Peterborough Currents

The 2022 Ontario election is on June 2. In Peterborough—Kawartha, six candidates are trying to unseat the Progressive Conservative incumbent Dave Smith, who is running for reelection.

Those candidates are: Jen Deck (New Democratic Party), Greg Dempsey (Liberal Party), Robert Gibson (Green Party), Tom Marazzo (Ontario Party), Rebecca Quinnell (New Blue Party), and Dylan Smith (None of the Above Party).

Peterborough Currents invited the four major-party candidates in the riding to sit for an interview to discuss why they’re running and what they’ll do about some of the biggest issues facing our community.

Deck, Dempsey and Gibson agreed, but Dave Smith did not respond to our requests, which were sent by text, email, and in-person messages. 

In this first episode of our election series, Deck, Dempsey and Gibson introduce themselves and run through what their biggest priorities for the riding are. Then, they each share how they’ll work to restore decency and respect to our political discourse.

Stay tuned for future episodes, which will cover topics such as policing, housing, and the drug poisoning crisis.

Mentioned in the show:

• The environment and climate change debate,  moderated by Mary Ellen Abberger, Malaika Collette and Gabriel Trozzi Stamou.
• Music by Erika Nininger

The Greatest Show was a performance art production that took over Peterborough’s collective imagination in the summer of 1988. Local musicians, performing artists, theatre technicians and more were brought together by renowned Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. They put their creative efforts together to create a “circus of the damned” in Del Crary Park. This haunted and twisted circus was an experimental production that challenged the audience by forcing them to participate and experience a show that was taking place all around them.

Artist and academic LA Alfonso reached out to some of the artists involved in The Greatest Show and has collected an oral history for Peterborough Currents. Many of the artists recalled that the show was influential in shaping their artistic practices. They found the blend of site-specific outdoor shows and unexpected locations highly inspiring for future projects.

The man who brought the project together, R. Murray Schafer, passed away last year at age 88 in his home near Peterborough. The memorials prompted Peterborough Currents to start exploring Schafer’s local legacy, and how this momentous production in the late 1980s has had ripple effects through to today.

Take a listen through the recollections and sounds of the show, in this oral history podcast, produced by LA Alfonso. Hosted by Ayesha Barmania.

Peterborough Public Health (PPH) is facing two compounding health crises: the third wave of the COVID pandemic fueled by the Omicron variant and the epidemic of opioid-related deaths. In the midst of these concerns, the organization has taken on a new medical officer of health, Dr. Thomas Piggott. 

Piggott took up the post in December, moving to Peterborough from Labrador, where he was medical officer of health for Labrador-Grenfell. Prior to that, he worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Médecins Sans Frontières.

His first few months as head of PPH have been focused squarely on responding to the COVID wave as well as working aggressively to secure interim funding for a safe drug consumption site. Alongside this work, PPH staff have had to respond to protests outside their office, and outside of Piggott’s home.

Hear Dr. Piggott speak on his work, recent challenges and how he approaches public health in this interview.

Additional links

Our reporting on the contaminated drug supply: https://peterboroughcurrents.ca/in-depth/opioid-poisoning-deaths-surged-in-2020/

Music courtesy of Erika Nininger: https://erikanininger.bandcamp.com/

Election Day is a matter of days away, and to help you make an informed decision about who to vote for, Peterborough Currents has interviewed all six candidates running for Peterborough–Kawartha in the 2021 federal election.

We asked each candidate to introduce themselves, why they're running for office and what are the key takeaways from their platform. 

Take a listen and meet the candidates who want to represent our community at the federal level.

Candidate interviews begin at the following timecodes:

• 01:24 Robert Bowers, Independent candidate
• 09:40 Michelle Ferreri, Conservative Party of Canada candidate
• 17:07 Joy Lachica, New Democratic Party candidate
• 26:27 Paul Lawton, People’s Party of Canada candidate
• 35:52 Maryam Monsef, Liberal Party of Canada candidate
• 44:18 Chanté White, Green Party of Canada candidate

Credits

Interviews by Ayesha Barmania and Will Pearson

Editing and production support by Leina Amatsuji-Berry

Hosting and audio mixing by Ayesha Barmania

Music courtesy of Erika Nininger, find her music on Bandcamp.

Support our work

This reporting comes to you from Peterborough Currents, a reader-supported and independent journalism outlet serving the Peterborough community. You can help make more reporting like this happen by becoming a financial backer. 

Make a donation today.

Peter Williams has a long history doing harm reduction work, though he didn’t necessarily realize it as such at the time, but he notices now looking back on it. “What I know now looking back is that I was doing harm reduction work but that wasn’t necessarily the framework for it,” he says during our conversation for the Neighbours podcast.

He started out working with an HIV/AIDS hospice in Toronto during the 1980s, the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and continuing that work as he worked for a number of agencies and then when he came to Peterborough to work at the Peterborough AIDS Resource Network (PARN) in 2010 when he was an HIV/AIDS education and harm reduction works coordinator.

Right now, Peter is a project lead for the Peterborough Drug Strategy. He coordinates the Housing Unit Takeover project and supports the Mobile Supportive Overdose Resource Team.

