Good morning, everybody.
We call this meeting order, committee of the whole meeting for Thursday, November 20, 2025, public information notice.
There are none.
I'm glad to acknowledge that call-on concert band will you have.
This is everybody good stand.
Gimegoich to the initial lobby people, to the ancestors and to the spirits who have cared for these lands and waters since time immemorial.
We are on our Treaty 3 partners, including our neighbors in Nassachuan, a Nassanabi nation, our hearts go out to you.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge the recent passing of Chief Leraine Copeness.
Chief Copeness was a powerful leader, said fast, compassionate and deeply committed to the well-being of her people and all nations within Treaty 3.
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 in leadership.
As we gather here, I recognize that I continue to work with insistence that have not always treated indigenous peoples with respect and equity they deserve.
My responsibility is to work every day to not uphold the 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 looking.
May the legacy of leaders like Chief Copeness continue to guide us towards that shared future.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
You said about Chief Copeness and I think we're going to begin with a minute of silence.
Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you very much.
Moving on to the agenda declaration of the key in our interest in the general nature there up.
Any council or wish to declare in our interest.
Today's agenda from which a member was not attendance.
I don't remember who our confirmation of previous key minutes.
So we have resolution number one.
I'll call the vote then I'll always in favor.
I carry thank you.
I don't remember five so we have a full document.
I'm assuming the great the didn't work today for the great 12 or 11 coming.
They'll be here school and start to the beer.
Okay, so we are going to have a great 11 12.
Law class will be the great.
Excuse me moving on.
The agenda 5.1.
We have great words.
Water, sustainability foundation.
So we have taken it.
Welcome.
Thank you so much Mayor Porea.
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 with the 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 Canara and works on the rainy lake of the woods water shed.
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 Spencer Summers here in the Treaty 3 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 Konance may be familiar.
He's the Commodore of the Yacht Club.
And then other summer codagers 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 of the woods basin as a sustainable ecological well-supported region.
And we do work that supports the healthy 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 lake 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're 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 were the Secretary for something called the IMA, the International Multi Agency arrangement, which I'll talk about in a moment.
This is a research consort.
Do you want me to just pause and let everybody in?
Okay.
Probably take a little bit to come in.
Just take a couple of minutes.
All right.
I'll carry on.
Welcome, Beaver.
I'm sorry.
I just just like to welcome the grade 11 12 law class and beaver.
I hope you.
I don't all along.
You're going to stay but hopefully.
Okay.
Well, you'll you'll see some some some action items.
So welcome here and and thanks for attending.
Thank you.
Go ahead.
Okay.
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 they at the other functions that we serve.
We are the secretary at for the International Multi Agency arrangement.
This is a really important table around 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 in liaisons among local groups.
So that might be road 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 Water shed.
It's huge 70,000 square kilometers.
About 60% of it is an Ontario 40% 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 Elie, Minnesota in the east,
the south east of the watershed.
In a general westward.
Direction through Nama Ken and Rainy Lakes.
Down Rainy River into Lake of the Woods and out through the dams.
Right tunnel island right there in Canara 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 Rainy Lake of the Woods, we have the International Rainy Lake of 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 Rainy Lakes into Rainy River.
There's an in public engagement committee and then the aquatic ecosystem health committee, which I co-chair
with my cursed from the Lake of 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 make 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 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 US environmental protection agency.
All these big agencies come together in the work group.
Canada 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 freshwater 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 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'll 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.
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 asking experts 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 freshwater 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 basin were impaired for nutrients that was leading to utrification algae blooms.
That triggered a U.S. 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 run off 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 is 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 E.O. Lake Watch map. You can go online and find this tool and subscribe to 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.
So next slide.
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 run off coming in and so there's less to fuel the bloom.
So it was a lower bloom year 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.
So historically the pulp mills, the paper mills, it 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, 12 foot deep bark mats and mulch mats in the river. It was dying.
So the government's 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 down stream into Lake of the woods and is 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 nutrient 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 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.
Sure. I'd be happy to do that. It's a bit complicated. I mean we are in the country.
Sure. 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 are 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. Councilor, Madison and then Councilor Bernie.
Tickets. There's somewhere that you can phone to report when you see LG glutes.
You can. So the watershed board.
It's at the International Rainy Lake of the Woods Watershed Board.
Does have a direct contact function? You can go on their website.
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.
Thank you.
Very interesting.
So you said right now I'm just in your notes here that every kilogram of phosphorous is important.
You talked about the southern end.
I grew up down there. I spent 15 years on that in the river.
And I looked very well.
We traveled over a year.
So being able to know this was important.
So it's, we've changed within regulations put in place as you mentioned.
So what are the, who are the, who are the, who are the, who are the top culprits right now.
As far as there was a causes for phosphorus being dumped.
So at this point.
Yeah.
Introduce to the river.
Yeah.
Now that's a great question.
And that's sort of one that we grapple with because there isn't necessarily a big culprits.
Now like the culprits was in the past.
We're paying for the legacy.
You know, I guess a, so far as for the majority.
Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
One of our, so not in our project, but there's a parallel project that's underway.
Working with agricultural producers to optimize their, their nutrient management.
So that when they're putting in tile drainage in the rainy river region.
So the rainy river region has, has undergone an agricultural revolution and it's now a lot of crop growing.
So 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 their 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 if I'm 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.
So.
So aside from those factors, you talk about what about development.
What about the human just sort of casual, you know, people that have the 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 systems well.
That's an issue that we're starting to look into a little bit.
We don't have a lot of say on that, but we can try to advise some of the regulators around that.
Yeah, I mean those are all small contributions, but they add up.
So everyone's got a part to play.
Thank you.
Yes.
Any other questions for Tika?
No.
Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Moving on to agenda 5.2.
We have Tim, consulting.
So he's going to present housing needs assessment.
So I'm going to hand it over to space gander, cocao to introduce him.
Thank you very much, Mayor.
Just confirming that everybody's there.
Thank you.
Okay.
Teacher taking you guys to Tim Horton, is there any W after?
I hope so.
What's the field trip with us in fast food?
Thank you.
So I'll get us going here.
Thank you very much.
Very happy to introduce to council and the public.
The team from Tim Welsh consulting.
Have been working with Tim and Fraser and Braden for nine months now on what we're calling our housing need assessment project.
The reason that this data is important to us is that when the city does applications for funding and when developers want to develop are going to finance financial institutions for lending.
It's very difficult for us to get the successful applications or 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 Fraser and Braden to walk us through the findings of their last nine months working with the city of canora.
Thank you so much.
Just want to confirm you can still hear me and I'm going to share my screen because we have 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, Mr. Memory Council.
My name is Fraser 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.
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 need assessment.
And so we're going to give you really a crash course on the housing needs assessment and what it is and and sort of high level for you today, accompanying this presentation is over a hundred pages of research and data supporting, you know, background research and support to support the city of Canora moving forward nest, they sort of outlined CMHC and federal programs are now requiring you many cases, a completed housing needs assessment to qualify for a range of funding with those are grants or preferred and
incentives various other funding streams. And the in H&A is often becoming a requirement for non-profit and even private developers looking to receive government 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 H&A 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, you know, what the average market home and even luxury homes in some cases in some communities would look like in a particular community. And a challenge that we find in our work with smaller communities is that there's often gaps in the data from us both from a local perspective, but also from the federal government perspective. CMHC for example has trouble collecting data and 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 in the community around the current state of housing needs and tomorrow and after a plot city staff, we worked really hard together to make sure that we got a robust sample of a feedback from the city of Canara 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 digging on like what how is housing impacting your organization or the housing needs in Canara 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 what, how and why of what's happening in Canara that we could then pair up against the broader census and CMHC data.
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 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 Canara's population.
And you can see on the graph there sort of highlighting the trend lines for the city there was economic transition from 2001 through 2016 in Canara and the 2021 census found just under 15,000 people about 14,967 folks living in Canara.
The population estimate since the census had 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 as 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 was seniors of the time of the census which is slightly above the average in Ontario at 18.5%.
And Canara is home to a significant indigenous population, whether those are first nations, matey or in you it.
With almost a quarter of the population self-addenifying that with that ancestry and that compares only about 3% in the broader province.
So certainly a diverse community and you know 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 and general population data from the census.
One thing that we like to look at is province why there was actually about a 3% just under a 4% under count in the population from the census.
So the census obviously engage you know they weren't able to get to 3.7 3.8% of the households around the province.
And so if we apply that value to Canara your actual population is probably closer to 1515,500 at the time of the census.
And the rural and northern communities generally have a larger or higher under count rate because it's just harder to get to places where people are for the census.
So something to keep in mind going forward.
You know Canara is also home to a significant seasonality in its population levels knowing that you know I'm talking with city staffing under population seems to swell 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 of Canara 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 been recent growth in temporary foreign worker usage in Canara and seasonal employment.
And so what that means is that you have a municipality that's servicing a larger population than it's 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 under counts mean that just looking at the raw data may not tell the full story around housing demand in Canara.
So as we move forward we look at the types of housing in Canara yet about at the time of the census you know 7,600 or so units of housing in Canara.
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, etc.
That you know during the summer 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 these 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% suicide 606.8 and Sudbury at 61.4.
Some of those are those cottages and seasonal dwellings being counted in there but what it also shows us 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 Canara District Service Board.
This isn't a bad thing having you know supportive and affordable housing is 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 identified a trend of sort of a portion of housing units moving out of the long-term rental market and into that short-term seasonal rental market in Canara.
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 Canara.
So CMHC has a number of years of data where the responses to their rental market survey as well.
Some of their other data sets are not as reliable due to small sample sizes from response rate challenges in Canara.
And then also you know organizations like for example, due to the small size, Canara 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 Canara.
