, 6, 3, 9. Last year, this amount for 23 was 13, 9, 5, 9, 1, 4, 9. Councilor Pribble, your mic so we can, Mr. Chisholm.

[2:14:18] Thank you, sorry, my apologies. Through the chair, I don’t have the same numbering system, but the answer for that is a change of classification for a reimagined Southdale project. So before we broke ground, the auditor determined it was a capital investment and they’ve since moved that into construction and progress. So once we broke ground on that, they decided they needed to reclassify some of that capital expenditure. So it was money expended by LMCH, but it was reclassified by the auditor based on the progress we have in reimagined Southdale that we needed another category of tangible capital assets to manage that through the consolidated statement.

[2:15:04] Councilor Pribble. Okay, thank you for that. The financial overview, capital overview on page 49, does the circular graph, signature repair renew $37 million. We are at 56% which is just over $20 million, this two years left. Do you anticipate and when you look at last previous five years, the $37 million makes sense. Of is the two years left, is there still expectation to do the remaining of $17 million which would be eight and a half million on average? Thank you for the question and through the chair.

[2:15:45] I’ll ask John Cril, director of asset renewal to speak to the capital investment. Thank you, Paul. Thank you for the question and through the chair. I understand the question correctly will the remaining funds allocated to the C-MHC program be spent in the remaining two and a half years, which we have end of 25 and then two years 26. 27 were on track to spend those monies. There are some contingencies included in the remaining funds that were setting aside for any unforeseen events.

[2:16:27] I think the more important question is, will the forgivable loan portion of those allocations be forgivable? We have to meet certain targets and we’re on track to meet those targets. One of them is over 400 units, modernized for accessibility. By the end of this year, we’ll be over half complete. Another 200 to go, we’ve really ramped that up. And there’s also a commitment to meet 25% greenhouse gas reductions energy savings.

[2:17:02] We’re in the middle of a deep dive on the energy analysis, what programs we’ve implemented so far, energy management systems, new furnaces, that sort of thing. And right now we’re at about sitting at about 17% energy savings portfolio wide. So also on track to meet those commitments. I hope that answers the question. Councilor Preble. Can we just thank you?

[2:17:34] It certainly did, thank you for that. And I have last two questions. Last year you reported that it was a slide that it stated how much money was written off in the bad depth and also the current tenants had areas, two amounts. And I was wondering if you have these two amounts for 2024 as well. Mr. Chisholm. Thank you and through the chair. We do have those numbers.

[2:18:07] So the numbers you’re referring to are bad debt right off, which is in the financial statements. So I will dig that number out and I’ll speak to, the two other numbers were rent forgiveness and current tenant areas if I recall correctly, right? So current tenant arrears, when I first started in 2020, we are running current tenant arrears on a quarterly basis of $1.4 million. I will say at the end of 2024, we’re running current tenant arrears around 800,000. So we’ve significantly shifted that and that had a whole bunch of compounding things in there.

[2:18:43] In addition to some, you know, challenging tenants, it was really post pandemic and program requirements. It just became a lot. So we’ve been able to work that down. Same with rent forgiveness. The number I think you had was 1.4 million. That number last year was around 700,000. So that speaks to people’s ability to do the documentation. They need to keep their RGI, which is always complicated. And we’ve been more effective in doing that. Bad debt right off, I will give you two seconds. I apologize, it’s not in the financial statements that I see at the top of my head, but that number has gone down from 1.1 million a few years ago to about 700,000 now.

[2:19:41] So those are all trending in the right direction. And that one has reduced for a combination of things, just more effective working with tenants, but also the delays in the landlord tenant board were, when people decided that they weren’t going to pay rent, and they went through that process, the length of that increased the bad debt by the time they lost their tenancy. So we’ve improved that all three measures. I can give you all three specific measures in exact numbers after the presentation. Councilor Pribble, that’s perfect.

[2:20:15] If you can please provide me with those figures. And thank you very much for answering all my questions. Thank you, Councilor Pribble. I will just ask Councilor Ramen to take the chair so I can ask a couple of questions and share a couple of comments. Thank you, I have the chair, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. And through you, I will first say, thanks to Mr. Squire for the kind words for the contributions of the elected officials on the board. It’s rare he has kind words for elected officials, so I appreciate when he does.

[2:20:48] But I did want to take the time first to thank all the staff who are here. Similar to Mr. Squire, a lot of new faces have come not just to the staff positions, but to the board positions in my time here. I see Mr. Thompson’s up in the gallery from our board and he’s brought a wealth of new information to our board and some expertise as well. And that’s been much appreciated. I do want to agree with Mr. Squire. Our tenant representatives on the board, Kathleen and Cara are absolutely phenomenal contributors to the board.

[2:21:27] Really appreciate the great feedback we get from them. Everybody’s working hard on this. Everybody’s growing in the right direction. And I’m really, we see it in all the numbers, trending in the right way, from the bad debt and the rent arrears to the turnarounds to get units that have been vacated, reoccupied by new tenants. All of those things are moving in the right direction. But I did want to take an opportunity to ask, and I’m gonna ask this in a general concept. I’m not gonna ask you for specifics, Mr. Chisholm, but there are a couple of realities that I think I’d like a couple of general comments on.

[2:22:07] When we talk about how fast we can deploy capital and respond to tenant concerns. I think it’s important for my council colleagues to understand that we have two realities. We have a unionized staff component with QP members who are responsible for some of our day-to-day maintenance requests and building operations. And then on our bigger regeneration projects and some of our capital investments, we have outside contractors. We go through our P processes, award tenders, those sorts of things.

[2:22:41] So I’m looking for some comment on the complications around how fast you can deploy working through those two realities, as well as with the reality that when we have to do a major piece of work, we are displacing tenants. And I know with the reimagined Southdale project, I forget how many months it was, but I know it was many months before we were actually able to vacate all the units by providing tenants with a new place to live that met their expectations before we could even begin the work, which of course adds some delay time to things.

[2:23:17] So I wonder if you can just share with us a little bit of an overview of the complications that creates with addressing some of the maintenance and capital deployment. Mr. Chisholm. Thank you. That is a complicated question. So I’ll try to break down as best we can. As you know, we have a United States workforce under QP. And I will say that as a United States workforce, there’s a sandbox we operate within, right?

[2:23:53] Whose work the work is and how that’s managed. And that is something we have to operate within. We don’t necessarily, we don’t necessarily see it as a constraint. And part of one of the things we need to do is make sure we have the right people with the right training, doing the right jobs. And that’s an obligation on management, working with staff and doing that development work. So I would say where it becomes complicated is, if we wanna do projects that sort of, whether work we want done by a contractor is a little more comprehensive than we’re used to doing, that’s gonna require a conversation.

[2:24:30] So we have to sort of navigate that. I would say the greater complication is sort of the level of disruption for the tenants. So, you know, I remember it was 2023, we were looking at paving windows, doors and furnaces where the work we had to do at two of our townhouse sites. And we were worried about disrupting them for pretty much the entire summer, heading people in and out of their units and things like that. So we have to really be thoughtful about, you know, how do we interact with tenants in this really significant work we’re doing? And sort of how do we, you know, accommodate reasonable access for contractors with ensure in the tenants aren’t totally turned upside down?

[2:25:12] So that is a challenge for us. And I think when we talked earlier, but we need to develop sort of kitchen and bath programs, those are really best done when the unit’s vacant. They become really complicated and disruptive for tenants if I take their kitchen away. That’s not something somebody, you know, around the table would want as a normal thing. So we have to be thoughtful. How do we deploy a project that will sort of have a significant benefit in the end but a significant disruption as we go through? So that’s something we have to balance. And we see that in our buildings as we do the CMHC unit work.

[2:25:45] You know, our plumbing is such an age that our shut off valves are failing. They were put in 20, 30 years ago and now they no longer do what they’re supposed to do, shut off. So if we have to bring in a plumber and we have to disrupt the water and we have to do a building shutdown and sort of replace a whole bunch of them all at once so we can do the work required to do. So really always conscious of that as we develop the projects and the capital team is getting really good at sort of communicating out and making that happen. So, and I guess the final piece was sort of, you know, when we do redevelop more, can you spoke about the self-dale and relocating tenants and things like that?

[2:26:29] You know, that on paper is theoretically okay. But I’ll tell you from discussions with staff who are talking to tenants, it stresses a lot of people out, right? That’s a challenge and that’s why it takes so long, right? And so I think phase one was 18 units and we tried to provide the best options that we thought but in the end, tenants wanted to stay where they were. You know, essentially they wanted their unit and we are saying that unit’s not gonna be there next year. So it was a difficult conversation.

[2:27:01] So providing options through the process, making sure you keep units available so we move people within the community. We move people to other communities that a lot of Middlesex housing that they were thinking of and some bikes, sometimes people are really happy. It’s like, it’s an opportunity to change something, you move closer to family, those types of things and there were some positive stuff, but I think, you know, if you do the rule of one third and one third and one third, like one third are really happy that they’re moving somewhere else. Another third are kind of ambivalent, they’ll figure it out. The other third are really challenged by the construct of leaving their community, leaving their unit and that’s a challenge.

[2:27:38] So it does take from decision point to getting vacant, like, you know, 20 units could take us over a year. So that’s something we always have to think about. We provide housing for tenants. Now we’re telling them you can’t have that unit and that’s a challenge. So I think we just have to pace our projects that takes that into account. Councilor? Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer and through you, certainly a reality that I’ve experienced through LMCH and something that has changed from the past term of council to this term of council is LMCH has now been asked by the city to be property managers, but not owners of certain properties, 122 baseline, 345 Sylvan.

[2:28:28] And more recently, we’ve been asked to step in and play an operations role at Ladybrook, but it is not formally an LMCH property yet. I just wondered if you wanted to share any comments with council about the complications operationally, budget-wise and, you know, governance-wise that it creates with having to manage a property versus the model which we’ve had with all of our other sites where we are both the owner and the manager. Mr. Chisholm?

[2:29:03] Thank you through the chair. I will say there are a very positive experience in looking at the work we do a little different. In the work we do across LMCH, we are everything for everybody and we’ve got to think about, you know, the capital plan. We have all these, every aspect of the property and owning and that we have to consider. In the property management work, you’re sort of, you’re working in a smaller sphere, right? So it helps us think about how we do that work better and, you know, what, how do we measure success and how do we work with others and communicate the work we’re doing?

[2:29:37] So there’s some really positive aspects of it. There is some challenging aspects when you’re an organization that’s used to operating in a certain way and on two sites or three sites, you have to operate differently or think differently or spend money differently. We sometimes find our staff doing things like, this is what they would do at LMCH. I’m going to go in, I’m going to, you know, fix this, I’m going to do it this way and they’re going to make it right. Well, it’s like we needed to ask permission to fix that. So it creates a little bit of a dilemma but ultimately I think the good communication we have with the city and setting clear expectations of how we’re going to work together is making that easier.

[2:30:13] And I would say 122 baseline is an anomaly. It’s a post-COVID funded project which, you know, there was way better decisions that could have been made but not any, no one saw them, right? So we’re correcting that. They were all corrected at 345 Sylvan, right? So I think we’re both learning and sort of that’s the continued improvement we need to do. You know, in the end, you know, it would be great if they’re a part of our asset pool and we could manage the revenue and manage expense and create a more, you know, sort of a more focused approach with what the LMCH portfolio is serving different needs but as property management properties, it’s also a great opportunity for us to try out different things, operate differently, think differently, spend our money differently in a way that’s accountable different, like on the small scale.

[2:31:05] When we’re running a portfolio with 300 move votes a year and we’re filling the units through a process that takes 60 or 80 days to turn and then 19 days to fill, in the bottom line, we’ve, you know, the vacancy losses there. When you’re in a building with 40 units and you’ve got a vacancy, you see it on the revenue side. You don’t see it necessarily in the 13 million tenant rent revenue but you see it in the $30,000, $40,000 rent line, otherwise, so it helps us think differently as we move through and manage that asset for the city. Deputy Mayor.

[2:31:37] Thank you. So I’m not gonna regale you with too many more questions, Mr. Chisholm but I know from my own experience and I think it’s valuable for folks to hear two metrics that I wonder if you can speak to just the positive trend lines of I’m not asking you to quote exact numbers here but just in terms of how we’re trending and I mentioned earlier we had, you know, we have a reality where we have both contractors as well as unionized workforce that are responsible for different parts of maintaining our properties.

[2:32:10] I know with that we did have a new contract with our labor union and I just wonder if you can speak to how the labor relations have been trending with regard to, you know, overall number of grievances and things like that as we’ve gone through this organizational change and had, you know, leadership changes and portfolio changes within the leadership team on the labor relation side, how are things trending, the other piece that gets lots of public attention, of course, is the pest management and I know that you’ve done some steps on that and so I just wonder if you can highlight how the pest management trend is going.