Before that Peter was the community development and engagement coordinator for the Peterborough Police, and in this role also became the chair of the Peterborough Drug Strategy, which is a collective of community partners focused on addressing the drug crisis. In this position he was one of the early leaders in the push to submit a Consumption and Treatment Site application for Peterborough.

In our conversation, Peter talks about this history and how community needs, belonging and connection are at the heart of it all.

The Neighbours Podcast is an audio series that introduces you to community members working on the frontline of the opioid crisis here in Peterborough.

Episode transcript coming soon.

The Peterborough Drug Strategy was started in 2009 as a way to bring different organizations together to coordinate a joint response to the drug crisis. Today, they’re the name behind the projects making headlines responding to the overdose crisis: from the Consumption and Treatment Services site to the Mobile Supportive Overdose Resource Team and many more.

It is an unincorporated collective with four core member organizations that each represent one of the four principles that underlies the group’s approach to drug use: Peterborough Public Health represents prevention; the Peterborough AIDS Resource Network (PARN) represents harm reduction; Fourcast represents treatment; and the Peterborough Police represents enforcement.

There are also 13 partner organizations that are a range of not-for-profit organizations, government agencies, and other bodies that work with or provide services to people who use drugs.

The drug strategy coordinator Jessica Penner says that having all of these voices at the table helps to identify the biggest needs in the community and come up with projects to address the gaps between mandates, oftentimes leveraging limited resources in the community to reach ambitious goals.

Listen to this edited interview with Penner on what the drug strategy is and how it works.

Episode transcript coming soon.

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Patrick Walsh is a local musician and radio show host, making music under the moniker Dirty Pat Walsh. Walsh also experiences chronic pain due to workplace injuries and repetitive stress. It’s a condition he manages with his doctor through prescribed opiates.

To kick off season one of the Neighbours podcast, which is looking at the opioid crisis in Peterborough, host Ayesha Barmania interviews Walsh about his story and perspective on the drug crisis.

Episode transcript coming soon.

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On Monday, Peterborough’s city council sat for the last meeting of 2020 and voted to approve the budget documents drafted by city staff with amendments. Peterborough Currents has been covering these deliberations for the past month and in this episode, co-publishers Ayesha Barmania and Will Pearson go over the highlights of this meeting so you can hear what happened.

Hey – Ayesha here, before we get into the podcast, I wanted to let you know about something that we’re trying at Peterborough Currents. As we look ahead into 2021, things are still uncertain and 2020 has been a heck of a year for Will and I to try and start a business. And the one thing that we’re realizing is that to become a sustainable operation, we need the financial support from our audience. And that’s why we’re asking folks to support our work for 2021 by becoming monthly sustainers. If you head over to peterboroughcurrents.ca/supportus you can sign up to support our work. It really means a lot to us if you’d consider contributing. And thank you!

Hello you’re listening to Peterborough Currents. I’m Ayesha Barmania.

This is the final episode of our Budget Week Podcast and to help me wrap up our coverage of the 2021 Budget deliberations, I’m here again with Currents’ co-publisher Will Pearson.

Hello.

And so today, Will and in this episode, we’re going to go over some of the highlights of the City Council meeting on Monday when council voted to approve the budget documents which we’ve been going into over this series. And before we get into some of the clips we want to play, I just want to say that this was the last City Council meeting of the year, and the budget was just one item on a pretty long agenda and pretty much all of the amendments to the document had been proposed, debated and voted on during the Finance Committee meeting at the end of November, which we covered in episode 5.

But there was one thing added at this council meeting but there were also 27 citizen delegations that spoke to council about the budget. And to kick us off, Will, there was one in particular you wanted to talk about.

Yeah, so I want to bring up a delegation that was delivered by Reverend Brad Smith from St. John’s Anglican Church on Hunter Street. St. John’s runs the One Roof Community Center, which is a meal program and a drop in center for people that are marginalized or homeless in Peterborough. And funding for the One Roof Community Center was always kind of baked into the homelessness budget all along. But it only came up at this last city council meeting because throughout November, there were some negotiations going on about what the service agreement would look like in 2021. And basically what was going on in those negotiations was One Roof was trying to secure some extra municipal funding to make up for a drop in the fundraising that it’s been able to do because of the pandemic. Currently, the City funds One Roof, but with $208,000 a year and the expectation is that they’ll deliver one meal per day, One Roof has been able to fundraise and through its own resources deliver two meals a day as well as additional activities, social supports, and like a community center. And so when One Roof was trying to get more funding so that during the pandemic who could continue to offer that enhanced service, it seems like the city wasn’t interested in increasing its support. And so the recommendation was to hold it steady at $208,000. Despite the fact that there is no increased need, especially for food programs, right now, during the pandemic.

The issue of food and security is not going away. In fact, as we’ve already seen, in the last six months, the number of community members accessing the meal program at One Roof is increasing as people’s financial resources are hit hard by the pandemic. If the city is going to issue a request for proposals for a meal program, it must do so seriously, including a credible amount of funding.

So that was Brad Smith from St. John’s One Roof had asked for $450,000. So more than double the funding of 2020. They kind of lowered their bid to $375,000 when the city balked at that, but then the city kind of held firm at $208,000.

