Open Council

14th Meeting of the Community and Protective Services Committee

Open Council

14th Meeting of the Community and Protective Services Committee

September 29, 2025, at 1:00 PM

Original link

The meeting was called to order at 1:00 PM.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That Items 2.1, 2.4, 2.5 and 2.7 BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

2.1   4th Report of the Accessibility Community Advisory Committee

2025-09-11 ACAC Report

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the 4th Report of the Accessibility Community Advisory Committee, from the meeting held on September 11, 2025, BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed

2.4   Bike Parking Implementation Plan 2025-2029

2025-09-29 SR Bike Parking Plan

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated September 29, 2025, related to the Bike Parking Implementation Plan 2025-2029:

a)    the above-noted staff report BE RECEIVED;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to implement the Bike Parking Implementation Plan 2025-2029 as part of the Mobility Master Plan; it being noted that the required operating and capital budgets for 2026 and 2027 are available in the adopted 2024-2027 Multi-Year Budget;

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to establish an on-line format to receive ongoing feedback on bike parking experiences, challenges and opportunities between December 2025 and December 2026; and,

d)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to prepare and submit a Business Case as part of the 2028-2031 Multi-Year Budget to expand bike parking.

Motion Passed

2.5   Part Two: Green Bin and Biweekly Garbage Collection Program - Next Steps

2025-09-29 SR Green Bin and Biweekly Garbage Collection

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated September 29, 2025, related to Part Two: Green Bin and Biweekly Garbage Collection Program Next Steps:

a)    the above-noted staff report BE RECEIVED;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to complete an implementation plan for a one-year pilot project to add pet waste to the Green Bin Program in a few areas totalling between 1,000 and 3,000 households including resident information details, costs, benefits, monitoring and identify a proposed start date for Quarter 2 (Q2) 2026;

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to focus on program optimization by increasing the quantity of existing Green Bin materials being captured and increasing program participation;

d)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to take no action on expanding the materials collected in the Green Bin Program at this time;

e)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to implement a pilot project to add churches providing food services and non-profit organizations providing food services to residents of London and are located on residential collection routes over a three-month period starting December 1, 2025, and take no action on other additional collection services at this time;

f)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to establish a fee or fees for those townhome complexes that cannot implement a Green Bin program due to on-site constraints and require weekly garbage collection and report back in Quarter 1 (Q1) 2026; and,

g)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to provide the next comprehensive Green Bin and Biweekly Garbage Collection Program update report for April 2027.

Motion Passed

2.7   Land Disposal Process Implementation Strategy

2025-09-29 SR Land Disposal Process Implementation Strategy

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated September 29, 2025, related to the Land Disposal Process Implementation Strategy:

a)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to allocate surplus municipal lands for the purpose of affordable housing development, including:

i)    surplus lands acquired for Capital Works Projects;

ii)    surplus Lands as identified in Appendix ‘A’ – Underutilized City-owned Lands;

iii)    surplus Lands vested to the municipality through failed tax sales; and,

iv)    other municipally-owned lands not previously contemplated, where there is a demonstrated interest by the City for affordable housing development;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to allocate funds to the original funding source at the original purchase price where surplus municipal lands acquired for capital works projects have been identified for affordable housing;

c)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to allocate funds to offset the property tax arrears for surplus municipal lands identified for affordable housing that have been vested through failed tax sales;

d)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to reallocate the lands identified in Appendix ‘A’ - Underutilized City-Owned Lands for the purpose of affordable housing developments;

e)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to allocate proceeds from the sale of lands resulting from City-led, shovel ready development initiatives to the Affordable Housing Reserve Fund;

f)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to update the Sale of Major Asset Policy to specifically exclude land held for the purposes of affordable housing from the policy, it being noted that proceeds from the disposition of lands held for affordable housing will be allocated to the Affordable Housing Reserve Fund; and,

g)    the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all administrative acts necessary to implement these recommendations.

Motion Passed

2.2   Single Source Procurement - Integrated Employment Services Digital Service Delivery Platform - SS-2025-208

2025-09-29 SR Single Source Procurement WE Data platform - Part 1

2025-09-29 SR Single Source Procurement WE Data platform - Part 2

2025-09-29 SR Single Source Procurement WE Data platform - Part 3

2025-09-29 SR Single Source Procurement WE Data platform - Part 4

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated September 29, 2025, related to the Single Source Procurement for an Integrated Employment Services Digital Service Delivery Platform SS-2025-208:

a)    a single source procurement, in accordance with sections 21(c), 14.4(d), and 14.4(e) of the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy, BE APPROVED to 2464420 Ontario Inc.SS-2025-208 through (PS-25-UP017) at a cost of $264,938 for a one-year term;

b)    the revised proposed by-law, as appended to the Added Agenda, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting on October 14, 2025 to:

i)    authorize and approve the 2464420 Ontario Inc. Agreement (“Agreement”) for the Contract between the Corporation of the City of London and 2464420 Ontario Inc.; as attached as Schedule 1;

ii)    delegate to the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, and the City Manager the authority and power to:

A)    represent the City (City representatives) with respect to the Agreement, 

B)    execute the agreement on behalf of the City of London; 

C)    approve and execute amending agreements to the Service Agreement, as attached as Schedule 2, that are consistent with the requirements contained in the Service Agreement, and do not require additional City of London funding; and,

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

iv)    the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract, statement of work, or other documentation, if required, to give effect to these recommendations.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

2.3   Proposed Temporary Warming Centre Framework

2025-09-29 SR Proposed Temporary Waming Centre Framework - Part 1

2025-09-29 SR Proposed Temporary Waming Centre Framework - Part 2

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Managers of Neighbourhood and Community-Wide Services and Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated September 29, 2025, related to a Proposed Temporary Warming Centre Framework:

a)    the above-noted staff report BE RECEIVED;

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to implement the Proposed Temporary Warming Centre Framework for Winter 2025/2026 and Winter 2026/2027 as outlined in the above-noted staff report; and,

c)    financing for the Proposed Temporary Warming Centre Framework for Winter 2026/2027 BE APPROVED from the Operating Budget Contingency Reserve in an amount of up to $3,632,500; it being noted that the cost of Winter 2025/2026 is funded through existing budgets and available Provincial Homeless Prevention Program Funding;

it being noted that a verbal delegation from S. Campbell, Ark Aid, with respect to this matter, was received.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the delegation request from S. Campbell, Ark Aid, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

2.6   Winter Overnight Parking Policy Change

2025-09-29 SR Winter Overnight Parking Policy Change - Part 1

2025-09-29 SR Winter Overnight Parking Policy Change - Part 2

That the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated September 29, 2025, related to a Winter Overnight Parking Policy Change:

a)    the proposed by-law, as appended to the staff report dated September 29, 2025, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held October 14, 2025 for the purpose of amending the City of London Traffic and Parking By-Law PS-114 to adjust the duration of the seasonal on-street overnight parking restriction to November 15th to March 31st and amend the definition of “City approved mobile payment application” to enable users to pay for Overnight Parking when required; and,

b)    the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to include in the 2026 Fees and Charges By-law update a reduction in the overnight on street parking permit fee from $15.00 to $5.00.

Additional Votes:

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by J. Pribil

That on recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, the proposed by-law, as appended to the staff report dated September 29, 2025, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held October 14, 2025 for the purpose of amending the City of London Traffic and Parking By-Law PS-114 to adjust the duration of the seasonal on-street overnight parking restriction to November 15th to March 31st and amend the definition of “City approved mobile payment application” to enable users to pay for Overnight Parking when required.

Moved by Mayor J. Morgan

Seconded by P. Cuddy

That the motion BE AMENDED to add a new part, to read as follows:

That the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to include in the 2026 Fees and Charges By-law update a reduction in the overnight on street parking permit fee from $15.00 to $5.00.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the motion, as amended, BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response Research and Evaluation Report

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Social and Health Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated September 29, 2025, related to the Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response Research and Evaluation Report:

a)    the above-noted staff report BE RECEIVED; and,

b)    the Mayor and Municipal Council BE REQUESTED to continue to prioritize advocacy efforts with the Federal and Provincial governments to secure ongoing operating funding in support of the provision of related services;

it being noted that a presentation, as appended to the Agenda, from Nadine Wathen, with respect to this matter, was received.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

3.2   Adequate and Suitable Cooling By-law and Maximum Temperature Amendments to the AMPs By-law (A-54)

2025-09-29 SR Adequate and Suitable Cooling Bylaw - Part 1

2025-09-29 SR Adequate and Suitable Cooling Bylaw - Part 2

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by J. Pribil

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated September 29, 2025, related to the Adequate and Suitable Cooling By-law and Maximum Temperature Amendments to the AMPs By-law (A-54):

a)    the proposed by-law, as appended to the above-noted staff report, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on October 14th, 2025, for a new Adequate and Suitable Cooling By-law; and,

b)    the proposed by-law, as appended to the above-noted staff report, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on October 14th, 2025, to amend the AMPS By-law, By-law No. A-54, to introduce new administrative penalty amounts for the proposed Adequate and Suitable Cooling By-law;

it being pointed out that the following individuals made verbal presentations at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with this matter:

  • J. Smith; and,

  • A. Caskey;

it being noted that communications, as appended to the Added Agenda, from M. Wallace, London Development Institute and K.M. Pagniello, Neighbourhood Legal Services, with respect to this matter, were received.

Motion Passed (4 to 2)

Additional Votes:

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by P. Cuddy

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by J. Pribil

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (6 to 0)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the motion BE AMENDED to include the following:

The Civic Administration BE DIRECTED take the following actions with respect to this matter:

a)     bring a report to a future meeting of the Community and Protective Services Committee with respect to the cooling units in the buildings;

b)     bring a report to a future meeting of the Community and Protective Services Committee with respect to extending the scope of the by-law;

c)     refer to London Transit Commission the issue of free transit on high heat days; and,

d)     bring a report to a future meeting of the Community and Protective Services Committee with respect to implementing an educational program related to the applicability and coverage of the by-law.

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by H. McAlister

That part a) of the amendment BE APPROVED.

Motion Failed (3 to 3)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by H. McAlister

That part b) of the amendment BE APPROVED.

Motion Failed (3 to 3)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by H. McAlister

That part c) of the amendment BE APPROVED.

Motion Failed (2 to 4)

Moved by S. Trosow

Seconded by H. McAlister

That part d) of the amendment BE APPROVED.

Motion Failed (2 to 4)

4.   Items for Direction

None.

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

5.1   (ADDED) 6th Report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee

2025-09-25 ESACAC Report

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the following actions be taken with respect to the 6th Report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee, from the meeting held on September 25, 2025:

a)    the Committee Clerk BE REQUESTED to invite the Civic Administration to the next Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee (ESACAC) meeting to assist with items on the ESACAC Work Plan;

b)    that “Nature Lives Here” lawn signs BE PURCHASED with the remainder of the 2025 Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee Budget; and,

c)    clauses 1.1, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 5.1, 5.4 and 6.1 BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

6.   Confidential

Moved by H. McAlister

Seconded by J. Pribil

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

6.1    Personal Matter/Identifiable Individual

A personal matter pertaining to identifiable individuals, including municipal employees, with respect to the 2026 Mayor’s New Year’s Honour List.

6.2    Personal Matter/Identifiable Individual

A personal matter pertaining to identifiable individuals, including municipal employees, with respect to the 2026 Mayor’s New Year’s Honour List.

6.3    Personal Matter/Identifiable Individual

A personal matter pertaining to identifiable individuals, including municipal employees, with respect to the 2026 Mayor’s New Year’s Honour List.

6.4    (ADDED) Personal Matter/Identifiable Individual

A personal matter pertaining to identifiable individuals, including municipal employees, with respect to the 2026 Mayor’s New Year’s Honour List.

Motion Passed

The Community and Protective Services Committee convened In Closed Session from 5:07 PM to 5:10 PM.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by H. McAlister

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 5:12 PM.

Full Transcript

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

View full transcript (4 hours, 26 minutes)

[18:02] All right, everybody, I’m gonna start this meeting. Welcome to the 14th meeting of the community and protective services committee. Please check the city website for additional meeting detail upon information. And I will read the land acknowledgement here. The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishnabek, Haudenosaunee, Linna Peiwak, and Adawandran. We honor and respect the history, languages, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home.

[18:36] The city of London is currently home to many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit today, as representatives of the people of the city of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. The city of London is committed to making every effort possible, provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request to make a request for a specific meeting. Please contact cpsc@london.ca or call 519-661-2489 extension-2425. I want to recognize members of committee that are in chambers.

[19:17] I have Councillor Peter Cuddy, Ward 3, to my right. Councillor Jerry Pribble, Ward 5, to my right. Councillor Sam Troso, Ward 6, also to my right. And Councillor Hadley, McAllister, Ward 1, to my right. Visiting members, I have Councillor Corinne-Roman, Ward 7, also to my right. The mayor is in chambers as well, to my left, Mayor Josh Morgan, and then Councillor Elizabeth Palosa, Ward 12, to my left. Do I have anybody online? Councillor Susan Stevenson is online. I also want to welcome members of staff and the chambers here with us today.

[19:57] Thank you for being here. And members of the public in the gallery up at top there. So the first I will ask is for any disclosures of interest from members of the committee. I have none. Okay, let’s move on to the consent items. We have a few. I do have some consents with some delegation requests. Consent item 2.3, the proposed temporary warming framework, is a delegation request for that. So I will pull that. And I’m looking to committee for any other items to be pulled.

[20:33] Oh, 2.2 for council approval. Okay, we can pull that. All right, last call, any others? Yeah, 2.6, I have a change to that. All right, 2.6, pulled by the mayor. All right, and I will be calling final last call. Any other pull requests? I see none. Okay, looking for a motion to move 2.1, 2.4, 2.5, and 2.7, moved by Councillor Cuddy. Sorry, just a second. Go ahead, Councillor Trussell.

[21:07] Yes, 2.3 is pulled. So moved by Councillor Cuddy, seconded by Councillor McAllister. Okay, we will put those on the floor for any questions, comments from members of committee, and then I will look to visiting members. Councillor McAllister, go ahead, and I will recognize Councillor Skyelet-Frank is online as well. Thank you, through the chair, just meeting off. I’ve got a few questions on a few of these items. I know, oh, actually, sorry, 2.6 got pulled. So I’ll leave those questions. So I do have questions of 2.5, 2.7. I’ll start with 2.5, just going numerically.

[21:42] I’m just wondering, I guess this would be Mr. Stanford, but in terms of the pilot project that’s being proposed, I’m getting a lot of questions in terms of, you know, what the pet waste and how that system would look. So I was just wondering if you could just give me a brief overview to make the public aware. Thank you, Councillor, I’ll go to Mr. Stanford. Go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. The item regarding pet waste is actually to get approval to create a work plan to bring back forward. We’ve had many sort of questions over the last several months, but what would something like this look like?

[22:17] And if it’s something that Council wishes to consider, we would bring back a work plan under Sean or Chambers signature, probably within about a six month period, and it would detail how this would be implemented, the benefits, the potential costs, and why this would be a good next step to go forward in the community, but that would be a part of our future report. Thank you, Mr. Stanford. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, and I appreciate that. Just for clarification, in terms of, you know, we’re still in the early stages of this, and just exploring our options. It’s definitely something I think we should look at.

[22:51] I’m curious to see that report come back, just to lay out the details as you describe them. So thank you for that. Onto 2.7, so a few questions with this. I do think this is an important plan to have in terms of the land disposal process. I think this is an important thing to have on the books, especially with our affordable housing plan. I think these two things pair well together. And I’m just wondering, maybe if staff could speak a bit more in terms of the affordable fund that’s spoken about in this in terms of, I recognize, obviously, for disposing of land, there’s a sale, money goes back into that fund, but I’m just wondering in terms of, you know, what kind of a balance are we looking at with this, and like, what ideally are we aiming for to use that fund for, and how much would we contribute to it on a regular basis?

[23:42] Thank you, Councillor. I believe that Mr. Felberg is ready for this one. Go ahead. Thank you, and through you, Mr. Chair. So the Affordable Housing Reserve Fund is actually where we embed all of the roadmap funding that we use. So it’s, the entire program is incorporated into that reserve fund. So really, this is the land disposal process. If we were to sell a property and recover any costs that we’ve incurred, the funds that we would, we would recover would go back into that reserve fund to be reused for affordable housing purposes. Thank you, Mr. Felberg.

[24:14] Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you. And then looking at, let’s just wanna make sure you get the name right, in terms of the Affordable Housing Delivery Partnership models that are laid out in the report, these are the options, right? So I’m just wondering in terms of, say, one of these projects came forward, are these the three the staff would review? Would you present all three, or would you ideally choose one and say, based on the review of this property, this is what, you know, we’re gonna recommend to Council. Thank you, Councillor, back to you. Thank you, through you, Mr. Chair.

[24:48] So yes, so for example, the Sylvan Project or Thompson or Baseline, they would have come forward through that City Lead and Manage project. And what we’ve learned from that process is that we need to engage with our operator at an early stage as part of the design and embed that into what we’re working on. The other two are where we’d go out for our P, go out and find partners, and then we would work with them to develop the lands, the Wostell project, and are recently closed in RFP for the Hyde Park lands would be a good example of those. And then the other example would be where we’re actually divesting of the project, and they would take over, and they would build based on whatever their proposal was that we worked with them.

[25:31] Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, and I appreciate that. I think for my own clarity, what I was looking at is, I mean, with the projects that would come forward, I would imagine it would be a lot of work for staff to give us the three options and actually recognizing that those wouldn’t always necessarily be options. And obviously in the case you just pointed to, I think where I was curious is whether we would get a few options when these projects come forward and whether council would make that decision, or is this, again, going to be something that’s delegated and brought forward by staff?

[26:06] Thank you, go ahead. Through you, Mr. Chair. So one of the recommendations or one of the resolutions that came out of the governance working group was where the city is going to be constructing its own, constructing a building. We need to come back to council prior to doing that. If we are going to be receiving federal government or provincial government money, we currently do not have embedded into that affordable housing reserve fund. We don’t have funds available for us to go and construct on our own. So our real focus is the partnership model. To go out, pre-develop those lands, find a partner and have them construct and operate projects moving forward.

[26:44] I would say between the two options, they’re relatively similar with slight nuances. So depending on how the RFP comes back and depending on what the partner is capable of, we’d make that decision at that time. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, and appreciate that. And with Appendix A, looking at the list of the underutilized city-owned lands and just recognizing a lot of these lands are east of Adelaide, there’s a bunch in Ward 13 as well. And I understand in terms of categorization, in terms of underutilized, I’ve looked at some of these parcels and they’re awkwardly positioned so I can understand that.

[27:24] But I mean, one of the things I just want to acknowledge is that we’re developing this for housing, but I don’t think we should necessarily just limit ourselves to the underutilized lands. Like I do think we still have to have a strategy in terms of having parcels of land that maybe the city would purchase, recognizing these are city-owned properties, but I don’t think it’s fair, again, to have all of our affordable housing projects concentrated. Like just as an example, you have 1175 to 1183 Hamilton Road, recognizing the large project, we’re also doing a fair amount.

[27:58] I think it’s a bit unfair to have an entire corridor, entirely dedicated to affordable housing. And I think looking at partners, obviously we’re not all developing this ourselves, but I don’t think, again, that we should have it all concentrated in one area. I think we need to look at other parcels, even if there’s something that another department is potentially looking at, but they haven’t used it. I do recognize the limitations in terms of the criteria that was used in terms of the underutilized lands, but I do think one of my concerns, and this is something I’ll maybe follow up with staff afterwards, but I do think we need to look at other parcels of land that we might have, that we could also assign for affordable housing.

[28:39] Thank you. Thank you, Councillor, I got Councillor Pribble next, and I have no one else on the speakers list. So if anybody wants to speak, just put your hand up, I’ll put you down. Okay, Councillor Robin is after Councillor Pribble. Councillor Pribble, please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair, to the staff. Just going back to the appendix A, when we are discussing the underutilized city owned lands, but we do look at the entire city, we don’t look just a certain part of the area. Okay, Councillor, go ahead. Thank you, and through you, Mr. Chair. So what’s on this appendix here is the underutilized lands that we currently have in our municipal stock right now, that we thought there was an opportunity for us to turn into a development opportunity in the shorter term, as opposed to in the longer term.

[29:26] Some of the things that we’re also considering, and it’s outlined in the report, is some of the lands that we’ve acquired through capital projects. So any of those surplus lands that could be available would be potentially opportunities in the future. What I’d also say is that the projects that you would, we’d be looking to deliver would be just a moment. We’d be looking to compile as many of the projects around the city as possible, and be looking to take on some of those pre-development development activities as opportunities for us to sell again in the future.

[30:08] There could be opportunities where we have a sale price that would align better with our affordable housing targets, and we’re able to recover some of those funds in the future, and then we’d be able to put those lands back into the affordable housing reserve. Additionally, that corporate benefits model, where we’re looking with all the other departments around the city, that’s a really key part of this strategy, where we’re working with all of our colleagues across the corporation to identify the opportunities that we have to move forward, and identify lands for affordable housing.