And also there's a number of infrastructure, number of barriers to building new housing in Canara, whether it's infrastructure needs challenges and costs of just building on the Canadian Shiro 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 Canara is a service hub and employment hub for a large reason region and requires the capacities to support those services.
But you also have some, you know, unique that fastest Shiro 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 that can accompany with it.
But what we also found within the data is a gap in incomes between tenants and renters.
Canara added individual level actually performs quite well from an income perspective.
You're above provincial medians, but when we look at a household level, so sort of grouping folks together,
Canara performs about three to four thousand dollars less than provincial averages.
And within 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 tenants to a homeowner is becoming a challenging canara 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 a future housing and it's creating barriers to local economic and employment opportunities.
And over 130 jobs were identified as going unfilled at the time of our engagement in Canara 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 is in a line 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 housing is considered to be adequate, meaning, in other words, it doesn't require major repairs and canor before is 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.
At the time of the census, about four hundred and fifteen households were in housing need in Canara.
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 support that were helping offset some of the affordability pressures facing folks in the community.
And since then, obviously, we've seen inflation in both a rental and homesuit and sort of home construction cost in Canara.
The 2024 point in time count from the Canara District Service Board also identified affordability being a major challenge.
Certainly 28% of respondents said that the 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 who have the point in time kind saying,
some sort of income issue was preventing them from finding adequate housing.
And the Canara District Service Board does have new units planned to support poor housing even those at the lower end of the housing spectrum.
But funding needs to be secured.
And hopefully his H&A will help back stop some of those funding requests moving forward.
But what it means is that, you know, the cost and lack of supply is a major driver of housing risk in Canara 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 a 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, you know, we're expecting significant demand both in the short term,
with construction workers, etc.
But then permanent employment won't those projects are completed.
Now, I'm going to walk through the table in detail in a second.
But within the full H&A, CMHC 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, 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 of four in the community that you have to account for.
Then we've had population growth which has been catalogued by statistics Canada through their population estimates all the way from 2024 and then leveraging.
The same population modeling that is being used for your official plan we estimate you know 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 be create their own household units but are unable to and to give you a couple of tangible examples.
Let's say that there is a student who has just moved home to their parents after completing post-secondary education they found found a job in Canora and they loved to move out of their 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.
In the community and 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.
While they're unable to downsize to that apartment and 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 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 our 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 jobs by those projects and that job growth and you 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 you 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 support of 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 1600 units being needed currently that number growing to about just under 2500 units by 2031.
Now this as I mentioned is probably in outliers scenario we are not accounting for things like you know as you can see we have a straight line estimate of employment shortage based on our engagement results 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 hospitals built for example you recruited doctor and his partner his or her partner comes to the community as well.
And also feels one of those vacant employment positions so you in essence have one household feeling two jobs and so even if this estimate is.
You know we're more robust than necessarily needed it is giving you sort of an outliers scenario where the likely you're likely need is going to fall somewhere between the CMA C estimate and the high end of this scenario.
And that gives you a 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 at the city there have identified 13 actions and many of these are sort of underway already.
But also our process moving forward and we'll be sort of key elements moving forward to help tackle the housing need across the community and these range from obviously there's an official plan and zoning by law work underway already.
Developing a master infrastructure plan move you know the collaboration on the new all nations health care partners and the.
Knore chief advisory to finalize you know the developments related those projects all the way to efficient you know increasing efficiency around you know getting building and planning permits done 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 you know there are significant steps moving forward.
So in about 10 minutes there I think I rattle through about the equivalent of 125 pages worth of data.
I'm happy to you know 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 council.
Ben Balina.
So.
Take it away.
Thank you.
Well we have some noticeable gaps I would highly the probably some of these are self induced due to past practice 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 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 10 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 community we've done work with like sagging 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 do plus 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'm going to build the quadplex and it can lead to a fast track.
Through the planning and zoning process 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 it in the.
You know official plan and zoning bylaw and then you know 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.
You know giving that you're a northern community more 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.
Yeah, just if I can just elaborate just slightly that actually in Bruce County yesterday we're saw again shores is.
And they've got a lot of growth in terms of workforce housing because of the the Bruce nuclear refurbishments that are going on right now.
It's a community that has.
So again shores is not as very similar population at 19,000 but there's been I think they're a really good coordination between the county just the service manager like your de-sab is your service manager.
And the area municipalities setting out in some cases incentives or go tax incentive grants for new rental housing a range of rental housing.
And as well as any forgiveness of municipal fees etc. trying to lay trying to be as welcoming as possible for new affordable housing but the other thing they are looking at.
And as we work towards the new federal program of built Canada homes.
is to have a coordinate response so for this city can or we're very closely with the D-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.
The base is a good context 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 bad registered nursing assistant or early at the hospital or daycare workers etc. who make a little bit of bubble minimum wage but not high enough to afford full market rent.
Trying to have both set the table locally having the coordination with the service manager with the D-sab and trying to build a collaborative case.
To prepare for the new build Canada homes initiative.
Thank you.
So you've given us all this information.
Is canor doing enough is it halfway there do we have 90% changes we have to make where we.
So canor like the H&A is the start of a journey I would say and this is what I say to a lot of communities and that this is sort of laid the groundwork I think you know and I may.
You asked staff to weigh in a little bit on this because they know more of the local context of specifically what the municipalities 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.
You have a number of pathways whether that is market or affordable or attainable or pre-fab or what what have you so I do think canor is on the right track I wouldn't want to put a certain percentage on it just because again what's happening you know in the community varies day to day and maybe staff wants to weigh on in on that.
The comment or question of would you take the trip.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah it's merporier.
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 silk park and that it took 20 years to fill and there's 75 watts 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 out of minimum of that to build like a bundle and that.
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 built these huge homes which are fine for some people but the majority of 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 days full nights once.
And and encouraged development of those instead of you know I look at what 77% of.
I think we need to be coming more into the center and that because we talk a lot about housing and we have studies and like we've 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.
Social housing piece but like that's not going to bring in a nurse or a doctor whatever I'm sorry and it's not a slight again 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 in 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 two for a bungalow, forget it. There's no money in that.
But I would buy four hundred or four hundred fifty thousand 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 stays 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 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 builder to get those construction class lower, whether that's your modular or through some sort of partnership.
You know, is a pathway that the city could explore certainly.
I do think, you know, and again, using the soggy ensures example, they found a similar sort of challenge, right?
And that, and that's why they created pre-approved plans for four plexus and three plexus and do plexus and 80 use to sort of add that gentle density in 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 this.
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 estimates there is really talking about.
It's about those folks who may be who are living in canor or are in canor now.
I 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 two things, one, having the housing need assessment data, the good work that that Fraser and very into pull together is a really important part.
And I know we've had discussions with staff in terms of a private sector, a rental builder.
CMHC had been a little bit reluctant because they didn't have a good handle on the data.
So we are hoping that the work that that our firm has done will give you that tool as a municipality to say, yes, here's the reality, the market need CMHC in this case, provide the mortgage financing for the market rental.
The other come out 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 other municipal lands that can be available made available for moderate income households.
There's, there's a number of examples, there's just one release last night from town of Midland in southern Georgia Bay, looking for a mixture of housing.
So you know, are those, I know that land is is challenging to come by, but are there any sites that could be made available for that mid level housing firm.
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 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 piece, 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 Walsh and as team Fraser amazing work and Braden, so thanks very much for your support through this project.
Happy to.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
Lots 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 to, because we need to go right to the source now and not like we can.
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 what we're up against, like geographically, 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?
So right 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.
And I think that that's that's great.
It does give you a tool and I just say that I think we are seeing overall both at the provincial and federal level.
We.
Feeling of there's going to be growth throughout northern Ontario, in terms of the the mining sector particular across northern Ontario and there seems to be recognition of that is a really important part of Canada 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.
So we've drawn a Vancouver, etc.
The large cities have lots of housing pressures, but to make sure that part of the bill 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 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 very much.
Okay.
Are they ready in the are they in the queue?
Okay.
So moving on the agenda 5.3 we have another presentation associated engineering capital meets 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 when I first came to the community in early 2023 and started touring the cities infrastructure.
Definitely identified that the city's water treatment plants and wastewater 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 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.
You process the the sewage coming out of the community and protect like we heard from earlier the surrounding watershed and so we we partnered with associated engineering in 2024 and been working closely with them for the last 18 months to develop a roadmap to rehabilitate both of those plants over the next 25 years and I'd like to introduce.
Graham Lang Caroline corn and Nico.
Karen Nungan to.
Provide the presentation on the assessment that they've been working through and the outcome of that which is our roadmap over the next 25 years for infrastructure renewal of the two plants.
Thanks Greg can you hear me everybody.
In the room that you can hear me.
Okay great and you can see the screen.
Okay, so.
I'm sort of.
In all of you guys sort of taking in all this information so I've got another sort of.
Thirty slide presentation I'm going to sort of run through quickly.
I will it will be very much a whistle stop sort of two through it you do have the reports man stand 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 that 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 plan on millerapids road there and couldora water treatment plan on seven street in canora I'll provide a few further details on those as I go through.
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 the 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 the detailed asset inventory the city already had a few of the assets in a system I know you have a sort of CMS computer as maintenance management system as 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 sustain and investment and the risk related to under investment in sustaining these two assets.
I'm 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.
Those assets are broken down just for ease of sort of analysis into engineering disciplines you can see them there with different types of assets that you would expect the civil is the robes the man holds the pipes in the ground architecture is the building envelope.
The actual slabs tanks process mechanical the bits that typically require most of the maintenance and then but 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 of controls that support all of that.
The methodology involved site assessment by a team of multidisciplinary 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.
So that a more complicated than the slap shot I've got there for you but it shows you that it's a scale of very good to very poor and it's aligned with remaining service life.