So Reverend Smith, on Monday night, told city council that he signed the agreement, even though he didn’t feel like it was the best thing for the community.

When I was informed that our first and revised proposals would not be accepted and that the City would accept a new one year agreement. I felt compelled to accept the terms. With less than two months left in the current agreement, there wasn’t sufficient time to rebuild One Roof Community Centers model without the City as a partner. So this was the only way to keep the program alive. Otherwise, all of the community members who rely on us for meals would be left with nothing from the first January.

So Smith was there on Monday night to ask council to reconsider, perhaps up to $375,000 for example. But yeah, city council didn’t accept that suggestion from Reverend Smith. So the result is that there’s only going to be there’s going to continue to be just one meal a day – it’s going to be takeout it’s not gonna be a sit down meal (sit down meals aren’t possible due to the pandemic right now anyway, but presumably, hopefully sometime in 2021 they would be).

Yeah, and there’s not going to be social activities unless the church can find more fundraising resources. It’s too bad. I think that the community center is a really important hub for some people in the community, for socializing, and for just being included in the community. So I really hope that the church is able to find those fundraising dollars to be able to continue to offer that community space to folks.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the other thing that I noticed in the delegations on Monday night was that there were a lot of youth speaking. Can you tell me about what the youth were at City Hall to talk about?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So a good chunk of the delegations at the meeting were students from local high schools, particularly grade 11 and 12 [students], from Thomas A Stewart Secondary School and Adam Scott. And some of them spoke to housing, but the majority of them spoke to climate change and wanting to see some more of an investment particularly in climate mitigation projects from Council. So I have a little montage of some of what they had to say.

Imagine a world filled with empty bellies and diseases sweeping everyone on the streets; storms occurring as frequent snow falling on a cold winter’s day;, sea levels rising and rising, flooding cities, like a braking dam on a river slowly but dangerously; boiling hot days, forcing people to evacuate their homes; deadly heat waves occurring without warning, crops will be dwindling, resulting in 100 more million people to be forced into poverty; water is now something that is prized as we are, we have very little. This is where our future is heading.

You have the power to make a difference by putting the City’s money into climate change action. Please choose where your money goes wisely. As I know, nobody wants this to be our future. Thank you.

My name is Gabriel Trozzi Stamou, I’m here to speak on the need for new funding towards climate action as COVID-19 has highlighted the importance for building back better. Currently, there is no money allocated for such new climate mitigation efforts, but rather for things that seek to deal with the effects when they happen, such as flood mitigation, water management, during drought and so on, which are no doubt important, but they don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As global temperature averages are set to rise higher than the worst scenario, two degree increase, youth like myself, will be disproportionately affected by this. I am asking that the council show it is serious about reducing emissions in our city before finalizing the budget.

Your Worship and councillors, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Juliette Arbrioux. I’m a grade 11 student from Adam Scott. And I’m here today to speak on the lack of money being spent on climate mitigation in Peterborough. I’m not talking about the millions of dollars spent on climate related action that for the better part would have happened anyway. I’m speaking on the lack of new commitments the city has yet to put in place and the mindset there is facing this crisis. Peterborough has a Climate Action Plan that involves projects that focus specifically to help combat the climate crisis. This is where we need to be investing the better part of our money. We need to make it a priority, or at least a bigger importance than a proposed arena that I’ve heard more talk about than climate action.

My name is Katryna Jacobs, a grade 11 Indigenous student from Thomas A Stewar. In a city that prides itself on its efforts to incorporate indigenous culture on a regular basis. I would have expected more climate funds in the 2021 budget. Reconciliation and climate related issues are often seen as separate and under federal jurisdiction. However, this should not stop Peterborough from making advanced advancements within the community. I hope to see funding towards new climate mitigation efforts within the budget, something that is not currently represented. Thank you for your time.

Those were clips from four of the nine students who spoke on Monday. That was Jasmine Barnes, Gabriel Trozzi Stamou, Juliette Arbrioux and Katryna Jacobs, from TASSS and Adam Scott Secondary. And in a few of the presentations there were specific references to Peterborough’s Climate Change Action Plan and particularly on climate mitigation projects. We did a whole episode on the Climate Change Action Plan and what’s included in there, so if you’d like to know more about that I’d recommend checking out our roundup of climate projects on our website or the podcast episode where I interview Michael Papadacos.

But all of these students who spoke to climate change essentially called on council for greater investment in projects that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions more quickly.

Another citizen spoke on climate change later in the evening and that was Trisha Clarkson from the Peterborough Alliance on Climate Action. That group had written a letter with four climate mitigation projects that they wanted to see in 2021 – three of which are referenced in the budget documents and those have to do with traffic signal synchronization, anti-idling bylaws, and the installation of electric vehicle charging stations for City vehicles. Here’s a bit of what she had to say.