[30:43] Thank you, Council, go ahead. Thank you for that answer, and I totally agree, the partnership is the key word in these initiatives, so thank you very much for that. And through the chair, to Mr. Stanford, I just wanted to clarify the pathways in the clause B, it states that you’re gonna come back with the implementation plan. So I’m considering that it’s gonna start in the Q2 2026, and maybe I misunderstood, but in your answer, I thought that you’re gonna come back with the report if it’s a potentially yes or no, but I thought we are going ahead with it, and you’re gonna bring back the implementation plan for the one year trial, is that correct?

[31:24] Thank you, Councilor, Mr. Stanford, please go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, the implementation plan will come back in about six months from now, and that the one year pilot, subject to council approval, would start after that date. So the implementation plan will include all your details, including locations, and when the program would start up. Thank you, go ahead, Councilor. So thank you for the clarification. No, implementation plan Q2 2026, but it’s as proposed star date Q2 2026.

[31:57] So I’m just looking at the timing, is it kind of in the implementation plan? If we say, if council approves it, it’s kind of almost the next day that we can start. Thank you, go ahead. Through the chair, the specifics will be in the implementation plan, and it could be very shortly after. So in other words, it would not necessarily be six months after, it really will depend on how complicated or not complicated the implementation actually will be, but the goal will be to start something subject to approval as soon as possible in 2026. Thank you, go ahead, Councilor.

[32:32] Thank you very much, no more questions, Chair. Thank you, Councilor Ramen, you’re next. Thank you, and through you. So my first question relates to the green bin report that’s in our package. I’m looking off of the report that’s on the system, so the pages might be wrong in terms of numbers, but page two of the report talks about the service London data that came out of the contacts for waste management, as well as for the large furniture and bulky item pickup.

[33:05] So I see that this is mentioned in the report, but what I was hoping for was a little bit more information on how we’re going to move forward in a way that helps address the ongoing concerns that residents are sharing with us about our processes when it comes to pickup. So in my ward, I’m seeing about once every time that we have a garbage pickup, at least a few streets are being missed for their garbage pickup. I’m seeing an uptick in the amount of calls for contact where things weren’t picked up, recycling, waste, et cetera, that are one-offs as well.

[33:45] And then with the large furniture pickup and the large bulky item pickup, in particular, there seems to be a lot of misinformation about what actually will be picked up, what sizes will be picked up if the pickup has been placed and that is going to be coming. There just seems to be a lot of challenges with the system, and I think that we’re seeing that and reflected in the amount of service London calls. So I’m wondering if there’s another report coming back that will be addressing the service London challenges that we’re seeing when it comes to green bin, as well as garbage and large item pickups.

[34:26] Thank you, Councillor. I will go to Mr. Stanford. Thank you and through the chair. What has been highlighted here is actually one of the items that is on our ongoing list for improvements, essentially. Some of that work is underway now with service London and ensuring that our information is even clearer than it is. What we’re relying on right now are successes where things have gone without a problem. So that information, we believe, is there now. It’s a matter of making sure that it’s even clearer.

[34:59] And to do that, basically, we’re doing a review of the online information. We are also, though, in our future report, which will be about two months from now, highlighting even further need for further attention, which may be a combination of additional information out there for homeowners, the use of additional languages that may be part of the challenge, and as well, basically, if we need to actually have additional crews out at certain times of the year, it’s a matter of balancing our curbside service to address the concerns we’re hearing.

[35:32] We hear these loud and clear. I guess the only comment would be, although it’s a year and a half, this is still the first time that there’s ever been a calling system for bulky waste. In many cases, some Londoners are experiencing this for the first time. So we still are feeling the concerns, and our goal is to continue to address them the best we can. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you. Within the same report, we talk about the increased illegal dumping on City Boulevard’s parks, roadsides, and other public properties. I see that we have a report back coming on illegal dumping in 2026, which I am hopeful for.

[36:09] I know this has been a big concern in my ward, especially in new subdivisions. What we’re seeing is an unassumed subdivisions a lot of dumping when people are missing or not being mindful of when they’re garbage, and that goes out. So I am hopeful that we see some changes, but in the meantime, I think it’s really important that as we roll out new streams, as we talk about the implementation of bringing a pet waste online, this is another example and opportunity for us to make sure that we get it right.

[36:42] So on top of having an implementation plan, I would like to see a very forthcoming communication strategy as to how we’re going to inform the public of this new line, but also just to reestablish some of our patterns, our approaches as we move forward with continuing with green bins. So I just want to be mindful of that in terms of scaling that response and making sure that we have appropriate timelines set out as we move forward with that. Thank you, Councilor, you want me to go to staff? I’ll go to Mr. Stanford for the, I believe it was the communication strategy that Council was asking for.

[37:23] Through the chair, that will be part of our upcoming work. We’re doing a review of the waste diversion action plan, which was part of the package where the green bin and biweekly garbage collection was approved. The team under Shawna Chambers’ direction is hearing loud and clear. I’m giving my best to share the knowledge that has been passed to me from many Councillors, from many community members. I still, overall, the program has gone off very well. These are the items there that all communities have to face and go through, and it’s our future response.

[37:57] That’ll really be the proof of the pudding. We hear these concerns loud and clear. Thank you, Councilor. Thank you, much appreciated. And thank you, Mr. Stanford. I know how hard you have worked on this, and I really appreciate how you tried. As hard as you can to over-communicate, I think it’s just one of those things where we’re still very new at it, we’re still learning, and I appreciate that you’ve helped us through that learning. I just wanted to talk about the report on the land disposal process as well, and specific to Appendix A, where it lists the properties and it delineates the property type and the potential forms and units.

[38:32] Just wondering if it’s possible through you to staff to just get clarification where it’s a single family and up to four units. How many units are we actually talking about? Thank you, Councillor Ramen. I’ll go to Mr. Delberg. Thank you, and through you, Mr. Chair. So one of the things that we rely heavily on when we’re establishing the development model that we’ll be undertaking is the gap that’s been identified in the housing needs assessment. So that was something that we were required to do under the housing accelerator fund, and it identified targets or populations and types of units that we’d be looking for around the city.

[39:08] So when it comes to four units, we’re talking about four units. It’s not specific to bedrooms. It’s specific to the number of units that are allowed on a particular property. So this would allow us to support those potentially. It could be a one bedroom, could be two bedroom. It will depend on the development and it depends on the partner that we end up securing that project with. Thank you, Councillor, go ahead. Thank you. So just to follow that up, so how many bedrooms could ultimately be put on one of these lots? Thank you.

[39:40] I’ll go back to staff. Through the chair. So any of these developments we would bring forward to council for their consideration, the number of bedrooms in the specific application for each of these different items as they come forward. So we just can’t provide the specific number of bedrooms at this time. We’d have to ensure that we are aligned with our zoning by-law and also any rental, the components of our rental by-law as well. So it depends on whether they’re in the near campus neighborhood or not.

[40:15] So, but we would bring this forward to council for it to make those decisions prior to proceeding. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think it would be helpful for from a language perspective when we talk about potential forms and units in this sense, just to be able to give a little bit more of a qualification so that residents understand how many units that could be at its maximum. Sorry, how many units? How many bedrooms at its maximum, as well as what that intensification could look like on their street, whether that’s in an affordable form or in a residential form.

[40:52] I think there’s a lot of confusion for the public right now when it comes to that. I think anywhere that we can clear that up would be helpful. Thank you. I have Councillor Palozonex. Please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A few questions through you two staff on the Greenbin and Biowake Garbage Collection Program and Next Steps. Just as we read the recommendation, part F is that staff establish a fee or fees. Looking to see if this is gonna be the fees that would enable full cost recovery, partial, like just what we were thinking as this, as we prepare for this to come back to us.

[41:36] Thank you, Councillor. I’ll go to Mr. Stanford. Thank you and through the chair. The, that particular item deals with the homes that we’ve had to actually keep at weekly garbage pickup. So they’re getting an enhanced service. And part of the rationale there is that it is just proven extremely challenging to implement the Greenbin Program. As a result with this higher level of service, staff will bring back to committee and council, the price of this additional service that is being provided, but also different cost recovery options.

[42:12] That will allow committee and council to determine what is the next best approach to deal with these particular locations that, and a little more on why these particular locations have some unique challenges, often with space and the inability to implement the Greenbin Program. So all that will be part of the upcoming report. And in that there will be a range of fee recovery options. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you. And I do have a series of questions. Part E is that we implement a pilot project that churches providing food services and nonprofit organizations providing food services at the residential collection.

[42:50] Looking for clarification through you to staff, if this is pertaining to the biweekly garbage, looking for just the Greenbins weekly garbage, if they’d still have bag limits imposed for garbage, realizing there’s some exceptions that some of them are exempt. So just looking for clarification if we’re just about Greenbins and what would have the garbage exemption limits. Thank you, Mr. Stanford. Through the chair, this particular proposal deals with the food waste component.

[43:23] It has been brought to our attention and directed by Council to look at those locations that are really in the food service business to the community. And what has occurred is that it’s been brought to our attention that many of a certain portion of the waste that’s being placed out now is organic. And the target is delivering food to the community. So we believe that the 20 locations that represent the possibility of the mix would be provided in this case with a cart-based service subject to a quick review on site to make sure that it makes sense for them.

[43:59] And it would be locations that are on an existing collection route. So if that’s the case dropping into these locations to pick up the food component would essentially be the service, it would not mean that there needs to be any change to the garbage collection parameters. Because if anything here, they would have additional capacity for garbage to put out. So we believe this blend of a system would work well together and can be accommodated when we’re talking about only about 20 stops per week. Thank you. Go ahead, Councilor. Thank you.

[44:30] So for clarity, I’m with green bins. You keep saying, sorry, I can’t even see this little podium. Sorry to IT. Can you put the podium down just until we’re done this? I like to see Jay. So realizing people also just put food and garbage. This one specifically is looking at the green bin offerings to these people. Okay, thank you. Part A for the pet waste. When we deal with our contracts, usually for food waste in your kitchen, it needs to be in the paper bags, compostable bags. Would this be assuming that people would use compostable bags for their dog waste?

[45:05] And if so, how are we going to enhance that, like enforce that if that is the case? Thank you, Councilor. Mr. Stafford. Through the chairs, what we’ve learned from other municipalities is they have pushed very heavily the same idea. Certified compostable bags are now available in many locations for pet waste. A big part of the pilot project will be making sure that the areas that are selected, that there will be reasonable access to those types of bags. So that will be part of the pilot project. Dealing with our contractor converters, they are capable of handling a certain amount of just regular plastic bags.

[45:43] So that was a very important part about the initial conversations being held here is that to move forward, there would be definitely information about certified compostable, ‘cause we don’t want the good habits that Londoners have created on the food side to now fall apart because they can use regular plastic bags for pet waste. So this is all part of why we do a pilot project to make sure that we get some of the kinks worked out before anything is considered citywide. Thank you, Mr. Stanford. And I’ll just say the committee is recognizing Councilor Anna Hopkins has joined us in chambers.

[46:15] I’ll go back to Councilor Palosa, please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for that. I realize that I am proud of the green bin program that we’ve rolled out and always have been more optic. I know what Londoners have been asking for a pet waste, just making sure that they understand they need different kinds of bags, realizing me. I’m sure we all look for walks and see the plastic bags in trees and everywhere else. So questioning some people’s enticement to make a change in behavior. My last question has to do following up on Councilor Roman’s questions around illegal dumping on city boulevards and parks.

[46:51] Just for committees and information, having an issue in South London, people either dumping it from one neighbor’s lot to the other or just literally trucks rolling out empty and a whole bed of a truck and driving off. My concerns are around enforcement. Would love to see more enforcement. My question to staff was also is there, if there’s problem areas, is it possible to get illegal dumping signs up? We have them in South London. As you hit some of the rural roads hanging out to the W12A, just reminding you that you’re not allowed to dump and if we catch you, there’s a nice find to go with it.

[47:28] Looking to see if some of that’s available for our residential areas as well. Thank you, Councilor. I will go to Mr. Stanford. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That is one of the solutions that we have right now and can be put in place. We typically use signs more in the sort of the rural area, but we have no problem installing them, particularly if they help, into more of the urban environment. This is something we work very closely with our roads and transportation team. They’re the sign specialists and they get a much better sense of where a sign might be effective and what type of sign we could put in place.

[48:03] But when we have locations brought to our attention, we do a quick assessment of that to find out what might be an immediate solution that can be put in place. Thank you, Mr. Stanford, Councilor. Thank you for that. We have my request in writing, the residents, we’re all very excited to know about Ms. Chambers filling your position as you move on as they enjoyed her at the basement in Overland flooding. So they were there, they’re looking forward to this new aspect for use. You might recognize some of them as you come out to things. And then just the comment about what people call for the large furniture pickup, but it might have been two days before their normal pickup and they already have their crap at the curb, and then they don’t get it to the next cycle.

[48:44] So then it’s really been sitting out there for two weeks in which case, municipal bylaw might combine for compliance for untidy property ‘cause they got garbage out, but they’re still waiting on us. And then just some concerns that if people have dumping, I have a resident stuff was dumped, they called and reported it ‘cause it’s a mattress and nobody came. And then garbage doesn’t come ‘cause it’s not them. So just looking forward to this, rolls out in the updates coming next year too for refinements for this, realizing that it’s a great program, looking for efficiencies from waste collection pickup, but a few glitches between neighbors doing it to each other and just some people not understanding the system yet.

[49:18] So thank you. Thank you, Councillor. All right, looking for anybody members or visiting members for any comments? Okay, none, I’m just gonna make two comments myself. I do appreciate the bike parking implementation plan that we’re gonna be, that we see on this report. It’s going to be adding extra biking, secure biking, secure bike locker capacity to the downtown, which I’m obviously appreciated of. That’s for temporary, which has no cost. The end user, that’s a big deal and a fair market amount for monthly secure bike parking.

[49:55] So I just wanna make that comment. And my second comment, we have a special day for a longtime member of staff here, and that’s Jay Stanford. He is the director of climate change in environment and waste management. This is gonna be his last meeting today. So I would like to everybody to give Jay a big round of applause. He has done a lot of good work on the green bin implementation. He’s done a lot of good work for a lot of things for the city. I can’t name them all. I know you have a 30 year plus sheet of items that you brought forward. But let’s just give him a big round of applause.

[50:39] Appreciate that. So now you can start packing up your 30 years of stuff that you have in your office. And I’d also like to welcome Shauna Chambers. She’s gonna be the new director of climate change and environment and waste management. So let’s give Shauna a round of applause. Thank you. Next we have is schedule items. Oh, we have to vote, never mind. Okay, I’m gonna make one last call. None.

[51:11] Okay, let’s call the question. I’m closing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. The next is scheduled items.

[51:46] We have one or two on scheduled items. The first is 3.1 and it’s an item not to be heard for 1 p.m. It’s a presentation for the health and homelessness whole of community system response research and evaluation report. We have some members from Western here that are going to be giving us a presentation. So I’m just gonna give them a moment to get prepared. We don’t need a vote for this. So once you’re ready, please let me know and you’ll have five minutes for your presentation. Good afternoon.

[53:40] Through the chair? Just a second. Let me just finish up here. Okay, I’m ready. So please state your name, where you’re from and then I will let you know when you have your five minutes. I’m Dr. Nadine Watan. I’m academic co-director of the Center for Research on Health Equity and Social Inclusion or CRESI at Western University where I’m also professor in Canada research chair. Thank you. Okay, you have five minutes, go ahead. Okay, thank you for the opportunity to share highlights from the research and evaluation report for the whole of community system response.

[54:22] Our research aimed to build a shared understanding of what’s working, where the gaps remain and how the response can strengthen coordination, equity and impact. We looked at four areas, outcomes and experiences of people using supports, the wellbeing of the workforce, system outcomes and costs of care and the processes of the whole of community system response itself. Hubs are showing real impact. Since the community youth hub and Wigwahman and Lodge have opened, over 100 people have been supported with more than 40 already transitioning to housing. Both sites have operated at or near full capacity since day one.

[55:00] Participants describe hubs as places of healing and belonging. A report notes that hubs are a proven part of the system, particularly for people facing additional forms of marginalization. And in the case of the current hubs, this meant for folks based on their age and their indigenous identity. To expand their reach, stable operational funding is essential. Highly supportive housing is delivering stability and better health. Over 90 units are open with more than 300 in development. At the House of Hope operated by London Cares, 83% of residents have remained housed with sharp reductions in emergency room visits, hospital stays, days in custody and police interactions.

[55:43] At Indwell’s Thompson Road site, again 83% of tenants remain housed and emergency visits among the highest users have dropped by 36%. Residents describe the relief of finally having stability. Take Jim, for example. He lived outside for more than a decade, struggling with substance use and unmanaged mental illness. In one year alone, he had 221 emergency department visits. After moving into the House of Hope, that dropped to just nine. The evidence is clear. Highly supportive housing saves lives, restores dignity, and reduces strain on emergency services.

[56:20] Between January 2022 and June 2025, 174 Londoners experiencing homelessness lost their lives. Many to preventable causes like untreated illness, toxic drug poisoning, or exposure to the elements. Behind each number is a name, a family, and a community left grieving. While any number of preventable deaths that isn’t zero is too high, this number is actually hopeful. Between 2022 and 2024, deaths have declined by 20%. Even as London’s population and homelessness numbers have grown.

[56:55] This may reflect the initial effects of improved coordination, housing access, and care for those most at risk. Our findings show that the Holy Community System response is already delivering measurable results. Most people are being housed, more people are being housed. Excuse me, service use is declining, and system coordination is improving. But progress is fragile. Sustaining it requires three things. Increased provincial and federal investment, stable operational funding, and a supported workforce. London needs commitment from all partners, governments, service providers, and the public to keep building trust, reducing stigma, and maintaining momentum.

[57:36] Thank you for your time and leadership. Thank you. I’m looking to committee for a motion on the floor for the report recommendation. Councillor Cudi moved, seconded, Councillor McAllister. Okay, looking for speakers. Just a point of order, Mr. Chair. Go ahead, Councillor. Never knowing how a conversation might go if you just want to remind our attendees in the gallery of the decorum of chambers.

[58:15] So yes, Councillor Palosa makes a good point. As per the councilor procedural policy for decorum, there’s no plotting, or no, no plotting, and any other types of noise like that, unless recognized from the gallery. So I would ask, even though I do understand your applause, I would ask you not to make any applause or anything like that from the gallery. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor McAllister, go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, I first want to start off by saying, thank you to everyone who worked on this report. I really do appreciate the additional insight. Thompson Road is in my ward, so this is what I’m very familiar with.

[58:54] Appreciate it, and well, giving me a tour recently so I could review the site and see first-hand what’s going on. So I really do want to applaud everyone’s efforts who’s involved with this and all the partners who are working to help us get people housed. And specifically speaking with the support of housing, I’d like that it would be here, we also have the mayor and Mr. Wipcounsel, I’m sure we’ll back him up to continue those advocacy efforts because as the report demonstrates too, this is working, but we need more resources. Support of housing has a proven track record.

[59:27] You can see in this report, but we need those additional dollars, especially on the operating side. This is something that municipalities cannot on their own, well, we shouldn’t really be handling the operations at all, but we mean we’ve done what we can, and on an as-needed basis, we’ve stepped in, but we can’t do that indefinitely. I did just want to ask a question in terms of what we might see with future reports. I appreciate the two that were used for this and recognizing obviously the scope of the work and making sure we can look at two. But in the future, looking at other, as they come online, we do have some other in-well projects in terms of future support of housing.

[1:00:07] This is something that will continue, I’m hoping, and that we’ll see more reports and more data in the near future. So I’m just wondering maybe when we could expect another update such as this. Thank you, Councillor. Go ahead, Chair. I certainly hope that we will continue to provide reports through the Center for Research on Health Equity and Social Inclusion. I do think that it’s a decision of the new leadership table, former strategy and accountability table, in terms of what that looks like. I would advocate from our perspective as those who shepherded the data to this point, that we support all participating organizations in standardized data collection, such that we are able to bring consistent data together and present that in a way that is comprehensive and coherent to all stakeholders in the system.

[1:00:58] Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, and I mean, I’m wondering, I don’t know if there would be any opportunity in terms of some sort of a comparative analysis, but I’m curious when we do eventually get the hard hub open, if we’d be able to look, you know, at that model, you know, at the model that’s currently operating and try to see, you know, where we can make improvements, I’m just wondering if there’d be any opportunity to look at other models as they get online in the city. Thank you, Councillor, Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair. I’ll start this answer and pass it on if Ms. Waltham needs to add any other comments.

[1:01:33] We know the hard hub is expected to have their own robust requirements around data tracking, data reporting, I don’t think it’s been the intent of the provincial government to do a comparative analysis between different models of care, probably because there’s difficult to compare, but we know that as we look to continue offering the services that exist today, and as new services come on board, as you mentioned, with the increase of the number of, how the sport of housing units that we will continue to track and report on those, and we expect that should continue to receive the resourcing they have to provide this level of detailed work that we would be bringing back future reports to Committee and Council.

