Good morning, everybody. We call this meeting the order. Committee of the whole meeting for Thursday, November 20th, 2025. Public information notice. There are none. Land acknowledgment. Call on Councillor Vanne Dahlia. This is everybody who could stand.
She may go to the Innitian Abbey people to the ancestors and to the spirits who have cared
for these lands and waters since time immemorial. We are in our treaty three partners including
our neighbors in Nisachuan, a Nuschen Abbey nation, our hearts go up to you. I want to take
a moment to acknowledge the recent passing of Chief Lorraine. Chief Copeness was a powerful
leader, said past compassionate and deeply committed to the well-being of her people and all nations
with entry three. Her advocacy, her humor, her strength, and her unwavering dedication
to community will continue to guide us long after her passing. Council members and staff
were honored to attend the memorial alongside an entire region who come together to acknowledge
her life and leadership. As we gather here, I recognize that I continue
to work within systems that have not always treated indigenous peoples with the respect
and equity they deserve. My responsibility is to work every day to not uphold these systems
of oppression, even while operating inside them, and to use whatever influence I have to
push for better, to help build a community where everyone benefits and where reconciliation
is lived, not just Vulcan.
May the legacy of leaders like Chief Copeness continue to guide us towards that shared
future.
Thank you very much.
Moving on, the agenda declaration of the keen area interests and the general nature
thereof.
So, any Councillor wish to declare a temporary increase on today's agenda from the meeting
of which a member was not attendance, seeing none.
I don't know for confirmation of previous committee limits, so we have resolution number one.
I don't know the five so we have a full document of deputations, presentation, money.
I'm assuming the great didn't work today for the grade 12 or 11.
They're coming.
They'll be here.
Schooled and start told.
They'll be here at 10.
Okay.
So we are going to have grade 11, 12.
Law class would be the great visiting and our meeting to observe us this morning.
Excuse me.
Moving on.
The agenda 5.1.
Thank
you so much, Mayor Porrie. Good morning. Mayor council, the members of the city team.
It's really nice to be here this morning. Lovely to sit in and listen to that very good
opening for this meeting. It's lovely. Thank you for doing that.
So I'm here today to bring you an update information, familiarize you with the Lake of the Woods
water sustainability foundation.
I'm guessing some of you probably are familiar with the foundation,
it's been around since 2005, but for those who aren't, this is just an opportunity to provide
an overview of what this organization is, what we do, and to invite you into some of our work.
So I'm the executive director of the foundation, and it's an environmental organization that's
based here in Canora and works on the rainy lake of the Woods watershed.
Next slide, please.
We're a really small team.
There are only two members of staff, myself and Megan Mills,
who is our international watershed coordinator.
Meg lives in Winnipeg and spends her summers here in the Treaty Three Territory.
So she's not here today, she's in the city.
But we also have a very active board of directors.
Some of those names may be familiar to you.
Todd Sellers was our past executive director.
Don Konantz may be familiar, he's the Commodore of the yacht club, and then other summer cottagers
make up our board. We have a couple of American directors, the rest are from Canada. Next
slide, thanks. So we have a pretty straightforward vision and mission. The vision is that we see
the lake with the wood space, and as a sustainable ecological, well-supported region, and we
do work that supports the health, economy, and beneficial use of the lake for current
and future generations.
So the foundation was set up with a mission to try to protect the ecological integrity
of lake of the woods.
This was primarily in response to what we recognized as much as 20 years ago was a growing concern
around harmful and toxic algae blooms and like of the woods, so that has been kind of one of the
focus points for the foundation over the past number of years, and I'll talk about that a little
bit more as we go along. But we do a lot of other things now too. So we actually serve as the hub
of a network. At the center of that is our International Watershed Coordination Program, so I mentioned
that Megan is the coordinator, but our organization functions as this hub of coordination of
services, projects, research, advocacy for everyone in the basin who works on water issues.
We're probably most well-known for our work with the International Joint Commission.
We were instrumental in advocating to the governments of Canada and the United States
for an expanded mandate for the International Joint Commission in this watershed
that resulted in the formation of a new watershed board in 2013, and I sit on that board and share one of its committees.
We also are the Secretary up for something called the IMA, the International Multi-Agency Arrangement, which I'll talk about in a moment.
This is a research consortium. Do you want me to just pause?
I want to pause. I'll probably take a little bit for them to come in.
I just like to welcome the grade 11-12 law class and beaver-braher I hope you I don't
know how long you're going to stay but hopefully okay well you'll you'll see some action
item. So welcome here and thanks for attending. Thank you. I'll go ahead and keep you
sorry. Thanks, no problem. Just to catch you all up so you know I'm the Executive Director
of the Lake of the Woods Water Sustainability Foundation and I'm just here providing information
to Mayor and Council about what our organization does. So to carry on. So the other functions
that we serve, we are the Secretary for the International Multi-Agency Arrangement.
This
which all of the government agencies in Canada, the United States,
Manitoba, Minnesota, Ontario all gather to be able to provide information to one another,
to share resources, to build projects and collaborative plans.
So we share that and coordinate all of that work.
We also are liaisons among local groups, so that might be roads associations,
lake associations, different environmental advocacy organizations,
and also indigenous nations and communities.
Okay, next slide.
So, this is the watershed that we work in.
The Rainy Lake of the Woods watershed.
It's huge.
70,000 square kilometers.
About 60 percent of it is an Ontario.
40 percent is in Minnesota.
There's a tiny little sliver in Southeastern Manitoba.
The East to West boundary is about 400 kilometers long.
There's 600 kilometers of waterways
that flow from Ely, Minnesota in the east, the southeast of the watershed, in a general
westward direction through Namaken and Rainy Lakes, down Rainy River into Lake of the
Woods and out through the dams, right at Tunnel Island, right there in Canora, into the Winnipeg
River.
Yeah.
Okay.
Next slide.
So, our work that we do with the International Joint Commission, so the International Joint
Commission is an international organization that was created between the governments of
Canada and the United States with a mandate to enforce and implement the 1909 boundary
waters treaty. So it has boards across the entire trans boundary between Canada and the
U.S., wherever there's water that's shared. And their mandate is to maintain the peace between
the two countries with respect to water resources management. So in this watershed, in the
Woods watershed board. It has a board comprised of 10 Americans, 10 Canadians, there are two co-chairs.
And then we have four working committees of the board. There's the Adaptive Management
Committee, a water levels committee that looks after water levels and flows in NAMIC and
Arrani Lakes into Rainy River. There's an in public engagement committee and then the
the aquatic ecosystem health committee, which I co-chair with my cursed from the Lake of the Woods County,
soil and water conservation district in Minnesota.
We also, the role that the foundation plays with the board is that we provide our international watershed coordinator as a resource person to the board.
So, we provide MAG services to help coordinate any projects that are done through the watershed board.
Okay, next slide. Did you lose your zoom connection?
Yeah, it's okay. So, a few minutes ago, I mentioned the IMA.
This is a list. It's all acronyms, so it might be kind of inscrutable,
but these are all the organizations that are involved in the international multi-agency arrangement.
So there's a work group that's made up of all the managers from the agencies, so we've
environment climate change Canada, Grand Council Treaty 3, all the soil and water conservation
districts at the county level in Minnesota, the provincial ministries of environment, natural
resources, fisheries, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
All these big agencies come together in the work group.
They set a mandate and work plan for the technical advisory committee which is all the people
who are the boots on the ground doing the actual work in the watershed.
And then among those technical advisory committee members, we have three working subgroups.
So there's one that focuses on aquatic invasive species, one that works on water quality nutrients
and contaminants, and then a third one that's working on core monitoring.
And core monitoring is just like being able to go out in the water and monitor water quality
and report on it and analyze that data.
Okay. Next slide. So the main reason why I came here today actually was to invite you
all to our next International Watershed Forum. So each year in March, the Foundation
hosts the International Rainy Lake of the Woods Watershed Forum. We've been doing this
now for, this will be the 23rd Annual Forum. It's hosted in International Falls, Minnesota
at the Minnesota North College.
It's typically a two-day science symposium.
In recent years, it's kind of grown to be not just science,
but also policy and governance conversations.
But we present two days worth of talks
from experts who work on water issues in the basin.
So these may be scientific talks.
They may have to do with governance.
They may have to do with traditional indigenous knowledge.
It attracts people from all over North America
who work on fresh water issues.
and it's one of the most important freshwater conferences in North America.
It typically is attended by about 160 people over the two days,
and it's really interesting, it's where a lot of the work
to remediate the algae problem in Lake of the Woods has come from,
but also many other projects.
So I would invite you all to consider attending.
This year it will happen March 11th and 12th.
We'll be sending out registration information probably later in December, and registration
will open in the new year.
So I would welcome anyone from Canora to attend.
We haven't had a lot of participation of Canadians in recent years, and although there
are some challenges in working internationally these days, this is one of those forums
that's so critically important to maintain cohesion across the boundary and across the
watershed.
It's been a fantastic space and we're
I'm really glad that we can continue the process here. Okay, next slide. Other things that we offer to the public, we do an annual webinar series. We're right in the middle of it. We've got one coming up tomorrow, in fact, on aquatic invasive species focusing on zebra muscles, but our Ask an Expert series are just one hour webinars that we offer midday. We record them. They're available on our website so you can go back and watch them again and just learn about fresh water science.
in our region. This year's lineup is really good. They're really interesting. Talks,
super cool stuff being done here. So I would encourage you to check those out too. Okay,
next slide. This is the project that we're working on with the most focus this year and next year.
We actually got three years of funding from the federal government through the Canada Water
Agency to do a project to develop a phosphorus management plan for the Canadian waters of Lake
of the woods. So back in the late 1990s the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency started
looking into this problem of algae and they determined that the waters of lake of the
woods in the south base and were impaired for nutrients that was leading to eutrification
algae blooms. That triggered a US environmental protection agency designation of impaired waters
and then the state had to respond by doing a comprehensive study and plan. They published
their plan in 2021, the Minnesota Total Maximum Daily Load Study, at the same time Canada
started doing science and research on Lake of the Woods, but hadn't yet come up with a plan.
And so now our organization has been tasked with that planning exercise. So over the last year
and a half, we've been working with communities and producers, mostly in the rainy river region
to identify sources of nutrient runoff,
and to try to come up with plans
for limiting the amount of phosphorus,
the nutrient that fuels algae blooms,
to try to limit that from getting into the water
while the lake cleans itself up.
So this is what we're responding to.
These are algae blooms in Canora in late 2024.
It's pretty nasty. You all probably remember this.
So we're trying to make that not happen anymore.
Okay, next slide.
We have lots of tools that we can use now.
Environment and Climate Change Canada has created a satellite imaging tool that we rely on pretty heavily.
The EO Lake Watch map.
You can go online and find this tool and subscribe to it and get weekly updates from May to November.
And it shows, so it's like a heat map of where the blooms are, the more intense the bloom, the darker red, the color.
So this was the peak of the bloom in 2024. You can see it was quite extensive in the South Basin and made it all the way up here to Canora.
I'll talk about it in just a sec.
So I've got one more slide and then there's a little bit of background.
Yes, there's a reason why it's at that end.
So this is this year. It was a much less intense bloom year because we had a really severe drought.
So when you have a drought, you have less water washing into the watershed and less silt
and runoff coming in, and so there's less to fuel the bloom.
So it was a lower bloom here this year.
Okay, next slide.
So how do we get here?
So the reason that the blooms start in the south end is a bit of a complicated story, but
basically, all this nutrient pollution comes from the legacy of industrial activity on the
rainy river in the early 1900s until about 1960.
60. So historically the pulp mills, the paper mills sewage, all the effluence just got
dumped raw into the rainy river. By the 1950s, the rainy river was so polluted that there
were 12-foot deep bark mats and mulch mats in the river, it was dying. So the government
tasked the International Joint Commission with doing a study that resulted in setting water
quality objectives to improve the quality of the water in the rainy river and the formation
of a board. So over time, the river got cleaned up. The river is now very clean. It's in really good
condition. It's recovered. But all that garbage that was in the river flushed downstream into
lake of the woods and it's sitting in the south basin of lake of the woods. The big traverse is a
big shallow muddy bay. It's only about 20 to 30 feet deep at the deepest point and it's really
silty on the bottom. And so when they flushed all the nutrients down into that basin, it just sits
there in the muck and every year when the ice melts the wind picks up and big rollers come in
and it just churns up all that sediment in the bottom and makes the nutrients be available
and then you get a bloom because you have lots of nutrients and lots of fertilizer for it.
So the blooms always start in the south end and then they move north. So there is a progression that the
the lake is slowly flushing it's flushing at a rate of about 1% per year. So over time it will clean
itself up. We need to not add more nutrient to it while it does that and ideally find
ways for there to be removals if we can. But right now the focus is just on limiting
the amount of new inflow. So we're doing this study. You've seen this map already of what
the watershed looks like but we're mostly focused on that region around rainy river into
the south basin. We can continue. This is just some background in case you have questions
about what a phosphorus management plan is, we're basically not dictating anything to anyone,
we're working with the community to crowdsource recommendations for actions that different sectors
and user groups can take to try to contribute to reducing the amount of phosphorus in the system.
Yeah, I think that's it. So I welcome any questions if anybody has any. And if you don't have any
right now but you think of some later, by all means just give me a call or send me an email. I'm
easy to find.
I'd be happy to do that. It's a bit complicated. I mean we are the center of
a network. We're a network hub and so yes we do work with all of these groups and our
integral to all of them, but we're a standalone charitable nonprofit as well so we yeah it's an
interesting role to hold for sure. Thank you. Okay, Councillor Matson and then Councillor
Bernie. Tika, is there somewhere that you can phone to report when you see LG Blues? You can so the
The watershed board, so the International Rainy Lake, the Woods watershed board, does have
a direct contact function.
You can go on their website and meet, there's a form you can fill out.
I don't know if there's a phone number, but for sure there's an email address.
But if you see one, I mean get in touch with me and I will put you in touch with the right
agency.
It depends on where it is in the watershed, what the reporting agency would be, so whether
it's Minnesota or Ontario and that sort of thing.
But there is not currently a really clear central directory where you would find that information, but we're working on that.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
So you said right now, I'm just in your notes here, that every kilogram of floss versus important.
You talked about the southern end.
I grew up down there.
I spent 50 years on the ring liver.
And I know it's very well.
We traveled or sick there every year.
So, you know, the millisplows and pork transits,
you've been, regulations put in place, as you mentioned.
So, what are the, without getting into the great detail?
Who are the top culprits right now, as far as,
or what are the causes for phosphorus being dumped or being?
So, at this point, yeah.
Introduced to the river, or to the system, no.
Now, that's a great question.
And that's sort of one that we grapple with,
because there isn't necessarily a big culprit now.
Like the culprit was in the past.
We're paying for the legacy to, you know,
I guess a clause for the majority of the constituencies
that we're working with today to try
to prevent additional loading would be like, you know,
anything that disturbs land.
So any land use development, agriculture and mining,
Those are, but those are like the primary drivers of the economy, so that, of course, is the sectors that we'd be focused on.
Currently, all the permitted facilities are well within compliance limits. They're all doing really well.
The only time that there's a concern is if we have extreme flooding, and, you know, like if a sewage lagoon's berms get topped by flooding, that's a concern.
And so that's something that we might put some recommendations into our plan about how
to shore up and build resilience around municipal infrastructure there.
We're one of our, so not in our project, but there's a parallel project that's underway
working with agricultural producers to optimize their nutrient management so that when they're
putting in tile drainage in the rainy river region, so the rainy river region has undergone
an agricultural revolution and it's now a lot of crop growing corn soybeans and wheat and so
they've put in tile drains which is like basically giant weeping tile in all the fields and
that that works really well to actually retain phosphorus on the landscape but it allows nitrogen
to flow. So we're trying to optimize that and the agricultural producers are fantastic to work with
they're really open to this because every amount of money that they pour into their
fertilizers, they want to get their benefit out of it, they don't want it washing into
the river.
So they're really on board.
And then the mining producers, so like new gold, we're working with them as well, currently
they're perfectly well in compliance.
So it's really just about making sure that we have all those permitting systems in place
to keep things good while the system recovers.
And yeah, it's going to take some time, but the models suggest that, you know, in 25
years or so, the system should naturally flush, provided it's not under additional stresses,
which is the real big kicker because, unfortunately, a changing climate is adding a lot of stress
to the system and exacerbating the nutrient and algae bloom problem.
one last question. So aside from those factors you talked about, what about development?
What about the human, just sort of casual people that have camps on the lake and development?
Yeah, I mean ideally we want to see anyone who's building any kind of new infrastructure on the lake,
having appropriate management for sediments and runoff, any kind of sewage systems. So ideally,
property owners that that are next to waterways are maintaining their septic
system as well. That's an issue that we're starting to look into a little bit.
We don't have a lot of say in that but we can try to advise some of the
regulators around that. Yeah I mean those are all small contributions but they
get up so everyone's got a part to play. Thank you. Yeah.
Any other questions
Thank you very much for Tika.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
Moving on, agenda 5.2.
We have Tim Walsh consulting, so he's going to present
how he needs assessment.
So I'm going to hand it over to Stacey Gander,
co-CAO to introduce him.
Thank you very much, Mayor.
Just confirming that everybody's there.
other?
Teacher taking you guys to Tim Horton's or NW after? I hope so. What's a
field trip with us in fast food?
So I'll get us going here. Thank you very
much. I'm very happy to introduce to Council and the public. The team from Tim
while she's consulting, have been working with Tim and Frazier and
Braden for nine months now on what we're calling our Housing Needs Assessment Project.
The reason that this data is important to us is that when the city does applications for
funding and when developers wanting to develop are going to finance financial institutions for lending.
It's very difficult for us to get the app, successful applications are for
them to get the financing without the appropriate data and we come to learn that the data that
we had in Canora was flawed.
So we've been working with Tim Welsh Consulting in terms of trying to understand what our current
need for housing in Canora is today.
And we are now there, we have that data, so really happy to turn it over to Tim and Frazier
and Braden to walk us through the findings of their last nine months working with the City
of Canora.
Thank you so much, Dave.
Good morning, everyone.
I just want to confirm you can still hear me and I'm going to share my screen because we had been disconnected there for a second.
Yes, we can.
Okay, and you can see the presentation on the screen there.
Yes, we can.
Perfect, thank you so much.
So good morning, everyone.
Mayor's Member Council.
My name is Frazier Fathers.
I'm a Senior Housing Policy Consultant with TWC on the call as well as Braden, who's a Housing Consultant with us.
and then obviously Tim Welsh, the Tim Welsh of Tim Welsh consulting, who is the principal consultant with TWC.
And as states were sort of saying we've been working with the City of Canora and it's been a pleasure to work with the City staff for the last nine months on this housing needs assessment.
And so, we're going to give you really a crash course on the housing needs assessment and what it is and sort of high level for you today. Accompanying this presentation is over 100 pages of research and data. Supporting, you know, background research and support to support the city of Kenora moving forward nest days sort of outlined. CMHC and federal programs are now requiring in many cases a completed housing needs assessment to qualify for a range of funding.
where those are grants or preferred incentives, various other funding streams.
And the NHNA is often becoming a requirement for non-profit and even private developers
looking to receive government financing or other supports through from CMHC or other
government agencies.
And it's quite likely for the new build Canada homes will also require some sort of housing
related information as well.
and the HNA explores a full range of housing needs
from not just affordable housing,
but along the entire spectrum of housing,
to from affordable, to attainable, to supportive,
but also what the average market home
and even the luxury homes in some cases
in some communities would look like
in a particular community.
And the challenge that we find in our work
with smaller communities is that there's often gaps
in the data from both from a local perspective,
but also from the federal government perspective.
of CMHC, for example, has trouble collecting data in smaller communities, and even the
census has some gaps in data in smaller communities, particularly over time.
So very briefly, the process that we went through over the last nine months, obviously
TWC was retained to engage in research and engage the community around the current state of
housing needs and tomorrow.
And after a flawed city staff, we worked really hard together to make sure that we got a robust
sample of a feedback from the city of Canora and from residents and businesses.
So a pair of surveys were launched back in the summer, which city staff did a great heavy
lift on getting the word out to the community and ensuring that we had over 700 residents
respond to the survey and over 77 businesses complete a separate business survey as well.
And there are appendices to the full H&A that really provide high-level summaries of that
engagement process.
