The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - What are the Challenges for Northern Ontario Mayors?

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Northern Ontario is geographically huge. About the size of France and Italy combined, but with the population of Mississauga. Trying to provide municipal services spread across such a vast expanse runs into facts that many southern cities simply don't face. In one of the key cities of the north, Sault Ste. Marie, at the Algoma Conservatory of Music, we welcome four out of the five members of NOLUM - the Northern Ontario Large Urban Mayors. Michelle Boileau, mayor of Timmins; Peter Chirico, mayor of North Bay; Paul Lefebrvre, mayor of Sudbury; and Matthew Shoemaker, mayor of Sault Ste. Marie.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. Northern Ontario is geographically huge, about the size of France and Italy combined, but with the population of Mississauga.

Trying to provide municipal services spread across such a vast expanse runs into facts that many southern cities simply don't face. We are in one of the key cities of the north, Sault Ste. Marie, and we are delighted to have here with us at the Algoma Conservatory of Music, four of the five members of NOLM, that is the Northern Ontario Large Urban Mayors. And they are, in alphabetical order, Michelle Boileau, Mayor of Timmins, Peter Chirico, Mayor of North Bay, Paul Lefebvre, the Mayor of Sudbury, and Matthew Shoemaker, the Mayor of Sue Ste. Marie. And it's great to have you four with us here. And can I just say off the top, we've had a wonderful time in the Sault. Everybody's made us feel very welcome. So thank you for rolling out the red carpet.

We've really enjoyed being here. Happy to host you in the team, Steve. Normally, this show talks a lot of policy, but I think given who you four are, I want to start with something a little more personal. And that is, I'd like to know, being mayor, what gets you out of bed in the morning? Go ahead. Start us off. Well, I think my four-year-old daughter gets me out of bed first thing in the morning. I didn't quite mean it that way, but I know what you mean. It's the idea of trying to make our communities a better place to live for our own families and for all of the residents. There's a lot of potential in every one of our communities that has been left untapped.

And I think that's what gets me out of bed is trying to work towards really fulfilling our full potential as a community. Mayor Chirico? I think it's the changing the challenges that we all face throughout our communities, changing those into opportunities. You know, if lemons, let's make some lemonade. Because no matter where you are, we're all faced with similar challenges. Northern Ontario especially,

because of that geographic distance and the population size, it's accelerated a little bit some of those issues. But trying to make our communities, as Michelle said, a better place and making those challenges into opportunities. Mayor Lefebvre? Yeah, same thing. Basically, get out of bed in the morning to just try to improve our community, right? That's why we got, we ran for office and see how we can contribute to making our city a better place to live, work and play. That's what kind of the lines that I use for Sudbury. Lots of potential, right? Certainly with the leadership that we can provide as we try to make it to the next steps and to really showcase what we can do and believing in our community. That's why I get up in the morning, show up at the office and work late nights and enjoy every day of it.

Mayor Shoemaker. Steve, I'll tell you, my mom was born in Italy and she was born on the floor of her house. So she was an immigrant or she is an immigrant to this country. In 1969, she came here to Sault Ste. Marie and Sault Ste. Marie provided her the opportunity within one generation her child has become the mayor of the city that had adopted her so it has provided me the best quality of life that anyone could dream of and I want to be able I want for it to be able to provide that to my children and and the rest of the community and so that's why I feel a deep sense of needing to give back to the community because of everything that it has offered me over my life. We're going to do one more round here, and this time it's the other side of the coin.

What keeps you up at night? Still my four-year-old daughter. As especially Marterico mentioned, there are a lot of challenges that our municipalities are facing, a lot of social issues. And I think it's the idea that there are so many residents within the city of Timmins, within all of our northern communities that are struggling to get by, to make ends meet, to access the supports and services that they need. And so it's trying to help meet the needs of our residents with the limited resources that we have, with the limited infrastructure that we have. And so it's, you know, it's always kind of that puzzle of how do we get there? How do we help everyone that needs help within our community? What keeps me up? It's the quiet. It's the quiet, actually. And as we all know that our days are filled from start to finish. And that nighttime, that twilight where it's quiet, and you get to actually recap the day and go through and try and figure out how we provide those services,