These initiatives are a great start on reducing some of the carbon fuel emissions in Peterborough. So on behalf of PACA, we thank you very much for these. However, these initiatives alone will not reduce emissions by 5% annually to meet the IPCC target of 45% by 2030. In order to reach this recommended target, the city has to transition from gas fueled and diesel fuel vehicles to electric city vehicles and e-buses in 2021. E-buses should be purchased in 2021, because it will take one year from the date of purchase to the date of delivery due to the high demand and not enough battery suppliers. So even if the city purchased two e-buses in 2021, they won’t be delivered until 2022. That’s why they need to be purchased as soon as possible.

So that electric bus proposal was the fourth thing that PACA was looking for. And Clarkson spent much of her time making the case for making that purchase in 2021. But ultimately, council didn’t debate the idea and nothing new was added to the budget with regards to climate change.

But there is the alternative fuel study.

Yeah, the alternative fuel study is being funded for 2021. And there’s a couple other projects, like the electric vehicle charging stations for the city fleet that are happening in 2021. So we’ll see. So there is some investment being made on that front.

Yeah, I guess what Clarkson is just getting at though is we kind of know what the alternative fuels study will say. It’ll say yes, it’s a good thing to transition to electric buses here, so people can do it. And I guess, gonna say we might as well start the investment now.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and so yeah, like I said, council didn’t debate this at all. But there was one thing that they debated and added – what was that, Will?

Yeah, so really, the big story from the city council meeting is that the budget was basically accepted by city council, in the same form that they approved it when they were sitting as the Finance Committee a few weeks earlier. There was one thing that came up in the discussions though, where a change was made. And that is regarding a capital project on Lansdowne Street, which is kind of like rebuilding Lansdowne Street between Spillsbury and Clonsilla. And this was not funded in 2021. It was something that was approved to be funded and built years ago, I think, like, maybe even five years ago. And it’s just been delayed and delayed, and it hasn’t received the funds that it needs to get done. And a couple of weeks ago, some members of the public address city council saying they really wanted to see this project get done, because that stretch of Lansdowne is quite dangerous, because cars go quite fast. And I think that by changing the built environment, we might be able to make that stretch of the street a little bit safer. And so and that was brought up again, in delegations from the public on Monday night. And so Councillor Parnell moved for a pre-commitment of money in 2022. So not this budget, but the next budget to start funding this project.

So it’s a project that definitely needs to be done, staff have acknowledged that it is a high priority capital project. And we need to just solidify it and give our word to these people that we will have shovels in the ground in 2022, completed at least by 2023. And so that is what I am asking for, please.

And Councillor Zippel, who is Councillor Parnell’s ward mate down in Otonabee Ward agreed, pointing out that this kind of the one of the reasons why this hasn’t been built is just the lack of funding in the budget for capital projects.

Councillor Parnell mentioned that this has been delayed for many reasons. And one of those reasons is, as Councillor Reil has said, infrastructure funding, and we have had a challenge getting capital dollars into our budget and making that commitment and we continue to see the impacts on our community.

And so listeners to previous episodes of the Budget Week Podcast know that Councillor Zippel had already moved that the increase in the tax rate be increased by a little bit to fund more capital projects in 2021. So that’s something that Zippel is concerned about. And she did something interesting with this motion to pre-commit funds for this project, which is request a recorded vote, which means that there’s a record of who votes what, which is not always the case. And she said that the reason she did that is so that when budget week comes next year, she knows who voted in favor of this project, and so she knows what councillor she can go to, again to say presumably we need to raise taxes to build this project because pre-committing the funds, doesn’t find the money in 2022. It just commits to spending the money. And so a year from now, city council will need to find how it’s going to fund this project. So I thought that was an interesting sort of illustration of Councillor Zippel’s priority to build infrastructure and to find funding in the tax base to do that.

Not every councillor was on board with pre-committing the money for 2022. Councillor Beamer, for example, said that as a Northcrest councillor, he was more concerned about getting Chemong Road rebuilt than than this stretch of Lansdowne

And so tonight I’m going to be a Northcrest Ward Councillor over the city councilor. And you know, I do have my eye on Chemong Road. Now I know northebd roads tend to be expensive and controversial. So I’m well aware Chemong Road is a big one. And there was another one we won’t mention that was also expensive. But Chemong Road does need to get done. And I’ll be honest, Councillor Parnell, Councillor Zippel, Councillor Riel and Councillor Vassiliadis, I am just concerned that this will take funds from Chemong Road, because, you know, the north end has been patiently waiting for Chemong Road and there has been some significant road work done in the southend over the past eight years, so.

And that was something that Councillor Pappas agreed with saying that, considering that the Parkway is looking very unlikely that that will be built anytime soon. Councillor Pappas is also concerned about getting Chemong Road reconstruction built as a sort of North-South corridor.

If we’re not building the Parkway, we are getting a transportation master plan come in at the end of this year, and dollars to donuts Chemong Road is our north south corridor, it’s got to get done. We all know that if you don’t vote for the parkway, you’ve got to vote for Chemong Road.

And so those two councillors as well as three other councillors voted against this plan, but it did pass six to five. And so that money is pre committed for 2022. And so that project should be able to get underway.

But yeah, other than that there weren’t any other changes to the budget. So if you have been listening to the budget podcast, you are all caught up. That’s not to say that we covered everything that’s in the budget. It’s a big document, we kind of picked out what we thought was the most important to discuss on this podcast. If there’s anything that you’re curious to learn more about, reach out to us, we can probably help you to find the answers.