[1:02:24] Perhaps part of that future work is broadening the scope. I’m not sure on terms of the capacity for a small research team to broaden that scope, but if that scope were to get broadened, perhaps you could look at comparing different models, both locally and abroad. Thank you, Ms. Waltham. You have anything to add to that? No, okay, Councilor, go ahead. Thank you, and I appreciate the answer. I guess I want to speak again to be, I guess this might be something the mayor would like to respond to at some point, but I did want to afford an opportunity as he’s being requested to do more advocacy.

[1:03:08] And this is something that is ongoing. We have already had these conversations. Many of my colleagues support of housing comes up pretty much every chance we get with our federal provincial partners. But in terms of where I’m seeing some issues, is there any opportunity, and this is something maybe the mayor can pitch in his advocacy efforts, but I really do feel like there needs to be some coordination of efforts. I don’t know if they’ve potentially looked at creating some sort of a task force, but I don’t think we can keep operating in a vacuum where essentially the different levels of governments are making decisions and kind of cherry picking where they want to make investments, but we need a real coordinated effort.

[1:03:52] And we’ve seen the benefits in terms of a model such as this, what can be accomplished, but I really do think that there needs to be some coordination in terms of where we’re seeing success and where we need those investments to be made, and not levels of government making independent decisions that we hope might get funding and pitching it after the fact. I really think we’ve had to take these ideas, run with them, but we really do need their buy-in as well. And I think being able to come to them with a report such as this and show the success is really important for those advocacy efforts.

[1:04:27] So I just want to give the mayor maybe a chance to speak more in terms of the conversations that have been had and maybe what we can expect in the future. Thank you, Councillor. I’ll look to the mayor if he does want to respond. Okay, go ahead. Yes, absolutely, I always happy to respond to a question. There’s a couple of pieces of that, so I’ll address them each individually. First, I want to say there is a level of coordination that happens at a few levels. One, between municipalities through AMO and the Ontario Big City Mayor’s Caucus and the advocacy that we do on solutions that work. Two, there has been a direct engagement with the Ministry of Health through the development of the hard hub system.

[1:05:05] There was a confidential consultations that happened with individuals at the city of London, as well as myself on some of the work that was being done here. I know they consulted with many people in the design of the hard hub system, but we were actually one of those. And on that piece, a part of the structure that the province went with was having proposals pitched from many parts of the community. There were almost 90 that came in and they ended up funding 27 of them. But there are relatively, there are small differences between the approaches that different municipalities and organizations have taken with the hard hubs.

[1:05:43] And the purpose of that is that the province expects us to do measurement and data gathering on them and report back on the types of things that are working because there is a willingness for them to invest more in the things that are producing results. And of course, they don’t want to invest in pieces that maybe aren’t producing the results that they’re looking for that we’re all looking for. So not only is it important for the work that we do, both within the hard hub system and outside of it to be communicated clear with the province, but the data and measurement framework that was presented today and the results of that is actually one of the most important advocacy pieces that we have and this document is important.

[1:06:18] I would turn your attention to page 39, I think it is. 39 is, I think, a really good advocacy piece. This is the page that shows that the amount of hospital and emergency and inpatient care that is provided to the homeless population versus the general population and how much resources are being devoted to serving a population that could be served in a different way like the model that we show. When you look at it, 7.8 visits per person for a homeless population versus 2.3 and 13% of those people are there for non-urgent items whereas only 3% go.

[1:06:59] But when you look at how many people are readmitted, return to the ED within a week, it’s 49% of the homeless population versus 14% of the rest of the population. And then the same thing on inpatient stays. You know, this is an incredibly costly way to provide care for people and the models that are being deployed within the hub system and highly supportive housing are a much more cost-efficient way. And you can see, when we talk about the targeted approach that the Health and Homelessness Framework that the City of London has is trying to accomplish, that helping the highest needs individuals.

[1:07:33] When you look at the paragraph that follows the graphic there, a small number of people experiencing homelessness drive a large proportion of the system. Just 10 people accounted for 3295 visits to LHSCED between April 2021 and April 2025. If you could help those 10 people, you can take a tremendous pressure off of the system. And then of course there’s similar stats for inpatient stays as well. So to me, this report is actually a critical component of the advocacy work that we’re doing and will continue to do. So I welcome the part B in this motion because I think it’s an ongoing advocacy.

[1:08:10] As the hard hub system is deployed, we’ll be giving advocacy with that. But we also need to continue to show the things that municipalities are doing that are working well that can be integrated into provincial programs and systems and funded by the proper level of government, even if they’re temporarily funded by, say, the generosity of residents in the City of London who’ve donated to the fund for change or other ways. The ultimate goal here is that the provinces be behind the permanent funding of the healthcare supports that are constructed within these systems. And so I think that these documents and this research makes a very strong case on how that is not only the morally right thing to do, but also the physically responsible thing to do when you think about the costs within the healthcare system as well.

[1:08:51] So I hope that helps address the council’s question. Thank you, Mayor. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, and I’ll just kind of wrap up with some final thoughts. And again, just speaking from my recent experience with Thomson Road, and I think the mayor articulated this, but the healthcare component is integral to this. And I had an opportunity to speak to the nurses onsite and, you know, like a bit of a term, I’ll just call it the stabilization services that are being able to be provided in-house are critically important in terms of keeping people housed. And so I really see there’s so much value in this, not only just from the healthcare perspective in terms of the cost savings you’re seeing on the healthcare system itself, but being able to provide the healthcare on these sites is really leading to the outcomes we wanted to see, and that’s keeping people housed.

[1:09:38] So I mean, I think whenever I look at these things, like again, just hammers home that like healthcare and housing are interconnected, and these are vitally important areas where we need the other levels of government to buy in, and we’ve seen that success, and I think we need to continue on the path of, we’ve started here ‘cause I really do think we’ve seen the benefits, we just need more of them. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. All right, looking to members of committee or visiting members for any comments, questions. Oh, Councillor Stevenson, sorry.

[1:10:13] Councillor, if you’re ready, please go ahead. Thank you, yes. I was just curious, back in October, there was a presentation done giving us the draft templates for the evaluation, and it was quite detailed, several pages with all the metrics and the baseline and the actuals for all the years. I’m just wondering why the report looks so different from the one that was presented to us in October, and I’m wondering if we could get that information in that format, if there’s a way to get that information.

[1:10:53] Through the chair. Thank you, Councillor, that’s why I think go ahead. Sure, Councillor, that is Appendix B in the report. So we have provided the template that was approved by Council as Appendix B, and obviously filled in the template to the best of our ability. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Okay, thank you. I’ll take another look at that. The, I wondered if there was a consideration of the crime statistics in the area surrounding the hubs and the highly supportive housing calls to foot patrol EMS and police calls, that type of thing.

[1:11:30] Oh, Councillor, we don’t have that data, that’s through the chair. We don’t have that data available. We did have data available on reduction in police contacts for those residing at House of Hope, as well as reductions in detentions at EMDC. Those were the two criminal justice points of data that were available to us. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Okay, thank you. And I was wondering in terms of the highly supportive housing, what community engagement was done to determine the impacts in the surrounding community? Thank you.

[1:12:03] I will go to Zwatha. Yes, through the chair. We looked at the CIR reports and all data that were collected through the City of London website in terms of the public engagement opportunities. Certainly we spoke with businesses, we did a survey of businesses and spoke also with representatives of the business and table for the whole of community system response. So to the extent we were able, we gathered that sort of input through those available data.

[1:12:39] We did not do new data collection or door to door or anything like that in terms of specific to around sites that have been open since the start of the whole community system response. Thank you, Councillor, go ahead. Thank you. I do believe though that if I read this correctly in the report that the input came from the downtown London BIA, was there other contact besides that? Thank you for the chair. I’ll ask my colleague to respond. Okay, thank you.

[1:13:11] Go ahead. Through the chair. Those downtown businesses association results came from a 2024 survey. So before this work, that was their input on homelessness in the downtown core. Thank you. Go ahead, Councillor. Yeah, thank you. That’s what I understood. And it’s just that, you know, there is data available. I’ve, you know, the hotels nearby get some reviews where people are very concerned about the street activity around the house of hope.

[1:13:46] We’ve had petitions from several apartment buildings nearby where residents are very concerned. I’ve got, you know, many emails. And if we talk to the businesses right around there, they’re having very significant impact in a very negative way. And I just, you know, if we’re gonna look at this as a whole of community situation, it just seems as though the report again is mostly focused on the people inside the building and not taking into account the impact on the neighborhood.

[1:14:20] But if we stick to what’s happening inside the building, recently I had someone express some very serious concerns after the video came out about the apartment that was in bad condition, that many of the apartment buildings or the apartment units within the house of hope are possibly in similar condition. Have we talked about damages to the units or condition of the units? Was that looked at? Ms. Woth, go ahead.

[1:14:52] Through the chair. That was not data that we had available to us. Nor did we enter any units in house of hope. Thank you, and Councilor, please keep it to the report and the motion if you can. Go ahead. Thank you. Well, this is supposedly an evaluation of what we’ve been doing so far. So I think again, this need to look at it from a whole of community perspective is really important. We had the issues at 122 baseline. It would be good to look at this and ensure that we don’t have those issues here. Point of order.

[1:15:24] Okay, sorry, Councilor, just hold on. Councilor McAllister, you have a point of order, state your point. The report is referencing two properties. We don’t need to get into a discussion about other properties. That is correct, Councilor, please stick with the two properties as Thompson and house of hope. Go ahead. Okay, thank you, and I will just say that Councilor McAllister and the Mayor were copied on an email that was received regarding the condition of the apartments in house of hope. So it is quite specific to this address. It also talks in here about ongoing challenges and risks of persistent stigma, misinformation and community tensions around homelessness.

[1:16:04] And I just wondered if somebody could explain to me more about that. What is the misinformation and the persistent stigma that’s of concern here? Thank you, Councilor. I’ll go to Ms. Swatha, go ahead. Through the chair, we did a media analysis just over the course of the two years around the whole of community response. I might ask my colleague Eleanor to chime in if I’ve missed anything. But I believe through that analysis, we were seeing a shift in public perception, including beliefs around all folks who are experiencing homelessness, our heavy substance users, all folks who are experiencing substances are a danger to the public.

[1:16:48] So certainly that notion of fear versus discomfort. And perhaps we feel uncomfortable when we see people living rough, but that doesn’t mean that there are an immediate risk to us. So it was just a little bit of that nuance and trying to see through media representations as well as through what we’re seeing through the other sources of data that I mentioned to ensure that we try to promote an accurate picture of what’s happening. Thank you. Go ahead, Counselor. Thank you. Yeah, I understand that.

[1:17:20] And I guess one of the things that I hear is that it’s perceived safety when it comes to the neighborhood and the businesses. But we just had a report come out where London Cares was expressing safety concerns. And we also know that our shelter system, our homeless service agencies, they eject people from their premises. They ban certain people from the buildings. And so I guess I’m just a little concerned when we talk about perceived safety concerns and stigma that it applies both ways.

[1:18:02] And they can’t be real safety concerns for the people who work in the agencies and only perceived safety concerns for those who aren’t even trained. They’re not even experts in this area. And they’re not paid to deal with it either. So we’ve got people who are trained and paid through taxpayer dollars to take care of this. And then we’ve got the neighborhoods and the community who are dealing with the impacts. And they receive neither the training nor the funding. So I just have to interrupt you there.

[1:18:38] You’re just at your five minutes. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Looking for other comments, questions. Oh, sorry, I do have Counselor Hopkins first. And then Counselor Troso, next. So go ahead, Counselor. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for recognizing me. I just wanted to make some comments on the report coming to us. And many thanks to Western city staff for this information. I think having information is very vital to counselors when we make decisions here around the horseshoe.

[1:19:13] I wanna speak a little bit to the supportive housing and how cost effective. That is, I sit on the AMO board, representing the city of London, just back from an AMO board meeting and we had discussions there, not only in the city of London, but how important supportive housing is. We as a municipality have that problem. And we all know we do not have the money and sometimes not the power. So the advocacy with the provincial government for supportive housing, the mayor referenced the costs of savings when it comes to healthcare and policing.

[1:19:48] And it goes on and on. And I think we really need to look at this information and the data. AMO has done a great job at providing a lot of data that we can really understand the homelessness in the province 80,000. And it’s increased as well during the past year, but it is really something that we have to grapple, understand and really work together. I think that’s the key. I know we can do it. We’ve done it before with other levels of government, but it is really important that we all sort of work together to provide this really much needed supportive housing that truly works.

[1:20:30] The other comment I wanna make is many thanks to staff for the work that they’ve done on this report, but many thanks to the agencies that are on the front lines in the community as well. That is something that we can all sort of acknowledge, understand even more, and again, we’re together. So thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Hi, Councillor Trosto, next, go ahead. Through the chair, I’m gonna keep this very brief.

[1:21:04] This is just a wonderful example of good quality research that comes to us from people in the community who have local expertise who have not been brought from outside country under a contract. And to me, this report does not answer all the questions. A good initial research report could not answer all the questions, and if it purported to do so, it would be overstepping. What this report does is it tells us about their initial inquiry, what they found, which is very compelling.

[1:21:43] I mean, you could look at a table of numbers, but remember, those numbers, every one of those numbers is a human being. So when you see those numbers in terms of bad effects going down significantly in some cases, really points to the fact that although more research is needed and more and more studies need to be sort of collaborated with the studies that other researchers are doing, this is an outstanding first step. And it really makes me as a Councillor who’s been sitting through this saga now, we’re now in the third year of our term.

[1:22:21] It really makes me feel that our patience is paying off. And some of the things that we undertook to do at the beginning of our council term, yes, we had to cut some of them back and there have been all sorts of issues that have come up, but for the most part, and I think this is the important conclusion, what we’re doing works in terms of having an appreciable impact on people’s lives. Not just cost, yes, cost. Not just reduced visits to the emergency room, very important, but in terms of the quality of life.

[1:22:59] And I think that this research has been rounded in a solid methodology such that it is going to be possible using the foundational work that you’ve done here to scale up this research, to take into account more activities. We’re also going to see in the coming year other individual research reports coming out from individual researchers and it’s going to be important to put these together and collate these and see that there is a pattern, there is a pattern that’s emerging.

[1:23:36] One thing I do want to point out though, which I want to underline, I could underline everything in this report, but I want to underline 8.3, which is workforce well-being. It’s the frontline service workers who are the foundation of what we’re doing here. And we have to be more concerned about their welfare, not just their physical welfare, in terms of them being safe on the job, not just their economic welfare, in terms of them having a reasonable salary, which they don’t have, and a reasonable term of engagement, which many of them don’t have.

[1:24:21] We’ve heard so many times from our service providers that one of their serious concerns, one of their issues, is they can’t plan their staffing properly, because they’re going on a six-month contract, or a 12-month contract. We’ve got to provide more stable foundation for the ability. We can’t retain the quality of the workforce that we have. So I’m really glad that you included that. But I also think in addition to a physical well-being, there’s mental well-being. And yes, I think there is a lot of stigma.

[1:24:54] I’ve heard some horrible things said about the service workers. They’re just in it to make money, and the poverty industry is turning people. I’ve just heard horrible things, and I think it really has to have an effect on the day-to-day mindset of the service workers. So if nothing else, I think this report really can be a corrective. I don’t want to say mid-term, because we’re not mid-term, but this report is a corrective to some of the misinformation and stigma.

[1:25:31] Am I done? Okay, some of the misinformation and stigma. So when we look back at the end of this council term, at the volume of staff reports and research reports, we’ve received. This is going to be at the top of the list in terms of impact and quality. So I want to urge everybody, this is a very, very busy agenda, very long for a CAHPS meeting. I want people to go back and read this report and look at the tables. And I am done, but please do that, because there’s excellent research here.

[1:26:07] Thank you, councillor. Looking to committee, councillor Pelosi, go ahead. Do you have five minutes? Thank you, I won’t need it all. Just thank you for this report and all the work behind the scenes that, as we said, it’s a living system. It’s evolving, it’s changing it. It’s changing to meet the needs of people where they’re at. Certainly, I’ve always liked to see and I’ve heard it from others that were investing in a system. I thought the numbers would have came down, but it’s like the population of London also went up. So sometimes this is what the numbers look like when you realize the population is still quickly expanding.

[1:26:44] In addition to all the economic things, we’re also going through just page 78 of the report, just a comment. People who said their compensation was inadequate for the work in associated risk, 67%. People who were making under 50,000 annually, 26%. I know when we always want the most bang for our buck as we issue contracts for me, I don’t like getting into how much people are paid for a dollar figure, but just making sure that it’s not even just a basic income, that it’s a living wage. The people who are doing this work and carrying these burdens and bearing witness can have the supports in a basic lifestyle and provisions being made for them.

[1:27:23] My question specifically through you, Mr. Chair, to staff or our presenter, realizing there’ll be future reports coming back, just they might look different as the system evolves and changes. I’m on page 27, and it’s what’s next for highly supportive housing. And we get to see what units are built and occupied, which ones are approved, some are under construction, and then units for future projects. I appreciate this. It’s always nice knowing how much is in the pipeline, but for me, I also want to know when. When are those units coming online, or we have developers too, that get approval on things and they sit on them, and their net shovel never hits the ground.

[1:28:02] So just as we’re trying to see the need in town and managing it with when hopefully, doors are opening to take some people in. So just looking to see, I didn’t see it in appendix, I did split through, of just if it’s not in this report, can it be in a future report, just when we know when those units are coming online. Thank you, Councillor. I’ll go to Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair, and through you. I know those figures represent a number of highly supportive housing projects, and not just one or two, and I see Mr. Feldberg is no longer here.

[1:28:37] Mr. Mathers and Mr. Feldberg and their team oversee those construction projects and those capital builds. I know they’ve been working to prioritize and expedite a lot of these projects as fast as they can. We know through Vision SoHo and that collaborative project there that we’ll see some high supportive housing units, as well as some that are attached to the hard hub through the Elmwood project, and those would be coming quicker than some of the others as well. But it is encouraging to see that we have some that are moving through the approval process and into the construction process, and then ultimately moving through that process to be ready for occupancy.

[1:29:17] It helps the system grow and scale at a rate that’s never fast enough for the people who need it, but at a rate where organizations can grow and be able to respond in a timely manner too. We know this municipal council has also previously approved housing projects through Hill Street and here in Street with CMHA as well. So we’re encouraged that going from council approval to construction is a relatively more streamlined process now than it ever has been.

[1:29:50] Thank you, Mr. Dickens, go ahead, Councilor. Thank you, no, I appreciate that. And just feedback from Mr. Feldberg when you catch him in the hallway. Just knowing those dates of anticipation of those units becoming available, same with the heart hub, and it was supposed to be open in April. Just from where you couldn’t tell the community that when these things, and they would hopefully start to see some movement in the system or those people waiting for space that they have a bit of hope to of when they can start to expect that. So thank you. Thank you, Councilor, and just to confirm, were you looking for feedback from Mr. Feldberg as well? No, it’s fine, I’ll find Mr. Feldberg later.

[1:30:23] Okay, thanks. I have no one else on the list. I have Councilor Perbal on the list. Go ahead, Councilor. Thank you. Thank you very much for this report with so many positive indicators. And also thank you for taking the time and previously and to kind of be available for us to answer any questions and give us more details. This is an area that I truly believe I mentioned it last week that it’s a, the clientele that it’s dealing with, doesn’t matter if it’s the hub source supportive housing.

[1:30:56] Those are individuals that as we all know and we keep hearing that they keep moving from low medium to high acuity. And I don’t, I believe that there’s no system in the world that will address this at a hundred percent satisfactory level for all. And I do get from some of my friends that they email me, you know, from the hotels and they state the what Jerry, our score, our customer satisfaction is being heard on this within the corporation. Why within the entire chain? Why because we have actually these issues that are the low, bringing us down. So I think that we do need to address it and we, just like anything else, you are looking at your strength to improve them and to weaknesses or something, we need to address them.

[1:31:37] But again, when I look at this report, those are really incredibly very positive indicators, which is a hard work of many people beyond this, behind these numbers. And one thing that was already mentioned, the workforce and I completely agree in terms to workforce, workforce that we need some sustainability, future plans, ongoing plans, because it’s the most difficult to get again and new employee, train them again and get them at the pace, at the quality, we need them at. So I agree with the comments that were said here.

[1:32:11] I do hope from our perspective, we will come with plans that will be the long term and address these issues. But again, I’m gonna reiterate these numbers behind that number one, of course, ER units, hospital stays, interactions with police. Those are very positive indicators showing that we are on the right track. Do we need to address more? And do we need to address other security, other plans? Absolutely, we do. But thank you for the work that has been done. I hope you do come back.

[1:32:43] And potentially, yes, if there are additional questions or if you want to go deeper, we have the opportunities through our staff to do that. But thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor. All right, looking to members of committee, visiting members, members online, visiting members online. Okay, I’m gonna hand this chair over to my vice chair. Recognizing I have the chair, go ahead, Councillor Ferrer. Thank you presiding officer. I obviously have to make some comments here as well.