what we do for our future generations, all of those things. those services, what we do for our future generations, all of those things. I actually rather relish that time of evening where it's quiet. You actually get a chance to think and to see, you know, because your days are planned out, your days are always busy. And so it gives you some time to reflect on what you've done and what's coming up. What keeps you up at night? Well, certainly, as Michelle said, our social services and the needs for our population

is just increasing on a daily basis. But at the same time, the city of Greater Sudbury is such a massive city, and our infrastructure is aging. And so the cost of replacing that and trying to figure out a way of minimizing, but at the same time providing the best services to the population, it's just a massive endeavor that has, in the past, we have not been able to be really at the forefront of past councils but now we are faced with this you know decaying infrastructure issues that we have so we

got a lot of work to be done and how do we address this and how we pay for this. So those are always things that I'm trying to figure out to find the best way forward for our taxpayers and try to keep our taxes reasonable at the same time. What keeps you up at night? Well, like Michelle, I've got a six-year-old and a two-year-old, so they keep me busy all day. But in economies in the North, you're always kind of one catastrophic event away from things falling apart.

And so it's really, we're sitting here in this beautiful space. This used to be a paper mill that employed, you know, between 200 and 400 people in its heyday. And so it shut down, it created a lot of ripples throughout the community. And there are only, you know, a handful of major employers in town that if anything goes wrong with any of them, and this is, you know, things that are purely private sector, like the steel plant and the tube mill that are here, to things that are reliant on government funding, like the university and colleges, which have been undergoing some upheaval, as you may have heard. And so we are always one, you know, decision or policy lever being switched away from something

much more severe going wrong. And those are the things we try to diversify our economy on and plan for the future so that we aren't so heavily reliant on one of these things or any one of these things so we can be resilient. As I look at the populations of your communities, now Sudbury, 170,000 people, that's a bigger place. 41,000 in Timmins. 72,000 here in the Sioux.

Maybe a little higher now. We just got our stats scanned out at 78,000 and change. 78? So we're growing. Okay. North Bay, are we around 53? 53,000. Okay.

So I'm going to guess here, I suspect, that when you folks are out doing your thing, you are running into people that you know every day unlike if you're the mayor of Toronto or Ottawa or Mississauga where you're going to spend some time in public and it's possible during the course of the day you're not going to know anybody because the places are just so big I wonder Paula Feb why don't you start us off how much of those daily interactions with people that you know just as you live life in Sudbury inform your public policy choices? Well, they definitely do.

These are ad hoc conversations that people actually take the time to stop you and say, hey, what do you think of this? We have issues with our roads or, like I said, with our infrastructure, with our homelessness population, what's going on? So certainly when you take the time to really listen to these folks that are taking the time to stop you and striking up a conversation, conversation it doesn't inform your your your policy changes or choices because as you're looking forward right it's good to have your ear in the ground and having these interactions on a daily basis certainly help and then we also have 12 councillors

right and they have those interactions as well that share that that that feedback as well so it's it to me it's key to have that that that connection to our our population and that's one of the things of being on the ground as mayor right we get to live in our communities we live there we pay taxes just like everybody else our kids are are growing there we want them to stay in our communities and how do we make sure that we grow our communities in a good way that's why these interactions are always key yeah like mayor pollo can you go to the supermarket or can you take your four-year-old to a movie without somebody coming up to you and saying, I got a comment about the garbage, I got a comment about services, I got a comment.

I mean, does that ever happen? Rarely, rarely. So, no, I'm definitely being stopped everywhere I go and not always with complaints or concerns, you know, sometimes with positive feedback and letting me know what we are doing well and what is being appreciated. But like Paul said, it definitely helps inform the work that we're doing. And we always say that in municipal government,

we have that most direct impact and link to the constituents that we're working for, but especially in smaller communities, do we really get to feel that? And that's nice because when someone's coming forward and coming up to you and sharing a concern and saying, you know, this is happening and this is what's going on in my life, it removes all of the buzzwords and, you know,

the alignment with other governmental priorities and you really get to just look at an individual and what they're experiencing within your community. And then, you know, we bring that back to staff and we say, you know, I just heard this from a resident. Could this be true? Is this going on? Maybe we should look into this, and that's how we really get the work done. One of the things I hear Doug Ford talk about a lot