Mm hmm. And the budget is something that cross cuts so much of city life, and it has impacts on all sorts of different things, we’re gonna still be referencing this document in our future coverage, even though we’re kind of wrapping up our budget week series. So yeah, please reach out.

This was a fun podcast to make.

Yeah, I learned a lot.

I feel like I have been following the budget deliberations each year for a couple of years now. I’ve never covered them as a journalist. And I feel like, man, that document is hard to parse, it’s hard to understand. And I feel like every year I get a little bit better at it. I feel like this year, I’ve learned a lot more about how the city works, how the budget works. I hope that I’ve translated some of that for our listeners. Yeah, but I think it was a good exercise in civic literacy.

Yeah, I totally agree. It’s been really nice to interview a lot of the city officials who don’t get into the spotlight very often and just learn about the work that they do, how they do it, and what’s kind of motivating them and what’s important to them with regards to this one document, and so we’re gonna keep up these relationships and keep doing this kind of civic reporting,

What are you keeping an eye on for next year, Ayesha?

Yeah, I’m really excited to learn more about the climate change action plan, we’ve got a report coming in 2021, about how we’re doing towards reaching the goal of reduced emissions by 2030. So I’m really looking forward to reading that. As well as – so one thing I learned in my conversation with Michael Papadacos about climate change was that the kind of spending for climate change action in 2020, was deferred back in March. And so that never actually got really resolved this year. So there’s going to be a report coming in the second quarter of next year about how that money is going to be spent. So I’m looking forward to seeing how that money gets meted out next year.

How about you, Will?

Well, something that I think we should update listeners on is the rapid housing initiative. And that doesn’t really affect the municipal budget too much because it’s federal money. But there has been an application – or city council approved putting in an application for that project on Monaghan Rd for 10 modular housing units for people in families experiencing homelessness.

Yeah, that also happened at the City Council meeting on Monday, right?

Will Pearson 19:32

Yes. Yeah. So I’m keen to see whether that application gets approved. I think that would be a great step forward in providing affordable housing to folks. And yeah, I’m also I’m just very interested in watching how this issue of funding the infrastructure projects that the backlog of infrastructure projects that the city has gets resolved.

Yeah. And I think that’s all I think we’re going to talk about in this podcast. Maybe we’ll do another budget week podcast next year looking at the 2022 budget.

The next budget will be the last one that this council.

Yes. Yeah, so maybe we’ll be back again next year. But thanks so much for listening this year. Music In this episode comes courtesy of the Mayhemingways. Thanks for being with me, Will, on this journey into the budget.

Thank you as well and have a good holiday to you and all of our listeners.

Thanks. See ya.

In our sixth episode of the Budget Week podcast, co-publishers Ayesha Barmania and Will Pearson go over how the draft 2021 municipal budget addresses the issue of affordable housing and homelessness. In particular, we look at funding for the city’s shelters, rent supplements, incentives for affordable housing, and changes to funding from higher levels of government.

Hello, you’re listening to Peterborough Currents. I’m Ayesha Barmania. In this episode of the Budget Week podcast, we’re going to talk about the thing that came at the top of the list of the survey of citizens’ priorities for the 2021 budget. And that’s housing and accommodation.

So my colleague and co-publisher Will Pearson has been following the developments on affordable housing and homelessness. And he’s with me now to tell us about it. Hi, Will.

Hello.

Um, so take us through the broad strokes of what we’re going to talk about today.

Sure, so there’s a couple things in the 2021 budget that jumped out at me when I first looked at it. The first is a pretty significant increase to the amount of money this city is spending on homelessness services. I also noticed an increase to the rent supplement program, which is great to see.

But not everything that the City does around housing and affordable housing does get reflected in the 2021 budget. Either because it gets funded by other levels of government or because some of the ways that the City, you know, encourages affordable housing development, for example, is not really through funding, but more through softer measures like incentives to encourage development. So I think we’ll maybe in this conversation stray from the budget itself a little bit to talk about those areas. But those first, the two things I mentioned are what jumped out at me and the budget document itself.

Yeah, absolutely. And so we talked a little bit during our last episode about the funding increase that’s drafted in the budget for the shelter system. So for folks who missed that episode, what’s that going to pay for?

Sure, yeah. So the first thing to say is just that the shelter system continues to be experiencing a lot of pressures, there’s just a high level of need in the community for the shelter services. So during budget week, Council approved a plan to increase the base funding for the Youth Emergency Shelter by about $60,000 as well as increase the starting wage for shelter workers to bring it up to a living wage. So that’s kind of two of the ways that homelessness money is being increased and how that money has been spent. Most of the money increased in the homelessness program this year is going to the shelter system itself.

Okay, gotcha. There was a little bit of conversation about this during the finance committee meetings, right?

