So I would like to remind members of a few procedural rules for today's meeting. All electronic
devices including cellular telephones will be placed inside of the mold during the meeting. All
microphones must be kept muted when not speaking. At the beginning of the meeting, it will conduct
a roll call and I will record the members who are participating remotely. On any item, when
the chair asks for a mover or a seconder, please raise your hand to mover second item.
The
All voting will be conducted as majority votes,
but the chair will call for all those in favor
on all those opposed to the motion in front of the board.
If you're opposed to the motion,
unmute your mic and indicate your opposition
by stating your name and saying opposed.
If you wish to speak to an item,
please send a personal WebEx chat message directly
to the chair.
The chat icon is served from the right on your control bar
that can be accessed by hovering over your meeting screen.
When the chair invites you to speak,
you can unmute yourself to speak.
And just a reminder that this meeting is being audio and video recorded and live streamed
on the TRCA website.
I will now conduct a roll call of the meeting.
Erika Braben, are you there?
Erika?
Absent?
Michelle Brown?
I am here.
Thank you.
Brad Shiddick.
Tim Favry.
I am here on the phone.
I can't get in on the web.
Crystal Meiki.
Thank you.
I'm here. Good afternoon, everyone.
Present, Scott Hendershot.
Got it here.
Present, Jack Heath.
Present,
Jim Carajanas.
Councillor Carajanas,
I did see Councillor Carajanas earlier.
Thank you.
Max Kachar.
Max,
absent.
John McKenzie.
Here.
Larry Miller,
thank you, Scott Pegg,
Theresa shootings, Theresa,
Absent, Paul Vicente,
Doug Willins,
Doug Re there,
Absent, and Chair Coin,
and Chair Ernst.
Thank you.
We now have Quorum, and over to the co-chairs, the meeting is yours.
That's where Daniel Max is here. I think he was having some of these unmuting.
I did see that. Thank you.
Okay. So the next items are approved.
Well, actually there are two meeting minutes approvals.
I guess we'll just take them in order.
The July 25th, 2019 minutes. Any comments?
Concerns with the approve?
It's you shall hear our freedom.
I
think I saw Paul's hand seconding
and the next set of minutes was from November 28,
2019, also in close approval
or any comments, one comment,
through your chair.
I noticed that there's an inconsistency in the description besides names for Councillor
and for myself what listed for our respective cities
in the previous minutes what listed for Regent Peele?
I'm not sure if that matters at all.
It's just a small fix.
So we'll adjust them both so that we reflect the cities then?
Yes.
Okay.
Any other comments?
So if there was adjustments,
we'll give it a second.
You just gave it a move.
We're going to move in a second after that.
We have a move.
Yep.
Looks like Paul, I'll second that.
Okay.
Item number four.
Disclosure of pd.
Interest in general.
Make sure they're up.
Who does this item?
I just for anybody to declare if they have any interest in the matters to come in.
Okay.
I believe.
So without any disclosures.
It's up to anybody to disclose the pd.
Have any interest?
All right, similar to delegations, presentations and correspondence, and I think Darryl said we have nothing for those items.
So we're just moving straight into the items for action and Darryl's presentation.
Thank you, everybody, and welcome to PPG EMC.
So the two reports under Section 8 are for action on your behalf.
The first report is on the Strategic Priorities for 2020, and this is really just providing
you with an update on the things that the team is working on on your behalf and on behalf
of the businesses that we serve.
Obviously, the first portion of this year has been unusual as everybody is well aware.
So Jeff will later on in the meeting give a presentation on how we've adapted to COVID
and how we've responded to the needs of our business community during this time.
But the report of 8.1 really just lays out some of the things that we're working on in 2020
to develop some energy around the program and build on the strategic refresh that was approved
in 2019.
I won't get into the details of the report itself.
You have it in front of you, but the intent is really to do two things.
One is to re-energize this group as well as the broader network, but also start to create
a framework for improved collaboration amongst programs within TRC that lays the framework for
leveraging better opportunities and amongst TRC's activities as we work out.
So some of the work that we've been doing as a team is developing an integrated strategy,
integrated through a delivery model that makes connections between things like PPG and our
Sustainable Neighborhood Program, PPG, and our Sustainable Technology Evaluation Program,
so that we can start to bring in some more of the programs that we offer and deliver
to your CA and enhance the work that we're doing within the business community.
A key part of this is the long-term financial strategy for PPG as well as the programs at
your CA.