We also did focus groups and individual interviews of 15 local businesses,
realtors, community and public sector organizations to get really dig in on
like how is housing impacting your organization or the housing needs
in Canora impacting your organization? And so what that really gave us is a robust
set of data that really helped provide the local context, the local why, how and
why of what's happening in Canora that we can then pair up against you know the
broader census and CMHC data were available.
So the next few slides are going to walk through
some of the findings at a very high level.
As I mentioned, there is over 100 pages in the H&A.
Itself, we also have a summative report
that really distills that down to approximately 20 pages.
We're happy to answer those questions
on any of these elements at the end of the presentation.
But we just want to sort of walk through
the high level findings.
And these findings really build off of one another.
So keep in mind as we're sort of walking through this that it's sort of building block
They all add up to sort of where we get to in the conclusion of the H&A and we start with the city of Canora's population
And you can see on the graph there sort of
Highlighting the trend lines for the city and there was economic transition from 2001 through 2016 in Canora
And in the 2021 census found just under 15,000 people about 14,967 folks living in Canora
The population estimates since the census have been showing some robust growth in the community, and that's an important thing to consider
in the broader community context. A couple other facts that we should just highlight as well is you have an average of about 2.2 people per household.
So in a given household, you have about 2.2 people, which isn't that far outside the provincial average.
You have about 21% of the population in Canara with seniors at the time of the census, which is slightly above the average in Ontario at 18.5%.
and 5%, and Kenora is home to a significant indigenous population, whether those are
first nations, Métis or Inuit, with almost a quarter of the population self-identifying
with that ancestry, and that it compares to only about 3% in the broader province.
So certainly a diverse community, and that brings with it its own challenges from a housing
perspective in some cases.
And what we want to point out here is, you know, there's some data missing from the
general population projections, general population data, from the census.
One thing that we like to look at is province-wide, there was actually about a 3%, just under
a 4% undercount in the population from the census.
So the census obviously engaged, you know, we weren't able to get to 3.7, 3.8% of the households
around the province.
And so if we apply that value to Canora, your actual population is probably closer to
15,500 at the time of the census.
Rule and Northern communities generally have a larger or higher undercount rate because
it's just harder to get the places where people are for the census.
So something to keep in mind going forward.
You know, Canora is also home to a significant seasonality in its population levels, knowing
that I'm talking with city staff and your population seems to swell to almost 30,000 people
in the summer. That's not captured in the census. The impacts of the surrounding Indigenous
communities and reserves, as well as the unincorporated areas, also because the Kenora operates as a hub
for those communities, you actually have a larger service footprint than your community may actually
represent from a population perspective. That's not captured anywhere. And then obviously there's
recent growth in temporary foreign worker usage in Canora and seasonal employment.
And so what that means is that you have a municipality that's servicing a larger population
than its actual population is sort of sort of indicating.
You have demand for social services and related employment as a result of that.
And the potential undercounts mean that just looking at the raw data may not tell the full
story around housing demand in Canora.
So, as we move forward and we look at the types of housing in Canora, yet about at the time
of the census, you know, 7,600 or so units of housing in Canora, but what we quickly found
digging into the data was only about 6,500 of those are regularly inhabited and working
with city staff.
We were able to identify hundreds of cabins, cottages, et cetera, that, you know, during
the summer are certainly inhabited, I'm sure, but are not regularly inhabited year
around. And so part of that means that you have this proportion of housing where, again,
from the federal government perspective and from looking at, you know, the raw data,
you have more housing than necessarily is inhabited in your community year round. And
so it creates a disconnect in the data. As you can see by the percentages there, about
77% of your homes or dwellings are detached homes. That's actually far higher than the rest
of Northern Ontario, Thunder Bay comes in at 68.8%, Sioux St. Erie 66.8, and Sudbury
at 61.4. Some of those are those cottages and seasonal dwellings being counted in there,
but what it also shows is a lack of diversity in housing in the community. And that can create
challenges, you know, for folks trying to find certain kinds of housing in a particular point in time.
Another element is the 14 or 15% of the housing that is in the form of apartments, both low and high
rises. A significant portion of that is actually operated by the Canary District Service Board.
This isn't a bad thing having supportive and affordable housing as it needed. But what it means
is that there's less market housing of that type in your community than it is actually represented
in the data. And what that means is that it's hard to find that apartment for that young person who's
moved out because there's actually a smaller share of rental market apartments there.
We've also
sort of a portion of housing units moving out of the long-term rental market and into
that short-term seasonal rental market in Canora.
And that's also creating pressures on the overall housing market.
The other thing that we also found through this project is there are data gaps in Canora.
So CMHC has a number of years of data where the responses to their rental market survey
as well as some of their other data sets are not as reliable due to small sample sizes from
response rate challenges in Canora.
And then also, you know, organizations like, for example, due to the small size,
Kenora doesn't have, for example, a robust real estate board that publishes regular updates on sort of the home sale data and market data in that regard as well.
So what it means is obviously there's a lack of diversity in some housing supply in Kenora.
And also there's a number of infrastructure, number of barriers to building new housing in Kenora,
whether it's infrastructure means challenges and costs of just building on the Canadian
Shield and then once those housing units are built ensuring that they stay in sort of
that long-term rental market or long-term you know family market is a challenge in the community as
well and the inability to diversify housing supplies creating barriers to household formation
and employment and we'll build on this in a second but what that really means is that because you
don't have certain kinds of housing it's making it challenging to attract the right talent
or for folks who are in the community who want to live in certain kinds of housing to find the housing that they need.
As a result of that, you know, again, we've highlighted that Canora is a service hub, an employment hub, for a large reason.
Region and requires the capacities to support those services, but you also have some, you know, unique facets to your economy.
The seasonality of your economy creates some housing challenges, and that you're bringing folks in for the summer months, and then they're not necessarily staying through the winter months as well.
You also have a smaller, and this is common for many sort of small mid-sized communities,
a lower proportion of self-employment in your community, partially just due to the makeup
of your local economy, and the challenges that can accompany with it.
But what we also found within the data is a gap in incomes between tenants and renters.
Now, Kenora at an individual level actually performs quite well from an income perspective.
of your above-provincial medians, but when we look at a household level, so sort of grouping
folks together, Kenora performs about $3,000 to $4,000 less than provincial averages,
and within that sort of, when you compare tenants to homeowners, you can see a significant
gap in the median incomes, which is showing a growing inequality, the ability to jump from
being a tenant to a homeowner is becoming a challenging Kenora from an income perspective,
And this is playing out across Ontario, but those gaps there are significant.
And through our consultation, we also identified numerous employers who are unable to find
secure housing and it's creating barriers to the local economic and employment opportunities.
And over 130 jobs were identified as going unfilled at the time of our engagement in Kenora
due to housing issues.
So, your regional hub, you know, the hub of your part of Ontario, that creates specific
demands for your community.
And as a result of that, you know, because the housing market isn't aligned to meet
those demands, it's creating gaps in your local employment and economic environment.
And with expected growth coming from, you know, things like the hospital plans, additional
housing demands are likely going to be coming as you move forward.
And then what where that leads though is into the space of core housing need, core housing
need is made up of three elements.
It's whether or not housing is affordable based on being less costing less than 30% of
your before tax household income, whether the housing is considered to be adequate, meaning
in other words, it doesn't require major repairs and Kenora performs actually quite well in
that standard.
And then whether or not the housing is suitable, you have enough bedrooms for the folks in
the house.
And at the time of the census, about 415 households were in housing need in Canora.
That number is actually likely under representing the current situation, as COVID supports
were in place of the time of the census.
And that was income supports that were helping offset some of the affordability pressures,
facing folks in the community.
And since then, obviously, we've seen inflation in both the rental and homesick and sort
of home construction costs in Canora.
The 2024 point in time count from the Kenora District Service Board also identified
affordability being a major challenge.
Certainly 28% of respondents said that their income was too low and 21% of respondents
said the rents were too high.
More or less of those are the same side of the, different sides of the same coin where in
essence you had about half of the respondents of the point in time kind saying some sort
of income issue was preventing them from finding adequate housing.
And the Kenora Distress Service Board does have new units planned to support core housing
need, and those at the lower end of the housing spectrum, but funding needs to be secured,
and hopefully, as H&A will help backstop some of those funding requests moving forward.
But what it means is that the cost of lack of supply is a major driver of housing risk
in Kenora right now.
There's a number of strategies being implemented, but they still require time and energy to move forward and resources to move forward.
And obviously, as a regional service hub for economic and social services, you're attracting folks to the region to so they can access those services and supports.
And that leads you to a position where you have extraordinary demand in your community and supply is a major challenge.
And so this slide is sort of the culmination of our work and we work with states and his team over a long period of time to really build out this modeling.
And this is an estimate of future housing demand and again refreshing briefly your current total housing stock is about 7600 units and with a range of major infrastructure and economic development projects forthcoming.
forthcoming, you know, we're expecting significant demand, both in the short term with construction
workers, etc., but then permanent employment, like those projects, are completed. Now, I'm
going to walk through the table in detail in a second, but within the full H&A, CMAC uses
a relatively straightforward methodology to estimate future housing demand. And based
on theirs, their methodology, you work out to about 867 additional units being needed by
2031. Now the methodology is sound, but it misses pieces of the puzzle. It doesn't account
for economic development and economic growth. It doesn't account for, for example,
Some of the undercounts and things like that that we've talked about through this presentation and through the H&A. And so what we did was we went and tried to build a more robust model that took into account some of these things. And what I would say is the table on the right represents maybe a more outlier scenario of that model, I'll explain what that means in a moment. But what it does sort of share is sort of like at the far end of the spectrum, what an extreme scenario may be from a housing demand perspective.
So, to walk through the table in 2025, some of these rows, obviously, we mentioned that
population undercount from the 2021 census.
So if that undercount holds true, it means that there's about 126 units or households
that are on account for in the community that you have to account for.
Then we've had population growth, which has been cataloged by Statistics Canada through
their population estimates all the way through 2024, and then leveraging the same population
modeling that is being used for your official plan. We estimate, you know, in 2025, there's about
an additional 159 households that are in Canora that weren't there at the time of the census.
Then we have suppressed household formation. And this is what this is in essence, again, a measure of
folks who want to create their own household unit but are unable to. And then to give you a couple
tangible examples, let's say that there is a student who has just moved home to their parents after
They're completing post-secondary education.
They found a job in Canora, and they love to move out of their house, or their parents'
house.
I think we've all been there at some point.
Really, what they're unable to do, unfortunately, is actually move out because of high rents
or lack of supply, et cetera, in the community.
So that's a suppressed household.
Another example may be a senior who's looking to downsize from a single family home to say
an apartment or condo that's more livable.
well, they're unable to downsize to that apartment condo due to lack of supply.
It also creates a bottleneck because there's another household who can't move into their
single family home because the senior has an inadequate form of housing that they want
to access.
And so this modeling is leveraging the heart model, which is, again, also integrated into
the H&A. And again, there's about 362 households that would like to change their housing estimated
within the city of Canora, but they can't do to supply. We obviously heard from employers
of approximately 130 current jobs or employment missing in the community due to lack of housing.
So in other words, if there's 130 new units, they would bring in 130 new people or households
into the community and fill those vacancies. And then there's housing demand induced by major projects
and job growth. And this was a collaboration between ourselves and city staff around, well,
what are the projects in the pipeline are currently happening? And what is the employment
demand going to be created by those projects and that job growth? And you can see this year,
it's a modest amount, but you can see as the years go by and frankly, as the hospital construction
and project moves forward, you're going to see significant demand growth in those from that sort of
part of the housing spectrum and that folks coming to Canora to work on these projects
and they're going to need to be housed. That leads to us to a market and population housing gap
and you can see currently it's about 812 and you can see how that is going to change over time.
And as you get to 2030 and 2031 you're almost double what the H&A estimates there.
And then we layer on top of that the current Canora District Service Board housing gap and they
have a wait list of approximately 800 individuals hoping to get into affordable or some sort of supportive
housing. And again, if you were to layer that on top of that and want to tackle that as well,
you can see where the numbers get to there with almost about 1,600 units being needed currently
at that number growing to about just under 2,500 units by 2031. Now this, as I mentioned, is probably
an outlier scenario. We are not accounting for things like, as you can see, we have a straight line
estimate of employment shortage based on our engagement result. It's likely that fluctuates
year to year. It also doesn't account for, for example, we assume that every new worker who
comes to town requires their own individual unit of housing. That's likely not true in many
cases. You may get a situation when the hospital's built, for example. You recruit a doctor,
and his partner, his or her partner comes to the community as well, and also feels one of those
They get employment positions, so you in essence have one household filling two jobs.
And so even if this estimate is, you know, more robust than necessarily needed, it is
giving you sort of an outlier scenario where the likely, your likely need is going to
fall somewhere between the CMHCS and the high end of this scenario.
And that gives you sort of an idea of the scope of challenge that you sort of need in the
community to an essence, try and restore affordability and restore housing supply to a place
where you have affordable and accessible housing across the spectrum. And so to achieve this end,
the municipality and the folks of the city there have identified 13 actions and many of these are
sort of underway already but also are in process moving forward and will be sort of key elements
moving forward just to help tackle the housing need across the community and these range from
obviously there's an official plan and zoning by-law work under way already developing a master
infrastructure plan, you know, the collaboration on the new all-nations healthcare partners and the
Cnores chief advisory to finalize, you know, the developments related to those projects.
All the way to increasing efficiency around, you know, getting building and planning permits done
and faster examining modular building practices
and implementing clear planning and development guidelines.
So there's a range of actions that the city staff
have already sort of identified as a starting point
that help move towards achieving those goals,
but there are significant steps moving forward.
So in about 10 minutes there,
I think I rattled through about the equivalent
of 125 pages worth of data.
I'm happy to stop sharing my screen
or go back to a specific slide
if any members of council or the mayor have any questions and we're happy to
feel those questions at the appropriate time. Thank you Fraser. So we do have a
question one so far from Councillor Ben Bellino. So take it away. Thank you
Your Worship. Well we have some noticeable gaps. I would highlight the
probably some of these are self-induced due to past practice and sort of
highlighting around, you know, are higher than average, single family home statistics and then some of our gaps in our official plan and our zoning bylaws that obviously are really need of updating.
Are there communities in Ontario, maybe in our population size that you see doing this well?
Like meeting the housing needs?
So I'll start, and then I think Tim may jump in as well.
There are, but every community first has their own unique challenges.
So it's kind of like, you know, it's not comparing apples to oranges,
but it's like comparing different flavors of apples.
You know, some communities are granny Smith versus red delicious versus honey crisp there.
So certainly there are some, you know, I think of, you know, for example,
a community we've done work with, like, sogging shores, for example,
Where they've gone and done work around and TWC supported this work around doing pre-approved
designs for additional dwelling units and other sort of, you know, duplex, triplex, quadplex
development in their community where the town actually has put free to access, you know,
designs publicly available where any developer can just sort of go and say, I want to build
the quadplex and it can lead to a fast track through the planning and zoning process, through
through the permitting process and things like that.
So the specific needs, and I think the 13 actions that were identified by city staff are
really going to help fill some of those gaps that you identified in the official plan
and zoning by-law.
And then really there's a question there of what levers does council want to pull around
innovation and trying new things?
So the idea around modular homes is certainly interesting, given that you're a northern community,
You know, building costs are high in some cases. So there's opportunity there, but I think it's really going to be about, you know, there's so many levers you could pull really narrowing focus on one or two that council really wants to get behind and then moving that needle trying to move that needle through one or two of those actions in a rapid manner.
Tim, you're muted.
If I can just elaborate just slightly that in Bruce County yesterday we're
sawing shores and they've got a lot of growth in terms of workforce housing
because of the Bruce nuclear refurbishments that are going on right now.
It's a community that has sawing shores is very similar population, it's
19,000, but there's been I think they're a really good coordination between the
county, just the service manager like your DSAP is your service manager, and the area
municipalities setting out in some cases incentives, where we call tax incentive grants
for new rental housing, a range of rental housing, as well as any forgiveness of municipal
fees, et cetera, trying to lay, you know, trying to be as welcoming as possible for new
for the housing of the other thing they're looking at, and as we work towards the new federal program of build Canada homes is to have a courted response.
So for this city can order, we're very closely with the de-sab, and say here are two or three or four or five projects.
It sounds like the federal government right now is working towards a larger scale, so if there can be work over the next number of months, identifying.
And I know states that good contacts with with certainly private sector developers looking to do private market rental housing.
But also to see about trying to have that range of housing. So people who are my registered nursing assistant are orderly at the hospital or daycare workers, etc who make a little bit above minimum wage, but not high enough to afford full market rent.
So, trying to have both set the table locally, having the coordination with the service manager, with the DSAB, and trying to build a collaborative case to prepare for the new build Canada Homeless Initiative.
Thank you.
So, you've given us all this information. Is Kenora doing enough? Is it halfway there? Do we have 90% changes we have to make? Where are we?
So, Kenora, like the H&A is the start of a journey, I would say.
And this is what I say to a lot of communities in that this is sort of laid the groundwork.
I think, you know, and I may ask staff to weigh in a little bit on this,
because they know more of the local context of specifically what the municipality is doing.
But certainly those 13 steps, if you're going to move through that list and accomplish many of those,
those would be sort of your major goals in the short term to try and move those forward.
And then, if hopefully if those are achieved, it will help unlock housing supply in the community through a number of pathways, whether that is market or affordable or attainable or pre-fab or what have you.
So, I do think Knorr is on the right track. I wouldn't want to put a certain percentage on it just because, again, what's happening in the community varies day to day and maybe staff wants to weigh on that.
Thank
you. Yeah, it's Mayor Porier. So the other day I saw in the news.
They were talking about
I think I think it was in relation to Toronto Vancouver, some of the larger centers where they've
realized now they've missed the boat on what type of housing they build. Because people say we should
have another like we have a development was called South Park and that it took 20 years
to fill and there's about 70 75 lots maybe. The reality is most people and today aren't
going to spend a north of a million dollars and then some to and it'll be at a minimum
of that to build like a bungalow and not and are we missing the middle because that's
what they talked about in this report. They said developers and governments miss the
boat completely and have built these huge homes which are fine for some people but the majority
people can't afford like north of a million dollars, but they can afford that, you know, 400.
Like I always said, we should have townhouses like built in clusters, you know, tasteful
nice ones, and encouraged development of those instead of, you know, I look at what 77% of
of a detached family homes which is high.
I think we need to be coming more into the center
in that because we talk a lot about housing
and we have studies and like I've been around long enough
to see all like a stack of studies,
but we haven't done anything in the last 20 years here.
We've done stuff on the social housing piece
but like that's not going to bring in a nurse
or a doctor or whatever. I'm sorry and it's not a slight against social housing but we need to
start focusing on you know private sector development and where they get their money is we can
help them and you know be part of that but we need to start building houses for people that are
going to be here over the next four or five years that will be making enough money in that to pay
market rent or to buy
Something if they're going to be here, three, four, or five years on a construction project. So I was just wondering, does that make sense going forward? You know, I always said, like I would buy other housing in this community as an investment, not at a million to for a bungalow, forget it. There's no money in that. But I would buy 400 or 450,000 dollar townhouse and rent it until such time that I would use it.
And I know many other people that would feel that would be a good investment, which would
help spur on housing needs.
So I'm just wondering if you feel that maybe we're, are we kind of just in the discussions
you have with states so far?
Are we kind of going in that direction or are we going in the wrong direction?
Because we need to change course very quickly if we are.
Yeah.
Thank you. So I think I think this report identifies that gap is that missing middle in a lot of ways in your community.
You know the 77% you know sort of highlights that certainly I would say you know part of the biggest challenge around getting some of those units built is just the cost of construction right which is beyond the control of the municipality in a lot of cases.
And so finding ways to support, you know, a developer or a builder to get those construction
costs lower, whether that's through modular or through some sort of partnership, you
know, is a pathway that the town, the city could explore, certainly.
I do think, you know, and again, using the sawgying showers example, they found a similar sort
of challenge, right, in that, and that's why they created pre-approved plans for four
plexes and three plexes and duplexes and ADUs to sort of add that gentle density and that
missing middle to their community, which is, again, largely a single family community,
home style community in Bruce County. So certainly I think there's opportunity there,
whether you can get the construction costs and all the costs down to $400 or $500,000 in your
particular community, that's probably going to be a challenge, but I think just you're going to need
a range of housing to get out of it. So some of this will need to be apartment buildings that are,
You know market rent, but they're nice enough that someone will want to you know live there for five to seven years
And have enough money in the bank that they can save to then put the down payment on a single family home when they're ready to move forward
That and that's what that household suppression sort of line in the in the estimates there is really talking about
It's about those folks who may be who are living in canore or are in canore now and would like some other form of housing
whether that's a young person who, you know, wants to get out, or it's a senior who wants to downsize.