Yeah, there wasn’t really a lot of debate about whether this budget line should increase. I think the councillors are pretty well on board with the idea of increasing the funding. But instead, they really used the budget meeting as an opportunity to – some councillors at least – to voice their support for the shelter system. And I think this comes– I think there’s a little bit of frustration on council for some of the ways that the media have been covering homelessness in the city. I think that they sense that maybe the media is focusing on negative stories and bad news stories and ignoring the good news. Keith Riel spoke about his wish that the media covered some of the successes of the city a little bit more, for example.

Get your story straight. This council is committed to helping the less fortunate. This council has put money where their mouth is. And we continue to do the job and to help the people that are marginalized who need the help. So why don’t we have a good news story about what we’re doing.

And then Diane Therrien spoke, you know, again, just to support the shelters, and in particular, the shelter workers.

Of course, there’s a lot of work to do. There’s a lot, you know, a lot of work still to be done. Our shelter system, our housing and homelessness system is not perfect. You know, we do hear a lot of concerns about the Brock Mission and why the Brock Mission are doing, you know, running this service. And that it’s also important to note that there aren’t a lot of organizations that are wanting to do this work. It’s, you know, these frontline workers are not paid a living wage, they’re not paid nearly enough for the amount of time and energy that they put into trying to help people. So it’s really easy to criticize. It’s, you know, but there are people that are working in the Brock Mission, at YES, at all of our frontline shelter services that put in everything that they have for minimum wage, really, and it and so, you know, it’s easy to say, ‘do this, do that’ but folks don’t realize how much is happening behind the scenes.

So that took up most of the conversation around the budget at the budget meetings. You know, it must be frustrating because this is not the first year in recent memory that the city has increased its funding of the shelter system, right. And this comes as you know, every city official and every community partner will tell you that homeless shelters aren’t the solution to homelessness. Housing is the solution to homelessness. And, yeah, it just must be frustrating every year to see the level of need in the community for these emergency responses and the need to continue to increase funding for them when that funding could be used to fund more long term solutions, if we could just pivot to pursue some of those longer term solutions a little bit more easily. When I spoke to Dorothy Olver who’s the program manager for homelessness in the city, she said that–

We would eventually love to see that, you know, all the funding that we have going into emergency shelters could be used very, very differently in our system if we didn’t need emergency shelters. But I think we need to acknowledge that we’re going to need to have some level of response. Our shelters will openly say to anybody, they’d gladly work themselves out of business and not need to have homeless shelters. But we’re going to be a while before we get there.

So you know, there’s a desire to get out of the shelter business, as Keith Riel has said a couple of times, but we’re not there yet. It would seem– And so yeah, the city is continuing to increase the amount of money that it puts into the shelter system.

Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure. And so getting out of the kind of emergency shelter system, there’s that other level of helping folks stay in housing, what are some programs that we can see the city contributing to now that do that?

So it seems that every year during budget week, rent supplements come up. It’s usually a topic of conversation. And I think in the past three or four years, at least, council has made it the practice to boost the level of support for rent supplements each year. And that’s happening again this year.

Yeah, so what is a rent supplement? What are we talking about there?

Right, a rent supplement is a payment that the city makes to help bridge the gap between what an apartment costs for a tenant and what they can afford. And they’re usually made directly to landlords. And so the money goes to the landlord from the city, and then the tenant is able to pay that much less rent, and there’s a few different kinds, some of them are rent-geared-to-income rent supplements, some are like a flat fee. So I think the Housing Choice rent supplement average is around $250 a month.

And is that tied to the apartment unit? Or is that tied to the family that’s moving in?

There’s a couple of different programs, some of the rent supplements are portable, so you can move with them and they aren’t tied to particular units. And some are tied to particular units.

And yeah, and so this year, we’re seeing a $50,000 increase for the Housing Choice rent supplement, and that’s a rent supplement that is worth – that’s the one I just mentioned – that’s worth about $250 a month. That’s the average anyway, and it’s portable.

And I spoke to Rebecca Morgan Quin about it, she’s the manager of housing at the City. She expects that about 10 new households will be able to access that rent supplement in 2021, because of the increase. So that’s good news.

One of the drawbacks of supplements is that often the ones that are funded by other levels of government anyway, usually have expiry dates. And so we’ve seen in the past actually situations where the City had to increase its own spending on rent supplements, not to increase how many supplements that are, but actually just to cover expiring programs, which is too bad. And the draft budget does point out that there were a few rent supplement funding programs from the provincial and federal government that are set to expire over the next five years. And that’s putting about 100 households at risk of losing the rent supplement. Councillor Kemi Akapo noticed that and asked about it during deliberations. Here’s what Commissioner of Community Services Sheldon Laidman responded.

So that is a very important risk I think to the long term future of the rent supplement program and the social housing program in general, is that, as Coun. Akapo mentioned, a number of these programs are about to sunset, and they expire. And they’re leaving a large number of units in a precarious situation. So housing managers across Ontario, I know have been lobbying the government, the provincial government for many years to give some certainty to that going forward, because it is a risk.

So that’s, that’s something to keep an eye on in the coming years. I think it’s not until 2023 that the first batch of these supplements expire. So there’s a little bit of time for senior levels of government to develop programs, hopefully to replace them, but we’ll see what happens.

Right. But until then, in this budget, the $50,000 that you mentioned, that’s just increased service money.