Or any asset there might be assets and there are a hundred years service life like a pipe I stick pipe and the ground compared to a PLC.
In a computer chip effectively for controlling the plant might be a 5-year 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 forty years five million dollars it will deteriorate and at some point you've got to buy it again and throw out 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 cities standard.
Five 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 likelihood, the consequence, criticality is assessed.
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 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 identified, those assets that are up here in the top right corner of the matrix, the very eye 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 lift pumps of the water treatment plan, the key treatment processes, it 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, sorry, aeration system.
It's intermediate pumping secondary clarification on ultraviolet disinfection at the end before the affluent is 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, for 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, but can be very misleading.
So wastewater treatment plan with value to with a replacement value of nearly $72 million.
Condition wise, you can see the overall condition grade there. I'm average with saying it's 3.5-8, 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 has been very high risk band assets for the water trend plan are the diffuses in the relation tank, which you're rated at $1.35 million and fair is each fact systems which are important.
Perhaps just pause for a second just while there are some some students who are leaving there.
Sorry, I didn't see that yet.
Okay, we're all set.
Can I go to carry on?
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, so the things in the high risk band here are aeration diffuses and then some HVAC equipment which is equally some of which is high consequence because in a wastewater treatment plan, venting those dangerous gases is important.
The good thing is that some of these already part of ongoing projects that Bergen is team of 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 prioritised because they have a health and safety impact.
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 tanks that don't have any lifesaving equipment.
Lower discharge piping that's leaking and lack of any means for disinfection of raw sewage that may bypass the plan 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 modelling shows at end of life.
The replacement needs to be 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 have every five years or so to S2 that expenditure profile, but it does leave you with some very significant expenditure.
So removing the existing young growing projects has removed a reasonable amount of 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 $126,000,000 there's $1.7 million in addition to what is already being spent on plan in current projects.
And then in the longer term, 52 million in the sort of beyond the five year period. So it's a very significant numbers.
Things in the next period that need to be replaced, as I said, the aeration tank diffuses, 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 aeration system and UV modules.
Looking at this sort of impact of spending that are not spending there, but do nothing scenario shows that that condition profile of a 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 know, doing it as it comes up, but it effectively stabilizes the condition grade.
But it's also reflected in the risk, this is the risk profile valued notionally in dollars, but it's any score, the key thing here is that really that if you do nothing, the risk increases by about three to four times, what it will if you spend the money and sustain and maintain that level of current risk.
So that's the way sort of treatment plan, the picture, the water treatment plan 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've 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 plan and we've.
But of the average condition grade that I think we can say is still fair.
That's the breakdown across the equipment, that things in the high risk area here rather than more value, $6.3 million but the good news is some of that's already projects committed with the high lift pumps and work that's going on with the low lift pumps and tankage there and some work to the filters.
There's a reasonable amount of work already going there and already committed.
The picture on immediate needs is very similar for $100,000 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, correct gas, rubber used chlorine gas to provide 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 pump, some electrical work, the sodium hydroxide tank repairs and various other things that are ongoing at the moment reduces that overall burden.
Again, we're using the risk scores so the grouping here kind of looks at the risk scores and all things forward that are to create projects that are higher risk higher consequence assets and which is back things that are less consequential.
So summary there is that all 100, it's very similar really to the wastewater plant, but 400,000 dollars short term needs another 7.6 million dollars in renewal of assets and then in the long term 46.5 million dollars in the sort of beyond the five year horizon for 25 years.
I'm sorry we're the total investment of $46.9 million dollars which is an average at $1.9 million a year.
Things that are being done, so the 2028 investment 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 pump supernating pumps, airscow, blowers, various things and building work as well.
Effectively the same pitch are there, do nothing, the plant deteriorates, not quite as significantly as seriously because it's in a slightly better condition overall, start with the proposed investment stabilizes that and does the same thing on the risk the risk is stabilised rather than, I think it goes up nearly four times if you don't put some investment into the statement of these assets.
So in summary we recognize that, you know, that's a significant value across both plants, you know, a hundred million dollars over 25 years is, you know, four million dollars a year and a key thing that we want to point out is that that's a statement investment.
So these investments based on visual inspection only, not any specific testing, you know, generally it was done by engineers who understand and do that routinely.
The focus is on staining the asset to maintain its current function, it's not including upgrades, you know, it doesn't include anything to meet tighter treatment standards that either plant or to provide additional kind of council driven type things like green house gas reductions or anything like that.
It's just to sustain the current performance and current condition of the asset to 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 lunch room, everything's getting replaced in most forecasts.
So there are scenarios between the do nothing and the unconstrained forecasts that we've presented.
You know, clearly we're not expecting all that budget necessary 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 that 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.
Kind of modern day equivalents that will be better placed to sort of address some of those things that 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 summarizes the two reports that we've submitted that 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 there or any.
I'm very happy to take questions.
Is there any questions available.
Council.
I know this wasn't part of the scope of the service.
Maybe I'll direct the question more towards staff but given that this just sort of is the replacement value of the.
Compliance as is. 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 phrase was thrown around a little bit when we were walking through and touring the plants.
You know, there are 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 plants on a daily basis.
So I think, you know, combining that work and some of this work will help kind of bring us out and into 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, 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 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 which does make it a little freaky here.
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 or a little better than useful life and all that stuff.
But I get back to this thing about I look at the I look at the scales and I look at especially on the water treatment plant, the section very poor.
And yet in 2526 and 27 you know, where I don't know what what it was here now was at 402,000 we're spending.
You know, like are those things is that enough to spend because without that in the wastewater like we keep spending all our money on replacing pipes and that's great.
But if these if these two assets aren't working nice pipes and 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 what this report now won't be all will spend 50,000 here in 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 or a disaster.
But is this enough and not 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.
And you know, it's some of the critical but they don't do not change the.
These things will, they shut down we don't have water.
We don't have a backup plant and it becomes very problematic.
I know a lot of people say, you know, they're just wondering if we're really,
we're really, we're really fighting people now for the next couple years to address the current
and that critical needs that you've done since I've been having people like you've been having all,
you know, the rest of the crisis, you know, you know, that's what I'm saying.
That doesn't give you a warm question, you know, twenty-two years back,
you know, why are you doing this?
Why are you doing this?
It's very hard.
And we're spending my time until twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-eight,
more than two thousand dollars.
You know, two, three, two, three, you know,
the rest of the crisis, so like that.
And what do you want to get straight enough to get?
We're giving me information yet, 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.
You're absolutely right.
The issues that occur with piping in town are more isolated
since that might impact a small number of community members.
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 onto 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 in 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 out of this immediate kind of critical risk state.
But associated, I don't know if you want to add any comments onto that.
I would just point out that there's $12.8 million of very poor here, which is in the last 10% of its life.
And that is covered, this is the immediate need, which is sort of repair work, but that very poor asset is in the forecast here.
And 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 committed in current projects,
there's being spent, and then there's Greg said, another very significant project coming up in the next $5 year period.
After this $5 year period, I can't see that number on my screen here, $22 million.
So yeah, absolutely, that this don't get hung up on this, this is smaller repair type things, this is the bigger expenditure on making sure things are replaced.
And I do a word, you replace it the day before it fails, but that's what we're seeking to do avoid any failures of the water stream and the waste, but to you, Greg.
Thanks, Greg.
Thanks for the presentation, and thanks for your input, Greg.
I'm totally comfortable with this assessment and you know what we need to do.
Thank you.
You have a lettuce down yet, so I'm comfortable with the level of risk.
Life involves risk and we have to manage risk, so again, I think this is this is very strategic.
We're addressing it straight on and I'm comfortable with the plan for someone to say that, thanks.
Okay, any other questions?
Okay, thank you very much for your presentation.
We have this information on whether we want 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 lost comments?
No, no, I just want to thank 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 output.
We truly do have a roadmap to take us through the next 25 years and to keep both plants running.
We've got the plan now, so we've got to work the plan.
Okay, thank you.
So I'm wondering if we could just take a five minute break.
It's a little off the 10th or you know, just five minutes and then we will get back to the communication piece.
And then I know Dr. Brainier, you have some time constraints here and then you will be first under operations.
Thank you.
Thank you everybody. Welcome back. We're ready?
Okay. So we're going to move along on item number five deputation presentation. So we have my authority.
Our communication.
I don't want to get your title wrong enough. So you're senior communication specialist.
I'm sorry.
We have got it. She's going to talk about the canor.ca redesign. So it's all yours.
Well, thank you, your merchant 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 with, 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 Carrie 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 we're involved.
So we had a very busy summer.
So I want to extend a big thank you to Carrie 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
wishlist 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.
They're review of all their existing library pages on their micro site and then migrating that over to the new library
pages within this site, as well as learning a new backend system.
Was a big task as well during the summer, plus with the 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 Knoara branding as well as the economic development tourism branding.
And big appreciation to all the department leads and managers who reviewed and provide
provided updates to their web pages without having the update 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 navigate 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.
So 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 hours put in accessibility integrations into the back end.
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 we're designed the website we tried to keep it to two possible clicks to get to where you need to if possible.
Alternate text or text you'll 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 assistant 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.
Tabels 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 forms 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 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 is 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 also we also have.
On the presentation sorry.
We 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 mail mail mail delays.
You can also close out the if it's.
And then I just want to draw attention to something that is new that carried it up is this week I want to button.
Which I got really nerdy and excited about when she put on the site. These are organized into, these are 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, okay, we're done.
We don't want that experience on the City of Canora's website.
So this I want to, is a very sleek 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.
So here we also, I want to draw some attention to the contact us. We had this on the previous site.
But 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 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 our customer service, you can click it open.
And then every every department or contact in here also has a prompt to send an email to them that them will open up a box where you can start typing out an email specifically.
We haven't set up this way to also limit fishing attempts whereas other sites.