So ensuring that there is that spectrum of housing is certainly an important step.
And just to have two things, one, having the housing needs assessment data,
the good work that Fraser and Brandon have pulled together, is a really important part.
And I know we've had discussions with staff, it was a private sector, a rental builder,
C.H.C. had been a little bit reluctant because they didn't have a good handle on the data.
So we are hoping the work that our firm has done will give you that tool, as a municipality
to say.
Yes, here is the reality of the market need C.H.C., in that case, provide the mortgage financing
for the market rental.
The other coming up make terms of trying to help that middle level is, are there any other municipal lands?
This is a strategy many municipalities have brought in more recently.
Are there municipal lands that can be made available for moderate income households?
There's a number of examples.
There was just one release last night from town of Midland on southern Georgia Bay looking for a mixture of housing.
So, you know, are those, I know that land is challenging to come by, but are there any
sites that could be made available for that mid-level housing for them?
Thank you. Any other questions?
Maybe I'll, yeah, I'll just say thanks very much.
Again, just picking up on this whole missile missing middle thing, if you look at the three
developers that have been trying to get projects off the ground in Canora in the last couple of
years. In each case they didn't have the data that they needed to support a good conversation
with CMHC. So this is a critical building block going forward and when you look at our
pipeline these are the you know our our our highest opportunity in the next three years
and when you start thinking about the hospital coming online and the construction workers
and all those other things and you see this big blip in terms of the demand curve it's
going to take that long to build these sorts of things. So now we have this foundational
We're now we can start having different conversations with not only developers, but the funding agencies to support projects in a timely fashion.
So this is great, and I want to thank Tim Welsh and his team, Frazier, amazing work and Braden.
So thanks very much for your support through this project.
Happy to.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
a lot of good information. Just a follow-up comment, not next week, I'm actually in Ottawa
meeting with the Parliamentary Assistant to the Federal Housing and Infrastructure.
And I can see pieces in here that I'm going to use as part of my speaking notes, because
we need to go right to the source now and not, like we can't. We need to move the needle
quicker than we are, and that's the only way we're going to get something happening.
And we've even invited them down into the region, some of the, even if it's staff,
to see, you know, what we're up against, like geographically, you know, rock, water, all
that stuff, they don't always understand that.
But they always come back and say, well, like, what's your housing needs?
Right.
So now we have it.
So hopefully this will go along way next week when we, because we have an hour with
this individual, not the minister himself, he's not available.
But parliamentary assistant and policy staff and staff of his office to talk about this
and move it forward in relation to some of the projects in the community.
No, and I think that that's great and does give you a tool and I just say that
I think we are seeing overall both at the provincial and federal level.
Refeeling of there is going to be growth throughout Northern Ontario in terms of the mining sector
in particular across Northern Ontario and there seems to be recognition of that as a really
important part of Canada and Ontario's growth and just making sure they make the connection
to having the housing for that workforce and the growth that's going to occur in Northern
Ontario. That absolutely trauma Vancouver, etc. The large cities have lots of housing pressures
but to make sure that part of the build Canada homes initiative lines up with all the other resource
sector initiatives that the feds and the province are pushing.
Great.
Thank you. So one last any other follow-up questions? Okay. Well thank you very much then for your time and look forward to using this document to in a positive way to solve some of our housing needs. So thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Are they ready? Are they in the queue?
So moving on the agenda 5.3, we have another presentation associated engineering capital needs assessment presentation.
Would you like to start, Director Green?
Yeah, thank you, your worship.
So just a quick recap for council.
You know, when I first came to the community in early 2023 and started touring the city's infrastructure, definitely identified that the city's water treatment plants and waste water treatment plants.
needed some love. They haven't got any and quite a few years and the time was
coming and so when you look at all of the individual components that make up a
water treatment plant or a wastewater treatment plant there are hundreds and
hundreds of assets pieces of equipment piping components electrical systems
that all work together to deliver safe drinking water to the community and to
process the sewage coming out of the community and protect like we heard from
earlier the surrounding watershed. And so we partnered with Associated Engineering
in 2024 and been working closely with them for the last 18 months to develop a road map
to rehabilitate both of those plants over the next 25 years. And I'd like to introduce
Graham Lang, Caroline Korn, and Nico Karanangan to provide the presentation on the assessment that
that they've been working through and the outcome of that,
which is our roadmap over the next 25 years
for infrastructure renewal at the two plants.
Thanks, Greg.
Can you hear me, everybody?
In the room there, you can hear me.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
And you can see the screen.
Okay, so I'm sort of in awe of you guys sort of taking
in all this information.
So I've got another sort of 30 slide presentation.
I'm gonna sort of run through it quickly.
I will it will be very much a whistle stop sort of tour through it. You do have the reports and understand you've most of you have sort of visited the plant so you'll understand some of it.
So I will go through very quickly and can kind of come back and cover things.
If you need me to go into more detail in any areas but let me sort of run through this as quickly as possible.
But please do stop me if you do have any questions as I go.
This is the presentation outline, I'm not going to dwell on that, but I'll just briefly explain what we did and then give you a findings for both plants and a summary.
The two plants, obviously you know the Canora wastewater treatment plant on Miller App, it's road there and Canora water treatment plant on 7th Street in Canora.
I'll provide a few further details on those as I go through.
So the objectives of the project that we've been working on with Greg and his team was
to understand the state, current state in terms of condition and risk on both plants
and to forecast investment needs to sustain both plants over the next 25 years.
That word sustain is important and I'll come back to that.
The scope included developing a detailed asset inventory.
the city already had a few of the assets in a system. I know you have a sort of
CMMS computerised maintenance management system that has some of the assets in
but we've developed a fully detailed inventory now. Assess, as I said, asset
condition performance, criticality and risk, identify immediate needs, the things
that need to be fixed in the next year to two or three years, maybe up to five
years, that are really repairs, and then look at those end-of-life asset renewals
in both the short term, the next five years, and the longer term, over 25 years.
And then I'm hoping what we're showing here is demonstrating the impact of that proposed
sustainment investment and the risk related to under-investment in sustaining these two assets.
I'm not expecting you to read that at the distance, but it sort of shows you the level of detail
that the inventory, I mean the inventory extends to the right there, but you'll see the sort of
condition grading for the assets in the inventory, but it's basically the type of asset, the location, the category, the replacement value for that individual asset when it was in service.
How long it's expected to last and provide that functional service, therefore how old it is, and then we've assigned a condition grade that kind of resets that so that it's not an age based thing is based on the condition.
And those assets are broken down just for ease of analysis into engineering disciplines.
You can see them there with different types of assets that you would expect.
The civil is the roads, the manholes, the pipes in the ground.
Architecture is the building envelope, structural slabs, tanks, process mechanical, the bits
that typically require most of the maintenance and then lots of building mechanical stuff as
well to keep the building to ventilate and do things like that, heat the buildings and
then the electrical and instrumentation and controls that support all of that.
The methodology involved site assessment by a team of multi-disciplinary engineers in
each of those categories going around the two sites, identifying immediate needs, anything
that needs to be repaired and also assigning a condition grade.
It's a little more complicated than the snapshot I've got there for you, but it shows you that it's a scale of very good to very poor, and it's a line with remaining service life for any asset.
There might be assets in that there are a hundred years service life like a pipe, a plastic pipe in the ground compared to a PLC computer chip effectively for controlling the plant that might be a five years service life.
but this aligns that and allows you to assign condition grading based on age if you can't
inspect it. Obviously some of the stuff that's buried you can't see but it gets a condition
grade anyway because it's aligned with its expected service life. This sort of shows that a little
further and shows you how that investment forecasting looks like so you buy an asset it doesn't last
forever it's 40 years five million dollars it will deteriorate and at some point
you've got to buy it again and throughout its life it will deteriorate and this
is that sort of condition grading curve that we're using to assess it risk as
well we've assessed using the city's standard
By five risk matrix that I'm assuming you have seen, it's come from your asset, corporate, asset management plan. Two scales, consequence and criticality, the consequence or criticality, sorry, consequence and livelihood, the consequence, criticality is assessed by, we did a first pass and then through workshops with city staff, including people operating the plants at each plant. We've come up with scores for
or consequence, likelihood is aligned with condition grading.
So that thing I showed you earlier,
obviously through its life,
the likelihood of any asset failing increases,
typically, with a steeper curve towards the end.
So that's what's been used to establish likelihood.
And what we're really interested in
is identifying those assets that are up here
in the top right corner of the matrix,
the very high or the high assets.
these ones down here need to be sort of monitored, but they can generally be ignored.
This would be things like, you know, the high left pump for the water treatment plant,
the key treatment processes here might be, you know, the ceiling tiles in the lunch room,
one of the plants.
So that's essentially what we did.
I'm just going to take you through the sort of findings now.
I won't dwell on this.
but the wastewater treatment plan as a series of process from screening, removing
grit, the main treatment process aerobic, I'm sorry, aeration system, it's
intermediate pumping, secondary clarification and ultraviolet disinfection of
the end before the air flow and it's discharged and then there's obviously sludge
treatment taking the solid material, digesting that, creating a cake and taking
that for disposal elsewhere.
The valuation of the asset is important because we use condition grading, it's important to
understand the condition grading relation to the value of the assets, not just the number
of the assets.
If you just count the number of assets, that can be very misleading, so the wastewater treatment
plan would value you with a replacement value of nearly $72 million.
dollars condition wise you can see the overall condition grade there on average we're saying it's
3.58 so it's between fair and moving towards poor the very poor is the stuff that's in the last
10% of its life this stuff here though is significant as well so it's not in that greater condition and
does need some investment. This just shows the grading by the engineering disciplines,
not unexpectedly the process mechanical is a large part of it because that's doing most
of the work and the structure which is providing the tankage to perform the treatment and you
can see the sort of relative values of the in each condition grade. I won't dwell on that.
This one I haven't gone into great detail on but the things that have been picked up as
being very high-risk band assets for the water-trimmed plant are the diffusers in the
aeration tank which are rated at $1.35 million and various HVAC systems which are very
important.
Perhaps just pause for a second just while some students are leaving there.
Sorry.
Didn't see that yet.
OK.
We're all set.
Can that carry on?
Am I good to carry on?
Yes.
Go ahead.
Yeah, so the things in the high-risk band here are
erasure diffusers and then some HVAC equipment which is equally
some of which is high consequence because in a waste water treatment plant
venting those dangerous gases is important.
The good thing is that some of these are already part of ongoing projects
that Peregrine's team are moving forward with already.
The immediate needs that we identified, these are things that we identified looking at
kind of code compliance condition, performance type issues, some of them are kind of prioritized
because they have a health and safety impact.
So we've come up with nearly half a million dollars that we feel should be done in the first
instance that are effectively repairs that includes things like lifesaving devices on open
and tanks that don't have any lifesaving equipment,
blower discharge piping that's leaking,
and lack of any means for disinfection
of raw sewage that may bypass the plant
in the high flow conditions.
So there's various immediate needs in there,
including a few sort of studies
that need further investigation.
The renewal forecast,
this is a bit of a horrifying number, but over 25 years we've said the forecast, which is
completely unconstrained forecast. So we're not limiting it and it's not budget constrained in
any way. It's just what the modeling shows at end of life, the replacement needs to be. We've
removed from the front end any of the ongoing projects as part of our task and we've grouped these
into sort of effectively projects every five years or so to pursue their expenditure profile,
but it does leave you with some very significant expenditure. So removing the existing
ongoing projects has removed a reasonable amount of their expenditure but there are still some
very significant expenditure in that short term and certainly in that sort of 10-year window.
Combining that together, so $426,000 there, $7.7 million, in addition to what is already
being spent on plant in current projects, and then in the longer term, 52 million in
the sort of beyond the five-year period, so some very significant numbers.
Things in the next period that need to be replaced, as I said, the AirAsian tank diffusers.
That's already ongoing work. There's some electrical work, HVAC systems that work in 2032
that we've got there includes work to the screw pumps, the AirAsian system and UV modules.
Looking at this sort of impact of spending, they are not spending, they do nothing.
scenario shows that that condition profile of the shoulder, the beginning, obviously turns
poor if we do not invest in sustaining this asset through its life. The proposed investment
controls that. It doesn't all go green because you're not replacing everything at the same
time. You're doing it as it comes up, but it effectively stabilizes the condition grade.
That is also reflected in the risk. This is a risk profile valued notionally in dollars,
but it's any score, the key thing here is there really that if you do nothing, the risk increases
by about three to four times what it would if you spend the money and sustain and maintain that level
of current risk. So that's the wastewater treatment plant. The picture of the water treatment plant
is very similar. Again, won't go through all this in detail, but you lift water out the lake,
goes through clarifiers, filtration systems, disinfection, and then the high lift pumping
pumps it into the distribution system. And there's various other sort of supporting systems there.
Valuation, we've said the water treatment plan is $57 million. Again, mostly sort of structural and
process mechanical, but building systems and other things, fairly significant, sorry,
looking on. In condition grade, we raised, said it's not quite as bad overall, the amount
that is in very poor condition is more, but the overall condition of stuff in very poor
and poor isn't quite as bad as the wastewater plant. And we've got an average condition
grade that I think we can say is still fair. That's the breakdown across the
equipment. And that, things in the higher-risk area here, there's rather more
value, 6.3 million dollars, but the good news is some of that's already
projects committed with the high-level pumps and work that's going on with the
low-lift pumps and some tankage there and some work to the filters. So there's
There's a reasonable amount of work already going there and already committed.
The picture on immediate needs is very similar, $400,000 over the next five years to repair
things.
Look at some studies to investigate things further.
It's noted that there's no one of the key items there.
There's no chlorine gas, probably used chlorine gas to provide the residual chlorine into
the water supply and that's a very dangerous chemical and there's no scrubber there that leaves
a significant risk to employees and potentially the public. So that's something we think needs
to be investigated and there's some various other structural repairs and work to the fences and
the security of the site which we believe is very important.
The long term forecast, 65.2 million
unconstrained. We've removed again the projects that are already ongoing and I've mentioned
the low lift pump station, the high lift pumps, some electrical work, the sodium hydroxide,
tank repairs and various other things that are ongoing at the moment reduces that overall
burden. Again, grouped using the risk scores so the grouping here kind of looks at the risk
schools and all things forward that are to create projects that are higher risk higher consequence
assets and wishes back things that are less consequential. So the summary there is that
it's very similar really to the wastewater plant before $100,000 short term needs another $7.6
million dollars in renewal of assets, and then in the longer term, $46.5 million in the
sort of beyond the five-year horizon for 25 years. Sorry, with a total investment of $46.9 million,
which is an average of $1.9 million a year. Things that are being done, so the 2028 investment
and includes sand and anthracite replacement
in the filters, the filter under drains,
backwash troughs,
so some fairly critical equipment there.
And then in 2034 project that we've got there,
the backwash pumps, super nighten pumps,
air scale blowers, various things
and some building work as well.
Effectively the same picture there,
do nothing, the plant deteriorates,
It's not quite as significantly as seriously because it's in a slightly better condition
overall, start with the proposed investment stabilises that and does the same thing on
risk.
The risk is stabilized rather than I think it goes up nearly four times if you don't put
some investment into sustainment of these assets.
So in summary, we recognise that that's a significant value across both plants, 100 million
dollars over 25 years is you know four million dollars a year and the key thing that we want to
point out is that that sustainment investment. So these investments are based on visual inspection
only not any specific testing but generally it was done by engineers who understand and do that
routinely. The focus is on sustaining the asset to maintain its current function. It's not
including upgrades. It doesn't include anything to meet tighter treatment standards that either
plan or to provide additional counsel driven type things like greenhouse gas reductions or anything
like that. It's just to sustain the current performance and current condition of the asset to keep
keep it doing what it does today. Conversely, though, those forecasts, as I say, are unconstrained.
All assets are being replaced in that. So when I showed you that risk thing and said,
up the top is the high lift pumps. Down the bottom is the ceiling tiles in the lunchroom.
Everything's getting replaced in those forecasts. So there are scenarios between the do nothing
and the unconstrained forecast that we've presented, you know, clearly we're not expecting
all that budget necessarily to be available and that's the sort of challenge going forward is to
find that level of investment that maybe the ceiling tiles can be stretched another
another 10 20 years without being replaced and so there are options in between another thing
just to point out is the potential climate change impacts have not explicitly been considered here
to some extent renewing things will address some of that because they will be replaced with
come a modern day equivalent that will be better placed to sort of address some of those things, but we haven't made any specific investments here to address any climate vulnerabilities and that's something we would certainly advocate you consider moving forward.
So that's essentially the presentation that I hope summarises the two reports that we've submitted I think are about 45 page reports each.
with attached dependencies, so there's a lot of information there.
So thank you for listening.
I hope that was useful.
Thank you very much.
Do you mind taking questions off?
Are there any?
I'm very happy to tell you questions here.
Is there any questions of council?
Councilor Randall, you have that.
You know, this was in part of the scope of this survey.
So maybe I'll direct the question more towards staff,
but given that this just sort of is the replacement value
of the
And I seem to remember when we did our tour, the phrase third world country being associated
to our wastewater treatment plant. Do we have an idea of what it would take to bring
that into a second world country level?
This, I appreciate all the work you do. This area
freaks me out every time we talk about it yeah I mean sure that that phrase was thrown
around a little bit when we were walking through and touring the plants you know there are
sections and areas of the plant that aren't as bad as others and so I think what we've received
from associated engineering is a detailed breakdown of what areas to focus on and in what order
to focus on those. So, you know, over the next 25 years, we are really bringing the plants
from the 19th century into the 20th century kind of thing. So that helps. And then we also have
on the side some general facility improvements and layout improvements that are already in the
budget and being worked on to help create a better environment for the staff who are going
into both plans on a daily basis.
And so I think, you know, combining that work and some of this work will help kind of
bring us out and into, yeah, a second or a first world country status.
It's going to take time, it's going to take money, we will get there.
And yeah, you know, it is a little bit freaky because it's kind of just, it's, these
These plants are operating in the background, you know, nobody in the community experiences
these plants on a daily basis except for really the staff and our department who are in there.
And so it's something that needs to be dealt with, but it's almost like it's like the invisible
item that you're just kind of talking about at a higher level and not really getting to put
your hands on.
So it's a little abstract in that respect, which does make it a little freakier for anyone
who's not directly involved.
Okay. Can I pass the chair? Thanks. Thanks for all the information. I understand it's
like a condition assessment report and upon inspection maybe things are, maybe a little
worse, are a little better than useful life and all that stuff. But I get back to this thing
about, I look at the scales and I look at, especially on the water treatment process,
the section very poor and yet in 25, 26, and 27 you know we're I don't know what
what it was here now was it 402,000 we're spending you know like is are those
things is that enough to spend because without that in the wastewater like we
We keep spending all our money on replacing pipes, and that's great.
But if these two assets aren't working, nice pipes in the ground mean nothing to anybody
in the community, and we don't have water or proper water and such.
And I just, I know with this report now won't be all, we'll spend 50,000 here and 50,000
this year, which has been going on for 20 years, and this is the result.
There's been no attempt to upgrade anything except until there was a problem where a disaster.
But is this enough and that should we be focusing more in on these two assets and maybe we
need to forego some of the other stuff because we're spending millions on a block to change
pipe.
to the rest of the current and critical needs that we do not have because of that.
But I think looking at all the rest of the charts and not that doesn't, you know,
there's something that I don't think that doesn't give you a warmest budget field.
That's 22 percent of the water treatment plan is very poor.
And we're spending in my company, so we need to be able to know to address some of these
things.
So like that, I'm hoping I get straight after here because if we're not given, we're giving
the information here, but we need some direction going forward in budgeting, and I'm just wondering
if we're missing the mark on that.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks your worship. Um, you're absolutely right. Um, the issues that occur with piping in town are more isolated incidents that might impact a small number of community members.
Um, but if we do have a failure at the city's water treatment plan or the wastewater treatment plan, that impacts the whole community.
What you've seen in the presentation today, and I'll invite associated to add comments
on to my response, is some immediate needs, but that we've actually built into what council
will see in the upcoming budget, major upgrades that are in the millions.