We're working on a long-term financial plan that reflects this program as it continues to
grow and evolve through the next five years as we work to implement the strategic plan
refresh.
And the last one, if you're looking at how, within that long-term financial plan, how
our foundation fits within all of this.
We have a foundation that has a long history of raising money for the communities that we
as a conservation authority serve, we're looking at ways that we can leverage the programs and
services we deliver to our communities to raise awareness of the foundation but also create
giving opportunities for our community to make sure that if we as we come out of COVID those
communities that are feeling acute financially still have access to some of the programs that
are still vital to making. That's an overview of that. If there's any questions, I'm happy to
entertain them.
Thank
you for that. Just have a couple quick quick questions. One is kind of a thought.
re-energizing the network under the heading of RASH now and particular emphasis on boards
of trade and chambers of commerce municipal economic development offices.
Can I suggest that there are members of the steering committee, and I would volunteer for
this, that should be trying to present EPG to the boards of any of those organizations,
during the fiduciary boards for those organizations so that they can get an introduction to PPG to get it from a member of the steering committee, a member of the business community.
If that is viewed as helpful in trying to engage them.
I would hope that it would be and with the design a pretty quick presentation, most people are going to be meeting virtually so you can just dial in and make quick presentation.
and then step out of those meetings, but make it a little bit more impactful if somebody
from the steering committee was available for doing that.
And I'm not volunteering everybody, but you know, we can help, okay, I would expect.
I'd say that would be a fantastic, I appreciate that.
To River.
Thank you, Doug.
The send-in thing was, and again, still under the heading of rationale, and this is more
in the nature of a thought, because I really don't know how to figure this out.
The last two bullets here, develop a long-term financial plan for sector-based programs
and services, leverage opportunities to provide quilted employee engagement.
I think at the next go-around, and this probably takes a little bit back to my curiosity about
what's happening with CRCA as well earlier, so I'm really glad that John's here, so we can
deal with that under the business at the end.
But how we tack into the federal and provincial financial challenges and opportunities as well,
I think I'd like to hear a little bit more about how that kind of connects both from
the business point of view, but particularly for the TRCA and PPG directly.
I, for frankly, lost track of how the governments are now financing a variety of activities
during COVID but there's going to be a lot of work coming out of this and a lot of financial
elements to it. So I'd just like to understand how we can connect those pieces a little bit and
maybe that's something for the next discussion. I know it could have been picked up in some of Jeff's
work but I'm thinking down the line as well. And through the chair it's John here. John thank you
I'm very excited by your question, I think it's the right question to be asking right now for our team.
We have and working especially closely with the region appeal and I have to say with Christine to you and Andrew Barr and the team at the region.
And of course, you know, our team here that is on the call, which I'm thrilled about.
But we have such a great support from our team, especially the communication that we
continue on here.
We've been able to get some support for the EV charging stations, and we've got a sense
of that.
Some of that is moving in the right direction.
and we'll be able to give you a better update on that shortly.
But on the other ones, we have been briefing the 416 caucus of MTS.
We have had our board of directors at TRCA write to ministers in McKenna, minister Wilkinson
and environment.
We have had a reach to the various ministers' offices, especially around designing programs
that make sense.
As part of any infrastructure stimulus, we want to make sure that it's something that's
supported by our municipalities.
We understand they're under extreme stress on the public health side.
So things like the local share and Leary can speak to this and this issue has come up at the
region appeal and again, Larry, your support and your conduit to the region has been very
helpful.
But this whole issue of local share and the percentage of that, most of these programs
require a significant local share and as an example, disaster mitigation adaptation funding
last year, it was 60% and 60% local share.
So the region or municipal partner had to put up 60% to get that 40% from the federal government.
So that's very challenging, that'll be even next to impossible in this context of post-COVID
to achieve that.
So we've been asking for them to design programs that make more sense, where there's less local share,
where there's the triple bottom line is accounted for, a little bit better in what they deliver.
So that messaging's gone forward, and we can speak to it in more specifics later on.
and I think that's a good idea when we come back
and when we report back, I think we can include
a great deal more information about our activities.
But really, a lot of it's been focused
at the senior levels of government
making sure that if they are going to design programs,
that to design them with that in mind.
At the provincial level, we've reached out to Lori Scott
and our Chair Jennifer Innis' of TRCA
has been helping me on this reach out
and we've been delivering these presentations
to senior staff, and we also have, through the Climate Change panel, we have Pat Covell,
who's the Chair of the TRCF, the Toronto Region Conservation Foundation, who's sitting
on Minister Eurick's panel, that's on...