is how he worries about getting caught up in the Queen's Park bubble. And I think, you know, probably all of you have smaller bubbles than the Premier of Ontario, but there is a risk of being in a bubble. Do you worry about isolation in your job and not having access to everyday people? I'm pretty close to, you know, I shop at the grocery store, I go to the movies with my kids. So I feel like I've got a good connection to community. And, you know, most of the people that I bump into during a day, I'm probably somewhat related to them, given that I've got a big Italian family. So one thing, though, that I think you get when

folks are coming up to you is the kind of unvarnished opinion, I think, as Michelle was touching upon, of what's going on in the community. And you get a good sense from people when they reach out to you directly of what the issue of the day is. So recently, we had some challenges with our YMCA at risk of closure. And that was a time when many people in the community, whether they saw me at my kids' swimming lessons, whether they saw me at the grocery store, whether they saw me at the movies, were coming up to me and talking to me about it. And it was, you know, it was obvious already that it was an issue,

but it was clear from those interactions that this is something that is on people's, you know, at the top of people's minds. What would they say? They would say that the municipality needs to do something, right? And however they could contribute to helping it, the municipality needs to be the impetus for making sure that the place doesn't close. And ultimately, I think we're in the process still of trying to work a solution out. But the municipality took the lead on that file, largely because of the interactions that councillors had with residents, that residents took up on their own initiative to try and spearhead, and that I myself had with residents as I was out in

the community. So getting stuck in a bubble is not something that I feel there's too much concern with in a community like the Sioux. Okay. Mayor Chirka, how about you? Any interaction with a member of the public that you can recall in your community which eventually resulted in a change of policy you thinking about an issue differently something like that i think every interaction gives you food for thought as you as you move forward we were just in the process of going out for tender for a new arena and it was top of mind for the last year and a half that it didn't matter where you went. People were talking about it. Well, you've got this, you've got this.

So every interaction with people influences that decision down there. And I certainly don't profess to be the smartest person in the room by any means, and most of my teachers for high school will tell you that. And I'm back in the same hometown that I grew up in, so they're quite available for that comment. But they, you know, those are the, where you make your decisions. We all have family. Again, as Matthew said, Mayor Schumacher, large Italian family.

I come from a family of 12, and 10 of them still live in North Bay. You are one of 12 siblings? Yes, one of 12 siblings. Yes, exactly. And everything that goes with that. But, you know, you hear from them, you know, what are and some of it's not too kind when, you know, you make an unpopular decision. But absolutely, those different comments that you hear, just on the weekend, the farmer's market, you know, we're down at the farmer's market with the grandkids. And my granddaughter, who just turned nine, she goes, Grandpa, do you know everybody? And, you know, because they do, and they feel, and I'm very pleased that they feel that they can approach us as mayors. And, you know, I know the same is true for the other three that are sitting here. It's very approachable, and I think that that's key if you're going to be successful in your community.

As we mentioned off the top, you are all part of something called NOLM, Northern Ontario Large Urban Mayors, although none of you looks particularly large, but I guess they mean larger cities. Okay, I get it here. Operating on the assumption that there is strength in numbers, I presume you four collaborate as much as you possibly can in order to get Queen's Park to help you get stuff done,

as the expression of the current government likes to say. Give us an example. Mayor Shoemaker, start us off. Give us an example of something that you Northern mayors collaborated on without which collaboration it probably wouldn't have happened because you needed that strength in numbers.

It's an easy example, Steve. My predecessor used NOLM to lobby for the Rural northern immigration pilot program that the federal government established and that was really an effort on the part of all five mayors from the north including the mayor of Thunder Bay who isn't with us today to have the federal government develop an immigrant an economic immigration program specific to the labor shortage needs in our communities, because in mining communities and in steel communities, you need specialized skills. And to find those specialized skills, if you aren't bringing them up internally, you need to find them elsewhere

around the world. And it has been an enormous success. I mentioned at the top of the program that our population numbers have gone up, largely because we have been able to fill jobs that would otherwise go unfilled in our communities, and those people bring their families with them, and then they tell people that are from their home countries of the greatness of our communities and the livability, and then it invites more people in. So immigration, as you know, the Sioux has a lot of Italians

because other Italians came here because they had a cultural connection to it. So if you can bring new Canadians in, it will bring in other new Canadians with the same cultural background. Give us an example from 10 minutes of a win you got because you all worked together. Well, I'd want to speak to another example that predates any of us here, but it's the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. And that really was, again, due to the collaboration between the large urban mayors from Northern Ontario. And I think that's a noteworthy example to mention.