[2:32:44] Thank you, I don’t have a way to cut you off. So 10, you’re down to 10 seconds. Okay, Mr. Chisholm, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. Laborations, you know, it has improved over my course of being at LMCH and having the new collective agreement is good, I will say that we have a lot of small L labor issues. As we try to figure out how do we work differently, who gets what work done and things like that and those are constant conversations that we should be having and we are having with our union.

[2:33:20] So I would say those are conversations that happen all the time, we welcome those and we’re sort of, that’s the conversation we wanna have. How do we adjust the work we need to do, who should be doing it, all those types of things and that sort of is a little bit of sort of what’s happening when you’re sort of looking at how you do your work differently. So that is something we’re dealing with, that is our reality and that’s, it’s not unexpected to where we’re at as an organization and what we’re looking to achieve. In terms of pest control, we see our numbers starting to trend down in early 2025. So 20, you know, I would say up until mid 2024, the actual number of treatments and the sort of, how we weren’t managing your own data.

[2:34:05] The pest control provider was sort of managing the program. So it was difficult to get firm numbers. So starting mid 2024, we are seeing those numbers, we saw them go up towards the fall, we’ve added pest control provider, we’re seeing starting to see those trend down. We have increased success in sort of managing access to units. So tenant refusals are down, we do have problematic access issues with some of our tenants.

[2:34:36] And I will share that we’re doing unit inspections now across all our portfolios. So we go into the building, we go in with our fire life safety team or sometimes our pest control contractors, sometimes the fire department. And the data that comes out of that we’re using electronic tool will tell us how many units are in that building that have a pest control issue that we have not heard of. And those numbers are five plus percent. So that’s a challenge that even with the conversations we’re having, we’re finding other layers.

[2:35:08] So while we see positive trends in clearance, we’re not sure how quick those numbers will come down. We’re finding it positive that we’re able to get into the unit and actually find units that they haven’t made a request. And we’re not sure why and that’s will unpack. But we still have the regular challenges of there’s some units we can’t get in and there’s some people aren’t telling us but where they’re letting us in, the treatments seem to be effective, the prep is better and we’re providing support where we can. Deputy Mayor, you have seconds to wrap up.

[2:35:47] That’s okay, I’m just gonna say thank you for sharing all that information. Thank you, our chair to you and no one on the speakers. Oh, Councillor Tussa on the speakers left. Councillor Tussa. Thank you very much. And I do appreciate the conversations I’ve had with you all over the last several months and particularly the conversation I had with Mr. Krill, which I thought was very, very helpful, conversations I’ve had with the members of our staff too. Thank you. I’ve been doing a lot of research outside what’s in the file and one of the things I thought would be useful would be to do a little bit more investigation into what the legal relationship is between the city as the sole shareholder and the agency, LMCH.

[2:36:32] So I was able to find the shareholder statement. I was able to find the service agreement and most significantly I was able to find a document that’s entitled the quote accountability rules. And I have caused these to be placed in the added agenda so those are all there available to the public. It’s a lot to go through. I wanna really encourage members of this council and members of the public and tenants to go through those documents. I spoke to the condition of the premises in great detail when the asset management plan was in front of us.

[2:37:10] So I’m not gonna repeat everything I said about the condition of the premises. And I’m going to limit my discussion about the condition of the premises to the annual report and the other matters that are before the council today. We know from the asset management plan that the properties in general are not in compliance with provincial habitability standards. We know that and we know it’s not close when we look at the poor and very poor.

[2:37:45] In addition, you did post on your website a building by building breakdown which is something that I found very interesting because there is a disparity between some of the buildings that are fair which is as high as it gets and some of the buildings that are very, very poor. Many of which are outside of the city of London but are still under your responsibility. So what I wanna do just very briefly is I want to look at some of the things that are in these internal documents because the question of the premises conditions is not just a matter of the rights of the tenants under the RTA to live in a decent, decent, clean, compliant unit but it also matters that these are obligations that you owe to the city of London as the sole shareholder.

[2:38:39] I did circulate the council, a memo going into this, the declaration of the sole shareholder talks about property conditions. There are a number of recitals about property conditions in the service agreement and also in the accountability rules. To summarize what my position is, you are not in substantial compliance with your obligations to the city with respect to the condition of the property. Now I understand that you’re doing regeneration work and some of the properties.

[2:39:11] I understand that a regeneration plan is coming forward but my question goes more directly to what is going to happen in the short run for the tenants who are living in poor, very poor conditions because they should not have to wait for this organization to figure out how to regenerate itself organizationally and if you need more money you have to ask for it but you’ve got too many tenants who are living in poor, very poor, substandard conditions and that puts you in breach of your obligations to them for which they could go to the landlord tenant board and seek a petition and it also puts yourself in breach with your obligations to the city which when you look at the service agreement the city has a number of remedies that they could but have not up to date exercised against you and short of talking about your plans for the future what is going to happen in the short run about remedying these conditions?

[2:40:19] Mr. Chisel. Thank you and through the chair. I will just clarify the asset management plan does not speak to the unit condition and I would disagree with the statement that the unit is not habitable as a general rule so the asset management plan speaks to the totality of the asset, the building the grounds, the underground infrastructure, the roof, the HVAC system, all those elements and how they combine when you have a 50 year old building with a 50 year old electrical system that requires three millions dollars to repair that takes away from the FCI index and it creates a lower rating.

[2:40:59] So we are aware of that. We are investing significantly across the portfolio and the FCI rating that you’re looking at per building is based on data from December 31st, 2023. So in the 18 months since that, significant investment has taken place. Specific to the county, there is significant project work happening in the county this summer that addresses critical infrastructure, roofing projects, paving projects, windows and doors and other matters that are part of that FCI rating.

[2:41:35] So we expect on December 31st to 2025, that number will increase. So I would sort of point out that the data is lagged and that we need to refresh the data based on current state and we’ll do that by the end of the year that we are investing daily in improving the state of repair. There doesn’t a week go by where I don’t approve hundreds of thousands of dollars with a work across various sites. We have a list that we can talk to you about.

[2:42:07] If you have specific questions about specific sites about what work has been done in plan, we’re happy to have that conversation with any counselor, with anybody who’s interested in that information, we’re looking to make it more available to the public. So these investments are occurring. So I would suggest that, you know, as we go through, you know, we will provide a plan that sort of outlines the investment we require to meet the standard. If we look at the accountability rules, there’s two core principles. And one of them is ensuring that there’s stable and predictable funding for LMCH, with as something I should say has occurred in recent years, but not through the history of LMCH.

[2:42:50] So while we’re still playing catch up, I think, you know, the funding decisions of 20 years ago still have a rebound effect on us today. So since 2020, those investments are being made operating in capital. And we are improving the state of the asset on a daily basis. Thank you. Have there been— Councilor, sorry, just before you continue. I just wanna advise you, you used four minutes already. So if you wanna move your amendments, you need to do that before your time is up.

[2:43:26] I’m also going to respectfully say, with regard to Mr. Chisholm’s response, and I took it as chair when you were saying it, that it was your opinion of what as an individual counselor, it can be your opinion that an agency is in breach of their shareholder agreement, but council as a whole and the city as a whole, make that determination not an individual counselor. So just a caution to not make absolute statements, because those would be a decision of council with advice from civic administration and the city solicitor, not one member of council.

[2:44:08] Well, and in my limited time then, I’d like to ask how we go about getting that advice, because I have a hard time understanding how a building is in very poor condition, but the units in it aren’t. So that’s why I wanna move on to my motion, which I will put on the floor, it’s an e-scribe. It goes to inspections, which I think would be very useful, and it also goes to reporting back. Both things that I think have been discussed quite a bit. So I would move A and B as additions to the motion that’s on the floor, and if I don’t know if that I should, now that I’ve said that, I should stop and just keep the rest of my time and wait to see whether this gets a second, in which case we can discuss it.

[2:44:53] Yeah, so because the clerks have broken out in the earlier portion to be received, the financial statements be received, the communication from Ms. Forrest, who is not here today to delegate be received, and then being noted that we received a communication from you, the clauses would actually be F and G, they are in e-scribe, if colleagues wanna refresh, they are motion number two, and I will ask colleagues to take a moment to do that, and then we would need a seconder before those would advance.

[2:45:39] I’m just gonna give colleagues a moment to read them in e-scribe before I look for a seconder. So Frank, did you have a question, or were you moving a second? Question? Question for point of information, I’m just wondering, are we allowed to direct staff in item F? I just, I’m not sure ‘cause I have felt like I’ve been told we aren’t able to, so I just wanted to ask. So it is listed as be requested, it’s not directed, so that would, with the be requested, yes, that could be.

[2:46:25] And I’m gonna look to see now if there’s a seconder for this or not. Councilor Hopkins, you’ll second. Okay, so F and G are on the floor now for debate, and now I will come back to you, Councilor Trussa, on the amendment now. So your time on the amendment starts now. Okay, I think there is good cause. I would go further and say you have very poor buildings, but let’s just say that doesn’t mean, that doesn’t mean that there are any units that are problematic.

[2:47:02] And I’m gonna turn my question to Mr. Metters, who, you know, knows I’m gonna, knows I’m going to ask this. To what extent has municipal code compliance attended these buildings over the years? Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, I don’t have a full accounting of how many times that we’ve attended, but as far as our, we have a proactive compliance program, of course, and we have worked directly with LMCH, and we have done three buildings in the last three years as part of that proactive appliance.

[2:47:42] And it’s, through the chair, it’s your proactive compliance program that is the subject of my motion here. And what I’m proposing, and seem to be, well, what I’m proposing, and I’ve talked to staff on both sides of this and it seems okay, is I would like to target some of the proactive compliance. You tend to do these on Saturdays, which is why I wrote Saturday in the motion. And I erroneously said civic administration, it would have been more specific to say municipal compliance.

[2:48:19] But what I’m looking for from this council is a request that you actually facilitate this. And I believe from talking to Mr. Mathers, and also talking to Mr. Chisholm, this is not gonna be controversial. So can I get feedback from both of you as to whether this is, you might wanna tell the counselors who aren’t familiar with the proactive compliance program on Saturdays, what that entails, Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, so for those who aren’t familiar with it, we have a proactive compliance.

[2:48:59] We look at property standards from every four to six weeks. We select two to three buildings. We base those selections on the number of complaints you’re receiving. And as I mentioned previously, we have work verticals with LMCH. They’ll have staff on site. And they were on Saturdays. We wanna try to maximize the ability to be able to have inspections. So we want those more likely to have people in the building on a Saturday. So that’s why we select those days. But it’s been a very valuable initiative and allows us to be able to work very cooperatively with property owners and the community.

[2:49:37] Thank you, I appreciate that. And if I may ask Mr. Chisholm, ‘cause I have spoken to you about this, do you have any objection to this happening in your buildings? Mr. Chisholm. Thank you. Through the chair, LMCH position on this is, we welcome municipal licensing, city fire, whoever is inspecting buildings and has that authority in the city of London. They’re welcome to come in. We ask that be treated the same as any other landlord in the city of London with this regard.

[2:50:13] Thank you. So through the chair, I’ll move on to the second part of the motion amendment. I appreciate that statutorily under our agreement, we have shareholders’ meetings every year. I would like to escalate the reporting that this council through a standing committee receives. And what I’m asking for in this motion is for us to receive a supplemental, not a full annual report, but a supplemental update to the materials that you’ve generated, including anything that’s new, be submitted to, I said caps.

[2:50:57] Now, the clerks can correct me if that’s wrong, if it should be SPPC. I thought it was caps. That can be changed if it shouldn’t be caps, but I would like to see a report no later than the end of the year 24. And I think that would be helpful. It will move this discussion forward. And what I’m hearing is you’re making progress, but I need as a counselor, as the fiduciary of the sole shareholder, I need to be getting more reporting on this.

[2:51:29] So that’s the second part of my motion. I’m wondering if you could comment on that. But I think you’re asking for a report to council. So I think that, I’m not sure that we’d be asking our guests from LMCH to comment on whether or not council wants to request more reports.

[2:52:03] I think that council has to have that debate. I don’t know. That’s fair. If the clerk wants to clarify whether I was correct in saying caps or whatever, it should be changed. Sorry, and that’s what we’re checking on. So if I’m a little distracted by what you were saying, that’s part of that. Just bear with us a moment.

[2:54:01] So here’s our challenge, counselor. A supplement to an annual report. Having not been scoped in any sort of more specific way would likely come here. If there was a specific piece of data or pieces of data that you were looking for, that might see it at caps. We could say to report back to a future standing committee, but without any clarification on what specific supplemental information you are looking for to an annual report, I don’t know how they comply with that.