Climate Change Advisory Panel right now. And we, through her and through members of the panel, have been putting forward suggestions about how we could advance green, the green agenda through the economic stimulus agenda. If there's any of that that comes forward, how we could advance resiliency as a whole. So those are, that's a snapshot. I don't want to get into too much more detail, but we do have a lot of efforts underway. And Darrell, please feel free to add anything I missed.
Thanks, John. Through the chair.
I think that, I mean, that's a pretty good overview of what's taking place.
I think what we could take is direction to staff to come back with a more detailed report
on some of the things that John touched on as well as some other areas that we think specifically
applied to PPG and the membership that we serve.
It may also be a good option for us to work with through you as the MC into the boards of trades
and chambers of commerce as well to get some input into that report from them.
If we were to frame that from two perspectives, one is what's PPG's role in supporting
the recovery, as well as what's PPG's role in supporting a recovery that improves the
sustainability performance at the same time as economic renewal.
So getting back to some of the investment in the green economy that we'll see ideally.
Is that what you're looking for, John?
much better, thank you. And I appreciate the way both of you tackled that. There's going to be a lot to talk about. Pat Kobo is a great dealmaker, so it'll be, see how to reforming next time you're chatting with her, but, you know, she's the kind of person that we should also be having the right kind of dialogue with as we kind of treat this as well, given her understanding of the business community as well.
Okay,
so the next item up is proposed 2020 meeting schedule.
So the next report is 8.2 is really just an overview of the meeting schedule for the
remainder of the year.
We currently have them set it, and as I mentioned in my email last week, as they're set
at 6.30, sort of anticipating that this will drag on for a while yet.
Our goal is to have these meetings be efficient with your time.
If there's a significant conflict by all means, let me know.
We've aimed to work these meeting dates around council schedules wherever possible that we
can see.
However, if there's something that we've missed, let Jeff or I know, and we can work with
the clerk's office.
If there's a major conflict.
Sorry to interrupt, but could we get a mover and a seconder for 8.1, please?
Oh, sorry, yes.
Chris and Jack.
So is this Chris?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay,
so we have a mover in the secondary, move on to item 8.2,
anything else on 8.2?
Or should we move from there?
A mover in the secondary on 8.2?
For a mover, he did not see enough of the faces here for the secondary.
Very.
Okay, so item 9.1, update on the PPG programming.
Okay, fantastic. Tom John, can you hear me?
Again, yes.
Perfect.
Okay, thanks very much. So fantastic to meet everyone on the line today.
My name is Jeff Roberts and there are a few individuals here that I haven't had the chance to meet yet.
So pleasure to to eat you individuals and hope that we get opportunities to meet face-to-face soon
or at least computer to computer.
So, my background, I'm incoming into the World Senior Manager with Partners in Project
Green.
I come from a 10-year background in Sustainability, predominantly in the consulting world, working
for a few different professional services firms, and engineering firms like Pinchin and
Deloitte.
So, I won't deliver that point, but pleasure to meet you all, and this item on the agenda
really just to cover some of the ways in which our service offerings and programming have been
adapted in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So we'll proceed to the next slide please.
And if I can give you the summary in the three main points, it would be these three.
The majority of our programs and deliverables within the PPG team here at TRCA
continue and are on schedule and the second point would be that we're converting
naturally all of our formerly in-person events meetings conferences and
roundtables to virtual environments at least for the time being and then the
third point would be that we've increased the focus of our programming and our
cross promotion on elements that allow the residents of our jurisdictions as
as well as the businesses that are part of our member network
to implement sustainable practices within the home.
So there are a couple of key developments
in those areas that we'll go through
over the coming slides.
In particular, I think what I'll do is I'll give a very quick,
maybe one or two seconds run down
of some of these programs for any individuals
who could use a refresher.
The Energy Leaders Consortium has been meeting
for several years now, and it's a roundtable style committee where energy leaders across
multiple industries can come together, share best practices, and learn from industry experts.
So, as far as adapting the programming to COVID-19, we've moved these consortium meetings to
an online setting, and we do some mix of a roundtable session where our members can share best
practices and seek support and advice from each other, as well as guest speakers and
informational content.
So some months it will be both, some months it will be one or the other, but we've continued
to see good movement in progress for the ELC.
So next slide please,
an additional consortium that we're running that's focused on energy
management is the small and medium enterprise energy management consortium.