Now we're working together on things like, of course, trying to meet the social challenges that we're facing, housing, homelessness, access to primary care, access to adequate mental health and addiction services within our communities. We often, sometimes it's just great to be able to talk about the similarities, what's going on in each one of our communities, to learn from best practices. So it's not always that we're advocating to Queen's Park or to the federal government, but just learning from one another is what makes this so important for all of us. I don't want to speak on all of your behalf, but I know that learning from all of you is definitely beneficial to our community.

Mayor Lefebvre, what would you add? Well, certainly that the collaboration is key, right? And just in our advocacy, we've all been in our positions for a year and a half now, right, as bears since the last election, but the fact that we can join together and go to Queen's Park, and we brought to AMO last year, and we're going to do where our,

that's why we got together here in the Sioux to have that conversation, and our next advocacy piece is, as Michelle was saying, our social issues that we're all dealing with, right, how can we better advocate, how we can better sort of address these together, because we're all facing the same issues. Who do we advocate to? As obviously some of us have

sitting members of provincial parliament that are in government, how do we address them? How do we certainly collaborate to advocate to them as well? So these are key moments that we can get together and to strategize together how we can best get results for our citizens of our communities. What would you add? I couldn't agree more with those, but one of the key is the therapy. It's the therapy that, you know, that we're not in this alone, that, you know, we use each other as sounding boards and we use it and it doesn't cost us $200 an hour for a therapist to straighten this out. And it really does because, you know, there's a lot of best practices, you know, there's a lot of experience that, you know, although that I'm, yeah, I'm the oldest here. Yeah. But, you know,

we've got some, a lot of experience around this table and different ways of looking at it. You know, just because you're old doesn't mean you have the answer. There's a lot of new ideas. We get new ideas. Paul has a vast amount of experience. Michelle has the same experience in different fields. Matthew, being a lawyer, no, not at all. He brings a lot to the table and a different perspective.

And getting those perspectives together to be able to say, oh, we're not alone and we've got that problem and this is how you handled it, that is a bigger part of NOLM than that advocating. That's a huge part in Queen's Park. But this is the collaboration that we can work together and we can make the North really, really special. And if I may, Steve, something else is it amplifies not only the voice

of the large urban municipalities in northern Ontario, but it just amplifies the voice for northern Ontario municipalities because each one of us is working and collaborating with the municipalities in our distinct regions of northern Ontario. As you mentioned, it's vast geography, the size of multiple European countries put together, and we're all service hubs in our communities. As you mentioned, it's vast geography, the size of multiple European countries put together. And we're all service hubs in our communities. And so we're working, and residents from other municipalities from our regions are coming to our community.

Who else? What other municipalities around Timmins? All of the communities along Highway 11, near Cochrane and Capuskasing and Hearst and New York Falls. We all work together. We sit on different service boards together. And so we like to bring into our conversations some of the realities and some of the experiences of members from municipalities that are surrounding our areas. And so when we do have that opportunity to speak with ministers collectively, we're also bringing all of that to the table. Okay, let me pick up on that. Because in my experience in politics, it helps to have

good friends in high places, right? You've got, like, one of the most senior cabinet ministers as the MPP for Nipissing. This is Vic Fideli. You once upon a time, the member for Nipissing was a guy named Mike Harris. He was the premier of the province. Do you know for a fact that your part of Ontario, your part of northern Ontario, did better than it might otherwise have done, did better than it might otherwise would have done, by having powerful friends in high places? Yes. That's as simple as that. Give me an example. Last week we were having a discussion just on the, or two weeks ago, at FENOM, Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities, and one of Paul's councillors was asking about Highway 69.