[2:55:00] I actually may struggle to actually rule that piece in order based on trying to figure out where it would land without some scoping. However, I do want to give you an opportunity to respond and see if there’s something that you are specifically in your supplemental reporting expecting back because an entire six month sort of thing of an annual report, or rather than once a year, twice a year, that would come here.

[2:55:36] And that would be a significant amount of work. If you were scoping something more specific, it may actually be simply a matter of having the LMCH board secretary circulate our agenda package of information to counselors at the end of a board meeting similar to the update we get from Middlesex London Health Unit because a number of those metrics are in the board agenda packages. So I’m going to ask you if you can provide us a little more detail on the type of information you’re looking for. Yes, I’m very happy to.

[2:56:08] And a lot of it flows from the representations that it made today largely from Mr. Chisholm who said more up to date metrics will be forthcoming. We could get a report on the conditions of your regeneration program. I’m hearing a lot about the regeneration program is coming and that’s going to take care of a lot of these problems. I’d like to not have to wait until June of 2026. Yeah, June of 2026, I don’t want to wait until June of 2026 to get that from what I understand from what’s been said.

[2:56:51] These new reports and these new plans and these new updates are coming soon. And whether you want to call it a supplement to the annual report or a report on the progress of the regeneration plan or the revised numbers in buildings or whatever you want to call it. I’d like to leave it as general as possible. But I do not think it’s unreasonable for this council to ask LMCH for more reporting.

[2:57:25] As a matter of fact, in the service agreement, the service agreement. I’m going to stop you there. Based on what you just said, I want to offer potential path forward, which would be because of course, the staff of LMCH, the administration, can’t, similar to any other board, can’t forward information to council until it’s been received by the board. So the board has to receive, for example, the regeneration update before it can be shared with council. But as I was suggesting, we do get, and thanks to our councilors, Cutty and Frank on Middlesex London Health Unit, we do get minutes from their meeting and links to their board packages monthly after their board has met.

[2:58:11] So I wonder if rather than a request to report back, might I suggest that London Middlesex Community Housing be requested to circulate to members of council the minutes and board packages from the board meetings once the board has received them. So that would allow the secretary to forward each month the information that the board is approving for everyone. If you would add to that, and I think that would be caps, the opportunity to ask questions about it, I could live with that, that would be fine.

[2:58:52] But I do think it’s not unreasonable to want to give one of our committees the opportunity to not only look at these reports, which are probably put on the web anyway, but to also ask questions about it. And I just cannot understand what an objection to that would sound like. Because, quite frankly, one of the problems, I think, is we’re not getting enough reporting back and accountability. And the service manager might want to comment on their ability to ask for monthly reports.

[2:59:27] Point of order, Councillor ramen. Right, just on the point of order. I’m just wondering, are we in debate right now or are we clarifying the motion at the moment? I’m lost, right? Well, I’m trying to clarify the motion. Yeah, I’m trying to clarify the motion too, Councillor. And we are starting to move into debate. This is what I’m hearing. Councillor, you started talking about having them come to caps. Well, the motion isn’t to have a delegation come to caps regularly to ask questions.

[3:00:03] Councillors can send questions to the board chair and to the CEO at any time. Based on the board agenda packages, it would also not be in keeping with what we do with any other board or commission. So I’m really concerned that you are moving beyond clarifying the motion and moving into debate about what you personally want to see rather than the language of the motion here. So I just want to bring us back to the motion because right now we have a motion that I don’t think fits with caps that is a supplement to an annual report.

[3:00:38] I offer to path forward to have things circulated. I want to know if you want to go that way or if you want to stay with your original motion that’s on the floor. Well, I think the original motion can say SPPC instead. In terms of that being a path forward, I mean, anybody can go online and review the minutes and agenda so that doesn’t really add anything to the discussion. I guess I do want to ask the service manager then if they could comment on the ability that they have to ask for monthly reports, whether that’s been done and whether the service manager might be interested in just asking for if not monthly twice a year or quarterly reports.

[3:01:19] ‘Cause that way council doesn’t even have to deal with it. Mr. Felberg. Thank you and through you Mr. Chair. So I can go back and have a conversation with Mr. Chisholm and we can determine what type of reporting we might need. I’d be looking for some direction from council on exactly the type of reports you’d be looking for so that we can ensure that we’re getting what it is that you need and the questions you want to answer. Through the Chair, that might be a good path forward.

[3:01:54] Would you be able to come back to either our council meeting or SPPC or CAPS or wherever you think it should go and let us know how those conversations go? I think having this conversation would be a good idea and it’s probably even more precise. So again, we’re starting to stray into debate. We’ve got to come back to what motion is on the floor. My question is in order to determine what motion is on the floor, would the service manager who has just said he will have conversations with LMCH be willing to let us know how often that will happen and how we’ll get that information back.

[3:02:34] And if the answer to that is we’ll get back to you on that, that’s fine. Mr. Felberg. Through you, Mr. Chair, we’ll get back to you on that. If that’s okay. Thank you. Okay. I think that’s fine. And with that representation from Mr. Felberg. Yeah, Councilor Palosa. We’re talking about me taking a motion off the table. Councilor, we’ve got a point of order that always takes precedent. Councilor Palosa. Thank you. I share the prior concerns.

[3:03:05] This is kind of a general conversation happening at this point, a member of Council’s not even going through the chair. Yes, thank you. So Councilors should be waiting until they’re acknowledged by the chair, absolutely. Councilor Trussa, I’m gonna come back to you because you just said we’re having a discussion that might take a motion off the floor. We’re not having any more discussion. Either the motion stands or it’s withdrawn, but I’m gonna give you the chance to withdraw it. However, it has been moved and seconded. So it is now in possession of the committee and it will need to have no objections from the committee to be withdrawn.

[3:03:42] In light of, and I really would like to say this without somebody telling me I’m arguing ‘cause I’m really trying to move forward. Part A seems to be not controversial. Part B seems to be a problem. In light of the representations that Mr. Feldberg has made to us. So long as those representations can somehow be engaged in the motion, it being noted that I would be very happy to withdraw Part B ‘cause I believe that Mr. Feldberg will do that and will do it very well.

[3:04:17] So can there be it being noted, substituted for Part B, it being noted that the service manager will undertake to have such discussions with LMCH and report back to council committee as the service manager feels appropriate. Mr. Feldberg, I saw your hand up. Please go ahead. Mr. Chair, it’d be very helpful if I could get some scope and some context for exactly the type of report and the type of conversation I’ll be having with Mr. Chisholm that might be helpful in order to move forward and start those conversations.

[3:04:56] Yes, so I appreciate that response because that’s going to inform my next ruling or my next direction as the chair. Councilor, if you’re prepared to withdraw this now, I think that as we just heard from Mr. Feldberg, he needs more scope than this. I don’t think we are going to, we are not in a position, I think, to have a debate on the floor right now. I think this is a motion that should be brought through caps, discussed at caps with some scope to it and allow a fulsome debate to happen there rather than trying to wordsmith what the scope may be on the floor, which may or may not have the support of the majority of council.

[3:05:43] If I may respond to what you just said, having this discussion at caps is, let me just say yes, that would work. Okay, so I’m hearing you’re willing to withdraw the second clause. You will bring something to caps in the future. I’m going to look to see if there’s anyone on the committee who objects to the withdrawal. Hey, seeing none, we’re going to strike clause G from the recommendation. We are now only speaking to the amendments that civic administration and middle sex, London Middlesex community housing be requested to work together to arrange a series of property inspections of selected Middlesex community housing properties to be held on select Saturdays on dates to be determined.

[3:06:31] So that’s all that’s on the floor now, moved and seconded. Councillor Hopkins, you are next on the speakers list. I’m going to go to you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The reason I second this motion, and there’s only a on the floor right now, is because we are already doing this. And I see as much as I don’t like the words of a administration, it’s more municipal compliance working with London Middlesex housing community. You see, the city is assisting the housing corporation. So I’m supportive of that.

[3:07:09] And if I can just finish off by saying to London Middlesex housing corporation, you are more than welcome to come back to us with a delegation request giving us an update. I always appreciate any of our UBCs coming forward to us. So I would encourage you to do that. And I would encourage this committee to support it. Councillor Pribble. Thank you, what I heard today on the floor and when I was talking to some of our staff.

[3:07:41] So we do blitz every four to six weeks, typically on Saturday, three buildings, reporting of municipal compliance, including matrix, LMHC prioritized. Can you please staff explain to me what we are passing that we are not actually already doing? In my eyes, if we were to stick to what our staff’s initiative is, and if we just ask for reporting back of the findings, we cover both F and G. So please explain to me what we are actually trying to pass that we are not already doing.

[3:08:20] So Councillor Pribble, I just jeez off the table. Reporting back on the compliance was not the full scope of G, so I just want to keep us focused on what’s still on the floor, Mr. Mathers. The difference between what we’re doing and what this motion would direct you to do. Through the chair. So currently we decide upon the buildings that we’re gonna be bringing forward with the next blitz, purely based on the number of complaints we’re receiving. So this would provide some additional prioritization for LMCH buildings as well.

[3:08:59] So we’d just be tweaking our program and how we select properties. But with this, I’d be comfortable in doing that if we have this councilor action. Councillor Pribble. Thank you for your answer. No more questions? Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair. I will be speaking against what’s left to this motion. I think the answer Mr. Mathers just gave kind of informed my decision. I think we’re already doing the prioritization. I’ll be honest with you.

[3:09:32] I’ve got a number of properties that I would rate even lower than what you would maybe consider poor by LMCH standards. And I don’t want to disrupt the way our staff prioritize. Fully recognizing obviously of what’s already being said in terms of the issues. But we already do have in-house inspections. I don’t know if Mr. Chisholm wants to comment on that more, but he did earlier speak to the fact that we do have active investigations in terms of complaints. We do obviously follow up with work orders. This is work that’s being done. And I don’t think that we need to add this.

[3:10:05] I think it’s a redundancy that’s unnecessary. Thank you. Councilor, I’ll have a speakers list. So I’ll put you on it, but you’re not next. Mayor Morgan is next. Thank you, Chair. I’ll be brief. I’ll speak against the motion as well. Councilor McAllister said exactly what I wanted to say. I don’t want Mr. Mathers to change his prioritization. This is an asset that we have a very clear window into. We know probably more about the quality of this assets than others in the city.

[3:10:41] And I’d much rather have him have his municipal compliance staff focused on a whole bunch of properties in the city that may be in worse condition that we don’t have a window into, that we don’t have a presentation to council before, that we don’t have a asset management planned on, that we don’t have counselors who sit on the board of where we are well aware of some of the conditions of this asset. And we are putting millions of dollars into assisting this board in getting behind the problem. So I don’t want prioritization of this. Mr. Mathers can, if LMCH sites come up as a prioritized site through the complaints process, that’s fine with me.

[3:11:19] He can continue to do that. But I’m certainly not gonna jump these properties above a queue of an asset that we might not have a window in where the tenants in that asset may be in need of assistance for the quality of their sites as well. So I’m not gonna support this. That doesn’t mean I’m not supportive of us having a really careful look at this asset, what it needs to bring it up to speed. But I think we’re doing that and we have more of a window into this than we have a number of the other assets in the city that we are not connected to in any sort of way. Thank you, Mayor Morgan.

[3:11:51] Now I have Councilor Trussell. Yes, and with all due respect to Mayor Morgan and Councillor McAllister, there’s an important difference here, there are two important points I wanna make. Number one, I’m not sure the tenants in London Middlesex housing feel comfortable or able to file complaints, we’re told that the Saturday program is complaint driven. And I think that we really have to prioritize this because I don’t think municipal compliance is getting complaints from London Middlesex.

[3:12:33] Housing and there are a variety of reasons for that. Maybe we should do a survey. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that maybe we need to be doing more of these Saturday programs and it’s not a question of one jump in the head of another. Maybe we need to be doing more. But when I see you on the face of it that a building as the property as a whole is in very poor condition, that suggests to me that it would behoove the city as the sole shareholder to go out to the property on a Saturday and talk to tenants and try to get a sense of what’s in the properties in the units.

[3:13:10] What I find interesting is neither Mr. Mathers or Mr. Chisholm objected to this. The second point I wanna raise is we need as the city to be setting a better example for all of the other landlords who we expect to be in compliance with property standards. When you look on the face of this asset plan and I think Mr. Chisholm’s point can be very well taken that just because the building as a whole is very poor, that doesn’t necessarily mean that that goes down to every single unit, but it does create the impression.

[3:13:48] And I think a very well founded one that the city is asking private landlords to come up to a certain standard but they’re not doing it themselves. And this is a perceived double standard which I think is a problem. And maybe this is what accounts for the exceptionally low resident satisfaction surveys that we get. I don’t know, I don’t know what’s behind that. But I think that this part of the motion is going to help us gather the information that we need as the sole shareholder to be able to comply with our obligations to our residents.