So, this is a neat program partially funded by the IESO that allows us to provide funding
to up to 10 small and medium enterprises to implement sustainable and energy reduction
either monitoring or energy reduction technologies.
So, at present, we have five of the 10 locked in and confirmed contractually, and there are
two contracts that are in the works and likely to be wrapped up within the next
several weeks. And so we anticipate that we'll have seven of the ten confirmed
and likewise we've moved these quarterly workshops into an online space
and are meeting the demand for some of the workshops in sort of a conversion
fashion with our green economy webinar series which we've also
kicked off in view of the COVID pandemic.
So next slide, please.
Our events are a few of our sort of hallmark offerings,
and at least for the PBG Connect Spring Networking event,
we move that as well to an online setting.
I had a solid attendance of over 200
and had panelists including John Coyne
to present on the topic of plastic mitigation.
And we followed that up with a networking session after the webinar to sort of mimic the typical
PPG Connect Spring Networking event.
And in view of the fact that a lot of our members are looking for ways to continue to pursue training professional development
and sustainable practices, even in a time when face-to-face meetings aren't really on the table.
We kicked off the Green Economy Webinar Series, which is a monthly series of webinars,
where topics really vary every month, and we tend to bring in industry experts
who can provide some useful content for our members.
So we just had one on May 27th on the business case for a natural infrastructure,
collaborating with some of our other TRCA partners,
and our next is on June 24th on Sustainability Reporting,
with an industry partner named FIGBITES.
So looking forward to that one.
And if anyone, by the way, has questions on
any of the Green Economy webinar series,
please don't hesitate to reach out.
And finally, just by way of update on the PPG forum,
which is slated for November 2020.
Naturally, we'll have to see how things evolve
in the coming months as far as program for that event.
Next slide, please.
So some of our programs that are continuing
largely affected. One example would be our material exchange program. This is a
really neat program that allows businesses to use our network and our
research capabilities to connect with either other businesses within our
jurisdictions or I guess we may be one slide behind. Could we proceed to the
material exchange slide? Awesome. Thanks Daniel.
So as I was saying the material
exchange program allows businesses to connect to either other businesses or community groups
to make use of excess material and avoid the landfill, save money, and overall improve their
sustainability in-house. So one recent example of this, we connected TNO, the neighborhood organization,
which is a community group in Toronto with Air Canada to use some excess banner material
that they were able to convert into masks for frontline health care workers.
We continue to see good demand for the Material Exchange program.
It's intrinsically not the type of program that requires a lot of face-to-face interaction.
And so generally speaking, that proceeds unabated in view of COVID-19.
Many of you, of course, will be familiar with the PPG clienting events.
Typically, we have a four per year as well as two private events.
In the meantime, they have been postponed, but we are looking to revisit the possibility
of doing some in either late summer or early fall, depending on the public health guidelines
that are passed on.
And an additional program that you may be familiar with is our recycling collection drive.
This program is rolled out as part of our people power challenge, which I'll move to in a moment.
And again, this program is slated to continue, but it will depend on whether our members'
workplaces are filled at the time the fall comes around.
So people power challenge, I should say next slide please,
and next slide please.
So the people power challenge is PBG's flagship employee engagement program.
It's a turn key sustainability program that allows our members to really drive employee
engagement and keep sustainability top of mind in the midst of our modern sort of workplace
where there are a million one priorities.
And it gives our members really great resources because we've heard feedback over and over
again that our members are very interested in sustainability.
Their employees are very interested in sustainability but they just don't have their resources or
for necessarily the information and tools
to drive those sustainability practices
within those workplaces.
And so next slide, please.
He improvements that we're making to the program
for this year include changes that we've made
obviously in view of COVID-19 to allow the program
to proceed online and in virtual settings
as well as some updates that we've made
based on debrief conversations with the participants from prior years.
One neat aspect that we're including this year
is integrating the UN SDGs or sustainable development goals,
such that competitive will receive a final report indicating
what actions were taken and the support of which SDGs.
And we've also, as I mentioned, increased the touch points throughout the program
So that each individual participating at the participating workplaces will get more
touchpoints with us, additional webinars and training opportunities.
So next slide please.
In particular as it relates to COVID, naturally we've moved the training and kickoff events
to be delivered online.
As I mentioned, we formally did in-person workshops and we've now moved these to be via webinar
and increase the quantity of these webinars.