When is that going to be completed? They've been promising to twin that thing for a very long time. Some of it is and a lot of it isn't. I may have whispered something along the lines of, well, maybe when the premier is elected in Sudbury. And listen, Highway 11, which, you know, very dangerous highway, no different than Highway 69. Listen, I give kudos to mike harris for getting that pushed through to get that so that we have safe transportation uh for all of our northern communities not just north bay uh vic has done just a tremendous job in advocating at queens park for so many things whether it's regional hospital funding uh you know rate from everything Northern Ontario Heritage

Fund film industry you name it it just it just goes and he is very supportive and yes you do have to have good relations with Queen's Park in order to get things done that's simple as it gets so let me look at the other side of the coin you here in Sault Ste. Marie Mayor Shoemaker used to have a cabinet minister in the current progressive conservative government representing you. He's no longer in cabinet. Did the Sioux suffer because it didn't have as good a friend in as high a place? You know I think that there were there were areas of advocacy that it helped having the Minister of Training Colleges and Universities in our in our in our own

riding but he is still an advocate for the needs of the community. I think one of the files that consumes a lot of his time is the physician shortage file. As you likely know, there are 10,000 patients at risk of losing their family care physician. He is on that file, and I have been in constant communication with him since the announcement. This is Ross Romano. and I have been in constant communication with him since the announcement that all these patients were going to lose access to primary care on May 31st. And he's still very engaged in the file, and whether or not it would have helped for him to have a cabinet position. I can't say, but I think that he is still fully engaged and a willing advocate for Sault Ste. Marie. Does it matter that Timmons' MPP is the Minister of Mines and is in the cabinet?

Well, I think it does, yes. I mean, I have a great relationship with Minister Perrier. I spoke with him on the phone just this morning. And I think the way it matters most is that it gives us a pulse on what's being said at Cabinet and what the feeling is and the attitude and what's being talked about. So are you spilling Cabinet secrets to him? No, not necessarily. Not necessarily. But having monthly meetings with him and check-ins, you know, we get a good sense of what the priorities are. And it helps us align with provincial priorities.

get a good sense of what the priorities are and it helps us align with provincial priorities. And then of course with the potential for the mining sector in the Timmins area. Of course he's the Minister of Mines for all of the province, but again just knowing what's coming up down the line, where the potential lies and what we could and need to be doing to really embrace it. It's just good to have that kind of advice. Now, as they say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. Tory, Tory, Tory.

New Democrats represent Sudbury. Okay, is it a problem for you in terms of getting the ear of this government to be represented at Queen's Park by a New Democrat? No, certainly for us, I have good relationships with Frangie Le Nau and Jimmy West, right? And they've been very, very good with me in the sense of, if you have a file that you want us to advocate with you for, you know what? Let us know. And if there's a file that you want us to back off because you're already working with the members

at Queen's Park, we'll hear you out and certainly we will support you. So it's about establishing good relationships with our local MPPs, as well as the city members of other, certainly, ridings of Northern Ontario and that are at Queen's Park. So for me, it's been an all-out approach and certainly advocacy to the Premier's office as well as to the different portfolios that generally we have issues for Sudbury. So it's about establishing those relationships.

And sometimes working with your MPPs, they have a job to do. They're in opposition. They have a job to do, and it is to recognize that, but at the same time finding the path to try to get the results that you're looking for. But in your heart of hearts, do you wish you had a Tory cabinet minister as your MPP? Listen, for us, like I said, I will work with anybody. And the fact that right now, I'll give kudos to the current Tory government. I can easily access who I want to and have those conversations and having those frank conversations. I don't have a wall because we won't answer the

mayor's call because he's from Sudbury. No, they answer my calls and certainly to develop that relationship. Okay. Let me change tack here for a second. I want to talk about the post-secondary world. You all have post-secondary institutions in your communities, and the past 6 to 12 months has been unusually historic in terms of, first, the announcement by the federal government to cut back on foreign student visas, which means there are a lot fewer students coming into your communities than used to.