[3:14:27] And I think that if we turn our back— If we turn our back on this, we shouldn’t turn our back on this, that’s it. Thank you. Thank you, looking for other speakers. Councilor McAllister, you only used 48 seconds. So go ahead. Thank you to the chair. Try to keep my comments as concise as possible. I didn’t want to call a point of order but I did want to reserve some time to comment on this ‘cause I think what was just said is unfair.

[3:15:00] I do think LMCH do their due process in terms of we receive complaints as well. We follow up with them and to suggest that somehow the tenants don’t feel comfortable. They are fully within their rights. If they have complaints and they would like to make complaints, they can do so. I think it’s unfair to suggest that there’s some sort of environment or impediment to tenants not being able to do them. They have those rights and in no way are they being impeded by LMCH. Thank you.

[3:15:36] Thank you, Councilor McAllister. Councilor Pribble. Thank you, Monairi, this motion, I really honestly believe that what’s going to get us and better results and being more accountable are the matrix and the municipal compliance. I think that’s more that our focus should be and the results will be seen by the other entrepreneurs who provide such services in our city. So I will not be supporting this.

[3:16:11] And again, my focus would be more on the matrix and compliance and the results, Councilor Raman. Thank you and through you. So I appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion. I want to ask a question, I guess, of Mr. Chisholm through you, if that’s okay. My question pertains to an escalation policy in terms of issues that residents do have. What kind of escalation policy is in place and how does Council or how do Councilors fit into that escalation policy?

[3:16:57] Mr. Chisholm, can you provide us some insight on that? Thank you and through the chair. Complaints come in through various means. They come direct from tenants. They come from family members, friends, people associated with tenants who are looking for support and not happy or and/or not happy with their service. They also come through municipal bylaw. They come through the fire department. They come through city councilor’s office. So Councilor Ferrara is not here. He has a lot of social housing.

[3:17:28] He’s sending email complaints to us on a regular basis. So they’re managed. They flow through my office. We record the complaints. We make sure staff are following up and we record the resolution. So we do have visibility on the number of complaints we get from Councilors and other elected officials. We monitor fire code violation, meters of bylaw violations, and we sort of manage those through. So we would be able to sort of have an insight after a period of time is what the nature of the complaints are, what buildings and things like that.

[3:18:02] We look at those along where there were quarters to decide what some of the challenges we may be having. We are reviewing our AODA policy, which is part of that is requesting service and managing complaints. So we’ll be doing a full some review of that this fall as we roll that out. And just to make sure the tenants are aware of that. Tenants have access through email on a regular basis. They can talk to site staff. They can call us.

[3:18:33] They call me. They call other members of management leadership and frontline staff. And we will escalate complaints as required until resolved. It is, you know, complex where the tenant may wish to do something that we’re not able to do, but we do try to keep a record of all the complaints so we can sort of figure out what are the trends? Where’s the miscommunication? Where’s the missteps that we can improve on? Councilor Rowan. Thank you and I threw you and I do appreciate that feedback.

[3:19:06] I do think there is some clarity that is needed for folks on how they can go about escalating concerns and getting those addressed and what kind of a response they may be receiving. I’m struggling with the motion in front of us because I do see this as competing with maybe some other priorities within the work that we need to do and other properties, private properties in the city. But I do think that there needs to, and I’m hoping that through this conversation here, my comment here as well as my comment to board members that are present, that there needs to be more clarity for residents on how they go about providing their concerns going forward and how that information then gets back to them or gets to them.

[3:20:00] I do think the power imbalance does play into this, which is I think what Councillor Trossa is also trying to address through this motion. So personally, we’d love to see some follow-up correspondence on how an escalation or a complaint-driven process will be improved and how Councillors can help to steer people in the right direction for that reason. But I won’t be supporting what’s in front of us here at this time because I do think it takes away from inspections that need to happen elsewhere in the city. Thank you, Councillor ramen, king for other speakers.

[3:20:41] Councillor, you’ve used your time on your amendment. So seeing no one else, I will ask Councillor ramen to take the chair so I can speak briefly as well. Thank you, I have the chair, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. So I’m gonna echo what Councillor McAllister said, and I’m gonna point to one of the things that was shared with us during the annual general meeting presentation. I don’t think tenants are scared to report to us because we have a 97% eviction avoidance rate.

[3:21:17] We’re not evicting tenants because they’re complaining as we see in the private sector. We do work with them. And I know this because I see the volume of emails. I get all kinds of emails from tenants because I’m on the board, not because I’m their ward Councillor. I also have attended a tenant talk that was hosted at a CH site in my ward. I know when the tenants come to those, there’s lots of issues they raise. Mr. Chisholm alluded to the fact that some of the things that tenants want are not things we can do. I get more than a couple of emails from LMCH tenants who are demanding we evict another tenant in the building.

[3:21:58] That’s the only way that they’re gonna resolve their complaint. And that of course is not something that is a complaint resolution mechanism evicting someone else that has to be based on those behaviors. So I don’t think that there’s… But I’m also concerned, and again, I got what Councillor McAllister said, I sent three property standards complaints from residents into municipal compliance last night. I have lots of properties in my ward, both multi-residential purpose built rentals and conversions.

[3:22:34] You know, one of the ones I sent in last night was an unlicensed residential rental unit that’s in very poor shape. We don’t have windows into that except through the complaint mechanism, but we do have windows into those spaces at LMCH. We are inspecting LMCH properties as part of the proactive compliance. But I don’t wanna take away from what is not only the proactive compliance efforts at other locations in the private sector, but I also cannot support, you know, re-diverting assets from the reactive compliance that is needed when complaints come through as well, which is a big issue, continues to be a big issue in parts of the city, including in parts of ward one, two and three in the East End.

[3:23:22] I know Councillor Cuddy shares some of the same challenges as well. And so I don’t think we’re facing the same issues that we are in the private sector. And for that reason, I won’t be supporting this. Thank you, return to the chair to you, if no one on the speaker’s list. I’m gonna do a final call for any further speakers on the amendment. Seeing none, we will call the question, then I’ll ask the clerks to open the vote, just on the amendment.

[3:24:11] Housing the vote, motion fails, three to 11. Okay, colleagues, that brings us back to the main motion. And we’ve had a number of speakers on the main motion. I’m just flipping back to my main speaker’s list and looking for other speakers on the main motion, which is the annual report financials be received, the communications be received. Councillor Trussow. This is through the chair. This is a specific question about the financial statement. And it’s difficult for me because I have no expertise in financial statements.

[3:24:48] So I’ll do the best I can. Typically, I see in financial statements aligned for contingent liabilities. And if I missed that going through these papers, I’m sorry if you could point out where that is, but was that there and should it be there? And what is it? What are the contingent liabilities that you’re carrying? Mr. Chisholm, and I know you have your team here. So if you wanna direct that to one of your senior leadership by all means.

[3:25:26] It’s just gonna take a second ‘cause I have not seen that line either. And I don’t believe we carry moment. And through the chair, there are point two, page 12 of our financial statements.

[3:26:37] And this is information that we don’t carry any current contingent liabilities for any legal claims through normal operations. The outcome of these claims is not determined at this point. So no such amount is included in the financial statement. So there’s no litigation where there is reached at that point. Thank you. Councillor Trussow. Is maybe somebody with more, maybe I should ask finance if you could help us with contingent liabilities.

[3:27:11] Does that only apply when there’s litigation pending? Or does that apply generally when there’s a risk of future litigation? So I will go to Ms. Barbone to see if she can offer comment on that. And Councillor, I just wanna come back to let you know that as I had indicated to you before you moved your amendment, you’re now, you’ve got about 20 seconds left of your five. Ms. Barbone, can you provide any insight on that from the city’s financial perspective?

[3:27:46] Thank you through the chair. So sorry, I didn’t have time to pull up my accounting handbook in front of me to quote from that. But essentially, contingent liabilities are something that are assessed. And if there is something that is determined that is quantifiable and is likely to occur, then you would record a liability for that. There’s an entire process that goes through in terms of identifying what that is and how that is assessed and based on the management estimates that it would then be subject to audit. So it’s not something that is typically recorded on the financial statements unless it is likely and can be estimated in which case it would be identified as a liability.

[3:28:24] And that would be part of the financial statements on the balance sheet included as such. Councillor Trozell. Thank you. We’ll talk really quickly. In the condition of the premises, I would think that they should be carried. I’ll be voting, I’d like a separate vote on the financial statement that we’ll be voting no. On that, there was another one that Councillor Pribble referred to earlier. One last question, have you made, has LMCH made plans to attend and participate in this Friday’s upcoming tenant fair?

[3:28:59] And you squeaked that in right at the mark, Councillor? So I’ll go to Mr. Chisholm to respond. Thank you through the chair. Yes, we’re participating in the lifespan. One of the challenges we have as an organization is people talk about what we do, but we’re not often at the table. So we’re working hard to engage with the community to be at the tables where issues that have mattered to LMCH and our tenants are discussed so we can contribute. So we are an active participant. We’re looking forward to discussing our self-dail community, the work we do, talking to our current tenants or potential tenants.

[3:29:35] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chisholm. And I’ll look for any other speakers on the main motion. We, the clerks have broken it out so they can be called separately. Financials are clause D. So I will call that separately. The others are the annual report be received. The communication dated from Ms. Forrest be received and it being noted that the communication from Councillor Trussow was received. So those are the clauses in the vote. And I see no other hands up in chambers are online.

[3:30:10] So I will ask the clerk to open the vote on the financials first. We’ll vote on that and then we’ll move the balance of the motion. Seeing the vote, motion carries 13 to one. And I will now ask the clerk to vote or to open the vote on the balance of the motion. Mr. Chisholm, can you start off your mic so the clerk can use it?

[3:31:35] Mr. Trussow, how would you like to vote? I’m sorry, is this one, everything including the receipt of the reports or is it just not the receipt of the reports but everything else that’s substantive? This is everything except the financial statements be received. The reports be called separately? We’ll have to cancel the vote and start again if you want that called separately.

[3:32:23] Okay, we’ll cancel the vote. Councillor Trussow, would you want parts A, B, and C put together and then the balance you would be okay with?

[3:33:35] I can’t get into E-Scribe right now. I’m on the wrong meeting date and I can’t get this undone. A, B, and C, B. Part A is on the proposed by-law be introduced. Part B was the presentation from LMCHB received and part C is the annual report be received. Okay, so I’d like to vote no on part A and part C. Oh, I’m sorry, through the chair. I would like to vote no on parts A and C.

[3:34:11] I’m fine with B and I’m fine with receiving the delegation request and all of the audits. Okay, the clerk’s now gonna open the vote on A and C.

[3:35:46] Closing the vote, motion carries 13 to one. Now we’ll open the vote on the balance of the motion, which is the receipt of communications and the presentation. Closing the vote, motion carries 14 to zero. Thank you colleagues, that concludes item 3.2. Moving on to item three point with thanks to our guests from LMCH.

[3:36:20] You’re free to go, 3.3 is the Housing and Development Corporation London 2024 annual general meeting of the shareholders annual resolutions report, looking for a mover to put that on the floor unless Mr. Felberg needs to give us a presentation. He’s shaking his head no, the report can be as read. Moved by Councillor ramen, seconded by Councillor Cuddy. Now we’ll look for any debate on this. Seeing none.

[3:36:54] Oh, Councillor Stevenson, sorry. Thank you, I just have a couple of quick questions or quick or the answers can come to me later. I’m wondering there was a budget, the budget was $800,000 loss, but the actual for 2024 was a $5 million loss and I didn’t see anything on the staff report around what that was about. Ms. Barbone. I thank you through the chair. The Councillors referring to the statement of operations and what the annual deficit is for the Housing Development Corporation.

[3:37:32] So the budget approximated about $800,000 and the annual deficit actually resulted in $5 million. So that essentially is related to two items that are included in note four under external transfers. That basically relates to a loss on the disposal of land that was transferred to the city with respect to the Duluth property. And in addition, there was a funding transfer back to the city of London for Sylvan Street. That was almost $2 million. So that is essentially two items that were not budgeted for.

[3:38:06] Those were not known to occur until after the budget was developed and therefore is part of the statement of operations. The only other item I would note is that the higher materials and supplies is related to some of the capital improvements that were not capital. They were included as part of the capital budget, but did not meet the test to be capitalized and hence are included through the operating statement for operating expenses. Thank you, Ms. Barbone, Ms. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you.

[3:38:39] Yeah, just as a follow up there for the public who might be wondering why we’re showing a loss on the property, is it anything that you can add there as to why we’d be showing a loss in the property rather than just transfer it at book value to the city? Ms. Barbone. Thank you for the chair. The transfer has to occur, it was occurred for nominal value. Therefore, there’s a loss. So when we consolidate those with the city, those are all ultimately eliminated through the consolidation, but on a standalone through the account standards, we need to show that loss with respect to HDC.