That’s new municipal money for new supplements. Yeah.

Right. So these rent supplements are kind of about getting people into and keeping their housing. What about getting more affordable housing built, like just getting more units on the market? What’s the city’s role in that? And is there any investment on that front?

Yeah. So, you know, that’s not actually something that we see reflected in the budget document a whole lot. And I think that’s just a reflection of the fact that the City of Peterborough is not really in the business of building affordable housing and doesn’t really have the resources to do that. And it’s not traditionally something that’s within the scope of municipalities, that’s more something that gets funded by senior levels of government.

That’s not to say that the city doesn’t do anything. Our listeners might remember that this year, the City took a couple of properties that it owns that are in the Parkway corridor. So they’re not going to be used for the Parkway anytime soon. And so the City kind of renovated them to create some affordable housing.

So there’s a couple of examples where the city has taken properties that it owned, and turned them into affordable housing. But it’s not very significant or large projects, it’s usually pretty small ones.

But one thing that the city does do to encourage the development of affordable housing is offer incentives to developers. So if someone wants to build an affordable housing project, they can apply to, for example, have the development charge that would usually be charged waived, or maybe the city can offer them reduced parking, minimum parking requirements, things like that. So just little things that the city can do to make it easier and more cost effective to build affordable housing. And that you do see that reflected in the budget. It’s a program that’s set to continue in 2021, to the tune of about $1.1 million.

Okay, so that’s money that the city is foregoing. Right? They would have received it if they’d not been offering this program, but they’re choosing to not receive this money. So that affordable housing gets built.

Yeah, that’s right. It’s foregone revenue. So other developers would be expected to pay those fees, but a few, including affordable units, then you can have them waived.

Okay, but aren’t there – so this isn’t necessarily about the budget, but aren’t they’re like – can’t the City, you know, talk to all the developers that are working in the city and force them to make a certain percentage affordable?

No, I think there’s a lot of people in Peterborough that wish that city council could force developers to include affordable units and the developments. So the sort of planning speak for that is called inclusionary zoning, so you zone a part of the city and say that any development in this part of the city needs to have, you know, this proportion of affordable units. And under the current provincial regulations, that’s only possible in major transit areas, which is kind of a planning designation that Peterborough doesn’t have any of those, it’s more like Toronto would be allowed to do it around a subway station, for example.

Yeah, but that’s new regulations that were brought in by the provincial government a couple of years ago that really do curtail municipalities ability to pursue inclusionary zoning. And I know that even though it is possible in Toronto, I know that advocates for affordable housing are really pushing the government to reconsider this rule around transit areas, because it really just limits where you can pursue inclusionary zoning. And in a city like Peterborough, where these transit areas don’t exist, it’s not possible.

Yeah. And I think that really echoes a lot of what I’ve been hearing in these interviews I’m doing for this podcast about the different constraints on the city budget based on these higher levels of government. So there’s these regulations that you’re talking about. But there’s also just different types of funding available. So what funding is the city counting on to pay for the initiatives that we’ve just talked about?

Yeah, funding from other levels of government is definitely a big part of how housing works at the municipal level, and during budget deliberations Mayor Therrien brought this up and really called on the provincial government in particular to come to the table with more funding for housing and homelessness.

These services, it is also important to note, have been downloaded from senior levels of government over the years. There’s three levels of government that we deal with, when we’re dealing with housing as a municipality, that’s the federal government, ourselves, and the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. And so I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it that we do need to be putting pressure on them to come to the table to help with these projects.

So there is a little bit of extra operating money coming from the province. And I thought that I noticed it in the budget. When I asked Olver about that, well, first she literally started to laugh. And then she said yes, there is a little bit more money, but she called it quite modest.

There is a little little little bit of additional funding. That’s part of the kind of our ongoing consistent funding that we get from the province. So we generally have a couple of pots. The community homelessness prevention initiative is probably our largest. And then we have the Home For Good funding. There’s not been any change in the Home For Good funding since we started it a couple years ago, and we don’t anticipate anything so it never changes year to year. And that’s basically for some of our supportive housing programs. The community homeless prevention initiative is like the funding we use for shelter funding housing, some rent supplements, and we had a very, very modest increase for this year.

And so I think that the City would, you know, could really benefit from what was funding.

But I think if I’m following the news correctly, and there have been a number of provincial and federal announcements at a couple different moments this past year about funding, what’s up with that? Are we getting any of that money?

Right. So you’re right, that there has been so there have been some provincial announcements about funding, and that’s mainly through the Social Services Relief Fund. And, yeah, you’re right to bring that up and Olver did bring that up too and said, where the province has really come through in 2020, is with one time funding in response to COVID-19.

And so the city did get, I’m not sure exactly what the number is, but it’s in the millions of dollars through the Social Services Relief Fund. And what that has been used for is really expenses related to COVID-19, like securing motel rooms, so that people in the shelter system can isolate if they might have COVID, moving the shelters to the Wellness Center, and then moving them back, paying for PPE, things like that. Also, expenses associated with the new 24-7 overflow shelter. So you’re right, that there is new provincial money. It’s more like a one time funding for COVID-19. And I think that Yeah, what, perhaps Mayor Therrien and Olver were speaking about is the need for or how the city could really benefit from more long term operating funding.