As mentioned, the Recycling Collection Drive is planned to proceed,
but naturally that will be a touch and go
and will update as we get closer to the date.
And we also have a September shoreline cleanup event planned.
But we'll update the exact structure of that
based on public health guidelines at the time.
So next slide please.
just for information of the group to have a sense of when this
for a challenge one.
On the program, it'll be launching August 4th, so it'll be August, September, October. So we'll continue to recruit through June and then train the champions from each organization in July for our launching August.
Okay, so that's the conclusion of the presentation. Happy to turn it back over to John Todd.
Okay, any questions or comments on that?
Sorry, I'd like to start with the chair. My apologies for
I'm not introducing Jeff at the other side of this.
We've been on so many of these webinars and other online forums,
so I just assumed that everybody knew Jeff,
but we were very pleased that Jeff joined the team
a week before COVID happened.
So he's really gotten his feet
within an unusual circumstance.
It's unusual enough to be working in a place
where you've been for a long time,
but then to find a way to get to know everybody
and get to know the systems from home
has been particularly challenging.
And he's rose to the challenge.
So I want to welcome Jeff to the EMC
and thank him for all the work he's done over the last
several months as we've navigated.
He doesn't look to hurt Darrell.
It must have happened before.
No comments.
He's going to use the phone already.
If I may ask a question or make a comment to Jeff.
Thank you very much for that report.
Jeff, and I know how challenging it is,
trying to put everything together this way.
The comment relates to the shoreline cleanup.
If that goes ahead, or if it goes ahead in some fashion,
do you find a way to repeat or restate or reinvigorate
the entire discussion around plastics?
We will have been several months since we engage on that.
And while the discussions are taking place
in a number of areas, the whole thrust
of a plastic solution crisis in waterways,
I think there's an opportunity not just
to talk about the shoreline cleanup but more broadly capture that plastic pollution agenda
a little bit more so we need a little bit more air in that balloon for all of us in this
area.
How long does it take to forward?
That's a great idea and if we're able at all, which I expect we would as we do the shoreline
cleanup to extract the volumes and weight of the plastics that we collect that would be
great nitric to be able to show a case.
It's not very strong.
It's possible.
If I may add, one of the benefits and one of the reasons we're developing this integrated
service delivery models to be able to leverage some of the other programs we deliver in schools
and in the community as well.
Because microplastics has to be, I'm going to have to check that out.
I'm a virtual community learning activity.
So you may have seen on our Facebook Live, we did a microplastic session, I think three
three weeks to go, and it's becoming something that's really requested from our community.
So we'll integrate those two together.
It's great.
There you go.
Hi, everyone.
It's Kim Fabri.
I apologize.
I'm not able to get on the web.
WebEx for some reason.
Must be a whole Internet issue, but I wasn't able to see the slides, but I'm wondering if
there's plans with respect to any of the webinar topics around helping companies or
organizations, including municipalities, employees,
return to work, both from a, you know, work-out balance
perspective and a, and actually a perspective
of the
potential policy that they both have decreased emissions
associated with commuting might be a timely topic for companies
are looking to measure those things or even smaller companies that are for organizations
that really are looking for support with respect to developing or return to work plan.
If I may through the chair, thank you Tim. I agree. It's an interesting idea.
We will certainly take it back and I'll get back to you with our sort of plan of action on that.
And through the chairs, the chairs, it's John again, John McKenzie years, I guess I just
wanted to say one of the things that has been an advantage for our partners within the
network and also our municipal partners, government partners at all levels, has been the,
I guess, the workshops and the training has helped with the re-skilling and so there's been
this effort on educating and re-skilling during this period of time that is really, you
know, some of its organic, some of its like, this is a time to take that pause and speak
with your team like, what do you need to develop? What are the skills, what are the offerings?
And so we're seeing quite a bit of interest in professional development. And I know
that through the integrated integration that is and with all of these different divisions
now reporting to Daryl and for that coordination that's happening, I think we're putting together
a much more refined and much more sophisticated suite of training options and accreditation
options for professionals in this field, so I think there's going to be more to look
forward to on that front, but I think that has been this competent opportunity that we're
trying to seize as part of this whole, you know, you never want to waste a good crisis.
This isn't a good crisis, but we don't want to waste it.
And we're continuing on and trying to make those offerings forward a part of all of this.
Yeah, you know, I agree.
I think the increase training and education hours, or just another example of, call it more
more positive side of this pandemic and if there are there's metrics you can track and communicate
that's a positive.