So what I will be proposing to council later this month, or an early December in the
2026 budget is to get into design and then construction of almost $20 million of rehabilitation
work based on the priorities identified in these two studies over the next three to four
years.
And then when we get into the early to mid 2030s, we'll be looking at closer to about a
$60 million investment in the two plants.
And so we're absolutely going to be in the millions and we're absolutely going to be upgrading
major pieces of both plants to get ourselves kind of out of this immediate kind of critical
risk state. But associated, I don't know if you want to add any comments on to that.
I would just, sorry, I'm mute. No, I'm still. Yeah, I would just point out, you know, there's
$12.8 million of very poor here, which is in the last 10% of its life. And that is covered.
but this is the immediate needs, which is sort of repair work, but that very poor asset
is in the forecast here. And, you know, we're retaining $7 million here, and I think the
existing projects are the other $5 million. So in this summary here, we are spending
this $400,000 on repairs, studies, et cetera. Another $7.6 million here, what I didn't show here
and probably should have added to the slide is that there's $5 million already permitted
in current projects as being spent. And then as Greg said, another very significant project
coming up in the next five-year period. After this five-year period of I can't see that number
on my screen here, another $22 million.
So yeah, no, absolutely, this don't get hung up on this.
This is smaller repair type things.
This is the big expenditure on making sure things are replaced.
In an ideal world, you replace it the day before it fails.
But that's what we're seeking to do.
Avoid any failures of the water stream plan
and the ways that you drink up.
Back to you, Greg.
Thanks, Greg.
Councilor Brink.
I mean, I'm thanks for the presentation
and thanks for your input, Greg.
I'm totally comfortable with this assessment
and you know what we need to be doing.
I'm just surprised that you got to put money in this.
And I'm not even second best.
You're, you're, you're, you're forecast
I asked for a word that we want to ask for this report.
I feel like there is a systematic way that is going to be done again.
You might just report it, but there's much more to go with that.
That's not been shared with the report.
You did the walk through and then you can understand that you have a surface to understand.
So I'm comfortable with the level of risk, life involves risk and we have to manage
risk, so again I think this is very strategic, we're addressing it straight on and
and I'm comfortable with the plan moving forward.
So I'm gonna say that, thanks.
Okay, any other questions?
Okay, thank you very much for your presentation.
We have this information now that whether we want it
to see it or not, we have it now
and it's a good planning tool going forward.
So thank you.
Do you have any last comments?
No, no, just wanna thank Associate
and so much for the hard work.
It's been 16, 18 month grind here to get us to this point and really happy with the the output and we we truly do have a road map to take us through the next 25 years and to keep keep both plants running. So
Just got a you know, we've got the plan now, so we've got to work plan.
Okay, thank you. So I'm wondering if we could just take a five minute break.
a little after 10-13, you know, just five minutes and then we will get back to the communication
piece and then I know director brain you have some time constraints here and then you
will be first under operations and in here, okay. Okay, so.
Thank you, everybody. Welcome back.
So we're going to move along on item number five, deputation, presentation. So we have my orally our communication. I don't want to get your title wrong in that. So you're senior communication specialist or advisor. She's going to talk about the canora.ca redesign. So it's all yours. Well, thank you, your worship and council for having me.
today. So I'm going to jump in. I'm presenting today as more of a tour of the website and we'll
go first. I want to jump into some thank yous actually before I get into the tour because this
was a large collaborative effort with all the departments. So I would like to first start off a big
thank you to Kerry Holder, our communications officer. She was a, I can't say enough about
her in regards to this website, without her support, especially expertise on accessibility
standards. This website would not be made possible. This website involved recreating and migrating
content over an updating content for over 300 pages. So it was a large undertaking for
the communications department and then other departments as well that were involved.
So we had a very busy summer. So I want to extend a big thank you to Kerry for coordinating
with various different departments, gathering information and again balancing that accessibility
standards that we have to adhere to as well as balancing that with multiple people's wishless
items that they wanted to see integrated onto the website.
I also want to extend a big thank you to Crystal and the library team.
Their review of all their existing library pages on their microsite and then migrating
that over to the new library pages within this site as well as learning a new back end
system was a big task as well during the summer plus with their regular day-to-day activities.
So again, big thank you to them.
I also want to thank Megan and Allison from the Economic Development Department for coordinating
with Carrie for the Economic Development Pages specifically and we were able to create
pages that had both the City of Kenora branding as well as the Economic Development Tourism
branding and big appreciation to all the department leads and managers who reviewed and provided
provided updates to their web pages or without having the up to date information from each department
our website wouldn't be the way that it looks today. And then last but certainly not least,
but it is the last stage before launching the website is IT. A big thank you to our IT manager,
Mark and the team over at MNP for ensuring a successful DNS configuration. I often compare websites
to building and doing interior design in the house so the communications department can make it look good and pick out the colors and the branding and make sure everything looks cohesive and matches and navigates well but without a good foundation and without the IT infrastructure.
We wouldn't have people directed to the site that you see here today without that IT help in the background.
Okay, so I'd like to, again, just before jumping into scrolling and taking you through the
fun side of the tour. Some stuff that you don't see on the back end of this website, necessarily
unless you have reader assist apps or go through a deep dive of the website. I really want
to hone in on a big accessibility component of this updated site. So similar to our previous
site. We follow accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, AODA guidelines. This
new site has been upgraded to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, otherwise known
as WCAG, at a 2.0 level, so it's a level AA. What you see is a sleep-looking website, but
what's behind the scenes is hours put in accessibility integrations into the back panel.
Just to touch the tip of the iceberg with what this means is that content is all the content is written at a low grade reading level for easy to understand knowledge except for terminology is absolutely necessary in specific departments.
Navigation on the website we tried to keep it to two levels minimum so instead of endless scrolls you might have to get redirected to another page where there's condensed information.
but you're not having to click like five different times to get to something.
So where we designed the website, we tried to keep it to two possible clicks
to get to where you need to if possible.
Alternate text, or alt text, you can me say a few times later,
is on every single photo in this website.
So what that means is if somebody is using a reader assist app,
it will give a description of what the photo is.
Heading styles and content formatting are also applied throughout.
So, very, very simple terms, what you see on word when you're putting in like headings
and titles and quotes and things like that, it's not just a matter of going in and bold
facing things.
Like there's actual accessibility standards where we have to format that stuff very specifically
and it's coded that way.
Tables are formatted, there's captions, there's also the use of forms and fillable forms
online here throughout where we're trying to minimize the use of PDF forms as much
as possible to make it easier to use.
And then you'll see on various pages as well that we include a statement about contacting
the clerk for alternative form documents if you need an accessible format of a document.
So, that again just touches the iceberg of the accessibility components, but I'll jump
right into the fun part of the tour here, and I'll take you through the home page and
some key features.
So, to start off, you can see we have a pop-up and an alert banner, so the pop-up is what
you see here as a sample, what's currently on our site for the Q8 and Channel Bridge.
So when people first visit the website, they will be served pop-ups, depending on what
information is crucial for us to get out there. When the site first launched we
also had the website feedback form on there. I believe that there is this. There we
go. So we still have that pop-up as well. This website feedback form is also
available in the footer and I'll show you that shortly.
So when you go to the
website you'll get served a pop-up. If you've gone to the website multiple times
in the same day, you're not going to keep getting that same pop-up. So cookies are tracked
for that. But if there's a new pop-up that arrives or new messages, then a new pop-up
will show up. In addition to the pop-up, you'll also have, there's a leg on the presentation,
sorry. You'll also see new to the website is this top banner that's green right now. We
have different colors for different alerts. But if we want to have an alert that's up there
that stays up there while the user is on the website on whichever page there's
that information along the top so right now we have information about e-billing
and male male delays you can also close out the if it's distracting for the
user you could also close out of it and then I also want to draw attention to
something that is new, that carried it up, is this leak I want to button?
Which I got really nerdy and excited about when she put on the site.
These are organized
into, these are the, some of the most common pieces that people have clicked on in regards to
the website. And then one organizing it into three different categories. It was a feat
in itself. But having this very, very quickly accessible, always in the top right corner for
people who are looking for these specific things, very, very quick, again, trying to limit how
many times how long it takes for people to click through things. We've all had a bad
user experience on websites where if it takes too long to get to, let's say, a shopping
cart, we kind of abandon the website and we're like, hey, we're done. We don't want that
experience on the city of Canora's website. So this I want to is a very sleep way to get
to your, the most popular information. If it's not in there as well, there's still the search
bar at the bottom. And then we also have the search bar on the home screen, which is very
identifiably canora. And then we also have the search bar up here in the top corner.
This is always present wherever, whatever page anybody is on. Okay.
See here, we also
I want to draw some attention to the contact us. We had this on the previous site. But this
This is also available on any page that you're on.
You're going to see this top banner with our logo, the living here visit, play, build
and invest tabs, the contact us, the search bar, and the I want to.
So it's nice and convenient so that if someone is in the middle of reading something, they
can always access that information.
So this contact us page has been updated.
It's a little bit more streamlined and easier to scroll through.
It's divided up by departments.
and then you can also expand each piece out to get more information. So you have the phone number on the right-hand side as you see.
If we wanted to get more information, let's say for customer service, you could click it open and
then every department or contacting here also has a prompt to send an email to them that they will open up a box where you can start typing out an email specifically.
We haven't set up this way to also limit phishing attempts, whereas other sites, it's best
practice now not to list out websites explicitly, or so that websites e-mails explicitly.
So if you click this, it will go to the user's specific e-mail software.
So for us, it might be Outlook or Gmail depending on what you're using if you're using that at
home.
Let's go back over to the homepage.
Let's see here.
We also now have these sleek icons right along the top,
which again are also very popular pieces.
Picking which ones, which six to include were difficult.
But going through requests from our past website,
we are able to set up a really sleek looking homepage
with streamlined most common pieces that were clicked
And then as well as a, we're calling this internally, the strategy section, strategies and plans.
So I also want to note that these aren't necessarily all the strategies and plans.
If you click open one, let's say the sustainability action plan.
You can also see on these right-hand menus, I'll be calling them pods throughout the presentation.
If you click in here, you can also see other strategic plans and reports and whatnot to
the home page.
Okay. This is a new feature on the website that we didn't have before.
Occasionally, we'll get requests too that we need something that's prominent on the home page for people with new projects, new initiatives, updates on specific things.
So now we have this in real time, we can update this and then redirect for more information.
So it has a very high engaging image, short call to action, with a very clear button that
then redirect you to the pages that this corresponds to.
We've also moved the land acknowledgement from a pop-up on the old site directly on the
homepage, and then it also links over to our new Indigenous Relations page.
my favorite section is got to be this what's happening section we had this on
the old website but we've modified this and cleaned it up a little bit so this
is a big hub on the on the homepage particularly and anybody that's in the
public that's wanting to find out what's happening in regards to real-time news
this would be the main spot that I would recommend that everybody checks out
regularly. So the news updates in real time and if you want to see more, you can click this all
news and see it's organized from the most recently published.
All right. See we already have
the Canora Housing Needs Assessment posted up. Events. We also have a community events calendar,
so we'll feature some of the days upcoming events or the following days upcoming events here.
And then we have, actually, I'm going to go into this quickly.
So this featured events calendar is a community calendar that anybody can go on if you are
an external organization, an event planner, you don't have to be working within the city
of Canora.
You can go online and you can actually create your own account and add your own event.
I do want to list that not events that you go through in a approval process and that
approval process parameters for that are event submissions that need to be professional,
they need to be inclusive, respectful, and open to the public to attend.
It's Canora event specifically.
We ask that you do not post events like your garage sale or your wedding social.
So we won't be putting any of that on there, but if you are an organization that has an event that is coming up,
feel free to go onto the side of the page and then press this Submit and Event button right there.
Okay. If you want to, you can also filter through the event specifically.
So if you're wanting to check out the library specific events, if there's community programs, the Muse Recreation,
and other special events, again, by other organizations.
So back over to the what's happening section.
And then this is new to the site,
is this bottom corner here, we're internally calling this
the public engagement corner.
So the intent of this is, again,
it's updating on a regular basis.
So the intent here is to have a spot
where the public can go to get quicks,
little bit, bites of information
about how to get involved in some way.
Okay, so this is where we would envision any upcoming town halls or open houses surveys
for example.
We have it colored so it pops out a little bit more prominently on the page.
It has a call to action button that we can then direct people to a specific spot.
Right now we're highlighting the tree lighting that's going on and
then you'll see frequently
on most of the pages as well, this blue section that says stay in the note.
We, on the previous site, you would have to search how to subscribe to updates.
And now this is more prominent on most pages.
So if you see this blue banner or you hear in the community, how do I stay up to date
with what's going on in the city of Canora?
You can direct friends, family and the public to this blue section of the website.
And if you hit subscribe,
you can fill out some quick information about yourself and then
And what types of updates do you actually would like to receive?
So you don't have to necessarily pick every single thing.
If only you're interested in Coney Island news updates, and let's say snow removal,
then you can subscribe to just those elements.
If you scroll down, there's also the city's e-compass newsletter.
These are two separate programs.
So we do ask that if you are wanting that newsletter that you fill this out as well,
impresses a bit.
other notable pieces that I'd like to draw attention to on the website. I mentioned the library earlier. Let's dive a little bit into the library's pages here.
So the previous site was set up. The library had a separate micro site that wasn't feasible with this new transition.
So what we had to do was actually do a complete custom design for these library pages, so that
patrons of the library who regularly would come to expect specific resources, that we
could migrate that stuff over to live within the city of Canora website.
So these pages are all custom designed with Crystal's team and carried at a lot of work with
their team to do this. So they have specific library news, specific library events, these
also feed into that community calendar, but here specifically it's just library.
There's
a search bar for your, to search the library specific pages, and then there's also a search
to look through the library's catalog for their books. I'm a big book nerd myself, so I always
like looking out this new arrivals at the library and you can span through the different
books, and this goes with any book that they get at the library that they newly received.
They scan it and it goes into the system here and also syncs up with the website.
So any new releases are also featured here.
Okay, and you can see we've set this up similar to how they had the microsite where each tab
in a way then goes to specific pieces for the library.
Another big component that we were really key on as well was there are certain departments
library included that have their own brand identity and we're wanting to continue to convey that
these other brand identities are still part of the city of Canora so we had to marry these in a way
where it's very clear that this is stuff for the public library but at the same time it's part of
the city of Canora so we still have the city of Canora header up at the top with the logo so that
people make that association and then additionally down at the bottom two we have both logos featured
Similar to that, we also did that with the economic development department.
So their logo very prominently displayed.
They also have their specific economic development tabs, so-to-speaker pages, key sectors and
components here.
And then they also have their own social media accounts that we wanted to draw attention
to.
While still reminding everybody that these departments are all part of the city of Canora as
well.
Let's go into, let's go back to the home, let's go test out the beaches and trails and
parks.
So I'm bringing you guys over to this page specifically because you can see now we have
the website features a lot of Canora specific imagery whereas before we did have a few but
here we have a lot of photos and call to actions and buttons so it's really clear that when
you're hovering over pieces, what's clickable. Any image is clickable on the website, so you can
either click the button or the picture itself. So it's very highly engaging in that way and not
just solid text that you're scrolling through. All the website pages are also set up to be mobile
and tablet-friendly. So depending on whatever device you are on, it will reconfigure to fit
appropriately onto your screens.
And again, I think it's worth mentioning here that every single
a photo that you see has an alt text description in the back.
So for anybody that's using a screen reader or maybe visually impaired, for example, if
they have a screen reader, it will explain that there are three children on a beach wrapped
in towels, say.
Or, pardon me?
Did not know that, did not plan that.
So,
like I said, very distinctly canara can confirm local people, okay, and then I also
want to draw attention to, let's see here, this, the footer for a moment here, so we have
our city of canara social media channels here, we also have in here some common resources,
so accessibility inclusion, again, the contact us, it will redirect you to that contact
page, the subscribe will take you to that, stay in the no spot that I've previously
showed, and then this website feedback form, again the footer is a visible on every single
page you're on.
So if you are having a complication on the website, and instead of having to search for it
or go on the search bar and type in feedback, you can go down to the footer and click there
and then be redirected directly to the feedback form, which is super short and sweet.
You give general feedback about what's going on on the page that you're on.
You can provide your name and your email if you would like us to reach back out to you.
If there's something specific, let's say somebody's having a problem paying a bill online.
Or you can anonymously leave feedback and then press the submit button and then you're good
to go.
Another new feature on the website, not a new feature or a tool per se, but a something
thing that is handy and also on a lot of pages, I'm just going to pick a random page.
Over on the right hand side you'll see these pod menus that I've referenced, and under
the pod menus there's the contact us, again because people might be prompted when they're
reading to be like, oh I have a question about this, so we have our customer service general
line there, and the after hours line are hours of operation, and on, I would say,
90% or more of the pages. You'll see this submit a request for service. So this tool we've been using for years, but now it's that much more accessible and easy to find on the website. So if you are wanting to submit a request for service, you would click the button, go to the request for service page, log an online form. And this is where the public can put in anything from a bylaw complaint to park maintenance requests, snow removal. My garbage wasn't picked up a pothole.
There are over 20 different selections here.
I highly recommend to that if you have it to take a picture and upload the photo as well to that.
And then put in a brief description as to what your request or your citizen issue is and then press submit.
And then that gets directed to the department that specifically maintain and manage by.
So, again, this isn't a new tool, but the new aspect of it is that now it's accessible
from the right-hand menu, anytime anybody is navigating around this website.
Okay, and I think in a general sense that encompasses most of the key features of the website.
It is a very robust website over 300 pages.
I'm sure that since launching on September 15th, everybody here has gone to the website
a number of times. But please feel free if you see anything, see any improvements or would like to see
anything added. Please let us know directly or you can fill out the website feedback form at the bottom.
Any comments, questions? Yes,
I didn't see a museum anywhere. Yes, we do have the museum.
It is in visit and play and it is in you can search it as well as arts and culture.
Here we go. So you can click on any of these icons or when you hover over you'll see
it links and it pulses as well. So these custom icons as well and then or you can go to
the pod menu and go to the museums that way. So again using photos we also have the ability
now to have photo galleries. So that's what these dots are. So if we have a lot of sleek
photos that we want to feature. We could also do it that way. This is on a timer. I think it's
going every three to five seconds. I'm just impatient while showing you.
And these are
proving to be super handy as well. We can add photos in this style to news and notices and other pages
as well.
This is great, Maya. Even for guy like me who stumbles through these websites, it's pretty,
for the, you know, self-evident, the pictures are quite, they're very, they're great, actually.
Are these all, did you take the pictures or...?
No, they're a combination of photos that the City of Canora and Tourism Department specifically
and the City of Canora have purchased and have licenses for up until the end of 2027
and then a number of them are also taken by workers out in the field, so city workers themselves
and then as well as Kerry in myself or, again,
Tourism Department had a lot of photos
that they were able to provide us,
both from a professional standpoint,
and ones that their team has taken as well.
Does everyone have a conversation about, you know,
photographs and using photographs
or as post-professional photographers?
But I think this hits the mark 100%
and it gets very well done and I really appreciate it.
I just wanted to mention on the first page again,
you showed the, I think of the drop down it has our plans
like your economic development. I love to see our community safety well being planned,
like that was conspicuously absent for, you know, I think prior to this term of council,
really. So I think the fact that we've achieved that and it's on our main page, I think it's great,
so it's great to be able to see those and have them, you know, one of the first things you see when
you go to the site, so very well done. Thank you very much. It definitely, the new layout of this
This really enables us to, as new initiatives, plan, strategies, and events are happening.
There's now actual spots that we can say, hey, this is where this is going to live.
Whereas before on the previous site, we had, I think it was, I want to say, eight icons
where we had similar icons and then a little paragraph underneath but we didn't have a photo.
So sometimes people would just scroll past it and the community safety and well-being plan
was one of those that were on there that it may have been missed.
And then sometimes when there was key highlights or initiatives going on, people would reach
out and be like, hey, I want to be on the homepage.
And every department has a number one priority in every department.
So how do we pick who gets homepage treatment, right?
So now having these specific, okay, we know the popular icons, we know that we have the
I want to's.
Having this rotating banner is going to be that huge piece where, hey, if there's something
that the public is asking a lot of questions about,
We can do up a banner for it and start directing people specifically to that information.
Thank you. Any other questions?
Don't see it.
Yeah, I just want to thank Maya and Carrie for their effort.
Anybody who's done a project like this and unfortunately I've been a part of a couple of them.