[3:39:20] Okay, perfect, thank you. So fair to say it’s not a real loss, like nobody looking at the statements has to be concerned that there was any real loss on there. It’s just a financial accounting entry. And we’re seeing nods from the treasure on that. Perfect. And my only other question is around the transfer of properties. When we say to the city, like, will 122 baseline be going to LMCH? And knowing 403 Thompson is operated by indwell, just wondering where that property’s gonna sit.

[3:39:57] There was a question earlier to LMCH about properties not owned by them. So maybe this is something that we’re planning to do, just looking for an update there. And we’ll go to Mr. Felberg. Thank you and through you, Mr. Chair. So both baseline and Thompson are the two remaining assets of the HDC right now. So we’re currently working, and we identified this in the November 2024 report on the dissolution when we talked about the next steps in order to complete the work. Baseline and Thompson are the last two things, and we’re working with the province and KPMG to find a ways that we can transfer those properties over to the city without incurring any land transfer tax.

[3:40:36] And we’re just working through those details right now. We’re optimistic that this will be the, this shareholder meeting in financial state will be the second last one, and that we’ll be able to bring a final one next year. As part of that work, we’ll also identify how we were able to proceed with that land transfer tax and if we were successful in avoiding it. Councilor Stevenson. Okay, thank you. Appreciate the efforts to avoid tax. I was wondering about the ownership. Like will, is Duluth owned by the city?

[3:41:11] Is that the intention that we’re gonna own it? And 403 Thompson and other people are gonna operate them? And what with 122 Baseline, will it be going to LMCH? Or again, is the city gonna start to own these properties and have others operating them? Mr. Felberg. Thank you and through you, Mr. Chair. So yes, Baseline and Thompson will be owned by the city. The Duluth property was transferred and we’re now going through a plan of subdivision. We’ll be looking to dispose of those properties to somebody into the future. So that work is ongoing as part of our shelf already land work under the road map.

[3:41:47] And then Baseline and Thompson, if that’s something Council wants us to reexamine, we can look at that. But first we need to at least make the transfers and then decide how to operate. Thanks, I appreciate the answers. Any other speakers? Seeing none, then I’m gonna ask the clerk to open the vote. Closing the vote, motion carries 13 to zero.

[3:42:39] Noting that Councilor Van Mirbergen has left the meeting. Thank you colleagues. That concludes our scheduled items. We have two items for direction that were deferred from the consent agenda. The first is corporate growth projections, updates. Councilor Frank, you asked this for this one to be separated. You indicated you didn’t really need to debate, but you just wanted to vote on it differently. So I’ll go to you to see if you want to offer any comments and then we can proceed.

[3:43:12] So Councilor Frank. Thank you, yes. I mean, I don’t need to debate, but I want to share my thoughts on this. I was saving my voice for now. Sorry, is it on the floor? That’s a great point of order, Councilor, no it is not. Would you like to move it? Sure, let’s go, yeah. Councilor Lehman, you’ll second that, perfect. Now it’s on the floor, Councilor Frank. Thank you very much, appreciate this. And I’m voting against this report, not because I disagree with staff’s approach. I think it’s actually wildly responsible for staff to be doing what they’re doing, but I disagree with having two completely different sets of population projections to underpin our major planning and budgeting documents the next 30 years.

[3:43:53] And I believe that we should actually be using Council approved projections across the board. I can’t do a reconsideration motion because I voted against using the 1,476 number and I voted for using the 1,100 number. So I’m not able to pull and do a reconsideration. So this is just my attempt to signal that I don’t agree with this approach that we are taking. And I’ve spoken with a variety of planning staff and it seems that we are able to use our municipal projections as highlighted on the first page of this report. The statement that the PPS allows for municipalities to modify as appropriate, which is why we’re actually able, in fact, to have finance staff use the Council approved projections for budgeting purposes.

[3:44:37] So we are able to choose that 1,100 number, but we are choosing not to based on the decision that we made in December to approve the 1,476 number. So I just wanna thank staff for making the recommendation to use the Council approved growth projections in all of our planning documents and budgeting documents except for the land needs assessment and urban growth boundary. My understanding is they’re restricted, they have to use the 1,476. So I appreciate staff making a really responsible financial decision on behalf of Londoners to use Council approved projections. And as well, I did ask staff to calculate if we were using Council’s population forecasting using the 1,476 number.

[3:45:20] We’d actually have 42 years of a developable land, which is well beyond the 30 years that we are required to by the province, but we’re using their 2024 ministry numbers, which inflates that number significantly. I do think we are locking the next seven to 10 Councils into these planning decisions. And again, seven to 10, depending on whose projections you’re using. If you’re using Council’s projections, it’s 10 years or 10 Councils. So when we talk a lot about making decisions about impact future Councils, I think this is probably actually one of our biggest ones.

[3:45:55] So I think to be more fiscally responsible and make better planning decisions, we should probably use the same population projections across the board. And I think that the more responsible ones are the Council approved ones. We’ve already seen the housing start to fall dramatically in the last two years, which means we’re not collecting enough money to put into our development reserve funds. The province has made all these exemptions that we don’t have to charge development charges to certain areas. We’ve already added almost 50 million taxpayer dollars into the DC reserve fund in the last two years as exemptions and discounts. And we’re already using GMIS to cancel and reschedule major infrastructure projects.

[3:46:30] So I don’t see the trend going positively towards the provincial population targets. We’re already in the $113 million shortfall in our development charges or fund. If we use the Ministry of Finance ones, we’d be at $600 million shortfall. So again, I appreciate staff not leading us into that direction. So, I mean, at the end of the day, in adequate DC reserve funds will just mean we won’t be doing infrastructure projects, which means that we won’t be moving forward with growth. So I guess that’s the way we mitigate those issues. But I do know that, for example, if we move forward with this, the projects that will get prioritized will be GMIS ones, which will be things like sewers, and the things that won’t get prioritized are gonna be things like parks.

[3:47:13] And so I think we’re gonna be looking at subdivisions that are really unattractive to live in from a livability perspective. So I’ll just say, I’m gonna vote against this. I don’t think we’re headed in the right direction by decoupling these two population projections. And I’d prefer to see them actually in lockstep, but again, appreciate staff. And I’m not, I think is a good report. So I appreciate what you wrote and your thought and care. Thank you, Councillor Frank, looking for any further speakers before we call the vote.

[3:47:47] Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I appreciate the Councillor’s comments. I have a number of subdivisions for development in my ward, and I’m starting to see the challenges going forward on how we make livable communities. And I did not support the urban growth boundary going out to the 14 either. So it’s really a concern as we undertake the urban growth boundary review conversation. I’m glad it’s here, I’m glad we’ve got this report in front of this, the 51% projection increase is 51% higher.

[3:48:26] I know that the federal immigration numbers, I’m not sure how they’re updated. I know the provincial numbers are annually updated, but I have questions around those numbers given the changes in immigration from the federal government. But I think the main point I wanna make here is that we do have tools available to us if we do need to increase our numbers with the GMIS as well as DC studies updates that are done, I think every five years or so.

[3:49:09] So there’s opportunities to make changes as we develop. So I too have concerns with these numbers and projections as well. Thank you, Councillor Hopkins. It’s a trust out. Through the chair, I’ll keep this very short. I’ll be voting no on this. I agree with what Councillor Frank has said. I agree with what Councillor Hopkins has said. And I’m just not going to go through and repeat everything.

[3:49:44] Again, this is consistent with votes I’ve taken in the past regarding the urban growth boundary and other positions I’ve taken on the urban growth boundary over the years. So I feel very comfortable joining Councillor Frank and Hopkins in voting no on this. And thank you for articulating that so clearly. Okay, for any other speakers. Seeing none, then I will ask the clerk to open the vote. Opposing the vote, motion carries nine to four.

[3:50:33] Thank you, colleagues. The final item from deferred from consent agenda is 2.3, mayoral direction, 2024, 001, city owned parking lot redevelopment. So we also have three requests for delegation status. I’m going to note that Ms. Lago had to depart and is not currently with us if she’s able to join virtually before the meetings ended, she may do so, but right now she’s not present to delegate.

[3:51:07] So I’m going to look for committee to put the motion for the delegates on the floor. Councillor Cudi, Councillor Palosa. Okay, so we’ll do this for all three delegates, even though we’re noting that Ms. Lago is not with us at the moment, and I’ll ask the clerk to open the vote on that. Opposing the vote, motion carries 13 to zero.

[3:51:54] Okay, so we will go to our delegates momentarily, and I’ve got Mr. Morrison from the Old East Village BIA, and Mr. Herb, and I know they’re both up in the gallery waiting to speak to us. I am going to go to our staff though. I know in particular, Councillors, kind of following a planning committee process here, where sometimes staff will present a little bit of a report to us before we go to our delegation. I’m going to see if staff can just provide some context to some of the concerns that have been shared with Councillors via email.

[3:52:34] We may hear it from our delegates as well, but in particular with respect to parking, because I think it’s important to let the public know that the preservation of some public parking is included in the RFP process, and so whether it’s Mr. Mathers or Mr. Felberg, I’m sorry, I’m kind of putting you both on the spot a little bit here, but can you just give us a very high-level overview of the RFP process, and also because we’ve heard there hasn’t been enough public consultation, what the steps would be if this RFP is approved in terms of public consultation moving forward?

[3:53:18] Certainly, Mr. Chair, and just for clarification, the RFP referring to is for the Queen Street property, not the Orton Street property, is that correct? Yes, ‘cause we’ve actually got the take-no action on a couple of those, right? So, and the communication has all been on the Queen Street property, so. Certainly, and just as a summary, so we spent some time, we went through, we were given a strong-layered direction to go out and look at three properties in the Old East Village.

[3:53:51] So, there’s the POA parking lot, I forget the parking lot number, but the one just east of Elizabeth Street, and then the Queen Street property as well. The two properties, which are take-no action, we found that they were incredibly constrained properties for the one just east of Elizabeth, and then the POA is actually a city facility, which offers a very specialized service that would be very difficult to move in the short term. So, the remaining property is the Queen Street property, and as we started going through the different easements and different encumbrances on the property, found it quite constrained, but we’re able to identify a few spots where we could undertake some development activity.

[3:54:34] And if you look into, I believe it’s figure three in the report, we’ve got some color-shaded areas that identify a strip of singles across the south side of Queen Street. There’s a pathway in between those singles, and then what we’re proposing under the rules and the provisions of the London Plan is a six-story building that could go in the larger purple area there as well. We’ve also identified a single family lot on Elizabeth as well, which would round out the development activity.

[3:55:08] So, what you have before you today is just a proposal. At this point, it’s just taking the provisions and the policies of the London Plan and identifying what’s possible on this site as far as development goes. The next step for us, and we’ve identified a little bit of that in the report, would be to go and consult with the old, these BIA specifically. And then prior to even making any sort of application for development, or even undertaking an RFP, the first thing we would do is we’d go through a pre-application community meeting. Very similar to the activities that we undertake with some of our affordable housing development projects.

[3:55:45] Actually, I believe there’s one this week for the Fairmont site. So, very similar going out, getting advice before we actually submit the application. Once the application is in, then it would come to Planning Committee and follow the planning process at that point. Assuming that there’s a favorable decision of Planning Committee, only then would we then go out and issue an RFP. But if there were specific items that the community is looking for, and I think some of the communication talked about, less desire for highly supportive or supportive housing in the area, looking for maybe affordable or market housing, those would be the types of things that we would include in the RFP to ensure that the bits that we get back meet the objectives of what the city was asking for and the community is hoping for in the area.

[3:56:27] Hopefully, that’s enough. If there’s anything more, I’m happy to provide any further information. Thank you, and I hope that was helpful to everyone to understand what the next steps are, ‘cause I know this is not a decision of a planning application today, and so I just wanted to clarify that, and with the delegation status as approved, I’m going to go to Mr. Morrison and then to Mr. Herb to make their presentations. Gentlemen, I know you’ve both presented here before, so if you can just give us your names, and then you will have five minutes, and I will give you a wave with about 30 seconds left if you’re getting close to your time.

[3:57:10] I didn’t want to start yet. I don’t want my five minutes yet there. But thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you here today. Actually, the comments just made are more information than what we’ve actually been given, except through the planning team that we’ve been dealing with. Again, I want to thank you for this opportunity with this proposed redevelopment municipal parking lot that’s located at 641 Queens Ave. I want to make it clear that we’ve had initial consultations with the senior planner, Melissa Campbell, who’s here today, along with our strategic land development manager, Michael, and I call him Mr. T, because I don’t want to butcher his last name, but they have actually been a pleasure to work with.