And in addition, you could add to that the fact that the provincial government has not heeded the advice of its own blue ribbon panel and is still doing some things to universities in terms of funding that those universities and colleges, excuse me, are not happy about. Okay. I want to find out how it's playing out in your neck of the woods. Start us off. You've got a couple of places in North Bay that would be very interested in this subject right now. Yeah, Snipsing University and Canada are colleges that share a joint campus in our community

and one of our major employers in our community as well. The changes in the immigration is definitely going to have an effect on what we're seeing in North Bay. And we've been very lucky at both the university and the college to see a lot of people that are graduating from both those institutions. Yes, they may leave at the end of their college and they may go down to the Toronto or the GTA area, but now we're seeing them come back because it's too busy, and they can't afford to live down there, and they're finding out that North Bay is a good place to live. So we're benefiting by that, but certainly the investments in the college and some of the cuts to the colleges and the university funding that, as we know,

the blue ribbon panel stated, you know, they have to increase it and get that back. And it hasn't followed suit yet. So they've had to depend on immigration and those foreign students to get their revenues up. And now we're going to see a leveling of that, I believe, right across the board with all colleges, all universities, right across this province. And that is going to impact the provincial government substantially in the future, where there's going to be more requests for funding because we can't generate it internally anymore. You've got Algoma University here. You've got Sioux College here. What's been the impact on the ground of these changes?

Well, I think it's significant. You know, I had mentioned the Rural Northern Immigration Pilot Program in a previous answer. And the best funnel into the Northern Immigration Pilot Program was our university and college, especially the foreign students that were granted study permits to come to Algomew, come to Sioux College, whether at their main campuses or their off-site campuses. And those people established a base in Sault Ste. Marie or in the GTA and then could find work in our communities and stay here as permanent residents and become immigrants through that process. And so on this file, I feel like it's one step forward, two steps back.

We made great progress with attracting students who then became permanent residents. But with the cutback in the number of students, it's only going to hurt the efforts of the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot Program that the government has established to succeed. So it seems that, you know, the left hand isn't really talking to the right on the federal government side of things. But as Peter mentioned, it's the universities and colleges being forced to rely on foreign students because the funding hasn't kept up with the pace of the costs. And I understand the need to keep post-secondary affordable. But if there is going to be some balancing of that, there needs to be an increase in funding from the provincial government that might have to

come from the general revenues. Who do you matter at? Feds or the province? Well, I think if you asked our university and college presidents, they would say that the changes in the federal government's permit allocation is more harmful. Got it. You got Northern where you are, right? Northern College. Northern College and what, oh, I guess. We've got satellite campuses for Calais-Bahriane, Université de Hearst and Algoma University actually offers programming at Timmins. So what's the impact where you are? Post-secondary institutions offering programming and of course there was a positive impact when we saw an influx of international recruitment and international students coming to Timmins with an aging population.

We need to be replacing that, you know replacing that population base of working age population. And so it was definitely positive for our local economy to see newcomers coming in, first for post-secondary, but then, of course, filling jobs that are much needed. I think in terms of the revenues, in terms of the funding, it'll be difficult, but everyone will survive. It just means that... Is that for sure? Because I keep hearing from the post-secondary sector, institutions are going to close, courses are going to shut down, instructors and professors are going to lose their jobs. So in the near future, it means that planning has to change. And so plans for projects, expansion projects,

growth projects are going to have to be put on hold. And it's unfortunate because that's really what could help us leap forward in terms of a region, in terms of meeting the needs of local industries. We know that technologies and practices change in industry so quickly, and we need to be keeping up with that. And so asking our post-secondary institutions to hold back on the innovating because of these funding issues is unfortunate.

And I think that's where the greatest impact is going to be felt, is that putting the hold on plans. You've got Laurentian, you've got Collège Béreal, Université de Sudbury, Thornlow College, am I forgetting one? Yes, Cambria. Cambria, yes. And the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. And Nossum as well, of course.

That's right. All right, what's the impact where you are? We're going to certainly feel the impact, but we're a bit different in the sense that Laurentian University, most of their international students were master's students, and they're not affected. Anybody in PhD at the master's level is not being affected. Cottage Barriale, because it's a Francophone college,

they're not affected either. So Cambria is the one that's's gonna bear the brunt of it. And certainly they had already prepared for kind of reducing that, their focus on international students. And so I know that they have a plan to certainly to be addressing that gap that will be coming forth.

So again, it's an issue. And as Michelle said, we have a lot more international students coming to Sudbury, it's been great. It's really helped the local economy. But at the same time, how are we going to make sure that we sustain the level of good programs that are at Cambrian College and to reassuring that we still have international students coming to our community because we need them to fill the gap of the labour force going forward, which is a big gap that we already have, and that's an opportunity for us.