[1:33:16] So the first thing I’m gonna say is I really appreciate the report and the numbers that you’ve derived and brought to us in the report. I think it’s very revealing and eye opening for some of the numbers that we saw. I did see some comments made by other colleagues. I will touch on those. But I wanted to focus on one that I did not necessarily see spoken about today and that was the number of highly acute folks in the increase there. And I do see a pretty significant increase on the number of highly acute individuals that are street level that this report refers to. On top of that, obviously we spoke about the 19% increase homelessness in the city in the 24, 25% province wide and both those numbers are alarming to me to see that.

[1:34:01] It’s something that obviously points to this being an issue that is the entire province or even the country is grappling with. But it does show that a greater framework and system province wide at least would need to be looked at. And obviously we are advocating for that to make those changes ‘cause that is really what we need to do. Specifically for the highly acute increase, I raised that because there are discussions that are coming up revolving that. And it’s just an area of focus that I think we should be looking at and speaking about.

[1:34:35] With the hubs and the supportive housing. So our supportive housing model is really as deep as we can go at the municipal level when it comes to actually solving a solution or bringing some real solutions here. And it’s something that we have seen great success. We’ve seen great success. The data for the House of Hope alone does show very good numbers for all the participants and everyone who is at the House of Hope right now. So that just shows you, it’s a microcosm, and it shows you what a supportive housing model can do. And remember, supportive housing is that housing with those wraparound supports.

[1:35:07] It’s the housing with the healthcare light that we can provide. But the thing is this system is supposed to be operating in the aggregate. So we’re seeing some very significant improvements and we’re seeing some really good data coming out of the House of Hope. But without the House of Hope or a supportive housing itself operating in the aggregate system, that means more. We’re gonna see numbers that are not coming close to picking away at the general population because we do see the general population of people who are unhoused is increasing. So the conversation really is, is how much faster can we build?

[1:35:44] And I feel like we’ve already hit the limit and hit the wall on that. So again, that goes towards the advocacy efforts that we would like to bring to get some extra help. With that aggregate piece, we only have two hubs. We did, we’re almost at 100 supportive housing, but we do need more and we are working on more as it is. Also, something that I would like to ask is the research and the data that we have here. That’s the type of data that we will have on the data portal that’s coming out. So I just wanna go to staff just to confirm that, to see if these numbers will be up to date on that new data portal that’s gonna be coming out.

[1:36:21] That would be available to everybody in London. And I do understand that there’s a couple of other phases that will show the increase in housing capacity that we’re gonna be adding to that too as well. So presiding officer, if we could just go to staff for that question. Go ahead, Steph. Thank you, Chair, and through you. As planned, there will be an initial rollout of the new data dashboard or portal available in October. We look to go live, likely the week of the October Council or the following week. To share some of those phase one stats with the community.

[1:36:59] As is always the case, we’ll continue to add data points as that portal rolls out. Right now we’re focusing on the City of London data first. We wanna make sure that we can publish for the community the stats and data related to housing and homelessness locally and make that available as things evolve and new iterations of that portal expand and grow. Then we can look to include other data sets as well. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, presiding officer.

[1:37:30] Thank you for that answer. I also wanna touch on a comment that I thought was very, very important that was made. It was by Councillor Trussell. And that was the comment that these numbers that we’re speaking about are human beings. And they are exactly that. Sometimes it’s hard to capture that when we’re looking at data, numbers and tables. But when you go on the ground, you go on street level and you actually speak to people, you will hear full stories, full lifetime stories of individuals. And if you were to actually get the information case by case, some of the narratives that I see out in the city would definitely be different because you will notice that it’s not only an individual that is at fault that comes to this.

[1:38:14] It is a system wide community situation. I do see that our capacity and just the structure we have of our society has gaping holes and they are opening more and more and more, especially when it comes to affordability, especially in our day and age. So I really hope and would ask when people are looking at numbers, try to think about the individual because that is exactly what we’re talking about again and again. My last point that I wanna touch on would be the workforce strain. And I know that this was brought up already, but I do gotta bring it up because I have 30 seconds, okay.

[1:38:49] ‘Cause we do have a very good workforce that’s on the ground who are very compassionate. They care and they are trying their best to make any significant changes or any significant improvements that we have. They’re also very strained in time, very strained in stress and in wages. And when we talk about some of the issues with supportive housing, for example, for me, that comes down to a resourcing issue. We will get the results. And so you’re at time. Okay, for as much as we resourced, but I’ll keep it there and we can talk about it after. Presiding Officer, I do have the mayor on the list next.

[1:39:24] So if you hand it back over, I’m gonna go to the mayor. Okay, I will hand the chair back to you and Mayor Morgan is next on the list. I’ll just say it’s good to have the middle microphone ‘cause if no one can turn it off on you, even if you go over time. I just wanted to add, ‘cause I think colleagues have made really good points and really great questions about the report. The context I wanted to add for colleagues is on the advocacy piece. As I said in my response to Councillor McAllister’s question, the advocacy on this is really important and when you have a good research, good data and knowing that this is the first report of the data, it is quite helpful to the research piece and I’ll tell you why because there’s a couple of things happening.

[1:40:03] One is the province has decided to invest in a hub space system across the province to the tune of a half a billion dollars. They’ve expressed a very strong willingness to deploy a provincial wide system, which we know they will probably have to invest more money in and they’re probably gonna do that when they get good data showing that they’re saving money in other places like the healthcare system and they’re getting good results, right? I agree with the assessment that a few number of individuals, helping a few number of individuals can have a huge impacts. They are humans, but there’s also, it only takes a small number of people to have tremendous impact on a healthcare system as you see from the report.

[1:40:36] Just a handful of people can consume a massive amount of resources and if you can help those people in another way, there’s more cost effective. It can be a very good financial decision, particularly for the province of Ontario and the federal government. The two pieces that are important are, one, continued advocacy and communication on the results of the model that is being deployed, how the model integrates and supports the work the province is doing within the hard hub system and the assessment of the hard hub system in the model as well for advocacy at the provincial level. There’s also, I wanna let colleagues know, for the idea that they need to advocate to get money into the support of housing space, like both the province and the federal government are supporting supportive housing in different ways, one through the homelessness prevention program funds at the provincial level, the other through reaching home at the federal level, and I can tell you at the last big city mayor’s meeting that I had last Friday, I think, continued advocacy and we will be writing a letter to the minister on as they prepare for the budget to ensure that as the federal government looks at reducing its operating expenditures and shifting maybe more to capital, that programs like reaching home, which are an operating expenditure are actually really critical for municipalities to be able to deliver on these services.

[1:41:50] In some cases, we don’t need more capital to build some of these things. We can raise some private sector capital, the municipality has some debt capacity to borrow. What we need is the operating dollars. So reaching home, homelessness prevention dollars, any sort of healthcare related operating dollars coming into the system, that is the critical advocacy piece that we cannot do another way. And so I can tell you that the advocacy at the federal level is very clear about the importance of the reaching home program and the advocacy at the provincial level is very clear about the important investments that the province is making on the operating side within the heart hub system and the need for more to be made, but also a commitment that we’re gonna show data that those increased expenditures will be justified and produce results.

[1:42:33] Thank you. All right, last call for questions, comments. Okay, see you now, let’s call the question. Sir Pivol? Poting yes. Opposing the vote, the motion carries, six to zero.

[1:43:13] Okay, thank you. Thank you to the presenters. All right, next on the scheduled items, we have item 3.2, that is for a public participation meeting for the adequate and suitable cooling by-law and maximum temperature amendments to the administrative monetary policies by-law 854. So with that, we do have some delegation requests here. So I’m just gonna, oh, sorry. We do have some added, sorry, it’s a public participation meeting.

[1:43:45] So anybody who wants to participate in the public participation meeting, just raise your hand. Okay, so we do have some, okay. Okay, so I do have some people who want to participate, so I’m gonna look for a committee to move a motion, to open up the PPM, moved by Councilor McAllister, seconded by Councillor Cuddy. Let’s call the question. Posing the vote, the motion carries, six to zero.

[1:44:19] Okay, the public participation meeting is now open. So I would ask for Mr. Smith, please make your way to the microphone, and just a second. Okay, please state your name, where you’re from, and then I will put my hand up when you have five minutes and then you can go. My name’s Jordan Smith. I live the bridal path. Kips in Adelaide area, Carlin Stony Brook. Thank you, go ahead.

[1:44:54] Good evening, good afternoon. Mayor and Councillors, my name’s Jordan Smith. I’m the chair of the Carlin Stony Brook chapter of London Acorn. It’s a tenant and community organization representing thousands of low and moderate income renters across the city. I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak tonight. Acorn welcomes the city’s efforts to introduce a maximum heat by law. With our summers getting hotter every year, tenants in London are facing dangerous indoor temperatures that can no longer be ignored. National survey by Acorn found that 79% of tenants reported being impacted by extreme heat, and nearly half had no access to cool temperatures at home.

[1:45:38] The health risks are not abstract. Across Canada, 916 deaths have been directly linked to extreme heat since 1981, and two-thirds of those deaths occurred in just the last past few years. We know that people most at risk are seniors, people with health conditions, and those in low income housing that traps the heat. That’s why the by-law must do more. As written, it only applies to buildings that already have air conditioning. But the truth is, those are not the buildings with the worst heat problems.

[1:46:13] The hottest, most dangerous apartments are usually older, older high-rises, and walk-ups where AC was never installed. These buildings often have poor insulation, windows that don’t open properly, and units that bake in the sun. They’re overwhelmingly home to low-income families, our seniors, newcomers, and people with disabilities. This is the very tenants that are least capable, they’re least able to escape the heat. Essentially, the most vulnerable of us. And if this by-law only applies to buildings with air conditioning, it creates a two-tier system, protection for some tenants, and no protection for the ones who literally are the people that need it the most.

[1:47:00] That’s not acceptable. So Acorn’s calling for two key changes to the draft by-law. Number one, expand the by-law to cover all rental units, not just those with AC. Tenants have a right to a safe home. Tenants’ right to a safe home should not depend on the age of their building, or whether their landlord has installed air conditioning. And number two, at a minimum, we need to require landlords in buildings without AC to provide a cooling room. Every tenant deserves at least one safe space in their building to escape the heat.

[1:47:35] It’s a basic safety issue. Beyond the by-law itself, Acorn also urges council to take additional steps to protect tenants. Expand the OWODSP-funded discretionary benefit that currently helps to pay for an AC unit for low-income tenants with health conditions. This needs to be expanded by the city to allow all low-income tenants to be eligible for the program. We need to provide free transit during heat warnings so people without cooling at home have somewhere safe to go.

[1:48:11] We need to track heat-related illnesses and deaths in London to guide stronger policies moving forward. We need to fund tenant education and work with tenant stakeholder groups to educate tenants on their right to cooling. This is to protect tenants from landlords who claim that tenants aren’t legally allowed to use ACs or who try to charge tenants money for using AC. This is very common tactic. London is already seeing more extreme heat days each summer and climate change is only going to make this worse.

[1:48:45] We cannot leave thousands of tenants behind in unsafe homes. So this by-law is a chance for London to show leadership but it must be strong enough to protect all of us. Expand it to all rental units requiring cooling systems and buildings without AC and pair it with the policies that are going to save lives. On behalf of London Acorn members, tenants can’t wait. Please act now to protect us all. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Smith.

[1:49:19] All right, next speaker who would like to speak in this public participation meeting. Please state your name. Alyssia Kasky. Thank you and go ahead, you have five minutes. I’ve never done this before, so bear with me. I was just told to speak about myself. I am disabled. I’ve had four open heart surgeries and heat is my enemy. I’m waiting for a new heart and I work with ACorn and I grew with everything Georgian just said.

[1:49:51] So I don’t need five minutes. I just wanted to put a face to some of the people that we’re helping, that’s all. Thank you. Thank you. All right, looking for the next participant for the public participation meeting and whoever does come up to the microphone if you could just get a really close, the closer you get the better we can hear. Thank you. Please state your name. My name is Spencer Hayam. Okay, thank you, Spencer. Go ahead, you got five minutes.

[1:50:23] Just a quick question. Does this have to pertain to the topic at hand? We don’t usually answer questions from the PPM but I will say you do have to stick with the topic. Okay, sorry about that. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Okay, looking for any other speakers. Okay, last call, anybody online? Okay, looking for a motion to close the public participation meeting moved by Councillor Cudi, seconded by Councillor Pribble.

[1:50:55] Let’s call that vote. Using the vote, the motion carries six to zero. All right, before we go to questions or comments, I do need a motion to be put on the floor. So looking for a mover, moved by Councillor Cudi, seconded by Councillor Pribble. Okay, let’s looking for speakers list.

[1:51:29] So looking to members of committee first and the mayor. Councillor McAllister, go ahead. Thank you, through the chair. I guess my question would be to staff to what was asked in the PPM in terms of what was presented to us if bylaw perhaps could speak more to what they saw in terms of what needed to be updated and limitations in terms of being able to enforce that and maybe on a bigger scale. Thank you, Councillor Miesfeffer, I believe I’m going to.

[1:52:06] Please go ahead. Thank you and through you. So in consideration of the requirement for a cooling room in each of the buildings, that’s something we can definitely take away and look at guidance from the health unit indicates that that’s not necessarily the best approach to take because of accessibility requirements or issues, but that’s certainly something we can take away and consider adding to this. In terms of our ability to provide transportation, that’s something we can also take away. Certainly when required, we do open emergency cooling stations throughout the city for individuals who do require some respite from the heat.

[1:52:45] So appreciate that question and again, we can take those two pieces away if so directed. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you and I appreciate that. And recognizing usually when the bylaws get updated, obviously there are limitations, also recognizing what was presented by the Middlesex Health Unit. Obviously they would need more direction in terms of reviewing that on a larger scale. I’m willing to kind of hear my colleagues out in terms of what their thoughts are on this, but I do understand in terms of what ACORAN’s asked for, but I think we just have to be mindful in terms of what we can do with the information we have currently because it does require more work if we were to do this on a bigger scale.

[1:53:32] So I’ll just leave my comments and hear what everyone has to say. Thank you, Councillor. I have no one else on the speakers list. Councillor Trosto, you’re next. Yes, I think what I would like to do through the chair is support the motion that’s on the floor enact this bylaw which we can do immediately, but I’m not satisfied with the scope of this bylaw for the reasons that have been given by members of the audience. At the same time, I want to delay the enactment of this bylaw.

[1:54:06] So I’m really split here. Part of me is thinking out loud, maybe somebody can help me with this. What I’d like to do is I’d like to pose an amendment to the existing bylaw, which I don’t think is contrary, that asks, number one asks for a report back on the cooling units in the buildings. Number two, ask for a report back on extending the scope of the bylaw to all rental units and not just those in the bylaw that’s in front of us.

[1:54:49] Number three, refer to LTC, the issue of pre-transit on certain days where the temperature meets the standard. And number four, refer back to bylaw enforcement and this is a longer term, a project, an ongoing program of education and enforcement measures. And I think by doing it this way, we get the benefit of the excellent work that the staff has done on this so far and we can enact this bylaw immediately, but we will not complete it this year.

[1:55:38] And I have purposely not put a time for those reports back and I would ask staff if you have a, obviously I’d like it next week so we can enact all of it, but could you give me a reasonable through the chair estimate of when, I think the one about extending it to all of the rental units and not just those in the current bylaw is the one that’s gonna take the most work. So I wouldn’t mind getting this back in stages. Thank you, Councilor, before I go to staff, I’m just gonna confer with the clerks on the motion.

[1:56:33] Before we go to staff for the motion that you put on the floor, it looks like some of these changes may affect the bylaw that we have on the floor. So are you looking to refer everything back? No, I’m looking to enact the bylaw as it is on the table and the referral will be from staff for subsequent amendments to the bylaw at a later time. Okay, thanks, just bear with us for a second. I’m not looking to, I’m not looking to redraft any of these sections.

[1:57:08] I wanna accept it as is and ask for a subsequent staff report at a later meeting for these other changes, which Councilor Mayer may not decide to enact. Thank you, just give us a minute or two. While the clerks put this motion together, I am gonna go to staff to see a response to the councilors’ questions.

[1:57:52] So I believe this is gonna be to Mr. Mayders. Okay, go ahead. Through the chair, just so for context, what we brought you today, this is the second PPM on this matter. And the first PPM kind of scoped out what would be going on engaging on. So I would suggest that if we were going to be looking at a future amendment, or just if they could, you’re looking at it, bring forward this change and then come forward with a report and for future amendments. So my suggestion would be that that would probably, we’d wanna have a little bit more engagement on that. So it could be several quarters to be able to get through this if you’re looking at having that thorough engagement similar to what we’ve had on the most, the current by-law that we’re bringing forward to you.

[1:58:32] So happy to take back what other reports that you used to work on. And we do have a substantial amount of work that we’re undertaking right now, but it would probably at least two quarters to be able to bring something back and have that engagement piece as well. Thank you. Councilor for your motion, I believe you said that you weren’t locking it into any times, but just from what we heard from Mr. May is they are getting some time, ‘cause they do have quite a bit of work on the plate at the moment. So just making sure that you’re okay with that while we still draft up the motion. Yes, absolutely, that’s what I was looking for.

[1:59:06] I would expect it would be at least a few quarters. I don’t expect this back in this quarter. Okay, thank you. Sorry, having said that, can I change what I just said a little? Go ahead, Councilor, what you got to add? The referral to LTC could happen in any point.

[1:59:44] Okay, so once we get the motion fully drafted, I’m gonna ask for a seconder, I can read it out. I’ll read it out so the Council of the Mover can also ensure that that is what was the intent. Okay, Councilor, just please clarify the educational piece that you’re asking for, the last part.

[2:00:42] I view the educational piece as something that would be led by municipal compliance and it’s something that they would work at over a period of time and report back on progress. Again, that’s something that is not urgent for the next quarter. And specific education on what aspect? On the applicability and coverage of the by-law, the obligation of property owners to comply with the by-law, an explanation to tenants as to what they can expect under the by-law and a discussion of the enforcement mechanisms for enforcing the by-law.

[2:01:29] Thank you, Councilor. I think we captured as much as we could for this amendment. So I’m gonna read it back. So the, sorry, the motion. So that the motion be amended to include the following new parts. The civic administration be directed to take the following actions. A, bring a report to a future meeting of the community protective services committee with respect to the cooling units in the buildings.

[2:02:02] B, extending the scope of by-law to include all rental units. C, refer to LTC, the issue of free transit on high heat day on high heat days and D, implement an educational program to the applicability and coverage of the by-law. Is that capture most or the motion, the intent? Yes, except the referral to LTC should be stated separately at the bottom ‘cause we’re not asking for a staff report when referring it to LTC, we’re just going to refer it to LTC.

[2:02:41] We need a staff report to ask us to refer it to LTC or can we just refer it to LTC, I think that’s the latter. We didn’t include that. We have the motion, the way I read it still, just looking at the mover to make sure you’re okay with that.

[2:03:26] And then if you are, I would be looking for a seconder. Yes, okay, looking for a seconder. And seconded by Councillor McAllister. Okay, let’s put that knee scribe for everybody to see. Okay, it’s in, so if you refresh your eScribes, you will see the motion there, there it is. Okay, looking for a speakers list. Councillor McAllister, go ahead. Thank you through the chair.

[2:03:59] As I have been reminded, it’s good to do the committee work at committees, so happy to second this, to at least have the discussion about it. I do think some of the things in here weren’t for the discussion, but again, I go back to kind of what I was speaking to earlier. And again, I want to direct this question to bylaw in terms of any sort of an expansion with respect to all rental units, the resourcing of that. Like, what is the opinion of bylaw in terms of being able to do that with current resources we have?

[2:04:37] Thank you, Councillor. Looking, Councillor’s looking for resourcing and the capacity of bylaw. So I’ll go to Ms. Pepper, please go ahead. Through you, Chair. We would certainly have to reassess our resources in terms of looking at an expansion to all units. I also think that we would have to consider existing clauses within the Residential Tenancies Act in looking at this expansion. Thank you, and I’ll go back to Councillor McAllister and I’ll just make a request to everybody.

[2:05:09] If you could just lean into your microphones, my hearing has turned down for some reason today. So go ahead, Councillor. Okay, and I’ll try not to yell, I don’t need to go deaf. I appreciate that. And I think in terms of where I’m leaning with this, I think that there is some value in terms of understanding what more could be done. I think the way the Councillor has worded this in terms of a report back, we’re not taking any further direction on that per se, but I do think it would be interesting to at least see what staff have to say, recognizing that there’s no timeline on this in the current workload.

[2:05:48] I don’t want to hold up the rest of this. You know, I’m willing to hear my colleagues out in terms of where they’re at, but just a recognition that it’s a report back to see perhaps what more could be done. And obviously there’d be some more consultation with the Health Unit as well. I’m not on the LTC, so with that aspect of it, you know, I’ll be interested to see what the LTC has to say about that, but I do think there’d be limitations on that in terms of being able to provide free ridership, especially when we wouldn’t be able to determine how often that would happen, that might cause some operational issues.