It's a huge beast to wrestle to the ground so I know a lot of work went in.
This is top quality work and just wanted to say thanks for your efforts.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And again, I really want to extend a big thank you to the library team and economic development.
Library, we had to learn a new system and migrate over all of their page content and copy and paste that over.
Everything that the library and communications department was pumping out on the website and public notices and whatnot on the old website.
In the background, we were also duplicating that effort and doing it here.
something also that was a big, it made for a very busy summer, I'll say.
I think so, Heather, did you have a question?
Yeah, I just wanted to add, again, thanks, Stace for pointing out a big credit to Maya as
well and her leadership in the department and full circle back to council in their commitment
to this role, the senior communications advisor role, which has allowed us the opportunity
to move communications forward and to be able to undertake a project like this would
have been very, very challenging to do being a one person show.
So thank you for that commitment to this position.
And thank you to Maya and her team and everyone who committed to this project over the summer
because it was a lot of additional work on top of the already busy day-to-day comms needs.
We still have work to do in some of the committee meeting minutes.
I'll own that one.
You were doing so well in that.
It was like it was finality and then thanks very much.
Thank you very much.
So we're going to jump a bit on the agenda to Director Brain.
And then we will circle back to you, Director Piccolo.
So it's just you have your time sensitive here to finish your report.
So if you want to move to 6.2, 6.2.1, Infrastructure and Operations Q3 report.
Yeah, thank you, thank you for your worship.
So have here the 2025 Q3 Infrastructure and Operations quarterly report for Council's review
and information.
A couple of big items to talk about in the report and just touch on is restructuring that
took place in Q3.
So the previously known engineering and infrastructure group has been renamed to infrastructure and
operations with a real focus on our capital project delivery, our infrastructure renewal,
and quality of service delivery in our operations departments and so new
our chart has been provided for for Council's review and also if the public
is interested. You know I just I want to acknowledge some of the operations
departments in the quarter. Summertime is always a very very busy season for the
group and whether it's the fleet department attending to just a significant load of service
requests relating to our city equipment to support all of our operations. The parks
and harbour town team dealing with community cleanliness and repairs and graffiti removal.
It's a major effort always in the summer. And the roads department, you know, I feel like
when you drive around the community now, we've got a much better handle on our road conditions,
the ongoing maintenance, the potholing situation. So I just really wanted to particularly acknowledge
those three groups in the operations department. But then on as well, you know, on the flip side,
we have a lot happening with projects and a lot of work that kicked off in Q3 and will continue
and take us into next year. But not only what you can physically see happening in the community,
behind the scenes, there's some real effort going into our design works to prepare for
the next projects that are upcoming. I've really impressed on the team that it is important
that we start advancing our schedules in terms of design and project readiness so that we
have shelf ready projects sitting and ready to go when the budget is passed that we can get
out, get tendered and get started in the community earlier than I've seen us do in the past.
And so we're going to continue to work through that and advance that schedule on the design
So that we're ready and things are happening faster in the community
Other than that, I'm happy to take any questions if there are any but I'll leave it that kind of brief summary for the quarterly report
Any questions of council
Thank you
So we'll move on to
6.2.2 capital needs assessment reports. Yes, thank you
So, Associate Engineering was here a bit earlier to provide council with an overview of the
two reports that have been provided.
Quick summary is that for both the city's water and wastewater treatment plants, administration
identified those a couple of years ago as some items that needed some attention and had
a potential risk in terms of continuous service delivery and we knew that there was investment
needed in both of those areas and we wanted to lay out a plan for how to go about that
effectively and efficiently and so we partnered with associated engineering to complete an
assessment at both of the city's plants and they've come back with two very detailed reports
and asset inventories, including asset condition, for us to then build our capital renewal program off of over the next 10 and up to 25 years.
Couple of highlights are that the, at the wastewater treatment plants, about almost half of the plants assets are determined to be in fair or better condition, but also half of the plant assets are in poor or
very poor condition, and that's reflected with a proposal in the upcoming budget to complete
renewal investments of $8 million in 2027 and then almost $30 million in 2032. At the water
plants, a little bit more 64% of the plant's asset was determined to be in a fair better condition
with about 35% of the assets in poor or very poor condition.
That's reflected in the upcoming budget proposals with about $8 million in 2028 and then $22 million in 2034.
And so it was about $105 million over the next 25 years.
Total investment recommended by associated engineering to essentially maintain the status quo for
those two plants and keep them in operating condition.
So both reports have been attached to the agenda for Council's consideration and happy to
take any questions if there are any.
Any questions, Council?
So that will come forward next week to the next Council meeting just to receive.
Correct.
Okay.
Thank you.
Well, I guess you might as well keep going, 6.2.3 agreements, blue box regulations, for sure.
Okay, thank you.
So the next report for council pertains to the city's recycling operations.
And the report is recommending that council approves the execution of two recycling agreements.
One is a subcontracting agreement with GFL environmental for services related to curbside
collection of recyclables for the next seven years with an option for three years of renewals.
And the other agreement is an operations agreement with circular materials to provide
a depot recycling services as we currently do for a term of three years and option to extend
for three one-year periods, subject to the ongoing operations circular materials has in the province.
As a recap for Council in 2016, the province introduced the Resource and Recovery and Circular
Economy Act and began to adjust and in 2021 adjusted the way that recyclables are handled
and who pays for the processing of recyclable-
So, starting in 2021, it became producers of recyclable materials responsibility to pay for the processing of that materials. That means the collection and the handling and the processing and the reuse and renewal of those materials to go back out into the community as new products. Back in 2023, council authorized the execution of a master services agreement with Circus
for the City of Canora to continue to deliver services for
a curbside collection, depot operation, and also some promotional and
educational material distribution for a period of two and a half years,
taking us to the end of 2025.
And while we were in that agreement with circular materials,
the province went on, or circular materials went on to complete procurement
of a broader service delivery model.
And so the province has been divided up into catchments, and
those catchments have been awarded to contractors to complete the recycling services.
And so for the city of Canora, the contractor who has the contract for
curbside collection is GFL environmental.
Now, that gave GFL environmental the option to come into the community and begin delivering that service, if they wished, but because we currently offer a combined service delivery for both recycling and garbage collection combined, we actively engaged with GFL back in 2024 to see how we could partner with them to continue to offer the services that we currently do.
And so, through negotiations, I have a contract for Council to authorize that lets us do that continuously for the next seven and up to 10 years.
And really, the only changes that community members would see would be the incorporation of recyclable materials from 95 gallon carts.
parts. Similar to what you see in other municipalities in Ontario or other parts of
the country, the big blue bins with the flip top lid and the wheels and the handles that
people can bring to the curbside and will be loaded into the city's collection vehicles.
We will have to out-fit our collection vehicles with a couple of cart-tippers, pretty minor,
but ultimately the contract allows us to continue providing the service, preserve all of the
The positions related to doing that work as city staff and also provides revenue that ensures that the city is not subsidizing the recycling program and that the cost is truly being passed on to producers which is consistent with the applicable legislation.
So that's one contract.
The other contract is to be with circular materials for the continued operation of our
depot at the transfer station.
The execution of this agreement just allows the city of Canora to continue on as we have
in the past.
There will be no noticeable difference for community members who are continuing to bring
recyclable materials to the transfer station.
We'll continue to package those up and handle those and get those ready for processing.
and there is a revenue associated with that that similarly allows for when combined with the collection revenue
the costs of recyclable, handling recyclable materials to be passed back to producers.
So, combined on an annual basis the revenue from those two programs is noted in the contracts to be $784,000 per year.
But in the early part of 2026, we will continue an existing relationship with GFL for the processing and transportation of materials to the Winnipeg recycling handling site.
And so through that agreement, probably two, three months, we will have some revenue coming in from GFL to continue on with our existing agreement with them.
So, about $110,000 is forecasted for the early part of 2026 to continue on with that operation.
So, I think that's kind of the overview and summary for Council, but if there's any questions,
Council has about the agreements happening.
Councilor Koch and then Councilor Van Billion.
Thank you, Roshep.
I'm wondering about the 95 gallon collection cards, the cost of those and replacement of those for residents if necessary what that looks like.
So the carts are going to be distributed in December by GFL and it's not a city cost to provide the carts or to distribute them.
So people will receive those, and then if there are any issues or replacements or things required on an ongoing basis all cart inquiries will be directed to GFL to deal with.
And community members will start to see communications coming out on that in the coming days. We're just finalizing the material.
Right. And just follow up to that. Will it make sense? Do you think for us to explore a similar collection cart for garbage?
We are starting down that path of exposure.
Thank you.
I'll bring that to Councilwoman Thridney.
Yeah.
Councillor Van Ballyton.
I was wondering if you could also just elaborate on the glass curbside pickup.
And then I would find it helpful in the budget section on these reports if it was net revenues.
Yes, sorry.
Just not just for your report, like just in general, I feel like that's a more accurate number of like what the actual cost.
So just to touch on glass. So similar to the
Communication coming out on the carts glass will become in 2026 recyclable at the curbside and we will have in the coming days
information coming out to explain that to curbside collection customers and then also
when the carts are delivered in December, there will be pamphlets included in all the
carts that outline all of the materials that can be recycled.
And in terms of the financial question, I will get an answer back to council as soon as
I can.
Any other questions?
Councillor Bernie?
Thanks, Greg, for your report.
I'm going to go back to, I should have mentioned this earlier, but I'm just going to go back
to your infrastructure and operations report, and I just wanted to bring up your section
here about clean-ups and vandalism, and you know, thank you very much for keeping track
of this.
I mean, we talked about that before and putting a dollar value to it, and maybe you can comment
on this.
And really, I'd like to just bring this up.
I seem to be beating this drum all the time, but I think it's something that the public
is very aware of, and the public needs to know, you mentioned here in your report that
the costs in this quarter doubled the year-to-date costs. So we're looking, we're at total,
bringing the total for 2025, this is for clean-ups and vandalism to $20,000, just shy of $20,000.
And you have some pictures here you shared, the Senataf was vandalized, there's a bus stop that
the glass was smashed out of it and then this is all available for the public if they want to look at the minutes and then there's some cleanup here
I don't know these areas in a wooded area where it's just looks like a garbage dump. So, you know, you're you're doing you and your staff are certainly doing the best they can. This is a
thankless job. I mean the garbage pick up all the work that they do and I've heard before that it's it's frustrating because you just clean up one area and you come back late hours later
sometimes and it's there's garbage there again it's revandelized so maybe you can just
comment on that and I just want to say this is why it's so important for us to be talking
about community-based crime prevention initiatives. We talk about you know police presence, targeted
patrol and I know our community safety and well-being coordinator is going to be delivering
the report later on, perhaps addressing this, but I believe that it's really something
that it's the fact that it's doubled is concerning to me.
I mean, $20,000 in sort of the scope or the context of what we've been talking about
are millions of dollars for waste water and their infrastructure is maybe small, but I think
it has a great impact on the public's perception of our community, and you know why I just showed
this is beautiful website she's done trying to portray our community in the
best-like possible but anyway that's another conversation but can you just
comment on that Greg about just maybe the ongoing sort of work that you and
your staff do and is there something that you can point to regarding this trend
this increase? You know I think staff works so hard to try and keep our
community clean and warm and welcoming and inviting and you're absolutely right. It is a
thankless job because there are there are many days where the area that they've just cleaned
and beautified is ransacked again shortly thereafter same same day and so it's a it's a really
tough and thankless position and I have a lot of empathy for the the team to continue to go back
and work as hard as they do to, you know, try and deliver a nice place for people to come
and visit and engage and gather in our community. So, you know, I think that we're just, we're
starting to become more attentive to also all of the outlying areas where we're seeing these
types of things happen. And so putting the pictures for some of the wooden areas into the report
was actually on purpose, just to try and share the level of effort it takes to deal with this,
and sometimes it's not seen to the greater community. It's only a small subset who maybe, you know,
hike through a particular trail through town and come across that. The community safety and
well-being plan is 100% tied to trying to correct this issue, and I think that, you know, also groups
like the net team and trying to activate our community spaces is so important on top
of thinking about our future projects and designing with you know visibility and open space
concept, safety and sight lines in mind to try and prevent as much as as much as we can.
But yeah, it's a huge effort and you know I'm really I'm really proud of the team for the
work that they put in every day trying to keep the community clean.
Well, thanks. I just wanted to bring that up because your hard work certainly hasn't gone
on notice and we all appreciate, I certainly appreciate it. And I just want the public
to know that for us, for me, certainly, this is a priority. And there are steps being
taken to your point to address this. It's a big shift to turn.
But it is certainly still
as a priority. And there are other tables where we're having conversations about accountability,
the, you know, criminal code charges, various other factors in the community that contribute
to this kind of thing. And it's still top priority. So thanks for commenting on that.
Greg, appreciate it. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you. So, there's no other questions. I think, I think
you're done. And thanks for the patience. I know you've been kind of chomping up the bed thing.
Okay, get this done so you could leave.
So, anyway, safe travels.
Thank you.
So we're gonna shift back up to under report 6.1,
planning and building services.
We have 6.1.1, we have a committee of adjustment
and property standards committee.
Director Pakello, please.
Thank you, your worship.
So the committee of adjustment
and the Property Standards Committee were proposing new terms of reference for both of these committees.
This initiative seems to have been around for far too long to go over some of the history.
Some procedural issues were identified last year for specifically the terms of reference for the committee of adjustment which was previously the planning advisory committee.
In the spring of 2025, Council did approve updates to the terms of reference for these two committees.
But at that time, I asked the Administration to take the terms of reference away again
and do a thorough review because what we had done previously was just update what we had.
And so we did a thorough review and we're proposing two separate by-laws.
It is still the same committee people, but two very different roles.
And so they should have different terms of reference for when they're following if they're
doing a hearing for property standards appeal is much different process and procedure than
if they're doing their committee of adjustment duties under the Planning Act.
So what this does is really separate the two out.
It provides terms of reference for each committee just for Council's knowledge.
Property standard appeal hearings are rare whereas the committee of adjustment typically meets
monthly to do with planning applications, so the...
Property standards committee would sit only as necessary, and it may or may not be part of a regularly scheduled committee of adjustment meeting. So we have provided you with the two bylaws and recommend that three readings be given to each of those bylaws. Next regular meeting of council and that bylaw.
So the Planning Department has received a application for a sign variance and
I would like to move on to 6.1.2 sign variance request 534 park street.
So the Planning Department has received an application for a sign variance and it falls within
Council's purview to grant variances to the sign by law.
So the sign in particular that is being applied for is for a business that will be located
at 534 Park Street which is within the Canora Shopping Mall.
The business is Sessions Cannabis and they are asking for three variances under the sign
by-law, first that the maximum area of the sign be increased to of 2.34 square meters,
that the vertical dimension of the sign be increased by 0.4 meters and that the lighting
for the sign that it would be a facelift illuminated sign.
So the rationale for these variances, this is, I guess, the lighting in context.
So in Harbor Town Center, we are not permitted to have backlit signs, so illuminated lettering
in this case. This change has been quite successful in our main street, second street area, which
is our pedestrian focus of downtown. All of the businesses in the shopping mall have
backlit signs presently, so this is not a departure from the other businesses. It's also a very
different nature because these businesses are set back very far from the
street with a large parking lot in between. It's a different field than
our main street. So that's the rationale behind asking for illuminated signs.
Also the sizing of the signs in the shopping mall. All of the signs are
contained within a strip at the top of the building.
The proposed variance is in keeping with other businesses.
I did include imagery in the report
that shows the little Caesar's sign, which
covers the entire pretty
much the height is the same as the strip.
this one would not be that high.
So what we're looking for is Council's
approval of these variances to sign by let 1, 1, 5, 2010 seeking relief from
section 8.1 to A and table E which permits only non-illuminated or
externally eliminated signage within Harbor Town Center and limits the size of
wall signs to 0.8 meters vertical height and an area of 0.5 meters squared per linear
meter of wall, or which 10 meters, which is lesser.
Thank you.
Councilor Van Bologna.
Thank you.
I just am wondering that given the entire area has now essentially asked for a variance,
is it a value to maybe update our sign file law?
because if you have a rule and you don't follow the rule, is there a plan on having the rule?
This feels like a lot of procedural work.
My team is reviewing the sign by law presently.
It is a 2010 by-law, so it is quite dated.
It is also extremely complicated.
So we are trying to simplify that and that will be coming forward to counsel
So, when it's complete, but we do have a review team that includes the building department
that currently reviews the sign permits as well as the planning department and bylaw
enforcement.
So, they're working together towards updating that particular bylaw, and it will come back
to you.
Thank you.
Councillor Matheson.
So what you're saying is first and second street can't have
backlit at the mall can all of the variants all of Harbor Town Center has
that prohibition that they're not to be granted backlit signs that came in
you know existing signs have been grandfathered in so if someone comes in and
asks to replace the you know the plastic with the letters on it but keep the
same sign so there still are some signs on Main Street that have not been
replaced with non-illuminated signs but for the most part there has been quite a
lot of uptake we also support through our CIP program there's financial incentives
to modernize your signs and have them in keeping with the look and feel that we're looking for in those areas.
But that is a blanket coverage for all of Harvard Town Centre. So in order for the properties at the mall to have a backlit sign,
that's different from just replacing the face shape, they would need a variance.
Great. Okay, any other questions of council entries?
Thank you, thank you, your worship. Just for a clarification, the proposed sign design is consistent with the existing signs in terms of the way it's lit, in terms of either mall patrons or not patrons, but tenants.
It is. Likely, little ceasers, each individual letter is assigned and it's illuminated from behind.
So, drive test, which is also illustrated in this report, shows a different type of sign
where the letters are painted on an illuminated panel.
So, Dolorama also in the mall has similar type channel letters.
So it is both types are in the mall, but this channel lettering is more common.
I would say. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you. So, if we would like to move on to 6.1.3, planning building Q3 report.
Thank you, Your Worship.
So, Q3.
Q3 has been busy mostly for our building department as one would expect it being the tail
end of summer.
We have seen a lot of permits issued, a lot of construction activity taking place.
At the end of the report, I do have a summary of our annual permit activity by month.
So you can see that already by the end of September, we have exceeded the amount of building
activity when comparing to all of 2024.
So in the first nine months of 2025, we have seen work valued at over $76 million worth of improvements and new buildings to buildings in the Canora area, so that that is a success story from our point of view.
We're seeing some of the highlights, I do have a picture of the one
of the buildings that's under construction on lot 15, which was part of the mill property.
So not everyone would see this building because it's tucked away behind the armories up on that hill.
So, there is a picture in the Q3 report showing that building, that is a 24-unit, affordable housing project.
Some of the other high-profile developments that you will see when you're driving around Canora.
Windhack's building is going up and that will make a huge difference to our downtown.
also the Kenore vet clinic is working on their foundation out on the West Highway.
There is a new foundation for a commercial laundry that's coming up.
So we are seeing signs of progress within the region.
I also wanted to draw your attention to our new secondary dwelling unit guide.
This has been a project that planning and building have been working together on and it
is a resource for homeowners who are interested in putting secondary dwellings on their properties
and helping them navigate the new rules and trying to facilitate that gentle
infill of our city. So that will be available on our website and we've also
included a copy for council. I believe it's with our development services report
later. We also had water quality monitoring complete for Black Surgeon Lake and it had
a clean bill of health, so I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Any questions, Council?
No? Okay. Thank you very much. I'm correct with the bill from here.
So our chief Howard is away this week, so his two reports I'm happy to speak to both of
them if you'd like to move on to fire an emergency services?
Yeah, why don't we deal with those?
And then you can break?
Sure.
Okay.
Oh, thanks.
Sure.
I'll be able to do that.
Sorry.
Council Committee update.
Sure.
Yeah.
If you wish.
Well, why don't we go around and do that around the table and then maybe provide an opportunity
for Councillor Moncrife when she re-emerges in the meeting.
That's all.
Okay.
I'll move to council committee update that.
I just have one quick question for Janice here, sorry, Janice, I just want to take you
on.
I just, you're a reporter under notices, notice a motion, progress or updates, the harbor town
zoning and then just you're calling his planning division continues to record zoning issues
and concerns for inclusion in the new official plan zoning by-law review.
Can you, at high level, what those concerns, issues and concerns are?
For the harbor?
Yeah, for the notices and what, it's concerning the notice of motion.
Harbor Town's owning amendments.