It's best practice now not to list out websites explicitly or so that websites emails explicitly.
So if you click this, it will go to the user's specific email software.
So for us, it might be outlook or Gmail depending on what you're using if using that at home.
Let's go back over to the home page.
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 request 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 cities 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 what that.
Back to the home page.
This is a new feature on the website that we didn't have before.
Occasionally, we'll get requests to 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 to directly on the home page and then it also links over to our new indigenous relations page.
Hi, 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 home page, 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 as 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 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 on 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 that events that you go through in approval process and that approval process parameters for that are events submissions that need to be professional they need to be inclusive, respectful and open to the public to attend.
That's Canora events 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 on to this side of the page and then press this submit event button.
Right there.
Okay.
If you want to you can also filter through the events specifically. So if you're wanting to check out the library specific events if there's community programs.
The news recreation other special events again by other organizations.
Okay.
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 quick little bit bites of information about how to get involved in some way.
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 on 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 what types of updates do you actually would like to receive.
So you can opt.
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-campus newsletter.
These are two separate programs.
So we do ask that if you are wanting that newsletter that you fill this out as well and press submit.
Okay.
Other.
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 have 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 Canara website.
So these pages are all custom designed with Crystal's team and carried it 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.
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 receive.
They scan it and it goes into the system here and also syncs up with the website.
So any new releases are also also featured here.
And you can see we've set this up similar to how they had the micro site 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's 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 Canara.
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 Canara.
So we still had the city of Canara header up at the top with the logo so that people make that association.
And then additionally down at the bottom too.
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 speak or 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 Canara as well.
Let's go into.
Let's go back to the home.
Let's go test out.
Let's go to beaches and trails and parks.
So bringing you guys over to this page specifically because you can see now we have.
The website features a lot of Canara 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 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 canora.
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.
I 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 shown and then this website feedback form again the footer is 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 far and type in feedback you can go down to the footer and click there and then be redirected directly to the.
To 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 in 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 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.
People might be prompted when they're reading to be at oh I have a question about this so we have our customer service general line there and the after hours line hours of operation and on I would say.
90% or more of the pages. You'll see this submitter request for service. So, this tool we've been using for years, but now is that much more accessible and easy to find on the website.
So, if you are wanting to submit a request for service, you'd click the button, go to the request for service page, log it 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 pot hole.
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 for 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, any time 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 in September 15th, everybody here has gone to the website a number of times.
But please feel free to 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.
Hey, 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 this. Sorry, I went really fast there. You can click on any of these icons or when you hover over, you'll see it links in 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 hope, sleek photos that we want to feature, we could also do that if that way. This is on a timer. I think it's going every three to five seconds.
I'm just impatient while showing you.
Yeah. 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. My, even for garlic, me who stumbles through these websites. It's pretty, pretty self-evident.
The pictures are quite, they're great. Actually, are these all, did you take the pictures or?
No, there are a combination of photos that the city of Canora and tourism departments specifically and the city of Canora have purchased and have license.
Up into 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 carry 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.
Is there remember we had a conversation about photographs and using photographs or as opposed to professional photographers?
But I think this hits the mark 100% and it's very well done and I appreciate it.
I just want to mention on the first page, again, you showed the thing at the drop down, it has our plans, like our 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 counsel 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.
Very well done.
Thank you very much. Definitely the new layout of this really enables us to as new initiatives, plans, 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 planned 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.
So it would be like, hey, I want to be on the home page and every department has a number one priority in every department. So how do we pick who gets home page treatment, right?
So now having these specific, okay, we know the popular icons, we know that we have the I want to, 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 that to learn a new system and migrate over all of their page content and copy and paste that over.
Everything that the library and the 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.
That's something also that with a big, made it made for a very busy summer all the way.
Thank you. So Heather, did you?
Yeah, I just wanted to add again, thanks, stays for pointing out big credit to Maya as well and her leadership in the department and full circle back to council in their commitment to this role.
We've seen your 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, Maya.
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 Pickello, it's just you have your time sensitive here to finish your reports.
So if you want to move to six point two six point two point one infrastructure and operations key through the report.
Thank you. Thank you. Your worship. So have here the twenty twenty five cue three infrastructure and operations quarterly report for council's review and information.
A couple big items to talk about in the report and just just touch on is a restructuring that took place in cue three.
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 the public is interested.
You know I just I want to acknowledge some of the operations departments in the quarter.
Summer time is always a very very busy season for the group and whether it's the fleet department attending to just a real 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 we've got a much better handle on our road conditions the ongoing maintenance the pot holding situation.
I really wanted to particularly acknowledge those three groups in the operations department.
But then on as well you know on the on the flip side we have a lot happening with projects and a lot of work that kicked off in cue three and we'll continue and take us in the 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 project sitting and ready to go when the budget is past that we can get out get tender to get started in the community.
Early or then 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 happen to take any questions if there are any but I'll I'll leave it at that kind of brief summary for the court report any questions account.
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 cities water and wastewater treatments plants administration identified those a couple of years ago as some items that.
You know 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 cities 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.
A 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 eight million dollars in twenty twenty seven and then almost thirty million dollars in twenty thirty two.
At the water plants a little bit more sixty four percent of the plants asset was determined to be in a fair better condition with about thirty five percent of the assets in poor or very poor condition.
It's reflected in the upcoming budget proposals with about eight million dollars in twenty twenty twenty eight and then twenty two million dollars in twenty thirty four.
And so it was about a hundred and five million dollars over the next twenty five years total investment recommended by associated engineering to.
It's actually maintained 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 the next council meeting just to receive.
Okay, thank you.
Well, I guess you might as well keep going six point two point three agreements moved 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.
Approose 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.
Is an operations agreement with circular materials to provide a deeper 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.
Twenty twenty twenty twenty sixteen the province introduced the resource and recovery and circular economy act and began to adjust and in twenty twenty one adjusted.
The way that recyclables are handled and who pays for the processing of recyclable.
Materials in Ontario. And 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 in the community as new products.
Back in 2023, Council authorized the execution of a Master Services Agreement with Circular Materials for the City of Canora to continue to deliver services for a curbside collection, depo 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 acting proactively 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 collection of recyclable materials from 95 gallon carts.
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 we'll be loaded into the city's collection vehicles.
We will have to outfit 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 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 with 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 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 will 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.
We've noted in the contracts to be seven hundred and eighty four thousand dollars per year.
But in the early part of twenty twenty six we will continue in existing relationship with GFL for the processing and transportation of materials to the Winnipeg recycling handling site.
Through that agreement probably you know two three months we will have some revenue coming in from GFL to continue on with our existing agreement with them.
So about a hundred and ten thousand dollars is forecasted for the early part of twenty twenty twenty six 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.
Yeah, so councilor caution and councilor Van Billion.
Thank you.
I'm wondering about the the ninety five gallon collection cards.
The cost of those and replacement of those for residents if necessary what that looks like.
So the cards are going to be distributed in December by GFL and it's not a city cost to provide the cards or to distribute them.
So people will receive those and then if there are any issues or replacements or things required in 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 and just follow up to that.
Will it make sense do you think for us to explore a similar.
Collection cart for for garbage.
But we are starting down that path of this word.
Thank you.
I'll bring that to council one thread.
Yeah.
Councilor Van Billion.
I was wondering if you could also just elaborate I have to 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.
Oh yes, sorry.
Just not 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 a 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?
Councilor Bernie.
Thanks Greg for your reports.
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 bring up your section here about clean ups and vandalism.
And 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 drama all the time but I think it's something that the public is very aware of in 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 dollars.
And you have some pictures here you shared.
The sanitoff is vandalized.
There's a there's a bus stop that the glass was smashed out of it.
And then this is all available for the for the public if they want to look at the minutes.
And then there's some clean up here.
I don't know these areas in a a witted area where it's just looks like a garbage dump.
So you know you're 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 and I've heard before that it's it's frustrating because you just clean up one area and you come back wait hours later sometimes.
And it's it's there's garbage there again it's re vandalized 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 a police presence targeted patrol and I know our community safety will be coordinator is going to be delivering report later on.
Perhaps addressing this but I believe that it's really you know something that.
It's it's 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 our millions of dollars for our wastewater and our infrastructure is maybe.
Maybe small but.
I think it has a great impact on on the public's perception of our our community and you know my as a show this is beautiful website she's done trying to portray our community.
In the best light possible but anyway that's another conversation but can you just comment on that drag about just maybe the ongoing sort of work that you and your staff do and and is there's something that you can.
You know point to regarding this trend is this this increase.
You know I think.
The staff works so hard to to.
Trying to keep our community clean and warm and welcoming and inviting and you're 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.
It is ransacked again shortly thereafter same same day and so.
It's a it's a really tough and thankless position and have a lot of empathy for the team to continue to go back and work as hard as they do to.
You know trying to try to 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 we're just we're starting to become more attentive to also all of the outline 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 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 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.
I just want the public to know that for for us for me certainly this is a priority.
And there are steps being taken to 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 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 great appreciate.
Thanks Mer. Thank you.
So there's no other questions I think.
I think you're done and and thanks for the patience I know you've been kind of chomping at the bed they get this done so you could so you could leave so.
Anyway safe travels.
Thank you.
So we're going to shift back up to under report six point one planning building services we have six point one point one we have a committee of adjustment and property standards committee.
Director.
I think you're your worship.
So the committee of adjustment and the property standards committee we're proposing new terms of reference for both of these committees.
This initiative seems to have been around for far too long to get 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 asked count asked administration to take the terms of reference away again and you 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.
The 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 bylaws 18, 20, 25, be repealed.
Any questions of Director Pregile on those of those amendments?
Okay. Thank you. So I'd like to move on to 6.1.2 sign variance request 534 Park Street.