[2:06:24] But yeah, I’m curious to see what folks have to say. I haven’t heard from anyone else, so I would appreciate if my colleagues want to speak to this, ‘cause I do think it’s important. I have heard from tenants. So I would like to have a better understanding of where everyone else sits on this. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I am gonna go to Ms. Marshall, and then potentially Ms. Pfeffer, if she has something to add, so please go ahead, Ms. Marshall. Thank you, Chair. Just in terms of the wording that you have for B and D at the moment, we would have an issue with the way it’s worded, because it doesn’t say bring a report.

[2:07:00] We’d be happy to bring a report, and expect some legal advice with respect to B, but the way it’s worded right now, it looks like you are directing staff to extend the scope of the by-law, not just bring a report back, and the same issue is under D as well. Thank you. And I was just hearing from the mover and the seconder, they would like to amend that, so please go ahead, Mr. Councillor. Well, may I ask, Council, how that would be amended to take care of that problem, in her view, would it say bring a report to a future meeting of an extent, what would be say, what would be date in your view?

[2:07:48] Thank you, Council. I believe it would be bring forward to a future meeting with no date, but I will go to Ms. Marshall. Just to indicate through the Chair that yes, right now it says extend the scope of the by-law, it doesn’t say bring a report back, it says extend the scope, so if it was saying bring a report back regarding extending the scope, because as I said, I think that we would want to provide legal advice with respect to that. Okay, thank you.

[2:08:21] Just looking with the mover and the seconder that you’re okay with to make that change, if we did do that? Yes, and I think if we combine paragraphs A and B, everything is under the auspices of bringing a report back to a future meeting, so I think that takes care of that, and instead of saying extending the scope of the by-law to include all rental units, maybe just say extending the scope of the by-law. Okay, thank you, give us a second. As far as you like. Thank you. Without saying all. Okay, just give us a second. Please refresh your screens, if you’re okay with that.

[2:09:28] Don’t give me any objections. I will look for the next speaker. I have none at the moment. Councillor Ramen, hold on, before we go to you, just once again, members of committee. Superbell, then Councillor Ramen, go ahead. I’ll be very brief. I will not be supporting this motion, and I will talk to the main motion that’s in front of us. Thank you. Thank you, I have Councillor Ramen next, and then the deputy mayor is next. Go ahead, Councillor.

[2:10:01] Thank you, through you. I won’t speak to the amendment other than to say part C, where it says refer to LTC, the issue free, trans and high heat days. In subsequent report, we’ll be discussing. It also talks about extreme weather, and whether or not LTC or other methods of transit could be used in order to get people to services. So we may just want to refer to LTC extreme weather instead of just specify heat. Thank you, and I have the deputy mayor.

[2:10:38] Next, go ahead, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, Chair. So I’ll be very brief. I won’t be supporting this. I don’t honestly need a staff report back to tell me that we can’t force landlords to retrofit buildings with cooling units, that sort of thing, breach existing lease contracts. It’s just, I don’t need staff to spend time on this. I will say, I am not going to support the main motion either, but on the amendments, certainly, I would not be supportive of any of this expanding of scope.

[2:11:20] This is not, it’s frankly, it’s something where I think we are, in my opinion, and I want to be very careful about that. I’m not expressing what other councilors’ intent may be, but in my opinion, I think we are virtually signaling a solution to something that we don’t actually have the ability to solve and enforce, and I think we are just setting ourselves up for disappointment and complaints, and not actually making the situation any better. Thank you.

[2:11:54] All right, looking for any other comments, questions? Okay, I would ask the clerk if you could split this vote up. A, B, C, and D. Call on the question, part A to the amendment first. Opposing the vote, the motion fails on a tie.

[2:12:53] Okay, part B, call on the question. Okay, call on the question, it’s open. Opposing the vote, the motion fails on a tie.

[2:13:33] Part C, opening that. Opposing the vote, the motion fails two to four. And part D, last vote, or opening that now. Opposing the vote, the motion fails two to four.

[2:14:37] Okay, we’re back at the main motion, so looking to, for any more comments, or actually, I don’t believe we had any comments for the main motion. So looking for comments or questions on the main motion. Councillor Trosto, go ahead. I’m very briefly, I’m in support of the main motion. I appreciate the work that the staff and the health unit have done on this. This is a step forward. I think it could be the end of the line in terms of what we do legislatively for a period of time, or it could lead to further improvements later on.

[2:15:13] While I’m disappointed that the amendments didn’t pass, I still strongly support the main motion, and look forward to at least these tenants getting some needed relief. Thank you. - Thank you. Further questions, comments? I’ll take from both members of committee. Okay, go ahead, Councillor Peril. Thank you, thank you to the staff for doing this work, and I’m gonna say a few comments, or four or five points that I have written down that are reasons why I will not be supporting it. First of all, it is already covered in the residential tenancy sag with everyone having the opportunity to install their own unit, window unit, which could be also applied to a decreased rent.

[2:15:58] Number two, enforcement. I really, and forget about the entire city, all the buildings in London, but even the ones, existing ones. I really don’t believe that based on our enforcement, I has nothing to do with the quality of our staff. But if you look at the size of London, the number of people we would need to do to address this and to actually make significant difference. And then putting the fees, fines, and moving forward, I really don’t see that very feasible. Third one, the dates.

[2:16:31] Right now, we are in September, and there are already people actually using still AC, and during the night, they are using the heating. That’s another issue that we would have. And number one is the increased cost. If you think that these individuals more, a lot of these individuals staying in these units, and again, as we heard, most of them, they don’t have, it’s not the issue of the ones that have the units, it’s the ones that they do not have the units. Usually these individuals are on fixed income. Who’s thinks that if we push this on the landlords, that their rent is not gonna increase?

[2:17:11] I don’t see how we are helping them. I talked to quite a few. They said, yes, sometimes, no doubt in July and August. It is hot, but on the other hand, the other 10 months of the year, they can afford that rent, their rent, which is already expensive. I really don’t see, from the perspective, I don’t see this as a value to not just us, city, or this, but even the individuals who are mainly on fixed income and they are looking at affordability as number one. And that’s the reason why I will not be supporting it.

[2:17:45] Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Any other comments? Questions, I’ll go with both members and visiting members. Deputy Mayor? Okay, go ahead. Deputy Mayor, go ahead. Thank you, Chair. So again, I’m gonna be as brief as I can here. I referenced this in my earlier comments. I’m not gonna be supporting this either. Councillor Pribble already touched on a number of the reasons why I’m just going to add a little bit from a technical perspective.

[2:18:18] I don’t think that a lot of folks are aware of the fact that, and we saw this in the communication from one landlord company in the city, when you have a two-pipe system, it’s not as simple as just shutting off the heat, turning on the AC, especially in those overlap months where you may have heat overnight and in the morning, and then in the afternoon, it’s 25, 26, 27 degrees. There are complications to that. Equipment also breaks down. The replacement parts sometimes take a while to come in, to say that we would enforce that on a landlord at that point, and there are provisions in the RTA that allow landlords to go beyond the legislative rent increases when municipalities impose additional costs on landlords.

[2:19:07] So I agree with Councillor Pribble on the component of the affordability piece. I think from a technical perspective, though it’s also pretty unenforceable when you think about equipment breakdowns, when you think about the temperature changes that we experience, particularly in the months of May, June, and again, September, October. I, again, I think this is appearing to do something without actually doing a whole lot. And the other thing that I think that has to be a factor here is that at some point there has to be an understanding of that there are accountability pieces and responsibilities and expectations, not just of landlords, but of tenants as well.

[2:19:48] And if you’re in that situation where you don’t have AC and you want a cooler, you know, that may be fans, it may be buying a window AC unit, it may be opening a window, it may be a number of different things, but it’s not our responsibility as a city council in my perspective to solve every challenge that every individual has in our community. I think we need to set some basic ground rules that everybody plays by. I think we’ve done that with our basic services bylaw, or vital services in terms of key piece, but I don’t think that the same applies in terms of this cooling piece.

[2:20:27] I wasn’t in favor of even getting a staff report back on this and I haven’t changed my mind. I won’t be supporting this at council. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Last call. Okay, let me hand this over to my vice chair. Okay, I have the chair, go ahead. All right, thank you, presiding officer. So I do hear the comments of my colleagues here at committee. I would also just recognize that this is to ensure that we maintain temperatures below 26 degrees for units that already have air conditioning units.

[2:21:04] I do see some of the delegations coming in here from a couple of delegates. I do want to ask about the flexibility that we have for any amps or any associated fees with that. So just through you presiding officer to staff, do we have flexibility for any of the amps that would be part of this report? Just to give some time to landlords who may have a broken AC, just to give them time, we’re not just gonna give fees immediately. Go ahead, staff. Thank you, yes, through you.

[2:21:39] We always have the opportunity to utilize discretion when considering a monetary penalty. And certainly if our goal is compliance and parts aren’t able to be shipped on time, that would be one situation where we would absolutely use that discretion and work with the property owner to ensure that compliance is eventually achieved, being mindful of the need for compliance with the bylaw and those individuals who are impacted by noncompliance. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, presiding officer. Thank you for that answer.

[2:22:11] So, and I did speak with staff about this before. So I do see this very reasonable approach. We do have flexibility for landlords just to give a little bit more time if they do to make repairs, but at the same time, we are trying to maintain these units at a comfortable temperature below 26. I know myself, if I’m living in a place that’s 26, I’m gonna have a headache, I’m out of commission. So I just think it would be fair, especially if we already have these AC units in there as well. I’d also add that many of the units that we would be discussing here for rental increases. I do hear some comments that I heard, but those units would be rent controlled units.

[2:22:47] Many of them would be built before 2018. I do understand there’s some extra things that could happen for extensions, special requests, and things like that. But we are speaking about units that don’t, that would have AC in there that may be a little bit older and may have some issues with that. I would believe that all new units after 2018 would have AC in there. So this would be a direction for staff to just maintain, to ensure that if the units are already in there, so we don’t have any significant costs for the landlord side to be reasonable, just to make sure those units are working.

[2:23:25] And we do provide that flexibility of something works, or if something is broken. So just knowing that, I will be in support of this staff recommendation. And I leave my comments there. Yeah, thank you, Councillor. I don’t have anyone else on the speaker’s list, and I return the chair to you. I have Councillor ramen next. Go ahead, Councillor ramen, you have five minutes, go ahead. Thank you and through you. I’m just wondering if I can ask some questions on the by-law through you to staff.

[2:23:59] My first question just pertains to, if someone has a medical, complex medical need, and they’re living in a unit, let’s say they rented that unit because it had air conditioning as advertised, and their medical needs require them to have working AC. Do you feel like this by-law could add additional protection for the individual by setting that temperature, by setting what we outlined in part C, if the rental equipment is equipped or furnished with an air conditioning system to provide that temperature minimum standard, maximum standard, sorry.

[2:24:45] Thank you, Councillor. I will go to staff, go ahead. Good afternoon, Lisa Christensen, manager licensing policy and special operations. In this particular instance, the example that you’ve given, we would be looking to the Residential Tenancies Act, and that’s what, I don’t wanna say, ties our hands, but those regulations are what we’ve modeled this by-law after, and in terms of the dates and the 26 degrees, and the fact that the unit has to have air conditioning, or does have air conditioning in order for this by-law to apply.

[2:25:29] Thank you, Ms. Christensen, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you to clarify, so you’re saying that it’s covered in Provincial Act, and so we don’t need the by-law? Thank you, go ahead. The regulations that are within the by-law are what are stipulated under the act. So basically, yes, I’ve gone as far as what I deem to be available to us in terms of how we can apply the by-law. Thank you, go ahead.

[2:26:03] Thank you, so my understanding is this gives us investigative investigatory powers, is that the best way to understand what the by-law allows us to do? Thank you, go ahead. Yes, it does, go ahead. Thank you, and through you, so I have heard from residents that live in my ward who have faced a challenge where they have went into a tenancy agreement where they are now locked into that agreement, and they did that understanding that they had complex medical needs and needed the temperature to be at a manageable level for them.

[2:26:44] And when it was not so recorded, all those temperatures provided the information to landlords and nothing has been done. So in my mind, this is a way for us to be able to advocate for lenders that may be in that situation to provide them with the opportunity to have a sounding board to perhaps have that extra step of that investigation to see whether or not there’s something that can be done. So this to me, I don’t see this as too broad for landlords in terms of what their requirements are because it’s already required, it just gives us the opportunity to act on their behalf.

[2:27:33] So I think from the perspective of what we’re trying to achieve to make the conditions livable for people, this is a minimal by-law. And I don’t see it imposing huge costs on a landlord because it’s something they already would have to be in compliance with for the most part. So this is those one-off circumstances where perhaps something, there’s a mechanical failure, there’s an issue, and this is giving our residents another tool in their toolbox to address that.

[2:28:06] So for that reason, I’d support it and we’ll support it at council. Thank you, councilor. All right, last call for members, visiting members online. Okay, I have none, let’s call the question. Closing the vote, the motion carries four to two.

[2:28:47] Okay, so that is it for scheduled items. We are on items for direction. We had a few items pulled. That was items 2.2, 2.3, and 2.6. Before we do that, I am gonna look to committee to see if they do wanna take a five-minute recess. If not, then we can continue on, but if anybody would like to, please move a motion. We keep going, chair.

[2:29:20] We can, councilor. The chair does have to make a biobrake, but that’s okay, I can wait. All right, let’s go on, let’s go to two. Let’s go to 2.2. No, I’m gonna move a five-minute break. Okay, moved, five minutes seconded. Thank you, committee, let’s do that by hand. All those in favor? Thank you, I appreciate it, all those opposed. Appreciate it, thank you, thank you, five minutes. All right, members of committee, I’m just gonna give a couple more seconds for everyone to get seated.

[2:34:48] We are still waiting on councilor Cuddy. We do have quorum, okay, they’re quorum here. All right, items for direction. We got 2.2, 2.3, 2.6, 2.2 is a single-source procurement for integrated employment services, digital service delivery platform, and there’s a revised by-law for that. I will look to committee to put a motion on the floor, moved by Councillor McCallister, a seconder. Okay, I will second that.

[2:35:26] Looking for a speakers list. Members, first, please. 2.2, council member, go ahead. Thank you, sir, the chair to the staff. Again, reading to report, all the way to Web Studio would certainly make sense based on the studies and based on the report. But I have a question, this goes back to my account information to 2019.

[2:36:01] Have we always been kind of the employment service center for our region, kind of beyond 2019? Or is this since 2019? Thank you, Councillor. Mr. Wilcox, go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, employment services transformation. So the move to integrated employment services as a model began in 2019. It’s a phased approach, started with prototype and phase one, and phase two, that’s actually three phases. So London began operating as the service system manager for our catchment, starting with integrated employment in January of 2024.

[2:36:48] Thank you, thank you for that. Thank you for that answer, and again, through the chair. Now, I do see that it’s at the entire investment and annual recurring amount, which is the high amount. It’s not actually covering, it’s not paid by our municipal budget, it’s covered by the province. Is this on the ongoing basis and in terms of future, is there a certain term contract we have from the province? Thank you, Councillor. Yes, Wilcox. Thank you, and through you, Mr. Chair, the agreement, we have a transfer payment agreement with the City of London for us to operate as the service system manager.

[2:37:30] Through the amending agreement, that takes us until the end of December, 2026. So our funds are guaranteed to that point, and the agreement as outlined in this report would not exceed those timelines. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, and the last question. If you’re replacing the current either platform or the program that we have, is the previous data gonna be transferred via interface or some into the new one, or are we gonna be having both of them to have the data from the past?

[2:38:08] Thank you, Councillor, go ahead. Thank you, and through you, Chair. The migration of the data that we have for integrated employment services is part of the scope of this project, and it would come over into the new system. So we’ve built in mechanisms to ensure that there’s continuity as we migrate from our current case management system to this new one. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you very much, no more questions? Thank you, I have Councillor Stevenson next, and anybody who wants to be out to the, let’s just put your hand up, go ahead, Councillor.

[2:38:42] Thank you, I just had a couple of questions as well. I noticed when I went back to the January 8th, 2024 report, it was also a single source contract, and that we were following what Bruce County did at the time. And that contract has only just finished, and now we’re switching to a new provider at what looks to be almost twice the cost. So I was just wondering what was wrong with what we’d done, and why we’re choosing something new at twice the cost now? Thank you, Councillor, go ahead.

[2:39:17] Thank you, and through you, Chair, thanks for that question. So yes, we did have a single source procurement that was approved by Council in January of 2024. That was as we started operating as the SSM for our catchment. I would say that the integrated employment services model as a whole is new, and there weren’t a lot of providers providing the case management tools in the market at that time. So the case management solution, we are approaching the end of that agreement at the end of this year.

[2:39:52] Well, the costs are more for the we data tools. It does provide us with more product, and that includes, so our current solution only provides a case management solution for the mandatory data that we collect as we support clients accessing employment Ontario services. This is a broader software solution, so it does include case management, but it also includes a more modern mobile optimized AODA compliant website with a lot more interactive features for job seekers, so think of a jobs portal, a job board aggregator, as folks are looking for employment.

[2:40:39] It also has resources for employers that are a bit more interactive. It brings on more tools for back-of-house operations for our service providers. We have 20 located across the city of London, Middlesex County, Oxford County, St. Thomas and Elgin County. So staff working in those organizations can also have access to those tools as they support clients on site. It also comes with a learning management solution, which is really key for us as a service system manager. We are the funder for the 20 organizations, and we sort of set the guidelines and parameters of service, again, as dictated by our transfer payment agreement, but that flows through us.

[2:41:22] So, we’re moving beyond a standalone case management solution to many more things, and I think having that packaged up into one single solution based on our assessment is actually much more efficient and economical. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you very much, that’s helpful. So I guess what I’m gonna focus on then is the single source, because we did a single source back in January 8th, 2024, even though Bruce County had done an open tender, or an open procurement.

[2:41:57] And then the January 6th, 2025 report that came to this committee said that if the city chose to move to a new program through an open competitive procurement, that the lessons learned through the first one would be helpful. And yet here we’ve got a single source again, and it’s referring to following Bruce County again and Windsor, but I know there’s 15 of these across the province. So I’m just wondering the rationale for not doing an open procurement and trying to get the best price possible.

[2:42:33] Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, and through the chair, thanks. Thank you for that question. As outlined in the report, we actually received an unsolicited proposal from Elevate Studios. And based on that as set out in the procurement of goods and services policy, we proceeded from there and are recommending a direct award based on sections 14, D and E of the procurement policy.

[2:43:12] There are not many providers in the space, and there are not any other providers to our knowledge that provide the scope of or the suite of services that are outlined in the report that’s before you today. So while there are many, all of the phases of integrated employment services are online now. There are not many providers that provide case management tools. And our assessment was that the services outlined are actually only provided by Elevate Studios.

[2:43:49] And based on the learnings from other SSMs that are operating and using the tool and based on our own learnings as we’ve been operating IES for since January of 2024, we feel that this solution meets our needs and we can build on the learnings of our colleagues and our own learnings here as I lower, yes. Thank you, go ahead, Councilor. Thank you. So I guess my last question is then there’s 15 of these across the province and we’ve listed two that there was Bruce County and Windsor is using this software.

[2:44:27] Are there others as well? Or are there other areas using different software providers? Thank you, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. So yes, you are correct that the SSMs utilizing, we data tools are the County of Bruce and also Windsor. They both operate catchments respectively. There are other solutions used by some of the other SSMs, yes. Thank you, go ahead, Councilor.

[2:45:04] I’ll leave it there, thanks. All right, thank you. I have Councilor ramen next on the list, but before I go to you, members of committee, this is your last chance before I go to visiting members. Okay, Councilor, go ahead. Thank you and through you, the report mentions, first off, thank you for the report. The report mentions that this also covers job seekers and when I look at the LRES network right now and where it points to for job seekers.

[2:45:36] I’m just wondering what kind of enhancements we see associated with the job seeker portion. And then I wanted to ask some further questions. Thank you. I will go to Ms. Wilcox. Thank you and through through the chair. Thanks for that question. So our current client facing offerings as LRES are hosted on London.ca. I would say they’re not terribly interactive in terms of what you can get through that.

[2:46:10] So we can get you to our providers. This brings different tools so where you could actually search for jobs. It has a career planner, a career calculator, things that we simply just don’t offer right now through our current website. Those tools would also be available to our providers as well. So while we do have some providers that within their own operations have some of these tools, this would allow that capacity and capability across all 20. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you and through you.

[2:46:44] I’m just wondering if you can comment on integration with LEDC’s job boards and other job boards that we have available through other groups and associations. Thank you, go ahead, Ms. Wilcox. Thank you and through the chair. We certainly work alongside our economic development partners. The tools that we use are actually hosted by local workforce planning and development boards, which also bring in those other tools or job boards that are available through organizations such as the LEDC.