The pandemic's created an interesting new waste challenge too and that's what
to do with disposable PPE. I don't know if you've given that any thought but it's certainly something
that we're starting to wrestle with. We're moving towards reusable as much as possible but still
anticipating quite a bit of waste from this?
Yes, from the local health authorities that it has to be medical waste, to treat it as medical waste.
I was going to mention Todd.
We published an article as basically as soon as we heard from the OWNA with guidance on that on the PBG website.
So I'd be happy to sort of summarize it.
It was basically indicated that for most workplaces, at least at the Ontario level, they were advising
that it be treated as regular waste, but naturally in certain environments, hospitals, etc.
They have their own sort of stipulations for how that was treated.
If I may, apologies, I didn't catch who was the prior speaker, were there particular municipalities
where they were requiring that the NEPPE be treated as medical waste?
It's a little bit of both. It's Michelle here, Michelle Brown commercially in the property management industry.
Our cleaners don't want to pick it up if it's not deemed medical waste.
So for the cleaners sake, they're asking that it's disposed of in a sanitary manner.
and then BIA's and municipalities have all said that they prefer to send the message
that it's all dealt with that way.
At least in the short run.
Understood.
Okay.
Thank you.
Questions, comments?
Motion in a second on 9.1?
Lost?
Most of your cases there, so if folks have their hands up, I can't see.
There's John.
We have a second.
Michelle Williams.
Okay.
I see a second from few folks.
All right.
So move on to any new business,
perhaps this is where we might have a few minutes of John's time.
Yes, just to tell us how things are generally at TRCA.
Before you got on, John, I was speaking with Darren Jeff and others about whether or not you could have given us a spend a while and weird things have been happening.
So just to help put PPG in context, how are things at the TRCA for you and the staff and the rest of the board and so on?
Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide an update, very happy to you.
And I guess this has been a pretty dramatic change and there's been a huge impact on TRCA operations beginning in March of 2020.
2020. And I guess it began with, and I don't want to recap all of this, but I think the
key thing is that, you know, the first big thing that had implications was that we had
to, very quickly, in short order, stop a lot of our programs involving the public. And
the Maple Syrup Festival was, you know, hour by hour. Is it a go? Is it an a go? And unfortunately,
It was a go in the morning by the board of directors taking into account risk mitigation
approaches, and before in the afternoon, it had been called off for the remaining two
weeks.
And that's an example.
And very similarly, we had our major tri-ECCA, the International Raging Control Association
and TRCA conference, which because of the so many delegates coming from the United States,
and this is such a major event, we had over 1,000 people coming.
We had all of the speakers lined up, but all of a sudden we had to move very quickly and swiftly to cancel that as well, and to come up with an entire program to try to chunk out segments of it so that the information could still get conveyed in a, I guess, in a respectful, responsible way, but over time.
So that was very, very dynamic and very, very, you know, very, very impactful as well,
because, and they're also, previous list, there have been issues with the education
sector.
Unfortunately, Darryl and I, in particular, and we're in a situation of having to issue declared
emergency leaves to over 175 staff at TRCA that were in the fields primarily in the education
and training in the parks and culture divisions of the organization, also some incorporate
services as well. But groups that were involved in vets and I guess where their income fees
where the revenue was coming from the public and visitation, there's no visitation. So
was very challenging and so what we did as part of that though we had developed in parallel
with that as quickly as we could a employee redeployment program where we could try to place
some of the displaced employees that into areas where there were positions in restoration
infrastructure where we had funded projects. There was also a parallel effort of trying
to ensure that our erosion hazard work, our mitigation work, some of our planting work,
some of our restoration work that we do for municipal partners and some of our infrastructure
was defined as an essential service in the regulations and legislation that was being
promulgated very quickly. And so that was a huge effort in terms of the chair,
Jennifer Innis and myself regularly frequently speaking to senior officials, ministers,
you know, all senior bureaucrats and the province trying to make sure that we were in
there.
And we were, some of the wording was pretty vague, ambiguous at times, but we were able
to move forward with most of our work being deemed as essential.
So I think, and again, Kudos to Darrell and his leadership and the team on being able
to adapt.
We have a lot of great staff and very, very bright folks that have been able to completely
change the format at which they deliver presentations and which they deliver their services to a
virtual format almost overnight.
And so that's been a really big effort within a lot of the programs so we've got some great staff and they've been able to continue to deliver the services through that and we've been working very closely with our municipal partners on that.
So I talked a little bit about re-skilling.