Sure, yeah. And so things like that one time COVID funding we might start seeing in the 2020 budget actuals?

I don’t know I’m not an accountant. So I can’t answer that question.

That’s okay. But I think what I’m trying to say here is that it’s not in the 2021 draft budget.

Yeah. And I think that there are a lot there are other opportunities right now for capital funding for housing projects. So the federal government’s National Housing strategy, which was announced a couple of years ago, and has been used so far in Peterborough anyway to fund the Brock Mission development and the Habitat for Humanity development at Leahy’s Lane, that’s still in existence. So there’s still opportunities to apply for that, too, to get funding for affordable housing.

And then there’s a couple of new opportunities too, I think that that is a capital component of the provinces Social Services Relief Fund, so that might be accessible to the City, or organizations in the city to build housing. And then there’s the federal government’s new rapid housing initiative, which is probably the biggest opportunity right now. That’s I think it is $500 million available to cities like Peterborough. So I know that the city is working with community partners to apply for that funding.

We’re trying really hard to do what we can to build our housing stock that we can actually dedicate to homelessness, that’s part of our challenges is, we have a binding priority list. And we need more resources actually dedicated specifically to that work to try to house people. So I think what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to expand any housing opportunities we have, where we have the opportunity to apply for any provincial or federal funding, we’re doing that with all of our community partners, or developers or folks who are able to work with us. And we’re able to meet the eligibility criteria for those programs. So there’s a heavy focus on capital funding opportunities, and we get to really have to be ready to jump on those when we can. We’re trying really hard to work with folks in the community to make sure that we jump on those opportunities.

So we’ll see if the City or some organization in the city is able to access funding through the Rapid Housing Initiative. I was interested when I was speaking with Olver about that – she brought up an interesting, not criticism, but there is a barrier with that program. And it’s that it doesn’t come with any additional money for support services.

When you think of someone that might be moving from homelessness into housing, what do they need to get into housing? I think they really need three things. The first is housing, there needs to be a place for them to move into. And that’s what initiatives like this respond to. There also needs to be rent supplements to help them pay the rent at this housing, because as we have spoken about before, even the most affordable housing developments these days are not really affordable for someone that for example, only has their Ontario Works cheque to pay rent. So secondly, someone would need a rent supplement to help them pay the rent. And then, in many cases, someone that’s exiting homelessness likely needs a little extra support when they’re in their housing to to live successfully in that housing, if it’s either because they have mental health challenges, or they have addictions, or maybe they’ve just been homeless for a long time and need some supports settling into and learning how to live successfully in housing. That can be a challenge if you’ve been homeless for a long time. And that kind of support costs money. And so the Rapid Housing initiative doesn’t come with that kind of money. Olver says that that’s something that the federal government is aware of and working on.

Yeah. And in particular, like I think one of the biggest – hero might be a lofty term, but it’s probably not the right word I’m looking for right now but – the best spokesperson that we have around homelessness right now is Adam Vaughn, [Member of Parliament for Spadina—Fort York]. And he pursues every opportunity he has in the federal government. He is pushing for this funding in terms of capital. But he’s also really always pushing for the provincial levels of government to kick in the support dollars to make these units.

He’s hearing loud and clear from everyone that we really appreciate the capital dollars, that you’re asking us to, to help with our high security level people that need support to help them to stay where they are. So he’s really pushing the federal government to push other levels of government to make sure that the support dollars are coming. So we’ll see if that happened, hopefully, guys, because we need to support dollars for many of the programs that we would like to continue to do as we go along.

So I thought that was really interesting to hear that the federal government is currently pushing the provincial governments in Canada to step up and provide funding for support services to help make the Rapid Housing Initiative more successful, because without that funding, it might not help the most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness in Peterborough. It might not be just simply because yeah, those individuals need extra support and just giving them a house but not giving them access to put isn’t setting them up for success.

Sure. And this is a program that the city does run called Home for Good if I’m not mistaken.

Right. One of the ways that the city funds supportive housing is a provincial program called Home for Good. And that that funding has flatlined, I think since 2017, it hasn’t been increased.

Right, yeah. So we might be developing this capacity on all these other fronts but there’s still one area that’s not getting a boost.

Yeah, you know, it’s a puzzle. There’s a lot of pieces that go towards solving homelessness. And yeah, it’s a matter of funding them all sufficiently at the same time, and then delivering them all sufficiently.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that’s all we really wanted to talk about today. Will, is there anything else you wanted to add?

No, I think that’s all the most important things. And that’s sort of what I’m keeping an eye on for 2021.

And not to spoil it, but we’re gonna have some coverage tracking all of these different developments on the Peterborough Currents website. So thanks for joining me today, Will.

That’s all for today’s episode of Peterborough Currents. You can find more of our city budget coverage at Peterborough Currents dot CA. We’ve also got episode transcripts of all the episodes up there.

Music in this episode comes courtesy of Mayhemingways.

My name is Ayesha Barmania. And thanks so much for taking the time to listen. Bye for now.