So the planning department has received a application for a sign variance and it falls within council's purview to grant variances to the sign bylaw.
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 canoar shopping mall.
The business is sessions cannabis and they are asking for three variances under the sign bylaw.
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 is lighting in context.
So in Harvard Town Center, we are not permitted to have backlit signs, so illuminated lettering in this case.
This is, this change has been quite successful in our main street, second, second street area where, 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 variances is not, is in keeping with other businesses.
I did include imagery in the report that shows the little Caesars 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 the Council's approval of these variances to sign by one, one, five, twenty, ten.
Seeking relief from section 8.1 to a and table e, which permits only non-aluminated or externally illuminated signage within Harvard Town Center.
And limits the size of all signs to 0.8 meters vertical height in an area of 0.5 meters squared per linear meter of wall, or which 10 meters, which is lesser.
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.
If you have a real need to follow the rule, is there a point in having the rule?
This was a lot of procedural work.
My team is reviewing the sign by 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 Council when it's complete.
But we do have a review team that includes the building department that is currently reviews the sign permits, as well as the planning department and by law enforcement.
So they're working together towards updating that particular by law.
And it will come back to you.
Thank you.
Council.
So what you're saying is first and second street can't have backlit.
Put them all can.
All of the variants.
All of Harvard Town Center has that prohibition that they're not to be granted backlit signs.
That came in existing signs have been grandfathered in.
So if someone comes in and asks to replace 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-aluminated 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 Center.
So in order for the properties at the mall to have a backlit sign.
That's different from just replacing the face.
They wouldn't need a variance.
Any other questions of council issues?
Thank you.
You're 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 the other mall.
Patrons are not patrons but tenants.
Like little Caesars each individual letter is a sign 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 dollarama also in the mall has similar type letter channel letters.
So it is both types are in the mall but this channel lettering is more calm than I would say.
Okay.
Thank you for clarifying.
Any other questions of Dr. Miguel?
No.
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 for a busy mostly for a 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 for all of when comparing to all of 2024.
So in the first nine months of 2025 we have seen work valued at 76 million dollars worth of improvements and new buildings to buildings in the canora area.
So that that is a success story from from our point of view.
We are seeing some of the highlights.
I do have a picture of the one of the buildings that is under construction on a lot of 15 which was part of the mill property.
So not everyone would have 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 are driving around canora.
Windhacks building is going up and that will make a huge difference to our downtown.
Also the canora that clinic is working on their foundation out on the west highway.
There is a new foundation for a commercial laundry that is 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 also included a copy for council.
I believe it's with our development services report later.
We also had water quality monitoring complete for blacksturgine lake and the Atlantic clean bill of health.
So I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Any questions council?
No.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
So 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 and emergency services.
Yeah, why don't we, why don't we deal with those?
Yeah, and then you can break.
Sure.
Okay.
Sure.
Yeah, if you wish.
All right.
Well, why don't we, why don't we go around and do that around the table.
And then, but maybe provide an opportunity for council.
Moncreate when she reemerges in the meeting.
That's all.
Okay.
Hi.
Okay.
All right.
Let's go.
Okay.
concerns issues and concerns are for the hybrid yeah for the
noses it's it's considering the nose of motion
the harbour towns owning amendments so we are we are looking at
simple pose changes to our zoning bylaw to address concerns in
the harbour town center what we are hearing what we heard through our outreach
a real desire to re-energize our down town keeping with the retail
focus and really looking at place making and creating a retail space that
attracts people and activities and business and making that a real commerce
help 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 you go on that a lot
of that is going to come forward through the zoning amendments so right now we
are working with our consultants on finalizing the official plan that gives us
the foundation but in background my team is working on going through the zoning
bylaw from beginning to end and it'll be in compliance with the new official plan
but also looking at a lot of a lot of changes are going to be proposed for the
zoning bylaw yeah I just want because I just mind on the motion map
It was concerning, I think, even talked about commercial special zones, looked at some other communities with an emphasis, I mean, 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 cop to you and ask me about that.
I'm sure we've all got most questions about 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 concern, hence the motion.
So thanks for the update, Dan.
We'll look forward to hearing about your progress.
Thanks.
Thanks, man.
Thank you.
So we are going to move over to 6.5 corporate services, finance, human resources, and we will begin with 6.5.1.
So we have council committee, work update.
So, depending on how long, those that may be all start over to my reach.
So we can get the councilor at Belly now, before she has to.
So I'll start the councilor.
Matt's in place.
I'll be really quick.
I just want to remind everybody that Friday is the main street tree lighting.
And on Sunday is Q8 is tree lighting.
And on the 29th, we have festival trees.
And I think they're pretty well sold out.
And then the kinsman parade on the same night.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
So I'll start with last week.
I attended the joint.
Polyps.
Ontario Association of Police Service Sports and Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police.
Fall Meeting.
The major themes is across police services and municipal representatives for housing.
Recruitment pressure.
This is like, you know, everywhere.
And the ongoing challenges related to the transition to the new community safety
and policing act.
And one part that I'm sort of interested around is naps.
Nishinabi.
Aski.
Naked.
Plesing services.
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 233 does not apply
enough.
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 33.
So there's multiple presenters.
And then there was a.
Not surprisingly.
The 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.
We're already seeing extreme staffing challenges in many community.
And then the need for improved coordination between social services and policing.
Minister Kersner joined remotely and asked for questions.
So we took my option.
I was in.
And she was like, I think your bears coming tomorrow.
I was like that man hates to see me coming.
But I one thing I did highlight with him is just one of the data points that we're seeing.
At in the.
Knero OPP detachment board is the significant year over year increase in youth interactions with police in Knera.
And highlighting it again, the provincial leadership needed to support upstream solutions, particularly in areas outside the municipal jurisdiction.
And emphasize sort of like our community safety well being planned in our committee and the implication committee and the coordinator.
And how there's so much of that work that is outside of our purview and needs to be crossmen that is dearly funded again.
And I did follow up with a email to him and his policy.
Staff member who was on the call as well.
So overall the meeting highlighted the need for a continue advocacy on recruitment sustainable funding and stronger provincial partnerships.
Especially when it came to supporting formal level youth and relieving police services of responsibilities better suited to community and health partners.
One, we were able to hear the last one was from the executive 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 there 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.
No, 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.
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.
Overreliance 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 overburden because we've underfunded all of the upstream measures that are putting us in are this situation so just also to highlight so our can our OPP detachment board was canceled for November just excuse me.
Our detachment commanders are away.
So we will meet again in January we'll have our elections in January Tom Jervé is going to join the meeting to discuss the.
Oreg and then we'll.
I have a lot of things on the agenda we're probably not just for the past some of it off we'll have to update our we'll have to do our detachment commander review and we got a couple questions we need to address as well and then.
We also had our accessibility advisory committee.
I just wanted to highlight some of the the way that this committee is working is we're really focusing on as you sort of saw with the website design is integrating accessibility features into.
How we are creating new spaces for city of canor projects so.
We did talk about the walking tracks slow praise issues at the city of canora rexenter or sorry, Moncreef 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 queueing 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.
The final is in the spring I think it was.
Railways street face for we will be brought back in to sort of discuss sidewalk and.
Res area integrations.
Some active transportation updates norm and park docking plan.
I'll highlight this one so the Norman there is a plan to put in dogs at the Norman park they are just waiting for hospital dogs.
To be finalized and then works should be started soon but it's just going to be connected to the grass right now.
But it is something that is on our mind that we will be connecting it to the surface area once the docks 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 engineering no operations and infrastructure thank you.
Is to make sure that the communities being brought in at the 30% design face to call out those things that are you know we only know what we know and then we are already working on a national accessibility.
We 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 for your quick response we are going to go in a community wide.
Direction this year and so we're looking at probably doing a sticker contest to get people 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 are such a huge success so we're thinking rather than having something that replaces that flag every year.
That's all I got that's all I'm doing.
I want to just keep going that.
Council.
Just a couple of quick updates.
I think I gave an update on my on the business committee a while ago we have met since but the overwhelming concern in addition to just the business of the business of the projects that local businesses are supporting was downtown communities downtown safety.
And I mean director brain is report and I talked about the bandalism it's they go hand in hand I think these two issues so it's it's 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 of being unsafe for staff closing up businesses at five o'clock five thirty.
Oftentimes female staff young staff that are in being tasked with closing businesses up and feeling unsafe walking to vehicles after so this is something that I really think that we can we can address and.
I mean we'll have this conversation in another table but you know it's it's it's it's a real dichotomy I feel we're trying to attract business to the downtown core.
We're we're doing you know we're trying to as I said track 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 the to their businesses in darkness and they don't feel safe closing up at night so it's an issue that I intend to.
To certainly fly again and I know.
Possibly bring up bring up with with OPP command staff here in canara because I know.
There are targeted patrols that are done each day school zones are just a given officers and cruises will go out and I'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 for 30 to 530 whatever to do patrol in the downtown core because it's really it's an unacceptable situation where.
Where business staff business owners as I say sometimes young.
Female staff or you know teenage staff or it are are feeling unsafe because they're closing businesses up in the dark now that we've you know the time changes happen and we're into the following winter.
So hopefully that can be addressed but that was a major concern that was addressed during the the business 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 soon arrows is going to be closed.
I believe the notice was in the new year the office in soon arrows is going to be closed and it was for various reasons the cost of the.
Keeping the building open the rant the volume of.
You know service that's being provided there so that.
There's a decision made to close the the office but still provide services and you know mobile services to that that area in scenarios.
As I say I'll have more job date next meeting since we're meeting on Monday but that's it.
That's it. Thanks.
I have no update at this time. Thank you.
I also have no update thanks.
I don't I'm sorry I lots going on but I'm in the.
I left the meeting as a result of moving the meeting it's conflicting with the.