So we are looking at some proposed changes to our zoning by-law to address concerns in
Harbor Town Centre, what we are hearing, what we heard through our outreach, a real desire
to re-energize our downtown, keeping with the retail focus and really looking at place-making
and creating a retail space that attracts people and activities and business and the
making of a real commerce hub. So we are looking at ways that we can change our zoning
and to preserve that focus of downtown. So we'll be getting more detail on that.
A lot of that is going to come forward through the zoning amendments. So right now we are
working with our consultant on finalizing the official plan that gives us
the foundation but in background my team is working on going through the
zoning by-law from beginning to end and it'll be in compliance with the new
official plan but also looking at a lot of changes are going to be proposed for
Yeah, I just want, because I just mind all this emotion, that...
Concerning, I think, I even talked about commercial special zones with some other communities, with an emphasis, assuming that the point is an emphasis on retail and a vibrant business, you know, vibrant businesses in the downtown core. So I just wanted to note that for the public's information because I've had people come up to you and ask me about that. I'm sure we've all got most questions about, so what's going on?
As we see more
services in the downtown core
Less businesses and more services. I would say people are concerned and that was my my concern
Hence the the motion so so thanks for the update Janice and we'll look forward
Hearing about your progress. No, thanks
Thanks, man. Thank you
So we are going to move over to
to 6.5 corporate services finance human resources and we will begin with 6.5.1 so we have Council
Committee workup date so depending on how long was that maybe I'll start over to my
right so we can get the councilor bowing them before she has to.
So I'll start with Councillor
We're announcing, please.
I'll be really quick.
I just want to remind everybody that Friday is the main street
tree lighting.
And on Sunday is Q8 tree lighting.
And on the 29th, we have Festival of Trees.
And I think they're pretty well sold out.
And then the Kinsman parade on the same night.
OK, OK, thank you.
OK, so we'll start with last week.
I attended the joint OAPS Ontario Association of Police
Service Boards and Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, Fall Meeting.
The major theme suggests across police services and municipal representatives who are housing,
recruitment pressure.
This is like, you know, everywhere.
And the ongoing challenge is related to the transition to the new Community Safety and
Policing Act.
And one part that I'm sort of interested around is NAPS, Nishinavi Aski Nation Policing Services
is has joined the Community Safety Policing Act, which means they are only going to be
like a provincial police force essentially, so that federal provincial funding agreement
that we have with like 3D3 does not apply to NAFTS, but it means that they have to adhere
to the CSPA. So they're going through that transition right now, but it's something that
I'm sort of watching they were talking about. As I know we've seen funding challenges here
with having agreements between those two levels of government regarding Treaty 3.
So there's multiple presenters and then there was a not surprisingly significant conversation
around the increasing demands being placed on police services due to social issues rather
than strictly criminal matters.
So a number of speakers emphasize the widening gap between community expectations and police
resources and we've seen this here obviously and even some things recently which include
the strain caused by court security requirements. So now the police are being required to provide
security to the courts where we're already seeing extreme staffing challenges in many community
and then the need for improved coordination between social services and policing.
minister Kursner joined remotely and asked for questions. So he took my
opportunity.
I was incredible. And he was like, I think your
bears coming tomorrow. I was like, that man hates to see me coming.
But one thing I did highlight with him is just one of the data points that
we're seeing at in the Canora OPP Detachment Board is the significant year-over-year increase
in youth interactions with police in Canora and highlighting, again, the provincial leadership
needed to support upstream solutions, particularly in areas outside the municipal jurisdiction.
I emphasize sort of like our community safety well-being plan and our committee and the
per view and needs to be crossman that is dearly funded again and I did follow up with
an email to him and his policy staff member who was on the call as well.
So overall the meeting highlighted the need for continued advocacy on recruitment, sustainable
funding, and stronger provincial partnerships, especially when it came to supporting vulnerable
youth and relieving police services of responsibilities better suited to community and health partners.
When we were able to hear the last one was from the Executive Director of the Municipal Chiefs of Police.
No, Manitoba, Chiefs of Police.
And they are having a lot of success redirecting the funds that policing are receiving.
Because they're seeing increased pressures on their demands.
Because essentially we are using the police as the response team for everything at this point obviously.
And so they, in Manitoba, what they're doing is increasing their, we wrote it down.
They've increased it like a hundred mental health support workers who go on calls with police.
And then work through those models.
So it's more focused on making sure that they're redirecting the funding from policing to social services,
to health care, to housing, to the areas to sort of prevent the strains that they're seeing.
So we did offer to join Manitoba again.
I don't know if I had the authority to do that at that meeting, but it's something that
I think that we're really seeing is we do have good relationships amongst our, you
know, people have relationships or whatever, but if there's not like any policy framework
to sort of solidify how this all works together, then we're going to keep seeing this over-reliance
on police for issues that they can't solve.
They're just going to be reacting.
That's what their job is.
It's a reactionary service.
It's there for emergencies.
And it's being overburdened because we've underfunded all
of the upstream measures that are putting this in the situation.
So just also to highlight, so our OPP detachment board was canceled
for November, excuse me, our detachment commanders are away.
So we will meet again in January.
We'll have our elections in January.
Tom Jervet is going to join the meeting to discuss the O-reg and then we'll have a lot
of things on the agenda, we'll probably just pass some of it off, we'll have to update
our, we'll have to do our detachment commander review and we've got a couple of questions
we need to address as well.
And then we also had our accessibility advisor committee, I just wanted to highlight some
The way that this committee is working is we're really focusing on, as you sort of saw with the website design as integrating accessibility features into how we are creating new spaces for city of Canora projects.
So, we did talk about the walking track slope raise issues at the City of Canora Rec Center, or sorry, Monk Reef Construction Sports Center, highlighted just the Sports Center temporary entry, there is a ramp there, and then they do have a like a chair to sort of get down.
The Queuing Elevator project is underway.
That's to get you to the main viewing area,
or the main floor to the viewing area.
And that will be finalized in the spring, I think it was.
Railway Street Phase 4.
We will be brought back in to sort of discuss sidewalk
and rest area integrations.
is some active transportation updates, Norman Park docking plan, I'll highlight this one.
So the Norman, there is a plan to put in docs at the Norman Park.
They are just waiting for hospital docs to be finalized and then work should be started
soon, but it's just going to be connected to the grass right now, but it is something that
And it is on our mind that we will be connecting it to the surface area once the docs are installed.
So it's just, I have, I just wanted to highlight like we're getting all of these projects,
what the goal is of, what are they called now in engineering, no, operations and infrastructure.
Thank you.
Is to make sure that the committee's being brought in at the 30% design phase to call out those
things that are, you know, we only know what we know.
and then we are already working on our national accessibility week plan so we
did the flag last year as you all remember that the schools did the
contest for and there's a lot of great submissions but thanks to Director
Gander for your quick response we are gonna go in a community wide direction this
year and so we're looking at probably doing a sticker contest to get people to
design stickers for highlighting national accessibility week because there's a
big uptick with the like community what are they called like the poll like
those Chris yeah the banners the banners and those were such a huge success so
we're thinking rather than having something that replaces that flag every year
That's where we're going with that. That's all I got. That's all I'm doing.
Do you want to just keep going now? Okay, Councillor Bray. Just a couple of quick updates.
Biz, I think I gave an update on my, on the Biz Committee a while ago. We have met since.
But the overwhelming concern in addition to just the business of the Biz, some of the projects
that local businesses are supporting was downtown safety and I mean director
brain is report and I talked about the vandalism it's they go hand in hand I
think these two issues so it's it's a it's a concern for local businesses for
sure one of the things that was it was it was impressed on me is the safety the
feeling of being unsafe for staff closing up businesses at 5 o'clock, 5.30, oftentimes female
staff, young staff that are being tasked with closing businesses up and feeling unsafe,
walking to vehicles after. So this is something that I really think that we can address and we'll
have this conversation at another table. But, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a real
dichotomy, I feel, where we're trying to attract business to the downtown core. We're,
we're doing, you know, we're, we're trying to, as I said, attract business, we're doing
events in the downtown core, yet the people that are working in the downtown core don't feel
safe. You don't feel safe in the morning going to, to their businesses in darkness, and they
don't feel safe closing up at night.
So, it's an issue that I intend to certainly flag and I know possibly bring up with OPP
command staff here in Canora because I know there are targeted patrols that are done
in each day.
School zones are just a given where officers and cruisers will go out and they'll do school
patrol in the morning and there's even a dark code for a daily activity report code for
school patrol.
So I'm hoping that this can be done, perhaps it was suggested 430 to 530 whatever to do
patrol in the downtown core because it's really an unacceptable situation where business
staff, business owners, as I say sometimes young female staff or teenage staff are feeling
unsafe because they're closing businesses up in the dark now that the time changes happened
and we're into the fall and winter.
So hopefully that can be addressed, but that was a major concern that was addressed during the the bus meeting
the the Northwestern health unit
We have a meeting on Monday actually, so I don't really have a lot to update but we did get an update that the
Office in Sunaro is is going to be closed. I believe the notice was in the new year the office in Sunaro is going to be closed and it was for various reasons the cost of the keeping the building open the rent
the volume of, you know, service that's being provided there, so that there's a decision
made to close the office, but still provide services and, you know, mobile services to
that area in scenarios. As I say, I'll have more to update next meeting, since we're meeting
on Monday, but that's it. Thanks.
I have no update at this time in a year or so now.
I also have no update, thanks.
I don't mind if, sorry, I'm not going on, but I'm in the, I left the meeting as a result
of moving the meeting, it's conflicting with the district services board meeting and
I'll be leaving again here in about 15 minutes to rejoin it.
They're in the middle of budget discussions, and I don't want to miss that, so I don't have a committee.
They're on lunch, yeah, so they laugh, but thanks, sorry.
Yeah, just a couple of things, we have the tree lighting this Friday.
you mentioned the Kinsman Parade next Saturday evening. Also I'm going to put a
pitch in there that next Wednesday and that the Christmas tree's arrived in
town the ones that Kinsman sells and that so and they're limited in numbers because
we're not able to get the kind of numbers that we used to order.
Just because of the, it's across the industry and that where there's shortages so they are limited. And also the lighting of the, or the tree or the lighting ceremony in Kuwait and on Sunday.
Pardon? Yeah, this Sunday. It's in our calendar and that. So just a couple of things. Just to let you know to and that.
But I guess I've been away more than I've been here.
I'm kind of too proud thing last week I was in Toronto for a couple of things, but mainly
for KDMA and had quite an interesting meeting with the Slyster General.
But I was there representing not only Canora, but all nine municipalities for KDMA.
And we all, like maybe not to the same extent, but we all have similar issues, complaints,
concerns.
But there was a lot of talk about, you know, we're going through the costing mechanism.
So that was brought up again, that, you know, we thought we submitted a good proposal, which
It really would have helped not only this community, but 31 other communities across the province.
Whether they take heed to that, I guess we'll find out.
They weren't forthcoming with a lot of information there, which suggests to me that they're not, they don't have it yet.
They're not ready, but they were also told that they better get on it, or do something because they're holding up.
Minus penalty budgets everywhere across the province right now they're they're stalled on the operating side because it's such a big piece
And that's our issue here right now
We don't know what to put into that what the numbers supposed to be
Which could be problematic for us going forward
Brought the community safety officers and I said just take a chance
Why don't you use this as a guinea pig a pilot?
But because they brought up other provinces and I said, yeah, we know about that.
But let's, why do we have to, just because no one else has it in Ontario, why do we have
to wait for this Toronto centric stuff?
Why don't you let us try and put something together and put a full-fledged proposal in and
we even have a department that would look at kind of overseeing that piece.
And then it taught, you know, there's data that shows that it takes a lot of pressure off law enforcement where they can do other things.
You know, where they, you know, they not only react, but they're proactive in that they can do other things that way to prevent, you know, crime or whatever it may be.
And then we talked about the LCBO thing, and Thunder Bay,
Sula Code, or Canora want to try it.
It's a test pilot if it doesn't work or it needs to be adjusted.
So what?
Because they do that all the time with government programs.
They have to adjust things.
So we're really pushing that again.
And like I don't know what other information on that one to provide.
because they've got more than enough data and it's being tossed around and moved
around from this ministry to that ministry but I think it's kind of time to make a
decision. It's not a legislated decision, it's a stroke of a pen decision. So
like that's what they're there for to make those changes. So really had an
interesting discussion about that and the other one was off sale liquor.
like sales. They need to go back and look at their regulations and legislation and they
can't just put these things in place and then let us ground because that's what we're
doing. So the data is being put together for, you know, what the effects are, like, I
Safeways or one, you know, the grocery store issue now, the one downtown, the service station where they sell it.
We see it all the time, all of us. It can't be hidden anymore.
But it's expanding out, but it's not only us, it's other communities that have some of these licenses that have been released out into the public and awarded.
They're having problems everywhere, again, it's not just a conor problem, it's become a problem like not even in just Northwest Ontario in the outline areas, and I think our city she hears it all the time in her meetings with colleagues.
So we need to have the ability to at least question things or maybe even what would help us right now.
that is setting hours at least we're not going to get rid of the legislation but they
can at least provide us with some tools that we can utilize at the municipal level in
order to you know stem the problems that are having because I said you know we're talking
about bringing solutions to reduce calls for service we go too forward and we're going
six back because every time you turn around and implement something, it hits us right there.
And this is like three or four things now that have come back to hit us. So you're not helping us.
So when you think we're getting a rebate and we're getting this, we're getting that,
that's not even helping, that's not even doing what we need it to do because our costs are going
up anyways. It's just like you know and I go use the the whole thing about the like when cannabis
came out at least the federal government for for fault in not to begin with provided municipalities
with a feedback some opportunity. There's no feedback with this. It's just we're doing it.
So we have a bit of flexibility on the cannabis thing or whatever.
I still think we have too many stores in town, but having said that, we do have some ability to control that somehow.
And we should for lecker, and I know the thing came up about, well, you should help them move the store.
And I said, we did everything, but hand, we literally offered them free property, valuable
property.
And we got some canned response back from the Ministry of Finance that they owned the
building.
Well, I don't care.
The government owns lots of buildings, sell it for giving you another one.
Someone would buy it for something.
That's not a reasonable and rational reason not to do or look at something.
and their growth square foot.
So it's all about profit and dump,
like these things on Canoran, that's what they're doing.
And that's really where the discussion went
and it didn't go well near the end
because it, like there was a lot of banter back and forth.
Like we can't keep coming and talking about these things
and getting nowhere.
Like what else are we going to do?
Like it just, and some of these things,
And regardless of who would be placing our community, they would still be problems.
And we've been talking about them, and we need to address them.
So hopefully we can get to a point where they continue on.
But the South New and Am going to a KDMA meeting, so I have to slip out for a bit.
And we're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about strategies going forward.
because if that's not going to solve some of the problems we have, we need to look at Plan B, C, and D, and some of those plans aren't going to be politically correct.
And while they're not, and we have to send a message, because 20 some million dollars in, you know, for sewer and water, and I know it's a different budget and everything else.
But we've got all these pressures on us to get this done to grow, to do all these things.
And we're getting killed by external agencies, like, you know, it's not going to be long
where it's going to be half our budget.
And we can't afford it.
Like we should not be paying for public health.
It is mandated from the province.
Why is a local taxpayer paying for that?
But why are we paying for day care, whatever, that we got out of the, or childcare, we got
out of that.
We shouldn't be contributing any of that.
If a government wants to put a program in, then you should be able to afford to pay
for that.
It should not be on our tax dollars, it's important, but it should not be in our purview.
We can go on and on and on about all these things, and hopefully we get some resolution on
a couple of these items, but how many more years and how many more mayors and how many
more councils are going to be talking about police costs because it's been a topic
of discussion since 2012 I think. That's 13 years. Come on. We need to spend our time
focus on other initiatives and some of these good programs that we've put forward as like
with groups of people that are going to make things better.
And we talk about it in every meeting about the problems, and we provide solutions, and
they get stalled out in a bureaucracy that's so big in Toronto that no one even knows who
works where, and so they don't know where to send things to, and that become quite evident.
more and more, every time you meet with staff, no one seems to know who's doing what.
And they're, well, we'll check into it.
Well, they said that six months ago and six months ago.
So, anyways, it was an interesting meeting, just like next week and not just kind of tied
in with over the last month or so, we've been setting up meetings with federal ministers.
to begin that dialogue on the campus care because there's a funding gap, quite a large one, actually.
But there's lots of pieces to that project, and there's lots of money out there.
And if we're not there, we're not going to get anything.
I don't care who writes a letter where it's a big country.
So we've made contact with ministers, we're getting follow-up calls now, and we're going
to meet with the housing or parliamentary assistant for housing and infrastructure at the
federal level where all the cash is, like there's billions now, well, once the budget's passed,
and then some into the future, we need to tell our story and, you know, from the report
that we have there. That's what they want to see. That's what we're going to
provide. And we we're looking for funding to help develop some of these areas.
They want housing. We'll give them housing. We have people ready to go. But we have a huge
cost to get to a foundation. So anyways, that's part of that and tied in with the
KCA and such so that hopefully after that there'll be one more minister at some
point and we're actually looking to set up a meeting with the prime minister
because they suggest that he would he it would be good for him to hear our plan
our story like as the partnership on that and with KCA the hospital and all the
other partners involved. Again, that's what they're looking for. It checks off
some of the boxes. We're going to give it to them. We already have it about, they
don't need to, you can probably use it as a template for other areas of the
country and not so that means we do good things here and we want to and we want to
show them that we are doing good things so, anyways, thank you so do we want to, what do
we want to do, so, yeah, it's not, yeah, so we'll take, I don't know,
I will,
I just,
Welcome back, everybody. So we're going to move
on the agenda. We're going to go to 6.4 recreation and culture. So we have 6.4.1. We have facility sponsorship and naming rights policy. So it's all yours. Perfect. So council will find a facility sponsorship and naming rights policy in front of them. The purpose of this policy is to standardize
an accountable approach to engage in external partners for naming rights and sponsorships.
This is fairly common in municipalities to have some sort of governing document.
There are two amendments within the policy.
There's a reference to an event in the number 10 as well as number 11.
and so that is pulled out and it will be in next week without that.
So if there's any questions, concerns, thoughts on this policy?
Definitely looking for council's intuition on this.
Any questions or council?
No?
So Andrew, just to clarify, you're removing the section regarding recognition event?
Yes, so there's a section where it says this event will be coordinated by the Recreation and Culture Department, that's been removed, as well as
Communications Department has managed sponsor recognition signage branding and event promotion that event promotion has also taken over there.
Any concerns by council for those two.
Okay, thank you. So if we can move on to six point four point two, recreation and culture,
or Q-3 report?
For sure.
So Q-3 was extremely busy at the Moncafe Construction Sports
Center with numerous projects going on.
I do want to thank, firstly, our staff
for being not only understanding,
but willing to be flexible with their work
stations having to walk probably 10 to 20,000 steps a day,
trying to get from one side to the facility.
So really appreciate all the work they've put into it.
We've they've come up with great solutions for problems we've had.
Just small little details that sometimes you just don't even know are going to happen and they've figured it out for us.
Really, really impressed and pleased with what the staff have done, especially during this construction season.
And as well as the public, I do want to thank the public as well for being so understanding
and willing to deal with the change so we can improve the facilities as well as I really
want to thank all of the staff who are potential, who are bringing up those ideas.
So, we had a lot going on this summer as well, but I really want to dive into something that
the library was putting on, so they had an annual drive an event, and I just want to iterate
how intelligent and creative that group is. They had kids in box cars watching a movie in
a library. That is so cool and exciting, and I wish I could have done something like that
So I really appreciate that they even had a concession there.
So who doesn't want to go to a drive?
And so I'm just really impressed with the library
and all of the really cool things that they do down there.
So really just want to make sure that everyone knows
about all the exciting things that they're doing.
And I also do want to comment on something
that the new staff have been doing.
They're doing exceptional intellectual work there
that a lot of us don't really know what they're doing so the digitizer photos they're using AI
now for some different things you know they're preserving second world war artifacts they do a lot
of stuff outside of just having the doors open and people going in there so I really want to
ensure that the public is aware of all the extras that they do especially what's in the intellectual
So once again, just really, really pleased with those two spaces in particular about how
advanced they are for a community, our size.
So, you know, if there's any questions, I'm here to respond, and to answer some.
Yeah, so I guess my question is probably more of a Q4 question, but I can ask it anyhow.