[3:58:00] Our first consultation was very beneficial, and them coming to the board was also beneficial, and I have the greatest respect for these two individuals, because they listened to the concerns, and I do have to say that I was a little bit surprised to see this report come here today without being notified in advance, and following the release of this report, Ms. Campbell did contact me late last week to discuss this recommendation, and at that time, I reiterated some of the concerns we have that I’d like to just mention to you here today. We did emphasize at the time of my consultation, as well as the board, the importance of transparency and ongoing dialogue right from the outset, and the old East Village BIA strongly recommends that the city host a dedicated public meeting to allow meaningful input from local property owners, business operators, residents, and other stakeholders, because this is a significant development, and it’s a development with long-term implications and deserves an inclusive and robust consultation process.

[3:59:07] And I hear now that that is a part of the process, but to me, it’s kind of after the fact with what’s being asked for here today. We’re concerned about the proposal to spend approximately $555,000 to make the site shovel ready before issuing a call for development proposals, and given the budget constraints and council’s commitment to fiscal prudence, we believe that it would be more responsible to first issue a call of expressions of interest to assess market demand and project feasibility before committing these public funds.

[3:59:40] It was mentioned just a few minutes ago, and it is a growing concern in our community. I don’t know how else to say this, except perhaps trust issues when it comes to City Hall. I’ve mentioned before that quite often our community, our neighborhood feels neglected and ignored, and I think it’s of the utmost importance that we begin to work together, something that I have said from day one since I joined the BIA that I am more than happy to do, because we have great potential with the oldies’ village and this development, we’re certainly interested in looking closer at.

[4:00:17] One of the things that has come to light from the community is they’re afraid that this proposal speaks of an affordable housing project, and yet quietly it’s going to turn into a supportive housing project. I just want this committee to be aware of that, because you probably will hear about it in the future as well from others. And despite the suggestions in the past that this parking lot is underutilized, it doesn’t reflect the experience of a lot of our business owners and property owners in the area, and many have been told actually that parking permits are unavailable.

[4:00:49] And of course you know the ongoing safety concerns, particularly around the payment machines, which also further discourages the use of these parking lots as we prepare for the impacts of bused rapid transit, bused rapid transit, sorry. It’s going to leave the day for me too. Bus rapid transit and continued commercial revitalization, parking availability is critical to the economic sustainability, and I’m open to hearing what we are looking at when it comes to those parking spaces, because I believe we could make this work.

[4:01:27] One of the biggest concerns we had was the lack of consultation with some of our key stakeholders, and at our board meeting we made it clear, for instance, Banting House is a National Historic Site located right adjacent to the proposed development, and they are a significant stakeholder. And during our board meeting, you know, staff had assured us that discussions with Banting House would occur prior to any recommendations coming forward, and it’s been confirmed by both Banting House and Ms. Campbell as late as yesterday when we discussed again, those discussions haven’t happened.

[4:02:01] So in close, I want you to know that the BIA supports more affordable housing, that’s not the question, however, how we get there is what really matters. If we’re gonna do this, we need to do it right. So I’m asking today that this committee considered deferring this matter. I suggested yesterday to Ms. Campbell the end of September, and she had no issues with that, or she did suggest perhaps the end of October because of the summer months. And again, I’ve really enjoyed working with them, and I look forward to collaboratively working with them and the city as we move forward.

[4:02:37] I see, you know, we have no real position right now. Thank you, Mr. Marston. Whether we support or not support. That’s your five minutes. Gave you a little leeway there ‘cause I knew you were wrapping up. Appreciate that. And Mr. Herb, when you’re ready to come to a mic, we will hear from you, sir, too, with sincere thanks for your patience. I know it’s been a long day for everyone, and I appreciate you hanging out and hanging in there with us for your time. Thank you very much. Well, it’s an important issue. My name is John Herb. Just to give you a little background, I actually live on the block in question that municipal number two is located at.

[4:03:14] It’s a 600 block of Dundash Street through Queens F. Just to reinforce a couple of points that Kevin Morrison made there. Speaking of Banting House, the shaded area that the city manager indicated, it’s taking away a lot of space from Banting House for school buses, tour buses that may visit that location, which they do frequently. Another thing that’s been overlooked in that shaded area is a turning radius for 630 Dundas that has a loading dock at the rear of the property.

[4:03:56] So if those five houses are built along that row in the area is indicated, it takes away the opportunity for loading and unloading from that property. That’s a little bit arcane, but you know, I think it’s important to discuss a little bit of the history of municipal number two, for the benefit of some of the people who may not even been born or who have moved to London since it happened. But in row 1980, it was decided to beautify Dundash Street. And part of that initiative was to remove all the street parking from Dundash Street in that section and replace it with meandering, kind of cobblestoneed mews, as it was called at the time.

[4:04:41] And that was when about 10 homes along Queen’s Ave work expropriated by the city, bulldozed, leveled, and parking lot municipal number two was established then. It was several years went by before the disaster that removing the street parking on Dundash was identified and it was restored. Municipal two was neglected, you know. But then in around 2017 or so, the city renovated that lot at a great expense actually, and hired landscape architects and had structures built, boulevards were laid out, trees were planted, extensive plantings all around, and it was actually beautified, it looked really good.

[4:05:33] It does, you know, the trees look good. But then within the last three or four years, approximately half of the parking spaces on Dundash Street were removed again. So now you’ve got less than half of the parking that was there on Dundash when Meany 2 was renovated in 2017. So that is the overflow, that’s where people park. There’s no getting around it. Besides the tenants in my building, one of which is down there, and the people who visit, people who come to that neighborhood for a myriad of reasons.

[4:06:15] So the Renault is basically, I don’t know, how it was figured that you would fix it and then wreck it. I’d like to point out a six-story building on Queens, I have at that location, is completely at a scale with everything in that neighborhood. On, you can go from the front of Quebec Street at Jacqueline, I believe, all the way downtown, and you won’t find a six-story building on that anywhere. It’s all houses and churches, and there isn’t even any business located on Queens Ave.

[4:06:53] So a six-story building there is completely at a scale with the residential aspect of the neighborhood. And you have to think about the environment that would be created for the people who living across the street, we’re gonna lose all their daytime sunlight as an example. So, and it’s been brought up and Kevin brought up the point. The neighborhood is very concerned about what kind of housing is gonna be, if at all is gonna be provided there. We are vehemently opposed to any more social service agencies, any more supportive and highly supportive housing in that neighborhood.

[4:07:32] We’ve got enough problems, thank you. And again, public consultation should be taking place before a sale is, you’re waving at 30 seconds? Well, again, that’s about it. I’m asking you to nip this in the bud. Vote no on that property at municipal number two. It’s ill-conceived, it’s been rushed, and quite frankly, it’s a bad location for that until I’m shown that there’s going to be allowances made for not only a parking for the people, the residents on that block.

[4:08:13] Oh, and that’s another point. Since Muni 2 was renovated in 1980 or so, two buildings have gone residential, the OPC factory and the old summer availability. And that’s 80 units, over 120 people approximately living in those. And we are at time now, John. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. And Ms. Legault, I believe you’ve joined us online. Sorry that you couldn’t stay with us in chambers, but I did see the login for you for Zoom. So if you’re still with us, we did approve your delegation, knowing that you might be able to still join us virtually.

[4:09:20] Just going to do one more call for Ms. Legault. I don’t know if she’s having technical problems or if something else has taken her away from us, but I’m not getting any response. So I’m going to look to council now for some direction to move on this item.

[4:10:00] Councillor Layman. I just have a question through Chair to staff. Just not clear on the RFP, does the RFP have provisions? Councillor, sorry, I’m going to interrupt you. I’m just going to ask if you’ll move the staff recommendation. I do know Councillor Stevenson has circulated a referral, but just so we have something on the floor to frame our questions around, are you willing to move that? Yeah, I’ll move that. Councillor Ploza, we’ll second. Okay, so the staff recommendations on the floor, go ahead with your questions. Thank you.

[4:10:33] Does the RFP explicitly the number of public parking spots in the new, in any new proposed public? Mr. Felberg. Through you, Mr. Chair. So the short answer is yes, but also what I wanted to highlight in the report is that we do have an extensive engagement plan, loosely outlined in the report. Intentions are to talk to about inland owners who would be impacted by the development, work with the OEV BIA.

[4:11:10] We want to deal with the issues that they’ve identified about bus parking and working with Banting House and trying to find a way to make something that works for this space. What you see in the report here is really, it’s what’s allowed under the London plan. So it doesn’t mean that it’s a final decision on what the development could look like, but it is something to start the conversation and for us to be able to go out to the community when we went in if Council were to approve the next steps on this approach. Councilor Lehman.

[4:11:42] Okay, that’s important for me for my support because it is essential that we protect parking spaces for the merchants, the restaurants, Palace Theatre, Alien Hall, you know, Banting. We want to encourage folks to come down and support these businesses and attractions. So I can support this if I know that those public parking spots will be preserved in the new development. Looking for other speakers.

[4:12:21] And actually perhaps I’m going to, while I look online, I’m also going to, Mr. Falberg, questions from the gallery and this was sort of going back to that PEC approach to things for a moment. The issue of accessibility for buses, tour buses, school buses, et cetera, for Banting House and the Great Area and the Turning Radius and those things. I just wonder if you want to offer any additional information on that. Certainly, Mr. Chair.

[4:12:57] Actually, we did a preliminary look at that and under site plan control and taking and looking at those radiuses, it does appear that there is enough space for tour buses to turn around in that location. So without getting into a detailed site plan design, I can’t say for sure without knowing the specifics of the development. But at this point, based on what we see today, yes, we do think that we can turn the buses around and there’s access for Banting House. Okay, and further details would be through a site plan process. So understanding that, just looking at Councilor Palosa. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[4:13:34] A couple of questions through you to staff. Hearing communities, concerns about supportive houses versus the affordable housing versus just full market rate housing, most of the person who might go in there. Your thoughts, your feedback, I know we haven’t gone out yet at what point or if there is a point at which it would be appropriate to suggest to the community, like we’re looking for this type of housing and not supportive as certain areas do have a concentration of services already within them. Thank you and through you, Mr. Chair.

[4:14:10] So the intention is not to put highly supportive housing or supportive housing in a dislocation. Within our RFP, we might identify some targets for affordable housing, but that would be that 80% AMR in that location. Additionally, just to provide some further information further to the special council meeting this morning that we had its council’s direction that we as staff bring back any highly supportive housing projects for your approval. So we would not be doing that without endorsement from Council.

[4:14:46] Councilor Palosa. Thank you. Also looking at as we potentially go out for interest with the zoning and our intention also include mixed use of this building, realizing it is within an area that could be housing up top and then main floor commercial or medical or other uses. Or is it like, how much is up for debate at this point? Mr. Felberg. Thank you and through you, Mr. Chair. I’m just thinking of Queen Street specifically. I don’t know that there’s a lot of mixed, mixed residential commercial, commercial residential buildings along that corridor.

[4:15:25] That said, part of the communication and conversations we’ll have with the community will include receiving feedback on that. And then we would assess and determine if there was room for that kind of use in that area and if the zoning would support it. Councilor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just looking at that property and knowing that there’s a national historic site next door, like not sure what future opportunities might be for, like there’s space or programming space that they might actually have an opportunity to expand into. So that’s where those conversations were coming from me, just with a museum background of looking at what their long-term needs and assessments might be.

[4:16:04] I appreciate the figure three on page 22 of the original report. Just looking at what the preliminary site plans may potentially look like, just given the idea of the area. Also, I saw as well the $550,000 investment upfront to start going through archaeological processes and getting it ready to appoint for potential interest in the site would know exactly what they’re getting into. Personally, I saw that as a way to have that as roughly a half million dollar investment hour and to potentially leverage over 4 million coming back.

[4:16:42] Also aware that sometimes residents will say they would like parking, highly subsidized parking, free parking, but then they also don’t want people loitering in parking lots and they would like more eyes on the street and boots on the ground coming out and spending money and enjoying the neighborhood and creating complete neighborhoods. And we know that parking lots leave vacancies and openings. We’ve seen that throughout the downtown of just your walking also. There’s a big gap in how far are you willing to walk? So I’m interested in seeing where this goes at the time and thank you for bringing back this proposal for us to consider.

[4:17:21] Thank you, Councilor Palosa. Councilor Stevenson, I see you know that the camera’s on. Sorry, the clerk said you had your hand up. I couldn’t see you with your video off. I’ve got Mayor Morgan ahead of you on the list and then I’ve got you next. So I’ll come to you after Mayor Morgan. Sure, I’m gonna speak to the whole report. First, let me acknowledge the comments from the delegates. I really appreciate the feedback and the comments and you taking your time to come out here today. I wanna go back to the original direction that I provided to staff, which was to develop and submit to the head of council a prioritized list of city-owned parking lots for potential redevelopment as high density housing, while also considering the prioritization of parking needs.