The district services board meeting and home meeting 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.
There's there on lunch. Yeah, so I laughed.
Thanks. Sorry.
Yeah, just a couple of things.
We have the tree lighting this Friday.
You mentioned the.
Kinsman prayed.
Next Saturday evening.
Also, I'm going to put a pitch in there that next Wednesday and that the Christmas trees are on the.
The ones that came from cells 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.
I do.
This is because of the, it's across the industry and that where there's short of just so. They are limited not. And also the lighting of the, of the, of the, or the, or the lighting ceremony and quayton on Sunday.
Yeah, this Sunday, it's in our calendar in that. So just a couple of things just to, you know, to a not, I guess I've been a way more than I've been here.
I'm kind of two-pronged thing last week I was in chrono for a couple of things, but mainly for KDMA and.
Had quite a quite an interesting meeting with the solicitor general, but I was there representing not only Canora, but either like all nine municipalities for KDMA.
And we off, like maybe not to the same extent, but we all similar issues complaints concerns.
But there, there was a lot of talk about.
You know, they're, we're going through the costume mechanism, so that was brought up again that.
You know, we thought we submitted a good proposal, which really would have helped not only this community, but 31 30 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 municipality 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 number is supposed to be, which could be problematic for us going forward.
The community safety officers and I said, just take a chance.
Why don't you use this as a guinea pig of pilot, 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, you know, there's, 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 not way to prevent, you know, crime or, or whatever it may be.
And then we talked about the LCBO thing and Thunder Bay, Siulicot, or Canara, want to try it.
It's a task 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.
And so we're really pushing that again and like I don't know what other information on that went 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 legislative decision. It's a stroke of a pen decision. So 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 sales.
That they need to go back and look at their regulations and legislation.
And they need, 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 guess safeways or one, you know, the grocery store issue now.
The, the one downtown the service station where they sell it, we see it all the time. All of us, we can't be hidden anymore.
But they're, it's expanding out, but it's not only us, it's other communities that have some of these licenses that have been that have been released out into the public and awarded.
There haven't problems everywhere. Again, it's not just a canor problem. It's become a problem like not even in North, just North Western Ontario in the outline areas.
And I think our city, she can, she hears it all the time in her meetings with colleagues.
So we need, we need to have the ability to at least question things or maybe even what would help us right now in 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 brain solutions to reduce calls for service.
But 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, 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, it's just like, you know, it's 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 is no feedback with this, it's just we're doing it.
So we have, we have a bit of flexibility, you know, on, on the cannabis thing or whatever, I just don't 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 liquor and I, I know the thing came up about while you should help them move the store and I said, we did everything, but, and we literally offered them free property, valuable property.
And we got some canned response back about, 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, that's not a reasonable and rational reason not to do or look at something, and they're gross square foot, so it's all about profit and dump, like these things on canor and 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 regardless of who would be placing our community.
They would still be problems.
And we've, we've been talking about them, we need to address them, so hopefully, you know, we can, we can get to a point where they continue on, but the South, new and I'm going to 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, aren't going to be politically correct.
And well, they, they're not, and we have to send a message because, you know, 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? Why are we paying for, like, day care, whatever, not, 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 important, but it should not be in our purview. We can go on and on and on and on about all these things. And, you know, hopefully we get some resolution on a couple of these items, but, you know, 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 focused on other, 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.
We talked 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, like, 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 in six months ago. So, anyways, that, it was an interesting meeting. Just, like, next week and that just kind of tied in with, we over the last month or so we've been setting up meetings.
Setting up meetings with federal ministers to begin that dialogue on the campus care, because there's, there's a, there's a funding gap quite a large one actually.
And, 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 were 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 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 show them that we are doing good things.
Thank you.
So do we want to, what do we want to do?
Yeah, so we'll take, I don't know why.
Yeah, I have a lot of people dropping off.
I will.
Thank you.
Okay.
Okay. 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 to sell these sponsorship and naming rights policy. So, so you're.
So council find a facility sponsorship and name 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. So that is pulled out and it will be in.
It will be in next week without that. So if there's any questions concerns.
Thoughts on this policy. Definitely looking for your council's.
Intuition on this.
Any questions, a council?
No. So you're 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 is also taken over there.
Any concerns by council for those two.
Thank you. So if we can move on to 6.4.2.
What's your question?
Culture, Q3 report.
For sure. So Q3 was extremely busy at the Moncave 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, you know,
there works stations having to walk probably 10 to 20,000 steps a day trying to get from one sign to the facility.
So really appreciate all the work they put into it.
We've, they've come up with great solutions for problems we've had.
Just small little details that sometimes just don't even know are going to happen and they've figured it out for us.
I'm really, really impressed and pleased with what the staff have done, especially during this construction season 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 potentially 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.
They had an annual, they did their annual drive and event and I just want to iterate how intelligent and creative that group is.
They had kids in box cars watching and moving in a library that is so cool and exciting and you know I wish I wish that I could have done something like that so I really appreciate it.
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 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.
An exceptional intellectual work there that a lot of us don't really know what they're doing so they so they digitize their photos.
They're using AI now for some different things you know they're preserving second world more artifacts that 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 to do especially what's in the intellectual frame so.
Once the end 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 so.
Yeah, so I guess my question is probably more of a Q for question but I can ask it any help.
I'm just wondering when when the when the drive pad was done and then I'm assuming the concrete continued on where the Zamboni goes down like who was who is verifying and checking.
First of all the project and secondly like the design on that because that like.
Be quite honest with you not that that was quite an oversight you know where now can't get down now it's created another problem there then they got to go back in the spring and.
Assuming remove some concrete and then change the slope again and.
I don't know I just I just feel that if we had a like like like a project manager there may be more often someone would have saw that notice that right away.
For sure so we did have our consultants.
So I think.
I think I think that 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 and actually goes into the tires now because it's too much of a decline in inclined.
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 gold crease, make an 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't actually tell if
there's no specs on the machine saying this is how high your decline is, your incline is because
you're not really supposed to have any of it. So we're fixing it now, and yeah, we understand
it was an oversight, but we're trying to make it better now. So just a supplementary then is
so just concrete hop actually have to be broken up. No, move. No, or is it something with a machine
or what? Like what? Like, because we got a lot of questions about it, and we haven't received
a lot of answers. We just said or been told that it, it'll 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, fold some
response as to like what what the issue is, then because I thought it was concrete and I guess I was
guessing we're going to keep going, and then it's finally swooped down when in fact that's not
what the problem in the issue was. Yeah, so the issue right now is that's like I said, you know,
the conditioner can't come up, so we built a fake ramp right now. So all we're doing is adding concrete to
the ramp, so we're going to 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 a stand-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 ramp. We already know, because we have it in place, we built it, so we just need to make a concrete
now, it's wet right now, so. Thank you. Any other questions of Andrew? No. Did you have more to
continue on with? No? No, you're welcome. Okay, well thank you very much, I thank you.
Okay, moving on the agenda, about six point five, corporate services, finance, and resources,
we're going to move to six point five point two, financial status and forecast at the September 31st,
so director and marsch.
Thank you, good afternoon. So I have the financial status and forecast report as of September 30th,
2025.
The forecast for the net tax level supported budget is the shortfall setting at $283,000, $47,000. The
south support utilities water and wastewater deficit is $109,009,000, and the solid waste forecast
services $8,859. So the net tax level supported budget is, we've seen about some
improvements from last period. Last period we saw it about $663,000. And so this period, we've
done a decent job of trying to mitigate some of the over-expansures 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 and out there. Our fire over time, we've seen a little bit of a forecast
or a projection come down. While it's still high, we're seeing, we're projecting a bit less
than we did last period. And then we have some more general salary benefits savings. So I'm just going
to go through some of the various explanations for each of the areas. So as I mentioned, the corporate
forecasting increase in interest of $91,000. General government, variance is due to salary
benefits. There's a number of positions inside there that are offsetting our vacancy management.
And we also have some savings and contract services. So we're at $677,000 in the deficit. They're mainly
because of the vacancy management. Protection, as I mentioned earlier, the overtime increase 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, increase savings and recycling. Some reduced fleet expenses are
driving that wreck in culture. We have a shortfall there, 125,000, mainly due to the capital work that's
influencing, impacting some of the revenues there. And then we have some planning development variance,
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, a variance is a result of increase in volume of sales,
offset with some small increase in fleet and vehicle. So eight, that's 8,859. And the water,
waste water variance is due to some increased maintenance and repairs. And some forecast and lower revenues,
that's also offset with some more 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. The second appendices is the
capital project. So that also gives you an idea of what the capital projects are still open,
some of the spending to date or as of November 7th, this includes and some of the remaining budget.
That would conclude my forecast for September 30th. There's any questions that you have to do.
Take any questions or council?
I just, the importance of accordingly 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, you know, 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, you know, we've really come a long ways in the, in the last couple of months in terms of
closing that gap, which just demonstrates strong financial management. So just wanted to say that.
Any other questions? Just, just come from one piece and just take the chair. I just, just a comment
that because I know there was a bit of concern on the water and wastewater because it was,
was it around 269 or something in the last quarter? Could be or was, it was significantly higher than,
then you thought, or then 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 in to stay this 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 director 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.
So I don't, yeah, that answers it. Yeah, it was more of a statement that I know there was
concern at the time at the end of the key to, it was, it was high enough that it was material.
Right, yeah. I think we're in a, 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, we're making our way to you. Yeah. Okay, thank you.
Thanks. So, oh, I guess you're, I guess you're done.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you, you, you have three or four items. So, so moving on the agenda 6.5.3, we have community safety and
well being Q3 report. So, Eric, thank you, Your Worship. Good afternoon.
Your Worship and members of Council. I printed to you the Q3 report for the community safety and well
being division. You know, as you can see in my report, 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 to 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're able to do some outreach through the fall.