[2:47:22] I think a key thing to note, and again, part of our work is ensuring that we have a regional approach as the SSM. We are responsible for the delivery of integrated employment services in the city of London, but also in the county of Middlesex, Oxford County, St. Thomas and Elgin. Thank you, go ahead. Thank you and through you. So one of the challenges I have with the current model that we have are London Regional Employment Services, job seeker portion doesn’t point to other job boards that we support within the city.

[2:47:56] And so I’m just wondering how that the new integration will do so. The other perspective or question I had is we’re looking at mobile applications. We have the My London app now as well, which also has a job seeker portion to it. I’m just wondering whether or not there will be integration with that platform as well. And lastly, whether or not there’s any AI integration that we are considering at this time. Thank you, Councillor, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. So the jobs portal in its function really pulls data that’s available across multiple sources.

[2:48:36] Again, anything available across our catchment, it will pick up and pull that into what we would call a job board aggregator. So it’ll integrate those in terms of if an employer has a posting out there, we can grab that and ensure that’s available to job seekers. So as we think of the journey of anyone accessing our services, those that are sort of can self-serve might be able to navigate tools that are available on a site and get themselves connected to a job in that way. Otherwise, they might be doing that alongside an employment counselor at one of our providers.

[2:49:14] And apologies, could you repeat the second part of your question, please? So a couple was just in connection to the My London app, which scrapes job boards across our community to pull in the data for work. I’m just wondering whether or not it will have that same integration if it’s a redundancy of that or that same product. Thank you, go ahead.

[2:49:47] Thank you, no, I don’t believe it’s a redundancy. I think again, we pull that and this allows us, because it’s looking at the catchment as a whole that we can ensure that we’re serving all job seekers across the catchment. I did recall you, I believe had a question to you about AI. So the platform does include tools within it that utilize AI to help with the development of resumes and cover letters that help staff that work at employment service providers.

[2:50:21] So that’s a really key piece. We know that as we seek to support all job seekers coming through our doors, this helps to alleviate time on those sort of types of tasks and allows employment specialists to perhaps have more time to work with multi-barrier clients or those that might need a bit more time. Thank you, go ahead, counselor. Thank you. So on the AI perspective, so it wouldn’t, for instance, take the career planning data that’s inputted by the client or the support for the client and then scrape for jobs that are appropriate in that market.

[2:51:01] Thank you, go ahead. Thank you and through you, Chair. Actually it does, so if you created a, you could add in your information, for instance, and it would help to pull together a resume for you, help to pull together your cover letter. It might also, if you can select certain features that are jobs that you might be looking for and it will pull those in for you. So you end up with what we call a portal account, a jobs portal account. So anyone accessing our services can create one of those and that can provide information to the client.

[2:51:38] They might also use that alongside supports and services that they’re receiving a lot from one of our providers as well. Thank you, go ahead, counselor. Thank you, does it happen to tailor the cover letters, resumes, et cetera, to that particular job? And then are they, are they given opportunities for a direct connect through the application now that it’s mobile? Thank you, counselor, go ahead, Ms. Wilcox. Thank you, Chair, and through you, Chair.

[2:52:12] That’s something I would want to get back to you on. I think there are different features within it and I can follow up on sort of how that works in terms of tailoring to the job. I know there are those features available, but I wanna make sure that I’m answering or providing you with a false response on that. It does, you know, and I think the key and this is that we have great employees and teams across the catchment at our service providers that are also working alongside a client.

[2:52:45] So, well, for some, that might be a path that they may take. For others, you’re gonna do that alongside and with the guidance of a provider, ‘cause they’re also going to be looking at what tools and supports they can offer you. Perhaps it’s referrals to other community partners and, you know, it could be interview coaching. There are many things that our providers do to help support someone on their employment journey. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, my last question just pertains to security and what type of data security would be within this contract.

[2:53:20] Go ahead. Thank you and through you, Chair. The solution that has outlined meets the standards of our information security requirements and the data is stored within Canada as well. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, and I appreciate all the answers to those questions. All right, thank you. Looking to visiting members, members of committee, last call, questions or comments online. Okay, let’s call the question.

[2:54:01] Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. All right, all right, the next item we have that was pulled would be 2.3, that’s proposed temporary warming center framework. We do have a delegation request. I just wanna look towards the delegates if they do wish to still speak, okay? All right, I would need a motion to open up the delegation so that would be moved by Councillor McAllister, seconded by Councillor Cuddy. Call the question. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

[2:54:48] Okay, Campbell, you ready? Okay, stage your name where you’re from and then I’ll put my hand up and that’s when you have your five minutes. Okay, well, I’m Sarah Campbell, Executive Director of Arcade Street Mission and thank you for the opportunity to speak. And if you can come just a little bit closer to the microphone there. I’m gonna step down and do this thing, how’s that? Yes, thank you, okay, yeah, that’s good. Five minutes starts now. Okay, well, first of all, I hope that you will join me in the excitement of discussing winter this early in the year. I am so pleased to be standing here talking to you in September as opposed to November about the crisis that takes place every year as our temperatures drop and today has been no exception to listening to the myriad of work that’s taking place in our community to address the issue of homelessness.

[2:55:42] I really wanna congratulate Civic Administration and yourselves for the learning that we’ve done together over the last number of years. This is certainly the earliest that I have been here and engaged in conversations about winter and I’m grateful. I also wanted to point out that there are a number of people sitting in the gallery today who are from our Warner program and because this report speaks to that program, I wanted to just acknowledge them and thank them for coming to show the support for the work that’s taking place at that program.

[2:56:16] One of the things I’m most grateful for today is looking at the solutions that we’re taking across our community, particularly around winter from an evaluated lens. We got to hear about the whole of system community response evaluation and then today there was an evaluation of what happened last year in terms of emergency responsiveness and this report comes from that work and I’m really impressed that we are taking time, reflecting, looking at what we did and then making recommendations moving forward. I’m also really impressed by the year round component that is reflected in this report as part of the tiered system.

[2:56:55] Recognizing that this report is not every homelessness intervention that’s ever going to be proposed at any time. This is a really impressive tiered approach that recognizes that the types of solutions that can be found in the moment are rarely adequate for the depth of need in our community but by planning ahead and having the stabilized workforce, which we have now had at Corona Warner, we’re not only able to respond in the crisis but we can in fact see results from that. I’m so very pleased to share that over 150 people have been housed or moved to alternate more stable sheltering or some form of treatment in less than two years while we’ve been operating the Corona Warner location.

[2:57:39] And so what started as a winter response, a space for that purpose and is now reflected in this tiered response. I think I really just appreciate the recognition that homelessness and the solutions for homelessness are year round but the crisis around the depth of temperature and what happens for people in those most critical moments also needs to be planned for. And this tiered response does have some meaningful numbers associated with it in terms of the number of individuals who would be served in those crisis moments.

[2:58:14] So those are my really positive, excited statements from this report. Of course, there are things to be said about the broader system components and it’s been reflected today in other areas. Warner is not a temporary program. Maybe the location has been, it was set up that way but the program itself is something that our system needs for the stability of our system. More spaces are needed as the problem continues to rise but that in and of itself is not enough. We need to continue to be pushing for the highly supportive housing, affordable housing, people experiencing the first experience of homelessness.

[2:58:54] I was really touched because one of our community members came today ready to speak to you thinking it was a public participation meeting and we’re gonna circulate his story ‘cause he had already for you. People’s lives are changed through relationship and I think this tiered response recognizes that the relationship of organizations like Arcade, London Cares and others who work directly with people on the streets is an important element to bring people in in those crisis moments and so I have a lot of positive things to say about this report. I’m grateful again that we’re talking about it now and that this is one layer of a broader system approach that needs to be engaged and continued to be discussed and evaluated like we heard earlier from the whole of system community response.

[2:59:40] Those are my comments and I hope that that’s, I’m right this. Goodness Campbell. All right, I need a motion for, I need a motion before we can discuss anything. So moved by and that’s for the staff recommendation. Councilor cutting for the staff report. Yep, okay, moved, seconded by Councillor McAllister. All right, looking for a speaker’s list. Councillor Preble.

[3:00:14] Thank you. I would like to add an amendment that was circulated earlier today and I don’t know if anyone’s sorry or if it’s actually in the East Cribe already. Just read the amendment if you don’t mind. The civic administration be directed to present a report at a future meeting of the community and protective service committee providing the above noted executed contracts for information. So we did that pass this before or in the past in the similar cases that we did ask for the contract. So it’s available for us if we wish to go through it, if we wish to see it for more details.

[3:00:52] Okay, thank you. We have a mover, looking for a seconder. I just ask a point of order with the amendment. Point of order, yeah, are new contracts being introduced or are these amendments to existing contracts? Good question, let’s go to staff. Through you chair, should funding flow to organizations, these would be amendments to existing contracts. Councillor? Okay, I just wanted to provide that clarity because the motion seems kind of redundant if the contracts already are going to be exist and the amendments will be added to it.

[3:01:33] Just give me a second to confer with the clerk. Going to staff, just from the chair, would this amendment actually be executable with the fact that we have previous contracts that we are amending with the motion from the recommendation?

[3:02:40] Through you chair, if we’re directed to bring back executed contracts, the contracts are technically already executed in place, we’d be making amendments to those existing contracts. In the event that we would need to do that, we would make amendments. If council or committee wishes to capture all contract changes or potential changes into this motion, then we’ll follow that interpretation. Okay, thank you.

[3:03:12] So just to the mover, hearing what staff said that is still within the frame that your motion is being moved. Excuse me, sort of chair to the staff. I just want to clarification. Councillor? Through the chair, yeah. So I don’t know if I can have you ask questions at the moment, it’s not your speaking time. I just wanted to see if you can clarify the amendment. Because staff did say that there are existing agreements already, this recommendation come from the report is making some amendments. So I just wanted to make sure your motion is still capturing that, if you’re okay with that.

[3:03:47] I just wanted a clarification from the staff because I didn’t receive it. So I’ll leave it on the floor right now because I didn’t receive, I have a question. Okay. Based on the answer, I would potentially pull it. Okay, I was, I hear what you’re saying. Let’s just ask your question for your clarification from staff. This will not count towards your speaking time. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair, to the staff. I just want to clarification. If all the contracts that we are mentioning here, if they were all submitted to us before, or if only some of them, and if they were all, then I will not because it’s all of them would be amendment only, then I would pull it.

[3:04:27] If it’s not, then I would keep it. If you can please clarify this, thank you. Okay, I am gonna, I should get a seconder before we ask that question. So before we go to staff, I just want to see if there’s a seconder you might. If there’s no seconder, then there would be no need to pull. So just seconder, Mr. Dickens, I’m not gonna have you answer the question.

[3:05:02] There’s no seconder. No seconder on that. So back to the main motion. Looking for a speaker’s list. So, Chair also go ahead. I’ll be exceptionally brief. I think this is an excellent report. A lot of thoughts been put into this. Since this came up last year, in the winter, a lot of work’s been done by staff in terms of setting up temporary facilities, which I think has been very, very helpful to the community.

[3:05:47] I want to underline what Ms. Campbell said about how the fact that it’s September and we’re talking about this. So we’re making progress. We are really making progress as a council. And I think this is just a great example of counselors and staff and our community partners working together. So yet another good news story today. And I know there’s a lot of negativity in the community, but I think this is just one of those things that we have to point to to say we do get things right. Maybe I should wait until this passes to say that, but I certainly hope it does pass because it’s a very thoughtful puzzle.

[3:06:30] Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I have Councillor McAllister next and then that’s for the members of committee. And I have Councillor Stevenson after that for visiting members. Go ahead, Councillor McAllister. Thank you and through the chair. Yeah, I just want to start off with being thank you for all the work that went into this, especially after last year. I think there were a lot of lessons learned. I really do appreciate this tiered approach. I think this addresses a lot of the concerns we already heard. I do just have questions in terms of tier three. And so I’m wondering if staff could speak a bit more in terms of the activation of like the warming spaces, but even with the choice for the Boyle Community Center.

[3:07:11] My understanding from last year was that most of our resources were at Carling and that’s why that location was chose because that’s where we could spool up emergency services. So I’m just wondering in terms of are we shifting some of those resources to that site or are we going to address that? Thank you, Councillor. I will go to Ms. Smith. Thank you and through the chair. So tier three is what we call and this is based on best practices and what other municipalities are doing in Ontario and cross Canada is really building our surge capacity. So if it hits that minus 15 with a wind chill of minus 20 at the minimum, we will surge what we have in the community as best we can.

[3:07:51] So that is looking at our service providers and adding in another 50 warming spaces. So tables and chairs and kitchens in staff room similar to what some have been able to do in the past year. And part B of that then is that part of that surge capacity is putting is we call a pop up warming center at Boiled Community Center. This was chosen when we looked in, the consultants went out in the community and we looked for a number of options as Council directed us to look for options other than community centers and unfortunately coming back to us, this was the alternative for leasing space which wasn’t efficient effective or it was cost prohibitive.

[3:08:38] This seemed to be the best proposal for this pop up warming center. So I worked with my team and we created criteria to look at what center would have the least impact on our community and those who use our community centers. And so we looked at things like it’s not another designated emergency center which our Carlin Heights is, so Carlin Heights is used for other emergencies. It’s also undergoing some construction this year and early into next year.

[3:09:11] The least amount of impact on existing services offered to the public proximity to daytime services for those who are served. So as we know with Boiled in the morning when we use Boiled this past winter, we were able to, people were able to leave the Boiled community center and just walk down the street to London Cares or the arcade facilities for breakfast, showers and services. The access and ease to public transportation and the appropriate space needs.

[3:09:47] So those were the criteria we used and based on that Boiled community center was the best fit. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you and I appreciate that. And I know it’s always tough in terms of picking a spot. I think what I was wondering is also, did we give any consideration to having multiple spots? I do recognize in the report that obviously proximity was an issue that was identified in terms of trying to, as you said, transit, get people to the location, but also recognizing that we have pockets in other areas and having everything for the surge capacity in one location that can have its own challenges as well.

[3:10:29] So I’m just wondering, did we look at having a multi-site approach or this was in the end determined to be the best? Thank you, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. So we did explore multi-site and we are using multi-site for tier three. So tier three is using our existing service providers and increasing by 50 spaces. And then the next service provider and that is the city of London and the community center. So looking at the staffing required, this is need to be staffed by city staff, this security, looking at the support from city staff, including CIR that were great in helping us in the evening and first thing in the morning.

[3:11:13] This was the best bit for us. And when we did this last year, this 60 is a good number for our facilities. And we feel when we looked at how we supported extreme winter response last year, 200. This is, we’re looked at a 200 capacity and our tiered model supports a 200 capacity. So we felt 60 spaces, last winter we were, we had between 60 and 100 at oil at one time. So 60 spaces is a good fit at what we think for a pop-up. Understanding that another 50 spaces will be used with our service providers.

[3:11:50] Thank you, go ahead. Thank you, I appreciate that and through the chair. I’m also wondering, ‘cause you did touch on it as well, in terms of the staff required for this. I know last year, it’s all hands on deck kind of approach, but I’m just wondering in terms of coordinating the CIR, but is this rec staff leading it? Like who will ultimately be running the site and have we provided perhaps some additional training to the staff, we’ll be looking after that. Thank you, Councillor. I’ll go back to Ms. Smith on this one.

[3:12:23] Thank you and through the chair, that’s correct. It’ll be a similar staffing model last year, typically looking for management staff from my area in Mr. Dickens area, who has some experience. We’ve also had our London Community Health Center offer and has done some training already. We also activate emergency reception centers in times of emergencies and fires. That’s what we use at Carling Heights, and that’s also uses staff from all across the corporation.

[3:12:57] So London Inter-Committee Health Center just, we just piloted some of this training just this past year with those managers. So we will use that training too, along with our security staff and our CIR that will help support us. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you again. And I do appreciate that, I really thought it was great in terms of what we were able to put together last year, bringing everyone together, but recognizing to the commitment that took from staff. So appreciate that those plans are in place earlier, then we can address the training and the staffing, so that’s ready to go.

[3:13:37] My other question then, in terms of using Boyle, the community programming, obviously that would have to cease. So where would that be moved to, if we do have to use the center? Thank you, Councillor, Ms. Smith. Thank you, and through the chair, I can start and then turn it to my team who has looked at this. So we looked at one of the criteria was the least impact. By having these hours and doing cleaning immediately afterwards, Boyle will be open for public use close to noon, which it typically is, and will allow us to do afternoon and evening programming, as we would not activate, if needed, the pop-up warming center until 9 p.m. at night.

[3:14:18] So I can also talk to, as done, Mr. McGonigal, how we supported that last year when we used Boyle. Thank you, Ms. Smith. Should I go to Mr. McGonigal? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, thank you, and through the chair, there’s other things that we do in our work, and so looking ahead to somewhere like Boyle, if it is approved and identified here today, we would start to reduce the number of multi-week registered programs at Boyle, and look to increase them at some other locations.

[3:14:52] Obviously, when people are in multi-week programs, having one cancellation and maybe another can add to frustration, so we would program at lots more with just one-off drop-in activities, which we do all over the system, so it would just be a little more amplified at that location. The other things I would say is that our user groups are very understanding in times of emergencies when we’re trying to utilize our spaces for other purposes, and I think the community has a really good understanding that they’re not just community centers for recreation and sport, they’re used for other important needs out in the community, and so we refund customers, we do our best to move rentals and try and put the puzzle together in a different way, so those are just a couple of strategies, but I’ll just say our customers have been great through it all.

[3:15:39] Thank you, Councilor. Yeah, and I think the other one, and just again, thinking of the lessons learned from last year, if we have like a multi-day cold surge or whatever we wanna call it, I’m just curious from what we learned last year, and my understanding anyways of our emergency management and how long we can sustain that, is there any plan in terms of if this is a prolonged period that we have to switch sites or add additional resources, so just recognizing that we had a particularly cold winter last year, but you know what I mean, it’s something to say that couldn’t be bad this year, just to make sure we’ve planned for the worst case scenario.

[3:16:28] Through the chair, if it goes multi-day, we do have the capacity from the emergency management side to step in and provide support staffing through that model. We generally go three deep anyhow, so there’s a rotation built in that we can extend that for a longer period of time if need be. If it was to go really extensive, then we’d have to look and come up with a plan which we’re used to doing in emergency management to cover off, but if it was to go for a week or a week and a half, I think it’s something we would be able to do is to stay in through emergency management.

[3:17:03] Thank you, go ahead. Thank you, and appreciate that. This is a question that I have received in the past, so it’s good to know. My last thought on this, again, I appreciate all the work that went into this. I think this is really important to have, but I would just like to as a final point, in terms of communicating to this to the public, obviously this has to go to council, but having this plan communicated to the public and the tiered system so people have an understanding. I think it would be very important just as we go into the winter, so they’re aware of it. Happy to disseminate that as I can. Town halls, social media, I’m sure everyone on council would appreciate that too, but just from the city communication side, it would be really good to get something out before the winter, thank you.

[3:17:45] Thank you, councilor. I have councilor Stevenson next, so go ahead, council. Thank you, just a couple of questions, it’s said that Boyle Memorial Community Center was the top one, what were the second and third top choices? Thank you, councilor Ms. Smith. Thank you, when looking at all the criteria after Boyle came Byron Community Center and after Byron Community Center came the North London Optimus Community Center. Thank you, go ahead, councilor.

[3:18:21] Okay, thank you. And in terms of the funding for this, it’s coming from the operating budget contingency fund. So my concern is in being asked to do this, well, I have many concerns around this, but one of them is last year, in 2024, when we did the shelter funding, there was a $4 million shortfall, we also know that there is funding is coming to an end for the hubs and for some of the highly supportive housing. Do we have a big picture view for 2026 of how much is going to be needed to be funded from the operating budget contingency fund or some other fund aside from just this 3 million?

[3:19:08] Thank you, councilor. I’ll go to Ms. Smith. I believe Mr. Marie’s online and can speak to this reserve fund. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Marie, go ahead, you’re on mute. Thank you and through you, Mr. Chair. So yes, the recommendation here is that the funding for this initiative be approved specifically for winter 2026 into 2027 from the operating budget contingency reserve. Winter 202526 funding is already in place and available to support that.

[3:19:45] What I can tell you is that as of right now, the operating budget contingency reserve has a balance of approximately $38 million uncommitted. We don’t have a specific breakdown at this very moment of the various commitments that are in place over the next few months. That is certainly something that we could pull together and follow up provided to the councilor as well. Thank you, go ahead, councilor. Thank you, I appreciate that. The in the past, if I understood correctly, we didn’t use the operating budget contingency fund for operating expenses.

[3:20:23] I know this is called temporary, but this will now be the fourth winter that we are looking to fund the Cronin Warner Center. And we did, we council at least approved. I know we didn’t use it all, but 4 million from the operating contingency fund to stabilize our shelters, which again, we were told the reason that we were able to do that was because it was only gonna be temporary because we had the hubs and the highly supportive housing coming in, but I anticipate that we are going to be renewing those contracts again come February.