[4:18:04] What staff did that was brought back a list that I then directed them to take to council for consideration and thought so that we can make a decision together. And at that time, we asked staff to proceed with a number, but on this particular lot and I believe I, I don’t know if I’ve moved or seconded the motion, but supported the motion to say, with this lot in the old East Village, let’s do some consultation with the old East BIA before we moved forward to it. I’ll be pretty frank on this. I’m not as interested in the lot at 641 Queen as I am and some of the other opportunities in the city.

[4:18:40] It might drive some housing in the city in the right way, but it’s actually quite a complicated site, as you can see with the land assembly. And it’s probably relatively restricted on the amount of density that you could put in there, given the parking needs in the area as well as the structure. So I actually appreciate that the BIA is interested in continuing to have a conversation about what might be possible there. And I’m very supportive of that. I think the awkward thing that our staff will have is what would we be consulting on in that period based on the deferral? And I think that’s probably a question that we should probably address because I think the problem with not having something is that everybody will speculate on what it could be or might be given that we’ve made absolutely no decisions yet.

[4:19:23] So I’m happy to support the way Council wants to go on on that particular lot, whether we seek more time or more consultation. I’m pretty open to anything. I will say, given my desire for high density housing, there are other things in this report that I think are quite exciting that I don’t want to get lost in the discussion on the old East Village site. And that is the SOHO parking lots. I think are quite an exciting opportunity. This is where we put out the request for expression of interest and actually got some positive feedback from the community that ranged from 450 to 600 units.

[4:20:01] Some heights as high as 24 stories and the developer willing to bring in some affordable components to a mixed development. That’s pretty exciting for a site that has sat as a parking lot for many years and has significant environmental issues with it based on the old site as a coal tar contamination, well, there’s coal tar contamination on the site. And I think that moving forward with a request for proposal in the fall is probably pretty exciting because this is on the kind of the southern tip of what a grassroots group of businesses and downtown owners have said that we want to call the River District.

[4:20:41] There’s lots of interests. There’s lots of ownership in the area from different individuals who have the capacity to move on their sites. And if we can actually turn what is an environmentally contaminated site into something that works for parking and housing in that part of the city, I think that could be quite the catalyst for that end of the city as well. So I know there’s lots of steps on that, but when I originally said, let’s see what we can do with our parking lots, this is the kind of big thinking, big opportunity that it seems like there is private sector interested in partnering with the city on that I think is quite exciting to pursue.

[4:21:14] And given the public focus has been on the 641 Queens site, I don’t want this to be lost because this is way more density, way more significant and has huge potential for that area in that part of the city and doesn’t have I think the same concerns or constraints that the 641 site does. So happy to see it where Council goes on the discussion on the Queens Ave. Very excited to see the direction and the interest in sites like the Soho, the Horton Street and the Ride-O Street sites and that we have the opportunity to move forward with a potential request for proposal in the fall once we’ve worked out some of the further details that we should be transparent about that site from a contamination standpoint and I’m fully supportive of that process.

[4:22:01] So I want to thank our staff for the work that they’ve done on this. I want to recognize that I understand why they put the kind of proposal they did on 641 Queens, like showing people what’s actually allowed under the current planning policies is probably very transparent. But I know that that’s not likely what we would actually do and I do think that some further consultation is perfectly fine with me on that. So I’ll turn it back to the chair. Thank you Mayor Morgan. I’ll go to Councillor Stevenson next. Okay, thanks to the Mayor for reminding me there is some exciting news in that report and so I’m glad to see that there’s some positive movement.

[4:22:39] On the 641 Queens lot, can I just get a clarification with staff how we would put housing and a six story development in there and not lose any parking spaces? Mr. Felberg, thank you through you Mr. Chair. So the purpose for putting the six story is that does allow us to include some parking if we were to just use a series of single family residences along there, you’d have driveways and then the be backyards and that would really limit our ability to retain any parking.

[4:23:14] If we’re building a six story as part of the planning application, they’re required to provide a certain level of parking as well. So there will still be some parking in there. There will be a slight loss of parking overall at the site, but in the report we identify that there’s, I think it’s about 50% usage of that particular parking lot and we’re retaining the parking at the parking lot across the street Elizabeth and at the POA in the area. Councilor.

[4:23:47] Thank you, through you to staff again, just to clarify. So the RFP says there won’t be any loss of parking spaces in that municipal lot. Mr. Felberg. Thank you through you Mr. Chair. So the RFP has not been written yet because we have not established what the use will be on that site. Once we establish what the use is in consultation with all the abutting landowners and determine what the actual parking needs are in that space, we can then write an RFP that addresses what those needs are.

[4:24:22] Councilor. Okay, thank you, ‘cause it just feels a little confusing. I mean, when we talk about the six story building, would that be underground parking that would be part of that building? I don’t wanna speak for Mr. Felberg, but I think it could be above ground parking structure or below grade, depending on what a different proponent would bring forward, different builders build different things. But I’m gonna see if Mr. Felberg wants to comment on what they would look for and how a developer accommodates the parking, perhaps, rather than whether or not they’re just underground.

[4:25:06] Thank you through you Mr. Chair. So underground parking is actually quite expensive to construct. What we’ve heard from the development community is you have to get a significant amount of density and height in order to be able to accommodate that. So for this site, it would be above ground parking if there was room to put a structure, they might do that, but I don’t see that happening. It’s likely going to be surface, some surface parking in order to accommodate the residents at that particular property. Again, though, the design has not been developed. We have not established any parameters or any details on what it would be.

[4:25:41] We need to establish those in order to be able to answer some of these questions about what would happen at this site, Councillor. Thank you and through you, I just, this is really important, this piece of it. And so when we talk about the potential of putting housing and not having underground parking, we’re talking about losing parking spaces. And I know there’s reference to only 50% usage, but we have like a 40% vacancy rate in our commercial district. And we, this council has a vision for this beautiful heritage art district to have it vibrant and alive again.

[4:26:23] The investment that was made in that parking lot is beautiful. If you look at it, there was a landscape architect that was hired, it’s full of ceramic and mosaic. It was designed to facilitate this commercial, the revival of this commercial district. So my reason for wanting to bring forward a referral is to be sure that before this council spends 500,000 on preparing the site, that we’re sure that we don’t need the parking.

[4:26:57] And that’s really the big thing. Once we determine if it’s true that there is some space that isn’t needed for the parking, then what we do with it is another conversation. But right now it’s about why would we spend half a million dollars investing money and getting a parking lot ready for housing if we truly need the parking spaces? We’ve got the Palace Theater that sits 350 people, plus performers and staff. A musical has 60 staff involved. We’ve got a big church there that that parking lot is filled on a Sunday when there’s people in there.

[4:27:36] I really need us to look at when this place is alive and full of people. Do we have the access point for people to park and come and enjoy this beautiful district, which I think the city needs? Councilor, sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt or train a thought, but you started to speak to a referral that’s not on the floor yet. And the reasons kind of for your referral. So I wonder if I can get you to pause and perhaps now is the time to move your referral. And then we can move into that debate ‘cause I don’t wanna say you’ve argued that on the main motion, like if you’re gonna— I hear you.

[4:28:22] Use those reasons for the referral. Okay, I will just say that we did have a couple of people here that were interested in this issue too that weren’t able to speak today. So one of them was is online, but isn’t able to speak. And there were a couple of other people here, the executive director for Banting and the Old East Village BIA Chair Grant was here, Frank, who was the Old East Village Community Association participant. People are here because they feel passionately about this neighborhood. And as Council knows, it’s having a tough time. The one speaker who is gonna speak today is a long time landlord right in that area, right on that block of the municipal lot too.

[4:29:04] And there are currently vacant apartments that are unable to be rented due to the social concerns that are happening there. It’s just not a safe place to live. So there’s different issues that we get to look at before we invest the 500,000 into that property. And so I did circulate a referral. And would you like me to read that out now, Mr. Chair? Yes, if you would. And I won’t be counting the reading out the referral to your time. You can debate the motion after it’s on the floor and seconded, but if you could read that out now.

[4:29:41] Okay, so just C, ‘cause A and B stay the same. Right, so A and B, the report be received and the direction to take no action on the other two lots stays the same. So just your, yes, if you can just read out clause C. And I’m sorry, I have a couple of different versions that you circulated, so I wanna make sure that the right one is being read out. Okay, I think this is the one from staff. So C says all pre-development land assembly activities to prepare the city-owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Avenue for a mid-rise form of redevelopment and related procurement processes related to this action.

[4:30:19] Be referred for consideration at the October 28th, 2025 meeting of Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee in order to fully complete the public engagement consultations, review the long-term strategic plan for the Old East Village Business Improvement Association and evaluate the associated parking needs. Okay, and that is the motion that the clerks haven’t ascribed, so that is moved. And we’ll look to see if there’s a seconder for that, Councillor McAllister.

[4:30:52] Okay, so that’s been moved and seconded. And if Councillor Stevenson, did you wanna hear from others first, or do you wanna lead into your reasoning? I know you’ve mentioned a bit of it, but— Yeah, I’ll just quickly, and then I’ll follow up after I listen to my colleagues, but I’ll just quickly say that, as you heard the mayor say, there’s not a huge rush on this one, it would really be beneficial to continue the public engagement sessions prior to the $500,000 investment. And really, the first thing that has to be figured out is, does this area need the parking?

[4:31:28] ‘Cause if they need the parking, then that is the answer. If they don’t, then we can proceed and work out the details later. So this referral to October, maybe the consultation will happen sooner. As far as I’m concerned, and you heard the other speaker say, we’re not opposed to it. We just wanna be sure that it truly is an option, assuming that we do have a fully vital and vibrant, beautiful neighborhood business district for Londoners to enjoy, because this is a unique heritage district that I really do think is a gem for the city and a place that people would wanna come and visit.

[4:32:09] So I just want to be sure that there truly is capacity in that space before we invest any money into it. Thank you, Councilor, looking for other speakers. Councilor Layman. Yeah, just a couple of questions through you, Chair. I just wanna go back, I’ve heard a couple of different things regarding the parking. So the RFP, I wanna be very clear on this, would explicitly include the same number of public parking spots that are currently on that lot.

[4:32:43] Can you confirm that again for me? Mr. Felberg. Thank you and through you, Mr. Chair. I’m glad you asked the question again, because I think I misunderstood what you were asking when you asked about the RFP. I understood that you’re asking if parking could be included in the RFP as something we would evaluate. Absolutely it could be. In the report, we do identify that with development on this site, there will be a reduction in parking. So what we need to determine is exactly the amount of parking that this site needs, how much we have to provide, and that’s part of what we will do with the consultation.

[4:33:16] And then once we establish that, we would then come back and include that evaluative framework in the RFP to ensure that we got that parking. Councillor Lehman. Okay, thank you and I appreciate the clarity on that one, ‘cause as I mentioned in my previous comments, I think that’s very important. Can you also enlighten me on expression of interest? Is that a possible way to go? It was mentioned by the delegate as a less expensive way to test the lotters, so to speak, before we go farther down that road.

[4:33:58] Mr. Felberg. Through you, Mr. Chair. Yes, we’ve used an expression of interest in a couple of different places. In fact, for the Horton property, we went out for an expression of interest and three proponents provided us with their suggested approach to redevelop the site. So that is absolutely an option and something that we could endeavor to do at this particular site. And then we could get some actual on the ground market feedback before we advance into any future activities. Councillor.

[4:34:30] Okay, thank you. So I will support the referral. I think we need to take another look here. It’s not time sensitive to get some further clarification on parking and also consider expression of interest. Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair. Summer, in terms of Mr. Councillor Lehman just said, I seconded this, I’m also willing to spend more time in terms of community feedback. Obviously, we have a few folks who are able to speak, but I do think need to have a full understanding in terms of the impacts.

[4:35:08] The parking, I know is integral, having a BIA that has a main street on it. I know the struggle with parking, on street parking, doesn’t always necessarily provide for some of the businesses and don’t have the availability of lots, but I can totally understand in terms of where OEV is now currently and where they might be in the future in terms of needing those spots. So I’m willing to put paas on this, hear more from the community and what they’d like to see in the area. So I’m willing to support the referral.

[4:35:40] Thank you. Looking for other speakers. Councillor Trussow. When we, through the chair, I was satisfied when I heard the staff report that there would be ample and it’ll do respect to what the speaker said through the chair, but I was concerned about this being rushed through and not having ample opportunity for consultation with the stakeholders about the type of housing that would go in to do appreciate that there are serious concerns about that.