Both of them, Mattiowski's farmers market and add a couple of 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. I mean, it was a time to further 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 will continue to do that.
The next part I wanted to share and this is why I've got my computer and one 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 BI system to be
able to show and keep track of the 48 different action items on where they are. So let me give you a moment.
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 with through consultation with the communication department.
We're keeping in mind AODA requirements and and how it fits in our our website and all this will be placed within the city of
Canora City, a canora.ca website under the community safety and well being planned.
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 it started and it 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 let's talk about the status the lead their approaches any updates and any results impact.
So for example, we had our community safety and well being.
Plan open house and so we have this is probably one that's has more information on it.
So it's been started where the lead knowledge, mobilization and assessments updates as it will be a yearly event.
We'll need to strike an action to start planning for next year's event.
And so about when we aim to do it this is in 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.
Well, this looks great and I see in your narrative here it says that you work with Klona or the city of Klona uses this yeah.
I'm familiar with their plan. It's quite a their community safety mobile being planned. 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 talked about this all the time about that we've taken this on.
But people want to know and we brought up constant mass is not in your head like we all it's a show me 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 using term before it's a big there's there's systemic issues it's a social determinants of health.
I mean we don't hold the keys to the the answer so to speak right and it's it's the collaboration it's very nuanced.
And but we can the idea is to make move it forward so to show people that we are moving it forward and you know it's going to happen incrementally I think it's a really great chance for the public to interact and have the questions answered.
May may not make everybody happy, but I mean we're following a tried and true like a template here, you know as using tools example so this is when is this going to be I think so we are going to soft launch in the matter weeks I think we're with communications to craft a message to go to the public to let them know kind of you know how to use it and there's some data cleanup I have to do so right now I've been working mainly and function
and so I do want to say I want to recognize the systems of our partners so we have community partners so I've been getting a lot of
assistance from the epidemiologists at the health unit and so so this is up up 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 or 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 Center for safer communities annual conference it was in Halifax and I was able to meet the folks from Kelona people to talk to them about that and
they're they're excited to be able to help us out to and to meet this useful and so this is one of the things we said
final comment here you mentioned about working with the folks in Halifax with epidemiologists and working with Kelona I mean this is unheard of we've never done this before and I mean so
so I just have to really emphasize this for people are listening and and pay attention to this these are collaborative
relationships that have been developed and that are really important here and you know your your connection with Kelona and you're going to talk about the conference we want to
these are communities outside of Kelona they're trying to figure out these same issues so we're I I feel where we've really come out of that
you know I use the term dark ages like we're we're addressing like we were we've identified these priority areas we were we're
we're we're we're coming up a strategic ways to address these strategic priorities and we're not going to stop 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 and congratulations for getting us up and going and lastly are you doing all the
are you populating all the data that's up to you to I am 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 only your intention about that because we don't want to be up update
48 different pages right you know within the web environment you want to be able to pull that in so it's a time saver
it's 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 on it and as we get more content.
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.
There might be other things. I'm looking at, you know, how we can maybe put some hyperlinks.
So it's up to 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.
It means 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 here.
And I believe it's to regulate, communicate to the public. So I could see it kind of living in this spot here, where then folks can go and look at that thing. And this is what the different different folks are doing.
Well, understanding that, you know, there is a communication 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 planned.
Thank you.
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 and 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.
I'm just curious if you've had conversations with KRR or Avenue G Child Family Services to try to identify what those funding gaps are or could be.
So that's just my first question all for the second one.
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 canora ring river child and family services on our implementation community.
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 to point one one about the human trafficking, but but as we discuss these things, they're not in isolation.
One reason to be other so.
So once we get those things set, it'll pivot and we'll work on that because it has been identified as a priority.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for that answer.
My second question is regarding 3.4 so code development between city and social services work for like a work readiness program with a specific goal to advocate to the crowns 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?
I haven't yet, but I will say that she did retouch to me last week, which is great and she said, I can 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 one of meeting timers, but I'm glad I had put in multiple requests and I know that in and 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 reach 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 Knorr 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 there is interest in looking at models like this right now among those who are in the Knorr environment.
So it's an opportunity it's an opportunity time to raise those discussions 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 drainage is in our community and I don't want to be saying the statement from you know a misinformed place I could be wrong but I wasn't really in person that years ago.
I was basically an opportunity for for this type of work to be completed with a specific focus on the background right 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 harbour town biz to partner or work together and collaborate that perhaps we can have an expanded area in our harbour town center for this type of community service work and service hours to help contribute to the clean up of our downtown.
I mean there are multiple ways of entering this this discussion and I think that we're already having these conversations so.
So I did have the opportunity to go to the harbour town biz meeting and I know that there was one question about.
Not not about it was about clean up of the docks and 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 harbour town biz.
And the this manager of the facility is to say you know start this discussion you know because he 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 I we've also learned that it's it was running in a different time as well you know in terms of like you know how people were on the on the streets.
With drug use much more prevalent now than when bucks brigade was in in operation however you know there we do know from our to me survey and our focus group sessions that there is appetite you know among those who are you know outside.
I'm actually as a house to be able to contribute to so so it's we are having these initial discussions okay that's that's good just a comment and then I'll wrap it up.
I just I just I want to I want there to be something in place or I would like there I'd like to see something in place in terms of.
A program partnership a collaborative effort so that if the crown is willing to redirect individuals for community services work that there's a place for them to go like I don't I don't think the expectation is that the crown is going to 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 that have seen change or have been positive change.
And the response certainly see 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 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 is a population that will be well served in doing this work and contributing to cleaning up our downtown our community and be longing to our community.
Yeah, I mean it's it's it's preliminary and so this is what what we've got from the feedback.
Part of discussion is it really is the crown that suggests the charges right so so when they're in the court system and they're there and there's there's something that they have to do it's it's not the defense it's the crown that will be amenable to that so the fact that we have.
on 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 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 kind of justice center as kind of a model because they have done some things with that with a restorative justice and things that it can.
That we could maybe use to do that I think one of the without getting to 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 said who who does that.
Yeah, I'm just suggesting it can be us. Oh partnering let's present here. Yeah, okay.
Yes, sorry, can 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 and more than one category.
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 party area is number two and has 13 actions and so they so there are some.
Instances where there are synergies between the two, but there's their distinct and they will be reported separately. So I guess I'm looking for a comment from you on how you feel.
The actions are weighted based on like it seems to me it's very useful.
And when we you know we have the initial community meeting where there was an outcry for it wasn't the use.
I mean it's on the rise. He's crying there's issues on the rise, but at that time it was to do that.
So I'm just wondering if you know what your feelings are on that and are there more actions to come around things like drug use.
I think I think I think I should add like you know among the actions there they're also not equivalent.
Some are short and advocacy and pieces that are just you know 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 you can families you know they're not all weighted equivalent in terms of their length of time that they'll be be done and the energy and effort and stuff.
I know there was a great deliberation about mixing it up within the plan.
Some things have short some things are longer and some things are really aspirational that like honestly we mean it not.
Be able to to finish in this 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 so for example if I can go to.
Down to me spaces.
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 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 police together to talk about the approaches of 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's it would kind of live in this and the work for here if that if that makes sense.
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 it's not necessarily.
directly spelled out here but in this I think a lot of the action a lot of the foundation for work in this these areas can happen.
Okay.
Go ahead comes for me. I just just another compound comment I guess Erica.
Councilor Chase talked about the the work program and bucks for whatever.
I'd like to see I mean I'm 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 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 again because I'm on the.
One of my communities is the biz and I got to experience with this before but I really think it comes with Chase said a partnership with the private sectors 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 canard to talk about it.
We've sponsored by the business called the most team which most stood for mission off the streets and it was designed to there was a small component that was.
Court like it was the court referrals but the majority of the team was not made up of they weren't they weren't just us involved.
And I think if you rely too much on the justice system it's kind of feast or famine type thing and certainly comes with this share of.
Challenges will put it that way so I think it can be.
There are other templates out there where it's an amalgamation of you know people that are just working they're just employed and they're doing this.
Either puts you the town or whatever this corporation is and some are or string to the court through the courts.
So I think you know we look at it that way and sort of craft it uniquely that something that best.
Our needs here in Canara, we can get it up and running. And I think start it off with, you know, we don't need to be, like on a grand scale, just start it off and get it working. And I think we'll build off that. But I'm more than happy to be involved, you know, and anything moving forward, especially as far as the business concerned. And I think, you know, there's a lot of opportunity for partnerships.
With our agencies, with the private sector, with, you know, with the soldier or bag, involvement.
I think many hands makes, like, work is a, the more we can get involved, the better. But I think we can come up with something by, by some of the hope.
Well, just put that out there. So, okay.
It's certainly, you know, it's not fresh on you, but I would just like to, in your world, I'd love to see something. I'm sure we all would like to see something, you know,
and I think this is, you know, there are a lot of things to, to be said about, you know, preliminary discussions to getting the idea and then working towards that.
And, and the idea that programs can adjust as needed. And that, I'll talk about that later, but they're, needle disposal pilot project.
I think that we're taking that approach, just to be able to get it out, right, and see where it goes, right.
Okay, I'll talk to you next time.
Eric, your, your title is coordinator. Is it also more champion of the gloss? If, if you're hearing out there, let's use the butts for great.
People want to see a group of people down, down 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 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 and bring that.
I'm deciding where to even look.
To look for, like, so much for great.
Do you, do you go to the city? Do you go to the city? Do you go to bills? Do you, who does that?
Oh, I, I, I would do that. So I would have internal discussions. And so I, I will say I've been in in touch with the, the chamber of commerce.
Um, about some ideas about possible things that that we're talking about.
And if you get a know then what?
Then you just keep on, you keep on seeing.