[3:20:58] So I’m wondering at what point do we get to be concerned about using the operating budget contingency fund for operational things in the hopes that they’re temporary, but with like zero evidence that they actually will be? Thank you, councilor, I’ll go to Ms. Smith. Thank you, and through the chair, I can start for this our temporary warming center framework. We’re looking at supporting this through 25, 20 up until March 31st, 2027, and at that time, if this is required, noting that many other items are happening, we know the mayor’s direction, we know and Mr. Dickinson can speak to the hard hub, opening next month is October.

[3:21:45] Next month, we are looking at funding this to March 31st, 2027, and then at that time, if a temporary warming center framework or a temporary response for winter, maybe it’s not temporary anymore, it becomes part of the business case for the next multi-year budget. So looking at a permanent source of funding for this specific report and framework, if required. Thank you, Ms. Smith, councilor. Thank you.

[3:22:16] So can we find out, is there enough funding, provincial funding available to meet all the commitments for 2026 for the renewals that we know are coming due? Thank you, councilor, I will go to Mr. Cooper. Thank you, and through you, Mr. Chair, we’ve been able to forecast with the existing commitments from both the provincial government for their homeless prevention program dollars, as well as our increased allocation we received last year from our reaching home program, which is our federally funded program.

[3:22:51] We’re currently forecasting to be able to meet all of our existing commitments, and we have not forecasted to dip into the operating contingency reserve in 2526. Thank you, Mr. Cooper, go ahead, councilor. Thank you, my question’s actually about 2627, and also not just commitments, but renewals of any current programs that we have funded. Thank you, I will go to Mr. Cooper, go ahead. Thank you, and through you, Mr. Chair, we’ve not received our provincial commitment for 2627, yet our current homeless prevention program funding allocation is to March 31st, 2026.

[3:23:33] We fully expect the province to engage with service managers on future allocations. We’re obviously advocating with our ministry colleagues to get that information as early as possible. So we are able to appropriately plan for another increase or having for better decrease in allocation. We do have our allocations from our reaching home until the end of 2027, March 31st, 2027, I believe, or it might be March 31st, 2028. So we’ve been able to forecast those programs that we currently fund with reaching home to that timeframe.

[3:24:10] Thank you, Mr. Cooper, go ahead, councilor. Thank you, so the shelter renewals that we’re anticipating coming in the late winter, there won’t be, as far as we know, a request from the reserve fund. Thank you, councilor, I’ll go to Mr. Dickens, go ahead. Thank you, Chair, and through you, as Mr. Cooper has just indicated that we don’t have our HPP allocation for the 2627, so it would be hard to speculate at this point. We do, however, know that we’ll be bringing forward a staff report to CAPS this fall, to table and seek some council direction on future procurement of shelters and service providers.

[3:24:53] Thank you, go ahead, councilor. Okay, thank you. I know, speaking for myself, I’m not gonna be approving a $3 million commitment through to 2027 for the same reason that staff are saying that they don’t feel comfortable making commitments without that funding. I think we need to know before we make a commitment to an agency to go that far. And as happy as I am to be talking about it early, I think we’re too early if we don’t know what our shortfall’s gonna be for 2627. I’m not gonna be supporting the use of the pop-up warming center at Boyle Community Center, again, for two more winters.

[3:25:30] So we’ve got an area of the city that, again, despite a core area action plan in a previous term of council that was to address the oversaturation of services and a commitment of the whole community system response to start to desegregate some of these services. We’re still talking about everything being in the core area and in the east end. And I just think that at some point, we have to either stop saying that we’re even committed to doing it or we need to find a way and show people that it’s possible to provide services in other areas of our city.

[3:26:10] When it’s minus 15 out being walkable to the services, I don’t think is an advantage. It’s minus 15 out. It would probably be better if they were in another area of the city and taking a warm bus. And so I think that’s something to consider. I’m gonna look at it between now and council as to whether to maybe propose that we move it to one of the other second or third choices. I’m open to hearing from my colleagues on that. And I did wanna ask about the 50 warming spaces from other service providers opening up overnight.

[3:26:52] So again, I’m assuming these are gonna be our current shelters and potentially arcade and London cares. Like we’re, we must have an idea for coming up with 50 as to who and where those are gonna be. Thank you, councillor. I will go to Mr. Dickens and just to be mindful, you have eight seconds left. Go ahead, Mr. Dickens. Thank you through you, chair. Yes, we’re looking at all available service providers. It was mentioned earlier, past winters were all hands on deck and we’re taking that same approach, looking at all available service providers to open up any overnight space.

[3:27:35] Similar to what we were able to provide and the in the community centers last year in terms of spaces for people to come in and stay warm overnight. So those who’s taking how many is to be determined, but that’ll be in all hands on deck to work with every available service provider in the community. Thank you, councillor, go ahead. Thank you and just the consultant, why and how much? Thank you. I will go to Ms. Smith, go ahead. Thank you.

[3:28:09] And thank you and through the chair, the cost of the consultant was $32,200 and we used a consultant, which we typically do when we wanna look at someone helping us to do a municipal scan. The capacity and the knowledge is not available, particularly the capacity with our teams. And so the consultant, we went out for a process and gained a consultant to look at this, was able to look at what other municipalities are doing across Ontario and Canada, bring that together and evaluate some promising practices.

[3:28:44] And that’s how the tiered response came out of this. And on top of that, the consultants engaged with the community and all the community organizations, the faith-based organizations and numerous organizations across our city to engage them on their potential involvement or what their role may or may not be in the warming center framework. So the consultant then came up with the plan, the tiered response that was built in to this report also engaged with the Middlesex London Health Unit to also help determine those thresholds too.

[3:29:22] Thank you, Councillor, go ahead, you got four seconds. No, that’s good, thank you. Thank you. All right, Councillor Pribble, you have four minutes and 24 seconds to go. So go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair, to the staff, going back to what I was talking earlier today, the contracts, and I was just curious if it’s, if all those contracts, if it is, if it will be just the amendments, if the original contracts are all accessible to us. Thank you, Councillor.

[3:29:55] I’ll go to just a second, Councillor. Mr. Dickens, go ahead. Thank you, Chair, we’re just conferring with Mr. Cooper there, so thank you. Because these span so many different service providers, you may have, Council may have received some of these, but these contracts cover a number of different services. So some of them you may have seen, some of them would be shelters and things like that, that you have not.

[3:30:31] They are available in the clerk’s office for viewing, but we have not necessarily brought forward contracts to Council for every single piece of business that we do. We would be going through and looking at the terms of what’s required for these to determine what is needed under a contracting basis. We’d be working with our legal team on that. So it’d be, at this point, if Council wants to see shelter contracts, they can do so through the clerk’s office, they have not been brought forward to Council. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor.

[3:31:03] So thank you for that, I’m glad that we have access to them. The reason why I was asking this is, if you remember some month ago, we did have, which actually I thought that our staff did a great job, statistics, so I could see the comparative analysis. And then there were some changes. There were actually changes to the better, instead of dropping overnight beds, et cetera. So they were actually more positive. But Council decided that they didn’t want staff to come back to us. So then the only other choice I have, if I wanna do my own comparative analysis, to go through the contracts, which is more length there.

[3:31:41] But again, I’m glad that I have access to it. I wouldn’t need to have an access to it if Council would agree to do the comparative analysis. I know it’s not always to apples to apples. I do get that, but on the other hand, it’s a very valuable tool for me to see which I feel the organizations are delivering more benefits to our city than not. So I just want to comment on that. And extremely happy that we are dealing right now with the winter response. Thank you for that.

[3:32:13] And I’m glad that we have a vision to address these issues. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Trussell. Yeah, I just wanna say that if we’re concerned about the benefits that we’re extending to the residents, I think that would be reflected in the attendance at the centers when the centers are open. But, you know, if there’s something in the contract that is raising concern, like there’s something untoward going on, I just feel like we’re on a fishing expedition sometimes. And I would just like to know what you’re looking for and what the concern is.

[3:32:48] And really, you’re gonna plow through all these contracts. I just, we just hear this all the time and I just don’t think that there’s any— All right, Councillor, I don’t want any cross debate. I saw Councillor Pribbles raise his hand. If you’re gonna cross debate, I’m gonna stop you. So go ahead, Councillor Pribble. So it’s a cross debate, just to our staff. What I was seeking off is really kind of what are the certain amounts that we spend with certain organizations and what they deliver.

[3:33:23] So I’m gonna go into the extreme. If I do analysis apples to apples, if one organization ends up giving us 10 beds for $50,000 or 20 beds for $50,000, I choose the organization for 20 beds. And if they have the space or they find the space, I’ll rather support them than the other one. So that’s really all I was looking for. And again, if I don’t have to compare it with analysis, then the only choice I have is are the contracts. So I just want to clarify this to the staff. No, I’m not trying to go through the contract line by line.

[3:33:59] I’m just trying to see what the dollar amounts, what they buy us, what they purchase us, what they deliver to the people who are in the most need in London. Thank you, Councillor, I’m gonna go to Ms. Smith. Go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, when we estimated the cost of this, for example, in each of the tiers, we looked out, for example, in tier one, and we looked at what is the cost per diem per bed, and because not per organization, but per bed.

[3:34:31] So you’re looking at what their current agreement already is, how many beds, what the nightly or per diem cost of that is, and then we’re adding, if organization A can add five beds, then we will do one bed times five. If organization B can do six beds, somebody else can do three beds. We did the same for, well, tier two is already signed and approved contract with council for tier three A for warming spaces. We did the same. We looked at what would it cost, for example, for one warming space times 50.

[3:35:04] So we looked at, on average, what it costs already to support A warming space, and then we multiplied that by 50. Similar to what we did for tier three B, I looked at what would it cost for one day. We looked at, we did that for 10 days. So again, it’s just an estimate of what it would cost for 10 days, and that’s what we estimated in tier three, because we activated for 10 days this past winter. Thank you, go ahead, council. Thank you, staff. I thank you for my terrific clarification. I just actually think that, again, the staff has done a really good job in this, and you presented to us really well.

[3:35:44] It was, I don’t know, four, five, six months ago. The only thing is that there were some changes. And as I said, they were actually changes that benefit us more, but we didn’t ask. I did ask for the update. It wasn’t supported by the council to get this update, which were actually benefits. I just wanted it, so there’s a continuity. And in the future, the future council’s councils, they can see it as well, where we were, where we moved into, and where we kind of came from. But I totally agree with you. I really love the comparative analysis, what you just mentioned, tier one, tier two, tier three, and I really liked the past as well.

[3:36:21] The only thing is that there were some updates that were not reflected. And again, those updates were actually positive ones. I’m done, thank you. That was perfect timing, councilor. Okay, other comments, questions? Councilor Omman, go ahead. Thank you and through you. So I want to thank staff for the report that’s in front of us, and also to the consultants that worked on this as well. I’m pleased that we’re here, that we’re able to have this conversation, and to be able to ask questions on these items. I did have a few questions, just in terms of, perhaps some of the things that are maybe my opinion missing in the report.

[3:37:02] And it’s specific to healthcare. So one of the things we keep talking about here at council is that housing is healthcare, and shelters healthcare, which I agree with. But I also think sometimes we’re missing the healthcare lens when we’re having these conversations. And rightly so, because that’s not the role that we play, typically as a city, but are playing more and more because of the situation that we’re faced with, with a lot of folks in our community living unhoused.

[3:37:36] Last year we heard anecdotes of people going to the hospital for treatment, because they were experiencing symptoms related to cold weather, whether that’s frostbite, or other health complications related to the weather. And I know I heard that they were being treated and released, even though the temperatures were at a place that they had nowhere else to go. So I’m wondering how our approach intertwines with healthcare, and intertwines with the necessity.

[3:38:20] And I know we talked about this in another report as well, the fact that a bed in a hospital is more expensive, but a bed in a hospital is a bed. And so for me, I wanna know that this approach that we’re going to use is a whole-of-community response approach, and I wanna know that the hospital system is also going to be ensuring that people have a bed. Thank you, Councillor. I’m gonna go to Mr. Dickens. Thank you, Chair, and through you.

[3:38:55] I can’t confirm the responsibilities of the hospital in terms of ensuring everyone has a bed. We know we just presented a report on some of the whole-of-community evaluation pieces, and identified some of the impacts of a healthcare system. It also recognized that some individuals leave against medical advice, or some people leave before they’re admitted, or some people simply just leave. This is difficult. What we are aiming to do is to create space that if people are outside in the elements, they have somewhere to go, albeit if they came from hospital or if they were never in hospital.

[3:39:36] We venture to try and create spaces so that people can access them at the coldest temperatures of the year. We, through some of our other teams, we have frontline workers that work directly with hospitals and other entities around discharge planning. So if an individual has been in care for a period of time and they’re being discharged, that there actually is a discharge plan in place, not always effective, not always thorough, but we do have a presence there to make those relationships and to try to prevent those scenarios.

[3:40:15] Understanding that these things can happen all hours of the day, all days of the week, whether we’re activated for a pop-up warming center space or we’re not. So it’s a point well made by the counselor. I know our teams share in that compassionate approach as well to try to limit or prevent the number of people that are experiencing homelessness from ending up on the streets after in medical care. It’s just not an area that we have a lot of control or influence over. Thank you, go ahead.

[3:40:48] Thank you. And I hope that we can continue conversations and I too will do so with our healthcare partners because I think it’s really important while they’re trying to maintain and achieve goals within emergency response in terms of time and hospital and costs that they have to control, it can’t be that one is sacrificed for the other and I want to ensure that. My next question is what would we do if we had someone that refused shelter in an extreme weather situation, sorry. Thank you.

[3:41:19] I will go to Mr. Aladdin, Sarah, go ahead. Through the chair, so obviously we can’t force people to go indoors, it is their choice. Generally when these incidents happen, extreme cold, our CRR team is out and about, as well as our outreach workers, that check on people and encourage them to go indoors. There are cases where someone may refuse to go indoors and if that’s the case, they would continue to check on them. So when something like this happens, we have the ability to obviously up our CRR team. So if we extend those hours to make safety checks on certain individuals, if it became to a point where it was so bitter cold and someone’s experiencing frostbite to the point they’re looking at causing harm to themselves, then obviously the police would be engaged and potentially under the mental health act and so forth if there was a belief that there was a mental illness involved.

[3:42:13] But we are out there, we’ve done it the last couple years. When we stood up the warming centers, we had teams out about checking on people, blessing people over, getting people into warm spots. Thank you, go ahead. Thank you. So that at the time when we have a temporary space for people to go to and they’re refusing to go there, then what does that do from a legal perspective? Thank you, go ahead. Through the chair, so obviously, as I said, people have the right to make those decisions only when it became a situation where it was so extreme that there could be a potential harm to those individuals, then again, we would engage the police.

[3:42:58] We don’t have obviously the authority to do any type of apprehension under the mental health act, but we would obviously do everything in our power to encourage people to go indoors. We would continue to provide support to those individuals even if they chose to remain outdoors, whether that’s providing warmer blankets and things like that to do current checks and future checks throughout the evening on those individuals. So it is a challenge, obviously, and we make those assessments on a case-by-case basis. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor.

[3:43:30] Thank you, and I appreciate the compassionate approach that’s taken. The concern I have is that if we’re resourcing Boyle Community Center at the time that we are experiencing extreme temperatures and we have to ensure that we have extra CIR on as well because we may have people that are refusing at the point that we are now saying that this is the path that we are taking as a system, then I’m just wondering how that will work in terms of our staffing, our complement, our ability to provide service and then having to provide extra service because people are refusing.

[3:44:09] So that is just something that I wanna, I guess, to think a little bit more in terms of what that might look like for the community and the supports that we’re providing and maybe that idea that we’ve gotten the health unit has now given us that threshold and based on the threshold, do we have more ability to help a person to go inside when they’re refusing? I did have a question about animals as well, if I can ask that question. So last year we heard there were a number of animals that were needing shelter at the same time, just wondering if Boyle will be able to handle that as well.

[3:44:48] Thank you, go ahead, Ms. Smith. Yes, and thank you through the chair. We were able to handle that at Boyle in no problem this past winter. We worked carefully with animal care control, cages and mussels if needed are required, which we didn’t, but we have cages, food and everything and we have our animal care and control that supports us. So if there is a dog, I believe there was one last year and the owner was the first to say that it wasn’t appropriate for this dog to be inside, that animal care and control took the dog for the evening from the owner at their request.

[3:45:26] So yes, animals, not just dogs, but animals are supported too. Thank you, Councillor, just a reminder, you have 50 seconds left, go ahead. Okay, in my 50 seconds I’ll ask about disaster relief, which was part of the original motion. I’m just wondering if we can comment on from a strategic perspective, does it make sense? And I think that was part of the question to engage from a disaster relief perspective, any funding if we were to declare a weather emergency.

[3:46:02] I think we’re hearing football scores. Thank you, Councillor. Go ahead, Mr. Leslie, let us hear. Yeah, through the chair, this is discussions that have gone across the province from CMCs across the province in relation to making declarations or recommendations for declarations. And I can say that speaking with my colleagues in other municipalities that have made declarations, it hasn’t resulted in extra funding to this point. Can’t say for certain what the future would bring, but generally looking at the EMCPA, so the Emergency Act, generally we look at that as a defined emergency with a point in time where we can go to a recovery piece in relation to that.

[3:46:55] So there was a lot of discussion of whether does it fit within the act in the sense of we’re dealing with complex social issues that certainly require a lengthy period of time and a lot of resourcing to work through. So we at that point did not see that there would be benefit from recommending any kind of declaration, not to say that at any point in time that couldn’t be brought back to the table depending on where we’re at in time and place. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor, 22 seconds.

[3:47:30] Thank you, I’ll just leave my final comments again. Thank you to staff, I appreciate all the information. I still think that the province could step up more when it comes to providing emergency relief as needed in our community, thank you. Thank you, okay, other comments? I do, okay, I’m gonna hand it over to my vice chair. Okay, I’m recognizing I have the chair, go ahead Councillor Ferris. Thank you, presiding officer. So I guess I’m gonna start with thank you for bringing this report. I really appreciate bringing in at the time that we did, I do not think we’re too early, I think this is the perfect time to have this discussion because the winner is right around the corner.

[3:48:11] Having just being prepared to quickly wind up, having a framework in mind, one that works with what we saw last winter, which we had a lot of very cold days more than what we expected. I think this is exactly what we need. On top of that, I would include, we do have, you know, the mayor’s micro shelter motion that’s coming to this committee in a few days, which is also gonna add capacity to the system. We do have the hard hubs, which they are beds, but they are focused on recovery and treatment, but they are beds, so we’re gonna have that capacity as well.

[3:48:49] So we are looking to be in a better position than what we’ve seen in past summer, so I am appreciative of that, and I know that this is gonna be quite helpful. I do have some questions. Councillor Raman asked some very good questions, so I’m not gonna ask the ones that she asked, so I got some extra ones that I just wanted to just confirm, and I guess the first one I would ask would be with any type of buffer period that we might have, and I wanna know, if we dip below the negative 15 threshold, for example, and we wind up this surge capacity, if we have a day that is above negative 15, but it is forecasted that we’re gonna be consistently below that threshold again, are we gonna be shutting down that surge capacity and winding it up again, or are we gonna have it open just to maintain a consistent opening?

[3:49:41] Thank you, and if you have for siding, Mr. for siding officer, that’s a good question. We ended up doing this last year, last winter, not last year, but earlier this year, and we had a day where it looked like it, and it was slightly warmer, but the next two days were not, so we maintained that open in the evenings for that full period, so we will look not just short range, but long range too. If it’s three, four, more days, no, but if it is that one day, and of course this is, I’m saying this now, projecting this, so if it’s two days, it could be depending on how many days it is after that, so we will look at what we can best do.

[3:50:27] Councilor? Thank you, and I guess my other question, most of my questions were exhausted, so I really have one more that I just wanted to kind of confirm, and that would be with the potential of those who refuse our warming centers that we’re bringing about. I know that there’s a good proportion of individuals who will not refuse, but then there’s a proportion of individuals who will refuse, and I just wanted to just, I guess, ask in a different way than how Councilor Raman asks, and ask, how do we ensure that we do capture both populations as equally as possible, so we can just make sure that everybody does have a chance?

[3:51:09] Go ahead, sir. I’ll start, Mr. Presenting Officer, and I’ll pass it on to Mr. Gladyser if needed. So individuals are known to the outreach workers, known to CIR, these organizations have built relationships with folks where this service will be known. The other scaling up will be known, organizations and agencies will be communicating this too. So we start from a place of, we’re trying to make sure everybody possible has all the information possible so that they know to access it.

[3:51:46] What those professionals do on the ground is, they start to encounter those hesitations, they probe those concerns of why you might not come when the weather’s cold. We don’t just leave at the chance and see who comes and who doesn’t. The outreach workers are phenomenal at building those relationships and almost coaxing people to their own benefit to come indoors. So when they encounter individuals that are reluctant or concerned or outright refuse, they know in advance of what that looks like. They then look at what alternatives would look like if it’s not a warming center, but also what would need to be in place in order to come inside.