I'm just wondering when the dry pad was done, and then I'm assuming the concrete continued
on where the Zamboni goes down, like who was verifying and checking, first of all, the
project, and secondly, like the design on that, because, like, be quite honest with you,
and that was quite an oversight, you know, where now it can't get down, now it's created
another problem there, then they got to go back in the spring and
I'm assuming remove some concrete and then change the slope again, and I don't know, I just I just feel that if we'd have had like a project manager there maybe more often someone would have saw that notice that right away for sure
So we did have our consultants.
Burn Rimer was a consultant who was the one leading that project.
We agree it was an oversight.
You know, I think the thought was that the Zamboni that we had
would be able to get up and get down still.
But the way that it worked out was our conditioner when it's coming off the ice.
It actually goes into the tires now because it's too much of a decline
So the machine could still go up and down, but if we didn't put the ramp in, they would have to lift up the conditioner in the goal crease, making a huge pile of snow and it wouldn't really work out that well.
So the design team likely should have had that into account, but when you look at the designs, when you look at the specs of your machine, you can actually tell if the incliner declines.
and there's no specs on the machine saying
this is how higher decline is or incline is
because you're not really supposed to have any of it.
So we're fixing it now.
And yeah, we understand it's, it was an oversight,
but we're trying to make it better now, so.
So just a supplementary then is,
so just concrete act actually have to be broken up
and moved, or is it something with the machine
or what, like what, because we get a lot of questions
about it and we have received a lot
We just said or been told that it will be fixed in April or whatever, but for a lot of people that's not good enough, not after what was spent.
So if we could get more full some response as to what the issue is then because I thought it was concrete.
And I guess I was guessing where it kept going.
And then it's finally sloped down when in fact that's not what the problem and the issue was so yeah
So the issue right now is that
Like I said, you know the conditioner can't come up so we we built a fake ramp right now
So all we're doing is adding concrete to the ramp so we're gonna add to the ramp
Which in turn
Means we have to have our bridge raise right now because we don't want our operators to be decapitated for lack of a better term
So we are working with Stan Tech on both of those right now to figure out
You know first of all how can we have the bridge down and make it a loop the whole time and second of all
Just the right angles that we need for that round
We already know because we have it in place. We built it. So we just need to make it concrete. No, it's wet right now
Thank you
Any other questions?
Andrew, did you have more to continue on with?
No, no, that's great, that's fine.
Okay, well thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay, moving on the agenda,
the clock at 6.5 corporate services,
finance, human resources,
we're going to move to 6.5.2 financial status and forecast
at December 31st, so Director Marsh.
Thank you, good afternoon.
So
I have the financial status and forecast report
short as of September 30th, 2025.
So the
The forecast for the net tax levy supported budget is the shortfall setting at $283,447. The
South Support Utilities Water and wastewater deficit is 109, 109,000 and the Solid Waste
Forecaster plus 8,859. So the net tax levy supported budget is, we've seen a lot of improvement
from last period, we saw about 663,000 and so this period, we've done a decent
job of trying to mitigate some of the over-expansions that we had forecasted.
So primarily the change from June to September is a little bit increase in our
interest earnings a little bit higher out there. Our fire over time we've seen a
little bit of a forecast our projection come down. While it's still high we're
seeing we're projecting a bit less than we did last period and then our we have
some more general salary benefits savings. So
I'm just going to go through some of
the variance explanations for each of the areas. So as I mentioned the
corporate, forecasting an increase in interest of 91,000.
General government variants is due to salary and benefits.
There's a number of positions inside there that are offset,
are offsetting our vacancy management.
And we also have some savings and contract services.
And so we're at 677,000 is the deficit there,
mainly because of the vacancy management.
And protection, as I mentioned earlier, the overtime increase, just to meet some staffing
requirements as we have is we're running a deficit of $491,000 there.
And in transportation, they're the ones that are basically covering off a large portion
of that vacancy management with some of the more significant positions.
they have vacancies currently and earlier in the year that are allocated there.
And then we have some increases, our increased savings and recycling.
Some reduced fleet expenses are driving that wreck and culture.
We have a shortfall there, 125,000 mainly due to the capital work
that's influencing or impacting some of the revenues there and then we have some planning
development variants, decrease in contract services and a small increase in fees that
we're seeing there for $53,000.
And the solid waste and utility side, solid waste variances, a result of increase in volume
of sales, offset with some small increase in fleet and vehicle.
So, 8,859 in the water, waste water variance is due to some increased maintenance and repairs,
and some forecast and lower revenues.
That's also set with some lower fleet expenses, so we're seeing with a deficit today of
109,000.
So, that kind of runs us through the departments quickly, kind of in a nutshell.
on the second appendices is the capital projects so that also gives you an idea of what the capital projects are still open, some of the spending to date are as of November 7th, this includes and some of the remaining budget.
That would conclude my forecast for September 30th. There's any questions? I'd be happy to.
Any questions of council?
I just, the importance of a quarterly report in terms of being financially responsible
is so important because it allows us to adjust in year to what we see as being a pressure.
So if council recalls the second quarter financial report that was presented, we were not looking
in a good place and we've done a lot to improve the financial position and what we think that
our year end expected finishes going to be.
So this is really, we've really come a long ways in the last couple of months in terms
of closing that gap, which just demonstrates strong financial management, so just wanted
to say that.
Questions?
Just come from one piece and you can just take the chair.
Just a comment, because I know there was a bit of concern on the water and wastewater because
was it around $269 or something in the last quarter?
Could be.
Or it was significantly higher than you thought, or than you were hoping for.
I have to take a look.
Yeah, but I know it's come down, I guess, is what I'm saying.
Oh, yeah.
What I'm saying.
So, and to Stasis Point, you know, that's part of the exercise.
this going through it gives eyes on the current financials that allows the
managers and allows the directors to see the position we're in and they're
able to pivot and make adjustments to try to, you know, really make up some
of those projected overages.
Yeah, that answers it.
It was more of a statement now. I know there was concern at the time at the end of
to it was it was high enough that it was material right yeah I think we're
in to your point I think we're in a better position all around so I mean we're
not quite there yet but we're making our way to yeah okay thank you so well I
guess you're I guess you're done yeah no usually you usually have three or four
So moving on, the agenda 6.5.3, we have community safety and wellbeing Q3 report.
So Eric.
Thank you, Your Worship.
Good afternoon.
Your Worship and Members of Council, I print to you the Q3 report for the community safety
and wellbeing division.
As you can see in my report, it first starts with the implementation planning and where
we're at with the different actions.
The committee went through a process of identifying the first priority actions that get started
with in part, recognizing what's already underway and what they felt should be the priority.
So you have a status report for that.
As well, we were able to do some outreach through the fall, both at the Maddy Outskis
Farmers Market, and add a couple other events to be able to let folks know about the
plan, and as well to be able to see if they wanted to be involved, and it was a time
for them to reach out to me, and to let me know about if an action team was something
that they would be interested in, and we'll continue to do that.
The next part I wanted to share, and this is why I've got my computer and one I'm sitting
down is just an update on the dashboard.
So as part of the plan we talked, we are making this a priority of the city about making
sure folks know kind of where things are at.
So in this, one of the ways that we're doing is by creating a dashboard using the Power
items and where they are, so let me give you a moment and I'm going to share this room.
So this is a little bit different than what's in the report.
What you have in the report basically is in a different orientation through consultation
with the Communications Department.
We're keeping in mind AODA requirements and how it fits in our website and all this will
will be placed within the city of canora.ca website under the community safety and wellbeing
plan. So as you can see, it is using the assets that we have and also shows kind of where
things are at. So really trying to keep it simple in a way that people can see and get
the information they need. So for example, priority area one is collaboration communications.
There are five priority actions. This is an indicator of how many actions have been started
and if folks want more details, they can click into this.
So this is a priority area one
with all the priority actions here. If they want more information about a specific item,
they click on that. And then it's on the right hand side, where we'll talk about the status,
the lead, the approaches, any updates, and any results impact. So for example, we had our community safety
the unwell being plan open house.
And so we have, this is probably one that has more information on it.
So it's been started where the lead, knowledge mobilization,
and assessments updates as it'll be a yearly event.
We'll need to strike an action team to start planning for next year's event.
And so about when we aim to do it this December and impact was we had an open house
or result June 9th, 120 folks in attendance at the Discovery Center.
So this gives you this information.
And as you go through here, we'll have that for each of the priority action areas.
And it's meant to be, you know, accessible.
You know, we also realize that, you know, sometimes we have reports, but it's good to have things
here for people to see.
Okay.
Maybe I'll stop here.
Are there any questions about this dashboard?
and I see in your narrative here, it says that you worked with Kelowna, or the City of Kelowna.
Use this?
Yeah.
I'm familiar with their plan and it's quite a community-saking wellbeing plan.
I know they're quite, they've been doing this for a while.
So I think we're following a good template here.
And I really think this is so important because, you know, we talk about this all the time
about that we've taken this on, but people want to know.
I mean, we brought up Constor Madison's nodding her head.
Like, we all, it's a show in the world, right?
People want to know what are we doing.
And oftentimes, people are impatient.
And we want to see results immediately.
But these things are, you know, I used the term before.
It's a big, there's systemic issues.
It's the social determinants of health.
I mean, we don't hold the keys to the answers, so to speak, right?
And it's the collaboration.
and it's very nuanced, but the idea is to move it forward.
So to show people that we are moving it forward
and it's going to happen incrementally,
I think it's a really great chance for the public
to interact and to have the questions answered.
It may not make everybody happy,
but I mean, we're following a tried and true
like a template here, as using Colonies example.
So this is, when is this going to be live?
I think, so we are going to soft launch in the matter weeks, I think working with communications
to craft a message to go to the public to let them know kind of how to use it.
And there's some data cleanup I have to do.
So right now I've been working mainly on functionality.
And so I do want to say, I want to recognize assistance of our partners.
So we have community partners.
So I've been getting a lot of assistance from the epidemiologist at the health unit and so this is about bringing that in as well
I've gotten help from Kelona, so a couple of things initially
So this is model after them, so I should give them credit for what need to give them credit for bringing this out
It was really neat actually as part of not this
Quarter, but it'll be in the next ones report. We did go to the communities a Canadian
in Center for Safer Communities Annual Conference.
It was in Halifax, and I was able to meet the folks
from Kelowna to be able to talk to them about that.
And they're excited to be able to help us out
and to make this useful.
And so this is one of the things.
You know, when you said this one, the final comment here,
you mentioned about working with the Northwestern Health Unit
with the epidemiologist and working with Kelowna.
I mean, this is unheard of.
We've never done this before.
And I mean, so just to really emphasize this
for people that are listening and paying attention to this, these are collaborative relationships
that have been developed and that are really important here and you know your connection
with Kelona and you're going to talk about the conference you want to, these are communities
outside of Kamar that are trying to figure out these same issues.
So I feel we've really come out of that, you know, like I used the term dark ages, like
We're addressing, like, we've identified these priority areas.
We're coming up with strategic ways to address these strategic priorities.
And we're not egging this up.
Like, we're using a template that's been successful in other communities.
So I really feel that we're on the cutting edge of this, and congratulations for getting
this up and going.
And lastly, are you doing all the, are you populating all the data, Eric?
That's up to you to create it and all that.
And so one of the nice things about the system is it all goes on one spreadsheet, one Excel
spreadsheet that this pulls from.
And that's the, and we were intention about that because we don't want to be able to update
48 different pages within the web environment.
You want to be able to pull that in so it's a time saver.
It also allows us to be able to do other things.
So this is, I should say this document is evergreen.
It will be changing as we see what information folks want to get and how we want to draw
And as we get more
Comfortable with the system, be able to draw that. There are a lot of different functional elements that we can do. Right now, what you've seen today is what's going to be launched beta-wise in terms of, and we will add to it going forward. You know, there might be other things. I'm looking at, you know, how we can maybe put some hyperlinks, so when you can click on reports and documents. So I think of what was presented today from the city was very significant with the housing needs assessment.
And that is in our plan to look at that communicate that out of the public and so a link to that would live on here
So you would see it in
It's not here right now, but like eventually be here, and I believe it's
To regularly communicate to the public
So I could see it kind of living in this spot here
Where then folks could go and they look at that thing and this is what the different different folks are doing as well
Well, understanding that there is a communications ecosystem within the city, absolutely, to do that.
But this is just where items will reside, the links, as it pertains to the community safety and well-being plan.
Great, thanks.
Thanks.
Councillor Chase.
Thank you, Your Worship.
Eric, good to see you.
Thank you for this update today.
I have two questions.
The first regarding section 2.2 in your report under priority items.
You've identified, engaged the province of Ontario in a collaborative review of funding
being provided to young people who are aging out of care, especially within the Northern
Ontario context.
I mean, we heard earlier today from Councillor Ben Bellingham in her work on the police services
board that, you know, they're seeing a huge increase in youth interaction in our criminal
justice system and interaction with police.
So, I'm just curious, you've identified that you need to identify an action team late.
I'm just curious if you've had conversations with K-R-R or Avenue Geech Health Family Services
to try to identify what those funding gaps are or could be.
So that's just my first question, I'll follow up with a second order in second.
Okay, so the first one is specifically to 2.2 we haven't done that specifically on the actions
however we recognize the importance of, you know, this issue of services and actions involving
young younger folk into that end. I did have a conversation I had a meeting with the manager
of the youth hub. We have the executive director for Kenora Rainier River Child and Family Services
on our implementation committee, so we're actually working on another action she's involved right now
on another action team that's further down. I believe it's 2.1 about the human trafficking, but as we
We discuss these things, they're not in isolation, one leads into the other.
So soon, once we get those things set, it'll pivot and we'll work on that because it has been identified as a priority to get the rights.
Thank you, thank you for that answer.
My second question is regarding 3.4, so
co-development between city and social services work for like a work readiness program with a specific goal to advocate to the crown's office to dedicate community service hours to this work.
So you mentioned here that you've got a preliminary outreach to the newly appointed crown and that you're going to be meeting with them in November. Have you had that meeting yet?
I haven't yet, but I will say that she did reach out to me last week, which is great. And she said, can I have a copy of the plan?
So I was able to send her a copy of the plan. She said she'll review it.
And then she said, I will follow up with her to see what a meeting time is, but I'm glad I had put in multiple requests.
And I know that in being in a new position that you're always kind of learning and getting caught up and stuff and so I'm glad that she was still
She reached out and was able to kind of say this is something that's on our on our radar. I will add she does have experience with the Conor Justice Center. So I think there are opportunities there to talk and the reason that this
3.4 came out was we did here in our conversations that in within the justice system
And there is interest in looking at models like this right now among those who are in the
canoor environment.
So it's an opportunity, it's an opportunity time to raise those discussions so you can
get some headwind.
And again, just to sort of piggyback off a comment made by Councillor Bernie earlier, I mean
the frustration of our staff to continually be cleaning up downtown, the resource drain
it is in our community. I don't want to be saying the statement from, you know, a
misinformed place. I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that years ago,
Bucksburg grade was basically an opportunity for this type of work to be completed with a
specific focus on the hardware front. I'm just wondering because there's also been comments
today and some reference in your report about, you know, willingness of perhaps the Chamber
of Commerce, or maybe Harbor Town Biz to partner or work together and collaborate, that
perhaps we can have an expanded area in our Harbor Town Center for this type of community
service for our conservers hours to help contribute to the cleanup of our downtown.
Right.
I mean, there are multiple ways of entering this discussion, and I think that we were already
having these conversations, so I did have the opportunity to go to the Harbor Town Biz
meeting, and I know that there was one question about not about it was about cleanup of the
docs and such. And so when I was able to reach out to within the city and and send an introductory
email to the chair of the Harbatown Biz and the manager of facilities, you know, start
this discussion, you know, because you said it was okay to start that. So it's about starting
there. And as we have those discussions that is there are opportunities, I think, to do
that. I've also heard about the Bucks Brigade and everybody's talked about, you know, the
successes there. We've also learned that it was running in a different time as well, you know,
in terms of like, you know, how people were on the streets with drug use much more prevalent now
than when Bucks Brigade was in operation. However, you know, there are, we do know from our
community survey and our focus group sessions that there is appetite, you know, among those who are,
you know outside, particularly the house to be able to contribute to, so we are having
these initial discussions.
Okay, that's good.
Just a quick comment, then I'll wrap it up.
I want there to be something in place, I would like to see something in place in terms of
a program, a partnership, a collaborative effort so that if the crown is willing to
to redirect individuals for community services work
that there's a place for them to go.
Like I don't think the expectation
is that the crown is gonna create this.
I think we need to create it for them
and I think we need to collaborate
with some of the downtown business owners.
I mean, we've heard loud and clear
I participated in the town hall open house
that we did last month or maybe it was earlier this month
at the news.
I mean, one of the questions was about
what are the noticeable things in our downtown
that have seen change or been positive change
and the response, at least the feedback from the audience
and from members that I spoke to both in the business community
and just the public at large is, you know,
they're not seeing much of a change
and they're seeing a lot of garbage downtown
and it's an endless drain for our municipal resources
and our staff to be dealing with this problem.
So I look to you and hope that you can continue this work
and try to get partners together to create an opportunity
for the crown to have someone to direct people to
because that is an opportunity
and I think that as a population that will be well served in doing this work and contributing
to cleaning up our downtown or community and be longing to our community.
Yeah, I mean it's preliminary and so this is what we got from the feedback. Part of
discussion is it really is the crown that suggests the charges, right? So when they're in the
court system and there's something that they have to do, it's not the defense, it's the crown
that will be amenable to that. So the fact that we have an audience with them to be able to bring
this up I think is you know is a good start that you know with that said yeah I think we need to
as you said make the best case to go forward and provide that structure for that to happen
and then this might be other further discussions with other groups and I think we should look at the
with that with the restorative justice and things that we could maybe use to do that.
I think one of the, without getting too long-winded, but one of the things is there has to be
a champion organization to be able to kind of take in these folks to be able to do that
work, right?
And so it's like, where does that sit?
Who does that?
Yeah.
I'm just suggesting it can be us.
Oh, okay.
Let's pry this out here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Sorry.
Sorry, could you just back up on your slide there Eric to that original?
Sure
So the question is around your interface here. Yeah, here we go. So now the
Actions that are assigned to each of those if the actions fall in more than one category are they captured in more than one category?
Um area
No, no, those are this is from what's in the plan so if you go through the plan they are numbered
you know one point I think there are there are five like so it's 1.1 through 1.5 the
biggest priority area is number two and has 13 actions and so they so there
are some instances where there are synergies between the two but they're
distinct and they'll be reported separately. So I guess I'm looking for a
from you on how you feel the actions are weighted based on like it seems to me it's very
youth-focused and when we you know we have the initial community meeting where there was
an outcry for it wasn't the youth I mean it's on the rise he's crying and there's issues on
the rise but at that time it was to do that and so I'm just wondering what your feelings are
or are there more options to come around?
Things like drug use and...
I think...
Yeah.
I think all that stuff around adults have to see...
I think I should add, like, you know,
among the actions, they're also not equivalent.
Some are short and advocacy and pieces
that are just reporting that, you know,
this is being done.
Others are much longer in scope.
So it's hard to say while there are 13 in children, youth, and families, you know, they're not all weighted equivalent in terms of their length of time that they'll be done and the energy and effort and stuff.
I know there was great deliberation about mixing it up within the plan.
So some things have short, some things are longer and some things are really aspirational that like honestly, we mean it not
Be able to finish in this time in this time frame, but we could kind of get the foundation started for something future
Like you know future focus as for the other things. I do think
I would encourage everyone to read the party actions because a lot of those things can live within those actions
And so, for example, if I can go to downtown community spaces 3
.3, 3.0, I'm sorry, there's a zero there and that's just by the sorting design.
That's why I have to do that because we have more than 10, but oh no, not 3.3, it is 3.2.
Design a comprehensive integrated approach that is inclusive all service, which to enforcement and outreach in the downtown area.
and ensure that this approach is widely known
and easily accessible to the community.
So something like this is about getting different groups
and outreach and pleased together to talk
about the approaches of working with the folks
who are outside what that might look like.
And so, you know, that might have an effect on,
you know, how we see people, how we approach things.
So it would kind of live in this and the work for here.
If that makes sense, right?
And so it's something about, you know, we're getting the piece together, we're having
the, you know, while it's not on the priority list of the first few, I'm starting to have
discussions with folks that might be part of the action teams to be able to kind of work on this.
Because, yeah, it's not necessarily directly spelled out here, but in this, I think a lot
a lot of the action, a lot of the foundation for work
in these areas can happen.