[4:36:21] Having said that, I think the staff satisfied my concerns that there is going to be ample opportunity at a couple of different decision points to really visit the ultimate question here. I’m not willing to hold this up and the, I mean, the best argument I’m hearing for holding this up is there are going to be a lot of questions coming up. If that were the case, it would be difficult to proceed on just about anything.

[4:36:56] I’ll be voting no on the referral. I’m keeping an open mind to what this project is ultimately going to look like. And I do think it’s important for the city to build into this process, which is going to take a long time, many different decision points with consultation. I’m satisfied that they’re doing that. So I’m not going to support the referral and I would like to, I would like to get the wheels set in motion to move this project forward.

[4:37:33] Thank you. Thank you for any other speakers. Councillor Palosa. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s going to be through you to staff. Having heard questions from the public and colleagues, looking through and it relates to the referral of supporting it versus not, as looking through next steps on page 23, you’ve laid out some things. But in step five, it says prepare procurement documents to solicit proposals from potential partners.

[4:38:09] Do the archeological assessments and some of the other planning application stuff, does that all need to be submitted beforehand? Or is there an opportunity for us to go out to the community and say, hey, before we drop half a million dollars and do archeological digs, which I’m happy to do. What kind of interest do we have of what kind of development to then bring back to the BIA and area residents of like, these are some things that could come to your neighborhood. Are they exciting, energizing? Like, where’s your interest of what steps of this process of how it’d be laid out?

[4:38:46] Felberg, through you, Mr. Chair. So the archeological assessment is actually one of those critical path items that we need to get that completed. We need to understand what’s below the surface of the parking lot before we can actually bring forward any sort of planning application. So that, I would say that’s one of the first steps that we have to undertake. As far as soliciting information from the community, we could probably do in REOI, a request for expression of interest in conjunction with that work. So we could be out there on site, doing the archeological work, determining what the restrictions are for that particular site.

[4:39:25] Welled also out to the public and the market to see who is interested in actually developing this site. And then from there, we might be able to have, or we will be able to have a more fulsome discussion with, say, OEV and some of the neighborhood residents when we actually have some concepts that we’re working with and we’ve been able to measure and decide if they work for that particular site. Councilor. Thank you. So just going out for an expression of interest and could not be done beforehand procedurally. I’m just thinking hold off on the archeological assessment, go out and do the expressions of interest and then perhaps a path forward.

[4:40:09] Mr. Felberg. Through you, Mr. Chair. So we could do the expression of interest first. That could be the very first activity that we do. That might actually be a very good referral as a direct us to go and do that. And then we could come back with some suggestions on what could happen at this site. And then you could make the decision on whether we fund the project moving forward. Councilor Palosa. Thank you. Like I said, I’m happy to do the investment in the archeological assessments to move development in this area forward and invest in that section of the community.

[4:40:44] I’m also happy to support a referral if it’s purposeful in moving us forward in what we’re getting back. I see the word councilor, like Councilor Stevenson’s hand is up. I’m not sure if she already had it up or wants to comment on the expression of interest being part of potentially the public engagement with the community, so I’ll yield the floor. Well, the Councilor had let me know via text that she wanted to get back on the list before the vote.

[4:41:18] So I can certainly go to her to see what she thinks about the expression of interest. But I did have other Councillors on the speakers list on the referral, Councillor Hopkins and myself. So perhaps Councillor Palosa, I’m just looking- Prestigely, can I amend the referral then to include an expression of interest as mentioned by staff? So into a little bit of a gray area on amending it to an ROEI, only in that it could be, it frankly opens up a challenge to the chair from the mover of the referral that they may see that as contrary.

[4:42:30] So what I’m going to do is go to the mover of the referral to see her thoughts on going out for an ROEI as part of this referral and whether she would feel that that is contrary or not. Councillor Stevenson. Thank you, I appreciate that. I don’t have any problems with doing the ROEI as long as we’re not spending the 500,000 or doing the archeological thing if we’re waiting until we find out if we need the parking or not. So I have no problem with the ROEI part.

[4:43:08] So the referral does speak specifically to evaluating the associated parking needs and in concert with the OEVBIA’s long-term strategic plan. So the ROEI, before I come back to Councilor Palosa, I think we need some clarification from staff on whether or not they could actually put out an ROEI without knowing perhaps from a parking perspective with the rest of the referral, what the associated needs are, and whether that changes the land assembly or anything like that, which could impact the ROEI’s success.

[4:43:49] So I’m going to look to Mr. Felberg, Mr. Mathers, whoever wants to weigh in on can’t, without an evaluation of how much parking we need to retain, can we even proceed with an ROEI? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that we can probably craft some language. What we’ve heard here tonight is that we’re looking as much as possible to retain as much parking as we possibly can. What we are doing is we’re soliciting feedback from the market. So it’s not something we necessarily have to act on. It does give us some flexibility to weigh the different options that have been provided by the market and allow us to massage that to suit where an ultimate RFP or where an ultimate decision from council would come in for us on the next steps for this site.

[4:44:33] So I think we have enough here and based on the feedback we’ve received from the OEV as well, we could also do some consultation with the community before we issue the ROEI. So I would ask for some flexibility on the date so that we can do it thoughtfully and we can actually have some conversations with folks. Okay, so what I’m hearing from staff is that the ROEI is not contrary to the other components of the referral. So with that, I can deem an amendment to include an ROEI as part of the referral being in order.

[4:45:09] Thank you, I would like to move that then and then the dates as mentioned by staff. I don’t, that’s Q4 or just say a future meeting to bring staff back and it’s not to tie our hands. Well, let’s see if staff needs a specific date or if a Q4 2025 is sufficient for them. Mr. Chair, I think we could endeavor to make Q4 and just recognize if there are issues along the way, we might update council to let you know that we haven’t been able to make that Q4 date.

[4:45:44] Okay, seeing a thumbs up from Councilor Palosa. I’m seeing a thumbs up from Councilor Stevenson. Councilor McAllister, you were the seconder. So you and I’m seeing a thumbs up from Councilor McAllister. So nobody’s deeming this from a mover, seconder position as contrary, everybody’s okay with this language. However, we do have a referral on the floor. So Councilor Palosa, you do need to amend the referral. Councilor Lehman indicated he would second that. So we have to deal with this in order of operations. So we needed an amendment to add the issuance of an ROEI to the referral.

[4:46:23] Does that language capture sufficiently for you? Yes, happy to refresh once it’s available, but that’s an intent, yes. And amending the date to Q4. So just gonna bring colleagues back to the item that’s before us.

[4:51:20] So the amendment would read that part C be amended to read as follows. That the potential redevelopment of the city owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Ave be referred for civic administration to prepare procurement documents and solicit a request for expressions of interest from potential partners, purchase the developable lots, blocks, and construct new dwelling units and report back to a meeting of the Strategic Priorities Committee in 2025. So that would be the addition, hang on one second.

[4:52:22] So the clerk’s advice is that rather than amending the referral language, that this would be an amendment to add a new part D, hang on a moment, different opinion from the clerk. All right, colleagues, if you wanna refresh, I’ll read again what the amendment from Councilor Palosa to the referral from Councilor Stevenson would read.

[4:55:07] And so the part C would be amended to read as follows, that the potential redevelopment of city owned parking lot located at 641 Queens Ave be referred to civic administration to prepare procurement documents and solicit a request for expressions of interest from potential partners to construct new dwelling units and report back to a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee in Q4 2025 and to fully complete public engagement consultations, review the long-term strategic plan for the OLDs Village BIA and evaluate the associated parking needs.

[4:55:48] Yes. Councilor Palosa, that meets your intent. Councilor Layman, thumbs up. I’m also gonna go to Councilor Stevenson and McAllister to make sure that they’re okay with that language, that they don’t feel that something in there has become contrary to their original referral, seeing thumbs up from both of you. Okay, so that is now on the floor and what we are now debating. Councilor Palosa. Thank you, just this amendment to the referral would allow me to support it moving things forward. I’m not looking to belabor the issue as the hour goes late and I grow hungry.

[4:56:31] Councilor Trussow. Yes, thank you through the chair. When you say fully complete the public engagement consultation, I mean, to me, that’s a long-term thing that includes the ultimate decisions that Council’s gonna make, that’s gonna include public meetings and ultimately a public participation meeting. So I really think to say fully complete the public engagement consultation during a short referral period. And I wanna choose my words carefully here ‘cause I don’t wanna get into a side issue about whether I’ve said this nicely.

[4:57:10] But I just don’t think that’s, I don’t think that’s good drafting and I can’t support this. And I’ll leave it at that, Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, so my take on language, I think that is a fair assessment of one way that you could look at this language. My take on it is to just reflect what Mr. Morrison’s comments were that there was a commitment or a discussion about reaching out to some of the neighboring property owners that wasn’t completed.

[4:57:46] So my understanding and of course this would go back to the council who made the motion as well is that that would be concluding and make sure that we have that full engagement with those surrounding property owners prior to bringing something back to council. And just for clarification, Mr. Mathers, none of the fully complete public engagement has bearing on the statutory public participation meeting through PEC and those steps after an RFP is issued and or if an RFP is issued and responses come back.

[4:58:23] I just want to confirm that. Through the chair, yes, it’s fully for the engagement to for council be able to make the decision whether to proceed with development on this site. What the form or the exact shape of that development will be through the planning process. Thank you for that clarification. Okay, any other speakers? Seeing none, I will just ask Councilor Raman to take the chair.

[4:58:58] I have the chair, go ahead. So originally when I read this report, I was ready to move forward, but I listened to Mr. Morrison, I listened to Mr. Herb, I also listened to the councilor, I recognize 50% or less parking utilization doesn’t seem like a very high amount, but I also appreciate the comments that there’s a 40% commercial vacancy right now. And that changes the math for me because we don’t want to see all that commercial remain vacant, we do want to try and fill it.

[4:59:36] I think more residential in the area provides more customers for those businesses that can simply walk out of their home. But again, we’re talking here about a mid-rise and some single families, we’re not talking about a 200 unit, high-rise situation. And so I do think that an evaluation of what the parking rates were historically when the commercial vacancies were much lower, what sort of commercial tenants the BIA and visions going after as part of their long-term strategic plan noting that commercial and retail realities changed quite a bit during COVID and they’re not going back, but there is a new reality for those commercial spaces too.

[5:00:17] So we’re not taking a long time here, Q4 of 2025, and we’re not holding up to 300, 400 units of housing where maybe it’s a couple dozen, because I think on a mid-rise where you’re trying to provide parking, you might end up with a situation where you have to, the first level is actually just covered parking and the residential is above that, which in a six-story reduces the unit counts as well. I also think that we definitely need to do some more engagement with Banting House in particular.

[5:00:58] I’m aware that they’re looking to put in an elevator to become more accessible, bring in more tours, bring in more school groups, which is a positive to me. And I’m also, frankly, a little concerned about whether or not we go ahead with 500,000 plus in expenses, including an archeological, that might actually turn up things that say we can’t build anything here because of the archeological component. So I do wanna proceed with caution here a little bit. I know that there are other spaces in the city where it looks like surface parking might be a great thing to get rid of and do builds, and there are actually existing archeological constraints.

[5:01:46] I won’t talk about what properties those are, that’s a discussion for a different day, but I’m aware that it’s a barrier in other parts of East London in general. So I’ll leave it at that. As I said, I wasn’t going to support a referral, but I’ve listened to what’s been said. I also had a couple of conversations with a couple old East residents last night, a former BIA director as well, actually two former BIA directors. And so appreciate their thoughts and the history, and Mr. Herb extended that history a little bit further today in terms of why the parking lot was created in the first place.

[5:02:25] I was born when the S curve came in, but my memories of it are very vague, and I think straightening out the street again was probably a really good idea. So I’ll support the referral, and I do think that we need to look at that land utilization. I do think some housing fits there, but perhaps a little bit more evaluation of what’s going to go make some sense. So thank you for Madam Chair. Thank you, returning the chair to you with no one on the speakers list. Okay, with no one else on the speakers list, I’m going to do a final call, and I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote.

[5:03:21] Using the vote, motion carries 12 to one. Okay, so now we do have to do an as amended motion because we’ve got the other components as well, the take no action on the two other sites, the other components of that motion. So we’ll just look for a mover and a seconder for as amended, Councillor Palosa and Councillor McAllister, and we’ll ask the clerk to open the vote. Using the vote, motion carries 13 to zero.

[5:04:11] Okay, colleagues, we have finished our deferred matters additional business. We have no items for confidential sessions, so I’m just looking for a motion to adjourn. Councillor Hopkins and Councillor Ramen on that one, and we can do that one by hand, all those in favor. Motion carries. Thank you, everyone. I know a special gallery. and it was a long afternoon waiting to get through this. Thank you for your patience with us.