You see, see where else where it could land. Also, I, I should say I talk to, um, you know, to my supervisor.
And, you know, you should, 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,
Um, I've had a very, um, good collaboration with different departments within the city.
I'm not talking about that to be able to do that. I think the one commonality that we have that I've seen is everyone wants to be better.
Like, I haven't really met anybody using, like, oh, we're fine. This is all good. Like, everyone does it. How can we, how can we get there?
There may be differences of opinion. How we reach that.
But as we talk about that and we collaborate, you know, maybe there's something that we can try it. And I think people are at the stage where they're, they're wanting to try different things.
And I think the big thing is different organizations 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 is 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 HubHearts during committee.
So there's really good work there. I think I'll leave it up to the heart.
Which are, 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.
So 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 within other 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 work group, again, that's another project that we're going to launch in the next couple of years.
And in the next couple weeks, we're just working on the communications.
For that, you can actually go to the website, if you want report needles.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's being, is going on with a net team as well with, we had an ad hoc.
And 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 our recommendations.
Okay.
Another question there.
Thanks, sir.
Okay. Thanks, Mayor.
Moving on the agenda, 6.5.4, improving safety and connectivity on murder and highways as it could see.
So, this is mine, but yours.
Because you're on the normal board.
So, what's the total work for you?
Want me to speak to you?
Yeah, that's for you.
I just put my name on the report.
And we just appreciate that.
So, yeah, this is, I mean, this isn't a new idea.
I think it's been going on for years, even in this just small area.
We've been advocating for 20, but the,
It started, it really picked up steam at the Emo last year when we met with the Minister of Transportation.
As a normal board.
We actually had a lot of, we had about a 45 minute session of face time with the Minister and staff.
I mean, then the mowana, the trying explained what, again, the uniqueness of Northern, Northwest,
Material, you know, explaining that the Transcan highway.
Actually, it connects the country, and it comes right through here and right throughout,
You have to sometimes you have to provide geography lessons.
But, you know, so, it continued to advocate on that.
I mean, there was a bit of stuff in the last federal budget or the budget that's in the
He hasn't been passed yet, but it's, or I guess it has been passed, no.
You know, recognizing that, and fairness to the rental 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 the next best thing to
20.
They've modeled it.
They do it in other countries.
And it works.
It's fairly cost-effective.
It's a lot quicker.
And, you know, short of that, you know, more passing lanes and passing lanes that are
are not two kilometers long, which is ridiculous, because it causes more accidents and
it stops.
Because you're rushing, right?
And they have most, sort 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 beyond, but it's something that's a lot better than we have now.
But they'll continue to do this and advocate because they think it's not important.
And there are, when you hear from other colleagues on Nomah that live on the highway 11 connector
piece, like, they said there's no, there's hardly any even shoulders to pull for, like,
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 shore, you talk about being closed here.
It's closed there all the time.
So a lot of them we wrote up 11.
And the conditions just start there.
And, you know, truck traffic, and all the economic developments 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 20 in here, it took a decade.
So, yeah, it's just, you know, continue to advocate to see.
And hopefully, hopefully, we'd look at it favorably.
And, you know, it's, is at the end all beyond, no, but it's going to reach enough people that
we're, we're committed to this and continue to be lobby and advocate on behalf of all of
North, North, 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 spurred out of a meeting with, like, through
a question.
Okay, thank you.
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 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, and dogs.
So, those are other things that I've seen through the different situations.
Any questions, council?
Okay, thank you.
So, moving on the agenda, you have 6.5.6, we have corporate services, Q3 report,
and then you want to flip back to higher-neurgency services?
Services?
Or do you, or just see if we have questions?
Yeah, if there's any questions, I mean, I can speak to you.
And then we can move on to active.
Sure.
Okay.
Thank you.
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 a high volume.
We have two new officers in by-law enforcement, and only one train 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.
Councilor Chase.
Thank you.
We're just a quick question about sort of property standards and by-law enforcement.
How I want to phrase this.
Is this still sort of complaints based driven or is the, and there's just so much workload,
or is it something that, you know, the officer and individuals 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, 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,
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, 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 officers time.
So, the goal is to get to where we are doing a lot more proactive enforcement when comes to property standards.
But I can't say one thing.
I can't say one thing.
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, snow plow damage that is done in the wintertime, 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 for, 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 technical process.
We've 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 things, some of the schools are because of the increased cost of busing, are considering trying to book all of the way plans to take kids to swimming lessons.
How are we doing about this sort of monopolizing the service?
I don't honestly believe it would ever work.
They're talking about it.
They're such a high demand, so it's a good problem to have. So the investment that Council has made in the wave has driven over 200% increase in our public transportation.
So more people are writing it, people that have never rid 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 have, they'll be able to access enough vehicles to get that many students.
These classrooms sizes are over 30 now. There's no way you'll get enough van, 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 in 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 my 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's 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 outreach, right? And communications is working hard on video.
You've seen Greg, I think we're going to take him out of his director of infrastructure and operations,
sort of into our video master, because he likes to do videos. He can take on a new role.
But we're seeing where, you know, when 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, people.
So would we like to move back then to just to see if there's any questions to 6.3 fire emergency services?
We have the municipal emergency management program amendment.
Yeah.
Are you 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 by law.
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 types.
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.
It's 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 6.3.2.
Do I 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.
All of the stats in the data are there for council to review?
No questions.
Okay.
So then we can move back to 6.6.
We have 6.6.1.
Economic development tours.
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.
Excuse me.
Sorry.
I just got a text.
My name is going to start.
My Canadian name.
I guess they got everybody there.
So if we could.
Sorry.
I don't know.
I'll be.
I'm hoping so.
So good.
Okay.
Excuse me.
Okay.
Thank you.
Sorry.
No problem at all.
So great Canadian docs came to us in January of this year.
And we did the ribbon cutting in July.
And it's a success in terms of being able to turn a 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 Canora.
So that's that's really good.
A couple of other highlights is the continued advocacy that we do.
This is in a largely Allison on the immigration front.
Her work with the Northern Policy Institute.
Now that work has evolved into.
Noma getting involved in the mayor getting involved in other mirrors getting involved in terms of advocacy on the immigration front.
I should mention the youth enterprise day cap.
Like my kids both went to Biscuits 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, you know, live in Winnipeg or live in Canora, so we get educated in Winnipeg and come back.
And, you know, one of the two is an entrepreneur.
So that seed was planted through Biscuits.
So this youth entrepreneurship day cap that the city puts on in an annual basis.
I think it's terrific to expose young people to to to new ideas and things and opportunities for the future.
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 percent of the time that people have been here nine and more times.
They report and 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.
That's largely because the effort that our tourism 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 for the visitors that come here.
So show to the tourism staff.
I know that they're probably ready to curl up in a ball.
Come late September and have a nap for about a month.
So happy to answer any questions.
Can you have it?
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 the 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 there day and night.
You know, I'm sure everyone does.
But she's just, I mean, it's an handheld down there.
And we really, I 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 Medielski'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, 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 your, your 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 a page for 19.
The table, summary table of events, attended.
Yes.
The business is its number.
Like the rest of the data sort of remains stable.
But that's one that doesn't.
And when you're, 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 our Q4 events.
You know, the spoiler alert.
There's for the holiday trail.
There's 24 businesses that have signed up.
Each time that a business signs up for that.
That's, you know, one or two or three individual meeting people with people.
So it's, we just let people run their business and focus on their customer.
So that does dip down in Q3.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Can you comment with all of you with the fall here and winter imminent?
About their snowball billing plan.
Is there any plans to do any projects with this snowball club?
Yeah.
Talk to you about it before.
But just increasing kind of that, you know, accessibility and that.
Yeah.
So for the last two years that were active.
We're 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 A&W and just cutting that trail that goes in there.
So that could occur. We did look at the potential to have some will be a traffic across at the A&W intersection, but determine that to be unsafe. We had the situation on the east side that you and I were both involved with.
And we cleaned that up. So 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 a, you know, some sort of marketing that they're doing, but we haven't heard anything as yet this year.
Anything as far as we talk years ago, what across 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.
And is there, like I guess this will pop them with conversation to 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 ever winter or winter carnival in the spring, but I think it kind of needed to track that sort of catch my area from Manitoba and to Canaro, is that ever been?
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 in that sort of thing that's something that we could support on the marketing front with.
Okay, I know, like we've had some success just like the farmers market and be great to have and the carnival is.
It's very, 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 Canaro and, you know, people that are in joy, snobby and generally have a bit of disposable income.
So anyway, thanks, thanks.
Yeah, they say when you come with a snowball bill, you just come with your wallet, right?
Yeah.
Come on.
Thank you.
I like the wood speedway.
Is it set up for snow machine racing?
Have any kind?
I do not.
No, I don't know the answer to that.
Yeah, because those used to be fun to watch.
I'll take that back to Josh.
Thank you.
So we'll be on thanks for that.
As your motion.
To John.
I have.
Part within your closure.
Number two, yeah.
Go ahead, Bart.
Okay.
Thank you.
We're moved by myself.
And seconded by council of Bernie, that person to section 239 of the Ms. Black 2001 as amended authorization for council to move into a closed session at 235 p.m.
to discuss items pertaining to the following.
Education and training members of council, one matter, development update, neighbor relations, one matter.
Council will be verbally reporting in a general sense and all items considered in the closed session.
Once we return from the closed session and move back to open session.
Thank you.
Welcome back. I'd like to pass it on to Councilor Chase too.
Thank you, Your Worship or Madam Deputy, Amy. So we have moved out of close back into open and just reporting
from our close session that we discussed development update and a labor relations matter and that no
direction has been given.
Okay. So can someone read the motion to adjourn?
The motion is a committee of all research to adjourn that for 30.
We're adjourned for 33.