Okay,
great.
Just another comment, I guess, Erica.
Councilor Chase talked about the work program,
the Bucks Creator, each team, whatever.
I'd like to see, I mean, speaking frankly,
I'd like to see something like this,
and it's not pressure on you,
but I think it'd be nice to have
if we had a timeline here or forecast.
I'd like to see something implemented
by next summer, actually.
And I, the way I envision it, and I'll certainly help out all I can because I'm on the,
one of my committees is the biz, and we've had some experience with this before, but I
really think that, as Conzo Chase said, a partnership with, with private sector as well.
I don't think, and I don't think it should be solely court directed.
There was a program that the Winnipeg did years ago, and we actually brought folks to come to
in order to talk about it.
He was sponsored by the business called
the most team, which most had for a mission off the streets.
And it was designed that there was a small component
that was court, like it was, there were court referrals.
But the majority of the team was not made up
of, they weren't justice involved.
And I think if you rely too much on the justice system,
it's kind of feast or famine type thing.
And, you know, it certainly comes with a share of challenges, we'll put it that way.
So I think it can be, there are other templates out there where it's an amalgamation of people
that are just working, they're just employed, and they're doing this, either in place
through the town or whatever this corporation is, and some are streamed through the courts.
So I think, you know, we look at it that way and sort of craft it uniquely, that something that bests...
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
working and I think we'll build off that but I'm more than happy to be involved you know in
anything moving forward especially as far as the business concerned and I think you know there's
a lot of opportunity for partnerships with other agencies with the private sector with you know
with the sole gen or mag involvement I think many hands makes like work as they say the more
that we can get involved, the better.
But I think we can come up with something by some hope for it.
So let's put that out there.
OK, it's not a pressure on you, but I
would just like in your world, I'd
love to see something, I'm sure we all would,
like to see something boots on the ground by the summer.
And I think this is there are a lot of things
to be said about preliminary discussions
to getting the idea and then working towards that.
And the idea that programs can adjust as needed.
And that I'll talk about that later about their needle disposal pilot project.
I think they were taking that approach just to be able to get it out, right?
And see where it goes, right?
Your title is coordinator.
Is it also more champion of the gauze?
If you're hearing out there, let's use the guts for great.
people want to see a group of people downtown all the time? Is it your job to find
who can do that? Or what's your job in that instant? Well I mean I work with
the implementation committee so I you know I take my lead from from from that but
it also is to to help connect and bring that up if if there is a call for that
Yeah, for sure. I'm open to meetings that bring that to look for like
for great. Do you go to the city? Do you go to biz? Who does that? Oh, I would do that.
So I would have internal discussions. And so I will say I've been in touch with
the Chamber of Commerce about some ideas about possible things that that we're
about and if you get a no then what then you just keep on you keep on seeing see where else where
it could land. Also I should say I talk to you know senior to my supervisor and senior leadership
to see kind of what we can do within the city. I mean there are some things that you know we have
and I will say I've had a very good collaboration with different departments within the city
about talking about that to be able to do that.
I think the one commonality that we have that I've seen
is everyone wants Kenora to be better.
Like, I haven't really met anybody who's saying,
like, oh, we're fine, this is all good.
Like, everyone says, how can we get there?
There may be differences of opinion,
how we reach that.
But as we talk about that and we collaborate,
maybe there's something that we can try.
And I think people are at the stage
where they're wanting to try different things.
And I think the big thing is different organizations
positions aren't really aware of what each other is doing and I think part of our job
is to get the message out there.
The city has already dedicated so many people to clean up downtown or whatever it is but
I think knowledge is worth a million dollars sometimes.
Right and that's part of my position is to kind of be the conduit for the city so you know
I'm the city's representative for the Hub Heart Steering Committee so there's really
good work there. I think I'll leave it up to the heart hub, which we'll be able to kind
of have their communications about that, but I can tell you, like, you know, a lot of things
that we wanted to happen in the plan, you know, the calls from the community, better collaboration,
better communication, they're definitely top of mind for these efforts, just like, you know, with an
A&HP, with another groups.
Sorry. Yeah, I've been taking up a lot of your time, so I just wanted to,
It's in the report. Again, if you wanted to see, if you go to the Needle Disposal Working Group,
again, that's another project that we're going to launch in the next couple of weeks.
We're just working on the communications. For that, you can actually go to the website.
If you want reportneedles.ca, if you pull it on your phone, you'll see that.
We're just talking with a developer about some, to give some feedback about functionality.
and it's in the plan and as well you know there is work that is going on with the net team as
well. We had an ad hoc that's in this quarter but we had an ad hoc site assessment that we did
for the area behind Shell and so we're putting that report together to build the pass-on with recommendations.
questions.
No other questions there. Thanks, sir. Okay. Thanks, ma'am. Moving on the agenda
6.5.4 improving safety and connectivity on Northern Highways advocacy. So this is mine,
but yours because you're on the Noma Board.
So what's so cold work for you want me to speak
Yeah, that's okay. I just put my name on the report.
I appreciate that.
So, yeah, this is, I mean, this isn't a new idea.
It's been advocacy going on for years.
Even in this just small area, we've been advocating for 20.
But the start and it really picked up steam at AMO last year
when we met with the Minister of Transportation, as a NOLO board, and we actually had a lot of,
we had about a 45 minute session of FaceTime with the minister and staff to try and explain
what, again, the uniqueness of Northern Northwest Ontario, you know, explaining that the Transcan
highway actually it connects the country and it comes right through here and
well you have to sometimes you have to provide geography lessons but you know
so it continued to advocate on that I mean there was there was a bit of
stuff from the last federal budget or the budget that's in the it hasn't been
past yet, but it's, or I guess it has been passed now. You know, recognize him not
an fairness to the provincial government. They can't do it alone. I mean, the
province is too vast. So it's, you know, the two plus one highway design, you know, is
is the next best thing to 20, they do it in other countries, and it works, it's fairly
cost-effective, it's a lot quicker, and you know, shorter that, you know, more passing
lanes and passing lanes that are not two kilometers long, which is ridiculous because you cause
more accidents than it stops because you're rushing, right? They have most
side of West of Thunder Bay. There's a couple there that are like 10
kilometers long and it clears traffic and it makes a huge difference at that
far end of like Highway 17. It's not the end all be all but it's something
I mean, that's a lot better than we have now.
But they'll continue to do this and advocate
because they think it's that important and there are,
when you hear from other colleagues on NOMA,
that live on the highway 11 connector piece.
Like they said, there's hardly any even shoulders to pull over
for like you know 30, 40, 50 kilometers unless you get into a business or a
community or whatever, no passing lanes whatsoever and then again that's the
next leg going north if something because you know along the north shorts you
talk about being closed here it's closed there all the time so a lot of them we
road up 11 and the conditions just aren't there and you know truck traffic and
all the economic development that they're talking about in the north it
becomes it becomes imperative that something's done because we know how long
planning takes to you know even put six kilometers of twinning in here it took
a decade. So, yeah, it's just, you know, continued advocacy and hopefully, hopefully we'd
look at it favorably. And, you know, it's at the end all be all know, but it's going
to reach enough people that we're committed to this and to continue to lobby and advocate
on behalf of all of Northwestern Northern Ontario because we all have the same again issue in
this case. So that's kind of what it's all about and it spurred out of a meeting like through
Okay,
moving on the agenda, 6.5.5 mandatory water safety advocacy.
Okay, so yeah, so this is a advocacy report that has been circulating once many municipalities
all these within Ontario and this is following,
this was originated in Dryden when they had a tragic event
in their community pertaining to children drowning.
And so this advocacy has been circulating
and to support really the implementing mandatory
water safety programming.
So that would be through the Minister of Education.
Other communities are taking initiative
in their communities to do different things outside of this, such as life-saving devices
at their beaches and dogs. So, those are other things that I've seen through the different
interpretations. Any
questions, council? Okay, thank you Heather. Moving on the agenda,
you have 6.5.6, we have corporate services, QCRE report, and then do you want to flip back to
higher emergency services or do you, or just see if we have questions or? Yeah, if there's
any questions, I mean, I can speak to either one of them. And then we can move on to active. Sure,
So I'll just briefly cover the highlights from my team a lot of property standards in Q3 a lot of property standards matters getting closed before we get into the winter season which is always important.
So they had 63 completed property standards matters in Q3 which is it's a high volume.
We have two new officers in by-law enforcement and only one trained certified property standards
officers so that really puts a lot of pressure on one officer who is the certified officer
to conduct those property standards depending on if they have to go to charges or if it's
just voluntary compliance, but it's still working with those property owners.
Thank you for your worship. Just a quick question about sort of property standards and
by-law enforcement. Is it how I want to phrase this? Is it still sort of complaints based
driven or is the, and there's just so much workload or is it something that the officer
individual is able to be proactive about, you know, enforcing our property standards by-law?
So I would love to say that it is more proactive than reactive, but unfortunately right now it's primarily driven by complaints because of the volume of complaints.
So the officers, you know, have been, both the manager and supervisor have, you know, talked to the officers about being proactive when you're driving by something and you see something, put it on the list.
It depends on the severity, if obviously if they saw something that was more significant
than something that's already been logged as a service request or as a complaint, then
they would prioritize that.
But right now, it's keeping up, summer is always the highest of volume of complaints and
if we could get a little more compliance, self-compliance, and there was not this mandatory
steps to take them through, you have to comply or you're going to, you know, we're going
to lead to charges. If it's not court processes and all of those things, all of that takes
a tremendous amount of time. And some people are really quick to say, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't
know I can't do that. And they comply and others don't care. So that takes a lot of the
officer's time. So the goal is to get to where we are doing a lot more proactive enforcement
when it comes to property standards.
I can definitely take that back to the, you know, department, if they're seeing common themes in certain areas. I know that several years ago, planning developed a great promotional brochure on what you can do when it comes to zoning.
with, you know, campers, trailers, boats, all of those time, and that was on our website
now. I don't know if that's still on our website, but I can follow up with that to see
if there is common themes and what we could do a little more proactive communication
on for sure.
Okay. So Councillor Manson will be happy to see
that there are more service requests that are closed during the season. A lot of requests
that come in. And so kind of how I've explained service requests are, it depends on when the service
request comes in and when it is closed. So for example, snowplow damage that is done in the
winter time, the crews can't get to that until the spring or summer. So that service request is
going to sit there outstanding until that work can get done. So you see a lot more service requests
closing. I will say that we've seen, this is more of a queue heading into a queue
four, but we've seen a lot of, we've seen a big decline in service requests in
our roads area, which has been great news. There's been a lot of good work
happening there and a lot of things getting done. So that's full kudos to the
team over in the road department because it's also reflected into my team who are
taking those calls and managing those service requests.
So IT launched an onboarding and off-boarding process for internal is more of an internal
thing, but it is really freed up a lot of time for managers and supervisors, so that's
a positive employee experience.
It's also positive for the new employees who are coming on and being onboarded, so it's
just a technical process.
us. Wave had a strong Q3 as usual, 10% increase in completed trips, which I don't know
how they're squeezing out any more trips, but they are managing to get a little more every
time by really tweaking the algorithms and the amount of time that hours on the road.
I was told that some of the schools back onto the water safety thing, some of the schools
are because of the increased cost of busing or considering trying to book all of the
way advanced to take kids to swimming lessons.
How are we doing about this sort of monopolizing a service and I don't honestly believe it
whatever work they're in there talking about it yeah they they're such a high
demand so it's a good problem to have so the investment that council is made in
the wave has driven over 200% increase in our public transportation so more
people are writing it people that have never read it before are now taking
advantage of writing public transportation which is a good thing but on the flip
side in order to increase the amount of available vehicles and hours and days requires more funding
and public transportation is highly subsidized.
So because the demand is so high, there's no way they'll be able to access enough vehicles
to get that many students.
These classroom sizes are over 30 now.
There's no way you'll get enough fan, we don't even have enough fans on the road to
accommodate that all going at the same time.
So you can see the rides per hour, so if you really broke down the rides per hour and
the number of students, they'll never be able to make that work.
So it might be something that they've never approached me about that or had a conversation
with me about it, but I just don't think it's feasible.
there's no unused hours in the day where the demand isn't there and you can't
pre-book so it's on demand.
Website, so Maya did a great presentation this
morning just on our website redesign. There's still some work needed to be done
in a few areas but that continues. The Thistle Arena Concrete Lab War, the video
that was done. We've had almost 16,000 views on that video and 11,000 unique viewers. So
that is a big outrage, right? And communications is working hard on video. You've seen Greg,
I think we're going to turn him in. We're going to take him out of his director of infrastructure
and operations tournament to our video master because he likes to do videos. He can dig on a new
But we're seeing where, you know, and I know that more video was important to council and we are really trying to listen to that and use video whenever we can.
And then there's going to be important change to the social media metrics in terms so we're working through that process through the comms department.
That's it for me.
Thanks, Heather. No other questions? So, would we like to, would you like to move back
then to just to see if there's any questions? To 6.3, fire emergency services. So, we have
the municipal emergency management program amendments. Yeah. You're comfortable. Yeah. So, this
is our emergency management program, which is passed by by law and that's required by the
Ministry to pass that bylaw and what we've discovered is that as we've tried to work
through our annual reporting requirements, the emergency control group must meet twice
a year and we also must have an organized training, which is usually a mock event of some
type.
Sometimes it's tabletop and sometimes it's in person.
But the actual emergency management control group, which is a small group, and then they bring
in the larger group is big, and you have to have 100% of the membership there to count
that you met.
So if one person's missing, you didn't meet.
So all of these people don't need to be part of the main core.
So, you see we've stripped down who forms part of the main control group, and then the
rest of the program committee is expanded, and so we're just changing who those people
are.
Rolls, not people.
Any questions?
Okay.
Move on to 6.3.2.
Do you want to do the Q3 report or just see if there's any questions?
I think just if they're chief Howard, I did say to him, I mean his report is pretty straightforward
and I think if there was any questions I would take it back to him but all of the stats
and data are there for council to review.
No questions and council, okay, so then we can move back to 6.6, we have 6.6.1, economic development
and tourism. Thank you very much. So again quarterly reports are always an
opportunity to highlight the great work of staff. Highlights for this
particular quarterly report would be great Canadian docs setting up shop in
Canora. We were successful.
I just got a text by me. It's going to start my
So great Canadian docs came to us in January of this year and we did the ribbon cutting
in July tremendous success in terms of being able to turn just an idea around to actually
securing space and doing a ribbon cutting and we have heard back from them that they
have had a very successful year so they're very happy with their decision to move to
Canors. That's really good. A couple of other highlights is the continued
advocacy that we do. This is largely Allison on the immigration front and her work with
the Northern Policy Institute.
Now that work has evolved into NOMA.
Getting involved and the mayor getting involved
and other mayor is getting involved
in terms of advocacy on the immigration front.
I should mention the Youth Enterprise Daycap.
Like my kids both went to Bizkit when they were,
like, you know, under 10 years old
and it had a profound effect on them
in terms of who they are as adults now, making the decision to live in Winnipeg, or live in Canora so we get educated in one big and come back, and one of the two is an entrepreneur, so that seed was planted through Biscuits, so this Youth Entrepreneurship daycap that the city puts on an annual basis, I think is terrific to expose young people to new ideas and things and opportunities for the future.
I just want to mention the Northwest Business Center and all the work that's been going
on there and the work in particularly with the started company, with 33 applications
coming in and 14 businesses going through the program.
And then just tourism in general, they run flat out for four months a year.
There's a number of different initiatives identified in the quarterly report, handled by our tourism department who continue to do great things and there's a reason why people come back, you know, I think it's 86 to 89% of the time that people have been here nine or more times, they report an intent. This is not seasonal residents. This is visitors that they plan on coming back. It's because they come here and they have a good time. And that's largely because the effort that our tourism department
staff do, but all the other staff that support tourism as well, like parks and such in terms
of making sure that things look right for the visitors that come here.
So show to the tourism staff, I know that they're probably ready to curl up in a bulk
on late September and have a nap for about a month, so happy to answer any questions.
I,
it's more of a comment than a question I've been involved in a few things down at the
tent and I just want to say to you amount of work they do in a short period of time keeping
that place clean and flipping it from event to event and Morgan seems to be living
their day and night you know I'm sure everyone does but she's just I mean it's, it's an
and we really appreciate everything that happens there and it seems to be a
magnet for tourists. Thank you for that. We did a we had a student stand there
and count people at the Medelliske's farmer market through one entrance there
was 5,000 people that went through on a Wednesday and when we do our planning
session for next summer I'll actually share with you the worksheet that we
go through so each day the number of staff that are required to actually manage the event
but not only transition the event because sometimes you're you've got four hours or something
like that to do a major change and you're and thank you for recognizing all staff that
are there it's a real team effort and it's pretty amazing what they can do and again it's
all about having people have a good experience when they're there the next thing I just wanted
to give you a chance to comment on was on page 419, the table, the summary table of events
attended.
Yes.
The business visits number, like the rest of the data sort of remains stable, but that's
one that does, and I'm wondering if you could just let us know what goes on there and why
that's not.
Yeah, so Q3 is typically a drop down because that's our busy season for our businesses, so we
allow them to run their businesses, and then that will pop back up again as we start to
get ready for Q4 events, the spoiler alert, for the holiday trail, there's 24 businesses
that have signed up. Each time that a business signs up for that, that's one or two or three
individual meetings with both people. So we just let people run their business and focus
on their customers. So that does dip down in Q3.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Go ahead, council member.
Can you comment all of them with fall here and winter imminent about their snowmobiling?
Is there any plans to do any projects with the snow bill club or talk about it before
but just increasing kind of that accessibility in that.
Yeah, so for the last two years, there were activities...
So, we had a couple of activities that were funded by Matt in support of the snow club and this year we haven't been approached for anything incremental. So, some of the things that we would have had dealt with was the rest stop at the ANW and just cutting that trail that goes in there. So, that could occur. We did look at the potential to have snow wheel traffic across at the ANW intersection, but determined that to be unsafe. We had the situation on the east side that you and I were both involved with.
And we clean that up, so, you know, fortunately we have staff that are actually on that club and it's a pretty easy reach out if there is something that they need, you know, support with signager or something that they might be doing where they need a financial contribution towards, you know, some sort of marketing that they're doing, but we haven't heard anything as yet this year.
Anything as far as I've talked years ago about a cross town corridor, is that even
conversation anymore? There's really nothing safe on the north side that
would allow us to actually create that corridor. So we're you know we're
limited by you know a self-entry which is yeah it's just a lot of extra driving
unfortunately. Yeah and is there with like I guess this will pop in with
conversation with the club, but any type of a big event like a rally or anything like
that that could, you know, that we could have like a, you know, we have our winter carnival
in the spring, but I think it kind of needed to attract that sort of catchment area from
Manitoba and to Canara.
Is that ever been?
It's not that I've been involved with, but I could certainly take that away because the
one thing that we're really good at is, you know, our marketing and social media.
So, if there's something that they want it to do as a way to either increase activity
or maybe just get more people coming from out of province and buying passes here and
that sort of thing, that's something that we could support on the marketing front with.
Okay, and I know we've had such success just like with the farmers market and be great
to have and the carnival is great and the tree lighting and be great to have something centered
around that because there's a lot of money to be spent here in Canora and you know people
that are a joy, snow-bearing, generally, we have a bit of disposable income in it.
So, anyway, thanks, thanks.
Yeah, they say when you come with the snowmobile, you just come with your wallet, right?
Pretty much, yeah.
Councilor Anderson.
I like the wood speedway.
Is it set up for snow machine racing?
Of any kind?
I do not know the answer to that.
Yeah, because those used to be fun to watch.
I'll
take that back to Josh. Thank you.
We'll be on thanks for that.
As your motion to adjourn.
Number two, yeah.
Go ahead, Barbara.
Okay. Thank you.
We're moved by myself.
And seconded by Councillor Bernie,
that pursuant to section 239 of the Miss Black 2001
as amended authorization for council to move
into a closed session at 2.35 p.m. to discuss items pertaining to the following.
Education and training members of council, one matter, development update,
labor relations, one matter. Council will be verbally reporting in a general sense
on all items considered in the closed session. Once we return from the closed session
to move back to a concession.
Welcome back. I'd like to pass it on to Councillor Chase, too. Thank you, Your Worship, or
Madam Deputy, I mean, so we have moved out of close back into open and just reporting
from our closed session that we discussed, a development update and a labor relations
matter and that no direction has been given.
We're adjourned for 33.