We've been supporting that work by the training.
and I think long story short there's been impacts of course on our parks and
conservation areas we are only now over the last few weeks opening them up. There's
been such a demand for grain space that people were using them anyway so we had
to try to figure out a way to do this safely and we are doing it safely. We also have
a number of tenants on our properties. Treetop trekking is an example of what
while and there's still efforts to try to support those types of uses but they have to be done safely
and it's all subject to public health. So a lot of work underway on that.
We've received some great appreciation from the development industry by being able to maintain our levels of service. And in fact, probably increase because we don't have as much walk in traffic that diverts staff from conducting their reviews. We've actually been able to increase, turn around on planning and permit reviews and the building industry has been appreciative of that. So we've continued that whole service during
this whole pandemic. We are at our TRC offices. We are working with a very small crew. We're
moving into the next phases of planning. The essential work is continuing. We have a lot of
construction underway on the waterfront and in our ravines, multiple construction sites,
big construction sites on the shorelines. And in some cases, for example, in Lakeview or Ashbridge
which is the rates of, we've been able to get more of the fill materials delivered
more quickly because the roads have been less congested and we've been able to make some
great progress by having our teams working with the industry being able to actually get
the work done at a more accelerated rate during this period interestingly enough.
So we are moving forward with a lot of those projects and protection of infrastructure and working
with our partners. There's a lot of great work going on and I'm probably missing so much
John but I did want to let you know that I think just in terms of the work that's happening
in the teams, there's a lot of coordination that's taking place. And again, Darryl, you know,
I want to just recognize that there's been a lot more effort at coordinating different parts of
TRCA and, you know, having partners in Project Green, working with CINO, immigrant action
program, the teams from other parts of the organization, government community relations.
And all of this is connecting us better with our partners, better with industry, better
with our municipal governments, so it's actually, there's a great deal of coordination going
on in collaboration.
So I'm actually really excited about the work that's coming forward and that we're going
to be receiving as an executive committee and as a committee on this.
So maybe I'll stop there.
And if there's any questions myself or Darryl, please do answer them.
Darryl, please feel free to add anything that I missed.
Well, thank you, John.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm not sure that there's anything that I can add to that.
That's a pretty comprehensive overview of the last several months.
So thank you for writing that.
One thing I did want to mention that has been an interesting.
What this has done has really helped us review our protocols and procedures
and for conducting work safely, field visits, field measures, and TRCA, because we wanted
to, and we had to, continue some of this essential work, I mean, you can't stop an erosion
project that's halfway through in the middle of springtime, you just can't, you gotta keep
doing it, you gotta finish it.
So we very quickly developed field measures, safety protocols for visits, safety protocols
for staff that we've then shared with our municipal partners, so we've been on a leading
edge of a lot of this protocol development. We have a strong health and safety team and a lot of
information sharing going on with all of our partners in the network. So I guess, you know,
and we even shared that with industry because at many times we had our contractor saying,
I don't know if we can do this. There's questions. And so through our vendors, we shared some of this,
they adopted our protocols in the field. And you know what, we were inspected regularly by the
Ministry of Labor right after, and they were on our sites, and visiting us, and checking
everything, and we had pre-audited a lot of it through our own health and safety teams,
so that was very, very helpful.
There's been some great work of the team, and highlighting some of this, I know there's
been some articles that they produced, that these seminars have been well attended.
So I just really appreciate the efforts of the team to maintain continuity during this
period.
That sounds fantastic. So kudos to all of you for the incredible effort, obviously, in
not only maintaining what it is that we're up to, but enhancing, in many ways, both the
service offer and the timeliness of those service offerings. So thank you from my perspective
to all of you.
Any other new business?
No. It's Scott Hunter Shop. Can you hear me?
Yes, again. Hey, how's it going? Sorry, you can't see me. I'm dialing in from my
I work on a computer and I don't have a camera yet.
But hey, nice to talk to you folks again.
Hope everyone as well.
So someone wants to throw out there to the team
and see you guys think, I know we've all kind of learned a lot.
I shouldn't say I know for sure we've all learned a lot
from this experience over the last three plus months.
And I know in particular, in an interesting position,
because as you all know, I work in sustainability.
But for the last two or three months,
I've been focused on supporting the corporation and COVID response, actually,
particularly with my boss and I have been focused on temperature scanning
and supporting all of our 55 sites around the world.