[3:52:24] Sometimes it’s just misconceptions. And I’m not gonna go because I can’t bring my dog. Actually, you can. We’ve got a great spot for pets. So we do that work ahead of time to make sure it’s facilitated. Real life examples last year, this earlier this year, we’re providing services at CHOC, for example, and individuals might wanna leave during their stay, perhaps a conflict or a concern, or they just don’t feel like they can stay anymore. Teams will do whatever we can to de-escalate the situation and ensure someone has what they need, try to have them stay, perhaps relocate to a quiet area, make some minor changes with tables and chairs to see if we can make that work.

[3:53:04] And if not, it’s about trying to ensure the person has what they need that we can give them in the moment to try to keep them as safe as possible. And that might be, we’ve got extra dry clothing and socks and hats and meds. Let’s triple up those layers. Let’s give you a blanket, things like that. And then outreach workers through our system are notified of that individual and some of those concerns so that people can, in the regular course of their business, try to check on those individuals. Any more questions, Councillor? Thanks, Presiding Officer, Ms. Smith.

[3:53:40] Go ahead, Ms. Smith. Thank you. And just quickly through you, Mr. Presiding Officer, a great example of this. When we first opened up, I think the first night we had 40, we slowly increased to 60. By night four, we had 120. So I think people wanna come out of the inside and when there’s trust and understanding in the end, they understand what’s available there. It’s just someplace warm to go, have a coffee, have a muffin, get a blanket, some warm socks. It’s showed by the numbers. And hence why we looked at a tiered response up to 200 beds because I believe we had 120 to 130 by the last couple of nights of our pop-up warming center.

[3:54:25] Any more questions? Thank you, Presiding Officer. I did say that was the last one, but I was just kind of hearing the great answer that I heard from Mr. Dickens and Ms. Smith. So I just wanna ask one more. So the Middlesex London Health Unit did mention in Appendix B or whatever appendix that they were in, that there is a very clear indication that at milder temperatures, not as cold as negative 15, but between the negative five to negative 15, there are still risks to people.

[3:54:57] There are people are still at risk. So if we do find that in that range of the tiered response that we still have more, I guess, demand for capacity than the capacity that we’re able to provide, are we going to get a report back to this committee or are we gonna be able to have the ability to flex and bring up more surge within that band of temperature range? So my question is basically, are we gonna get any feedback where the amount of people who have sought this extra space if we’re at that capacity and we do see that there is more demand than that, are we gonna be able to flex that in a future year or would we be able to do that this year?

[3:55:45] Just half when you’re ready, go ahead. Thank you, and three, Mr. Presiding Officer, part of the recommendation coming out of the consultants report and that what civic administration talked about was doing an evaluation plan. So definitely working alongside with our partner, our service organizations and with the Middlesexland and Health Unit who we engage very early in this process and have been very supportive and have assisted us in developing this framework because we will evaluate that. And because this is weather dependent too, I think last winter was a bit of an anomaly.

[3:56:19] So we’ll see what happens this winter. And definitely this is a framework that will be evolving. And if we have to make changes and if we need to come to council, we will before we activate it again for 2026, 2027. Any more questions? No, that’s my last question, Presiding Officer. I will just make these last closing comments. I am gonna be in full support of this. I think the value that comes here with both just individuals not having to suffer in the cold if they don’t have any other place to stay.

[3:56:55] The value of neighborhoods and communities around individuals who are unhoused, I think it goes well beyond the amount of money that we have here, the $3.6 million. This is gonna be money well spent. In this report, I did like to see just touching on the wind up costs. So we’re avoiding the wind up costs when it comes to the crowded water spaces. So for me, if we don’t fund this, we will have that many more people on the street with no assistance. So it’s kind of a no brainer for me on this one. Obviously, I wanna see as much more support as we can.

[3:57:30] I hear comments of having more of a provincial entity support that would be able to bring in more capacity in that respect, province wide. I’d like to see obviously when it comes 10 seconds, okay, well, I would just like to see as more support as we can because this is one of the biggest priorities of the city, so I’ll leave it there. Okay, thank you, Councillor Ferra. We’ll return the chair to you. I do just have a few quick questions to ask. So I’m putting myself back on the speaker’s list while I hand you back the chair.

[3:58:02] Thank you, Councillor McAllister. You have one minute and 14 seconds, so go ahead. Thank you and through the chair. I really do appreciate the discussion, by the way. We’re having today, I think this is really important, especially going into the winter. I think this is something that a lot of lenders are interested to hear about. I did have a question ‘cause it was in the consultant’s report and we haven’t touched on it yet. So I’m wondering, it did identify the role of volunteers. So one of the questions I got a lot last winter was people reaching out from my area in wantoners in general, asking, and I’m speaking specifically with the city response ‘cause obviously service providers, I think people know you can go to the site and go to donations, but I’m wondering from our perspective, is it helpful, is it a hindrance?

[3:58:46] Like, what is our response in terms of managing volunteers for these sites? Thank you, go ahead, Ms. Smith. Thank you and through the chair, that’s correct. When the consultants went out, we had a number of organizations that said, we don’t have space to offer, it’s not accessible, or the hours are right, but we’d be willing to provide food, provide blankets, and we had that, and volunteers actually show up and drop off food and supplies at our warming centers. We provided at Boyle and at Carlin Heights this past winter.

[3:59:20] So that is our big role. We’ve also had conversations with Red Cross and St. John’s Ambulance, who are more than willing to help and support us with staffing these two. So the next step passed by council is, I can only speak to, I’m speaking to, the pop-up warming center at that 3B surge, is that we will look to develop a plan, what that looks like. There would be a communication strategy, and we will thank you for this suggestion. Clearly, articulate if you want to provide food, blow the blankets, socks, here is what and how you can do it.

[3:59:56] Thank you, councilor, you got 31 seconds, go ahead. Thank you, through the chair. Appreciate that, it was just something that we were talking that I definitely had questions about last year. And still on that note, one of the things I also found interesting was, ‘cause it speaks to the faith groups, and recognizing that it also says in the report that sometimes the spaces aren’t necessarily available for the longer term, right? And so one of the things I encountered last year, which I thought was interesting, was on a temporary basis, say in surge capacity issues, some of them seemed amenable to that.

[4:00:33] But the question, and I’ve had this from different groups since, is how do they operate something on a temporary basis? And the worry is, I mean, it’s not sanctioned by the city, is that something that we’re potentially contemplating, that if we are in a situation where shelters are full, and for instance, churches— Okay, councilor, I gotta cut you off, I gave you like 15 extra seconds. I’ll just end on that question, but I’m just curious, if we have the ability to do that. Ms. Smith, go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, that’s why we looked at, when we looked and tried to consider other models, we don’t know.

[4:01:09] Hopefully we don’t have to activate tier three. But if we do, you’re right, it’s last minute. We talked, for example, to Western Fair, who said there are days where we’re empty, but there’s days where we’re on, and we can’t cancel a concert or event or a hockey at the last minute. So that is why, after talking to some of the organizations who potentially it’s based, because we can’t guarantee, it was easier, I’m hoping it’s easier, for a city staff and city facilities to activate, probably with maybe 24 hours notice.

[4:01:44] Thank you. I have the deputy mayor, next. Go ahead, deputy mayor, Lewis, you have five minutes. Thank you, chair. And I’m gonna try and be as brief as I was earlier. Generally, I can support this, but picking up on Councilor McAllister’s comments and the staff report on the faith communities and concerns about not all the faith community buildings are accessible, and we just heard Ms. Smith’s response around timing, but I have to say, I think more work needs to be done there.

[4:02:23] I think in an emergency situation, the fact that not all of the spaces are going to be accessible shouldn’t necessarily be a barrier. There’s not everyone requires an accessibility accommodation. And so if we have a space that is accessible and we can direct people there, I’m not sure why we couldn’t look at spaces that perhaps do have some accessibility limitations for those who don’t require accommodations in that way. And I wonder if staff can comment on that at all.

[4:02:58] Not talking about the staffing. That’s a different question. I’m gonna have a follow up on that, but I wanna talk about the accessibility piece that was raised and why we can’t on an emergency basis. I mean, if we have a tornado or a train derailment, heaven forbid those things happen, but if that were to happen and a church would open up their space for people, I think we would welcome it accessible or not. So why would we not consider that in a cold weather situation? Thank you Deputy Mayor, Ms. Smith, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair, I apologize when I said accessible, I meant that they have more available.

[4:03:35] That we need, when we had conversations with them or when they consulted it and look in our organization, it was the availability and our lack of guarantee of when we would be able to do this, how this might need to be activated in less than 24 hours and staffed. Some of the challenges with organizations too, besides not knowing when, but was also the staffing of them and the availability of having volunteers work overnight. Thank you, Deputy Mayor, go ahead.

[4:04:10] Thank you then. Sorry Deputy Mayor, let me just interrupt you there. Mr. LaDuceira has something to add to that. So let’s go for you. Just through the chair. So the other piece of this is because we can’t guarantee that those spaces would always be available. If it got to that point, emergency management, I mean, there doesn’t need to be a declaration for emergency management to obviously activate. And we have a number of resources. We connect a lot with the faith-based organizations as well as different businesses that we would start sourcing space if it got to that point.

[4:04:43] I think the piece here is so that we’re not in a mad scramble when we get to that next level, that we have a reliable space guaranteed. And then if that surged capacity beyond that, we’d start looking outside. Thank you, Mr. LaDuceira, back to you, Deputy Mayor. Fair enough through you chair and the tag team response there made it even more helpful than just the first half of the response. So I appreciate both of those comments. I still think that more discussions need to be had with the faith communities about their role in helping with this.

[4:05:18] But I do hear as well, staff saying, we’re gonna be evaluating again this year on the outcomes, what that looks like moving forward. I understand that not being able to predict the weather, which even today we can’t do with great precision despite forecast things change. And I recognize how that could be a challenge. Although I do think that there’s opportunities for particularly where there’s partnerships. If we have two Anglican churches, and I’m just throwing this out as an example that we’re interested, well, if the use is required on a Sunday and it’s gonna disrupt a service that it might be possible to accommodate both congregations on a short term.

[4:06:07] But I do understand the logistic challenges. So that’s a little different than canceling contracts, for example, for a concert or something, which comes with its whole additional financial consequence. So I can understand why that’s not an option. But I do wonder if some more discussion around this needs to be had. But that’s a discussion for another day. I do appreciate the answers we got because the report, when I read it and heard the accessibility piece, I appreciate the clarification from our staff on that, that in an emergency situation.

[4:06:40] And I would agree with you, Mr. Letusser, through you chair that a state of emergency declaration hasn’t proven to be the route to go on these things because the province and I agree with Councilor Rahman that they should be doing more, but they haven’t. And so I think what we have before us today, I don’t love it, but I recognize that this is where we have to go for now. And I do appreciate being able to have this conversation in September instead of the middle of November. Thank you.

[4:07:14] Okay, I’m looking for any last comments, questions? Councillor Trusso, yep, go ahead. My recollection is through the chair that what Council asked you to prepare was a framework. And you did that and you exceeded it. And I think some of the questions you received were very good questions. Went beyond, I think, a framework, but thank you for providing us with a workable framework. And with that, nothing else to say. Thank you, okay.

[4:07:48] This is when we are my last call, anybody. I think we have had a very good exhaustive discussion here. Okay, let’s call the question. Closing the vote, the motion carries six to zero. That leaves us with our last poll item and that is item 2.6.

[4:08:21] That’s the winter overnight parking policy changes. I believe that there potentially could be a motion. Okay, looking for a committee for staff recommendation or motions. Okay, Councillor McAllister moving the staff recommendation seconded by Councillor Pribble. Okay, now looking for a speaker’s list, questions, comments, Mayor Morgan, go ahead. Yeah, and I hope, I know people only want to speak to the main motion.

[4:08:59] I just want to make our proposed an amendment for committee. I like a lot of the report. The one thing I thought seemed a little high was the per night rate that was being charged for parking overnight beyond the $15, $15 seemed very high. I’d chat up with their staff about what might be a reasonable number. And they said $5, $5 per night would be it. So if you park for 10 nights, it’d be 50 bucks or 20 would be more. So I have the language for an adjustment direction to adjust the fees by-law to put that at $5 instead of $15. So I’d like to propose that amendment if there’s support.

[4:09:36] Thank you, looking for a seconder. Seconder by Councillor Cutty. Okay, let’s refresh your E-Scribe. And now I’ll be looking for speakers list for the amendment, speakers list for the amendment. Nobody, Councillor Pribble, go ahead. Okay, you were looking for a comment.

[4:10:13] So I said that will be supporting. You Councillor, any other comments, questions? Last call, okay, let’s call the question. I’m not. Sorry, Councillor, go ahead, Councillor Stevenson. No worries. I just wanted to, my understanding was the $15 a night was to make it a deterrent because of the impact of the cars being parked there when the snow plow was on. So $5 a night is $150 a month. So is the intent that then we don’t mind people parking during the winter as much?

[4:10:48] I’m just curious. That is a comment for the committee, it seems. If anybody raises their hands, you’re free to answer the comment if you’d like. Mayor Morgan, go ahead. So I can’t speak to what staff I think about this, I can tell you my own intent here. My thought here is if the fine is $50 and you charge $15, people are probably gonna roll the dice and maybe not even pay the 15 and hope they don’t get caught. If you put it at five, they probably pay it.

[4:11:21] I think the deterrent is the fine. At the end of the day, what I support is staff creating a registry to ensure that if we need people to clear the streets in the winter, that we can. So I’m not too worried as much about the deterrent piece. I think the fine is the deterrent piece. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I have Deputy Mayor Lewis with his hand, go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I’m supportive of this. The math that was just given the $150 a month, I think that that is a reasonable sort of approach to comparing does this make sense when you consider that a parking stall, even if you’re in a new building downtown and you wanna get a second stall, it’s gonna cost you worth of $200 a month to do that.

[4:12:12] So to say to folks in other parts of the city who don’t have that ability because there’s no spaces available. And I know that some residents, even in my ward, have been talking to their property management companies where every unit has a stall, can they register for a second stall and take away from some of the visitor parking, but that’s not gonna be an option in every space. And I would rather that they take the opportunity to park on the street when we don’t need them out of the way of the snow plows and such, rather than what we sometimes see with the front yard parking and gambling on getting a ticket there, not registering and gambling on getting a ticket there.

[4:12:59] I do think that this is something that we’re gonna continue to have discussions around, not just the winter parking, but I know on planning and environment committees, deferred matters, we are still waiting to come back to minimum, maximum driveway widths and front yard parking and driveway widening to allow people to recognize the multi-generational family living might have need for an extra parking spot in the interim until we get to a point where perhaps people can create some new spots on their homes for the vehicles, I think this is a good approach.

[4:13:38] Thank you Deputy Mayor. All right, comments, questions? Let’s call the question. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Okay, that was the motion as amended. Going back to the main motion, questions, comments, Councilor McAllister, go ahead. Thank you and through the chair.

[4:14:11] I have a question which may lead me to an amendment, but it would not be a big change. It’s more, I’m just looking at the dates. So when I looked at the table that was provided, my issue is the front end of this. So switching from November 1st to November 15th. And my issue is usually when we spool up services, there’s a bit of a delay. And recognizing from the chart that was provided, November had more dates for the maintenance than March-April. I’m a less concerned about springtime, I’m more concerned about the start of winter.

[4:14:46] And my issue is ensuring that the roads are cleared and actually being able to deploy the snowplows appropriately. And so I’m wondering if staff can speak a bit more. In the table, it just said November generally is a month, but my issue is the start of this service. And I think delaying it by two weeks might have issues in the start of the season. So if you’d comment as to where we were seeing the usage in the month. Thank you, Councillor. I will go to Ms. Chair. I can certainly start and Mr. Mathers may have some things to add.

[4:15:20] Generally we do see those events later in November, but weather is weather is so it isn’t entirely predictable. We worked closely with our colleagues on Mr. Mathers team and we’re comfortable that this change can be accommodated. If we’re seeing issues as weather patterns change, we would certainly come back and take a look at those dates again. Thank you, through the chair as well. The direction back to staff from council was to look at these dates on November 15th, March 31st. So that was the other reason why we actually focused on these dates. Thank you, go ahead.

[4:15:54] Okay, I’m still going to put forward my amendment to keep it at November 1st. I don’t mind changing the latter half, but seeing the seven events and not knowing an unpredictability of weather these days, I’m still more comfortable keeping the start at November 1st, just also recognizing again, the spooling up of services. I just think it to be good to air on the side of caution in terms of the start of service. So I’m gonna put forward that amendment to keep the start date at November 1st. I’m still fine with ending it on March 31st, but I’d like to stick with November 1st.

[4:16:29] Thank you, okay. We have an amendment, just a second, just a second, Councillor, from the chair to staff.

[4:17:04] The changing of the dates from November 1st to November 15th was a previous council direction. Is that correct? Mr. Chair, it was in the direction that was provided to council and this report was instructed to be prepared or provided from council, pardon me. Go to the mayor.

[4:17:42] Yes, so not that I get to decide these things, but I looked at the direction and it said, the administration will be directed to do a bunch of things, including consideration of a revised timeline from November 15th and March 31st. So if you’re talking about a decided matter of council, I don’t think considering something is a decided matter. So I might not support the council’s amendment, but I fully support them being able to make it based on that language. Okay, thank you. Just, okay, I’m getting nods, okay, good. Just to make sure that we can make such an amendment. Okay, so I have the amendment on the floor to not change the date from the 1st to the 15th.

[4:18:19] Keep it at the 1st, so I’m looking for a seconder. Okay, last call online. Okay, there’s no seconder council. Councilor, back to the main. Looking for any other speakers, questions, comments? None, last call, none. Councilor Raman. Thank you and through you. So this is on the main, correct? That’s correct, as amended.

[4:18:53] Okay, the main as amended. So my question actually pertained to the driveway, a Britain parking that was cited in the report. We looked at the St. Thomas pilot and what they were doing, there were no takers on the St. Thomas pilot. It looks like there was a little more restricted than I thought it was gonna be, but that was good reading. I just wanted to ask, it says right now that we’re, that we actually allow parking on the driveway for now, just wanting clarification. Thank you, Councilor, Ms. Pepper. Thank you and through you, Chair.

[4:19:28] So currently we allow for perpendicular parking, perpendicular to the roadway parking, given the apron dimensions and that they’re sufficient. The St. Thomas pilot looked at parallel parking on the apron, so that would be the distinction. And I think the rationale behind that relates to a motorist ability to maneuver the vehicle into the space without causing damage to the surrounding Boulevard. Thank you, go ahead. Thank you, through you. So I think that probably requires maybe some more education to the public because I know folks that have complained to me that they’ve gotten tickets for parking on the apron.

[4:20:09] So, and not because they were parked over the sidewalk or anything like that, just that they were actually the other direction. So I guess that’s something I need clarification. So just to be clear though, for winter maintenance and operation, if people are parked on their driveway apron, it’s not going to conflict with snow removal in the area. Thank you, I will go to Ms. Chair, go ahead. With respect to the current by-law and the parking perpendicular, generally those are fairly large apron spaces within the Boulevard and can be accommodated.

[4:20:47] Certainly the parallel would increase number of locations or that’s possible significantly and that would create significant operational concerns with our ability to deliver our service in a timely way without damaging potentially vehicles that are parked on that space. We don’t seal a great deal of this in terms of our winter operations. So, and it would certainly be our advice to keep it that way. Thank you, go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, that’s very helpful. I appreciate the information that’s shared here and appreciated discussion. Thank you.

[4:21:20] All right, last call, call the question. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. All right, that concludes all items for direction. Next is deferred matters additional business. I have one that is an added the sixth report in the environmental stewardship and action community advisory committee.

[4:22:04] Looking for a mover for the recommendation in the report moved by Councillor Cudi, seconded by Councillor Per beau. Okay, looking for a speakers list. Let me call us there, go ahead. I just want to do this, sorry, through you. I just want to do this now because with our last report, I’m just wondering would these be requested in terms of what’s being requested for civic administration?

[4:22:40] Do they see any issue with that? Thank you, Councillor. Anybody who wants to take this one, go ahead, Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, the only item that we see that here that actually speaks to be requested is for staff to attend a future meeting, discuss the work plan and we’re happy to be here.

[4:23:21] Thank you, Councillor. Okay, I will make one last call online. Okay, let’s call the question. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Okay, that’s it for deferred matters additional business. We have one more item, that’s a confidential. Four items for in-confidential session. So I’m looking for a mover to go in a closed session. Moved by Councillor McAllister, seconded by Councillor Cuddy.

[4:23:55] Let’s call the question. Okay, let’s do a hand vote, all those in favor? All those opposed? That motion carries. Just give staff a moment to rejig the room. Okay, we’re back in open session.

[4:26:14] I’m gonna go to my vice chair to report. Thank you through the chair. We went into a closed session and just reporting that progress was made on the items for which we went into closed session for. Thank you, vice chair. That leads us to adjournment, looking for a motion to adjourn. Moved by Councillor Cuddy, seconded by Councillor McAllister. Hand vote, all those in favor? All those opposed, we’re carried. Motion carries, we’re adjourned. Thank you.