But what I wanted to suggest out here perhaps for this team into PIPG
and TRC and such is maybe putting together something along the lines
of a collection of lessons learned from this entire COVID experience
from all the companies that are connected to PIPG.
So just a few examples that kind of come to mind from my perspective is we certainly as
a corporation, again, probably when we make aircraft engines, we all know what's happening
with the aviation industry these days.
We look at individually at our factories, right?
We see our environmental metrics, metrics in general, they are all dropping.
Not only from a factory perspective, but obviously from its muting perspective, too, as well.
We were seeing a bit of a renewed slash catalyst for interest in the environment and maybe not
necessarily now, but when we sort of kind of come out of this, a little bit more maturely post-COVID,
we can kind of really start to see a bit of a better understanding and appreciation for the environment,
considering perhaps the science of COVID was not taken seriously enough with the start.
and now we are where we are, perhaps that same sort of analogy can be kind of applied to
the environment, but we've all talked a lot about the opportunities to learn and educate
in some situations where some corporations are having some downtime such that when people
are back to some semblance of what normal is, they can kind of hit the ground running.
We've been talking a lot about the office of the future as I'm sure everyone has working from home.
I don't think it's going to be an odd thing out too much anymore.
I think it's going to become much, much more common.
And there's all sorts of discussions, of course,
at our primary level as well going up to Raytheon technologies on that.
The fact that it better will collect balance potentially.
The fact that we all have professionally and personally time perhaps to slow down a little bit
and notice what is important to us and our lives and all that kind of good stuff.
So, long story short, not to go on too long about it, but just the idea that we have a community
of folks that are connected at PIPG, but wouldn't be interesting to put together a, you know,
again, some sort of collection of lessons learned from COVID across the entire spectrum,
that we as, you know, a community of businesses and, you know, VEMC, but as well,
anyone who's connected to PIPG to sort of, so everyone understands what goodness has come
out of this. We have been given a tactical pause. It's not a good thing. I was going to
say it certainly not been handed you up on the silver platter, but there's so much to be
learned from this. And I know I'm speaking personally, but I know speaking to all of my colleagues
that are now sort of more or less permanently working from home will be for at least another
the two, three, four, five months, if not permanently,
the landscape of working is changing.
And we could make this for the better
along the lines of what we are trying to do
with respect to this committee
and what TRCA and PIBG do for the 11th.
So it is thought, I don't want to miss any
of the sort of lessons and opportunities
that I think are boundless out there.
So I just kind of want to throw that
at everyone to see what they thought.
hard
to disagree with. It's great.
So I know it's very I'm kind of it's a bit of a shotgun approach but it's just interesting as time goes on that we as a business are learning so much and I think we all personally are learning so much from that it would be such a shame to quote unquote go back to what were we were before when and the lot of cases maybe that doesn't make a lot of sense.
There's a lot of positive changes we can take away from them.
Thanks.
Probably right.
I think we should keep returning to that at some point.
So I think what it is that we want to reflect on further,
because it's going to take some time for us to absorb this as all
as you point out pretty fast.
No question.
And it takes a while for us to absorb a lot of that
and think about those implications over the longer term.
So I'm just going to say if you like, we could look at bringing a report back later in the year on some of the learnings that we as PPG have observed or have heard from our members and be a little intentional about reaching out to the membership about what they've learned in specific areas through this process.
Yeah, sure, sure.
At this point in a day, I've got a bunch of COVID.
I'd make a good idea there.
Yeah, for sure.
I would suggest that we aim for the, I think it's the November
meeting.
That might be the better time.
Just gives us a bit more.
Yeah.
Put it together.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
There's a lot of things that can be sort of tied into regular
conversation and business, but you know, and people, there's
certain things that will be connected to certain individuals
in their roles.
I kind of say, you know, I really kind of learned X, Y, and Z
from this.
And I think people should know about that.
We don't want to miss the opportunity.
Cool.
Thanks, right?
Yeah, this certainly seems to be a sentiment that, you know,
as we talk, we're going back to normal.
Normals part of what got us into this situation.
So that's exactly it.
Take the opportunity to make some changes for the better.
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Last call for any new business.
Motion for item 10.
In the second.
I
can motion that. Okay, I'll second it. Jim Kerr, James. Okay, everybody was
motioning to honor of the James we're waiting for five. Okay, I didn't see it in, so I don't know.
I need to pick your screen.
Okay, finally motion to adjourn.
Okay, he was John.
Second.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the report.
Great work, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff.
Thank you, good night, good night.