This is an example, Steve, I think, of where a policy is implemented across the board and has a more detrimental effect on Northern Ontario when it's trying to cure a problem that exists more acutely in Southern Ontario. So I think this is widely recognized as something that was implemented to reduce housing shortages in Southern Ontario. Well, if you're going to improve the housing situation, you need more college-trained welders, college-trained builders, college-trained electricians and HVAC programmers, and you could have implemented this in a way that provided access to colleges and universities in communities like ours

that are desperate for new residents, that are desperate for additional students to assist with the revenues at our college and universities. And you could have done that more strategically as opposed to applying one rule across the province that has a disproportionate effect on northern communities than it would on southern Ontario communities. Okay. I'm going to change the subject on you again, this time the opioid crisis. There isn't a municipality in this province that is being spared the horrors associated with this issue. And although none of you specifically referenced it when I said what keeps you up at night, I'm sure it comes under the basket of social services and things that you would like to be able to do better at there are wonderful efforts being undertaken but if you pick up any newspaper or

flip on the news on television it's all bad bad bad news can you give people watching this listening to this any reason why they should think that you're going to turn a page on this thing and that you're going to make a page on this thing and that you're going to make some progress? Because certainly from everything we read, see, and hear, it doesn't look like it. Mayor Chirico, start us off. Yeah, it's a health crisis. It's a health crisis, not just, you know, an opioid crisis. It's an entire spectrum that is taken probably two decades to create. And it's probably going to take two decades to fix. It's going to start with education of our younger generation to ensure that they have the proper tools, the investments in mental health providers, social service age,

it's going to take a lot of investment to be able to correct the problem that we created ourselves. And it's not that we don't have the services available, but it's fractured. It's very fractured, and we have silos all over the place, and we have to break down those silos. If we are going to correct this problem, correct the societal problem, then everybody has to be on board.

Because right now we have a small group of individuals that are holding a very large group of individuals hostage in a lot of ways when it comes to drug strategies and homelessness and all of those. And I don't mean to sound callous about it, but it is, you know, most people go to work every day and they try to do it, but they come home and their house has been broken into because somebody's trying to access for for drugs whatever the case may be you know we have to deal with that today and if we don't start dealing with it as a

society then not only we're failing a couple of places we're failing for our existing residents but we're also failing for those people that are on the streets because we're not providing for them we're not helping them and we have to make sure that i think there's the old saying about you know how a civilization will be judged it's how we treat our poorest right and that it was something along those i should have paid more attention in school but you know that is going to be how we're judged and so i do believe that that that's how it's going to start it's got to start at the lowest level with our children and grandchildren and be able to educate them properly, bring them through that system,

and then deal with what we've got in front of us. I think the quote is on how we treat the most vulnerable among us. Yes. Something like that. Yes, very much so. Anyway, but point taken. Okay, how about in Timmins? What's it look like there?

Well, it's challenging times, definitely. Politicians always say challenging when they mean god-awful. Can you just say god-awful? Some days it's pretty stark, Steve. Some days it's definitely stark. I mean, among our five cities, well, the four, and then the city of Thunder Bay, we chart among the top ten in terms of opioid-related overdoses. And I think that really, again, speaks to the inequities in health care in northern Ontario.

There are unique factors in northern Ontario that need to be addressed. But I would say, you were asking, you know, what would we tell people? And it's managing to put in place all the different parts of the system that are required the system that are required and as uh peter mentioned at the moment it's fractured and it's not only fractured within our communities it's actually across the north the services are spread out across the north and because often decisions are made on population numbers um and

so we have to be more strategic in the way that we're addressing issues in northern ontario and if that means more investment then that means more investment if if that's what it takes but you know having to travel great distances to access treatment services and you know we were referring to a recovery journey that can consist of almost 1200 kilometers for someone in Timmins that you know as they go through the journey and and they're relocating from one municipality to another to access different services, we need to make sure that those are available within every one of our municipalities. I would say, though, that, you know, whereas Timmins had charted just a few years ago as second highest in terms of opioid-related overdose fatalities in the province per capita,

you know, in recent years we were able to come down in those numbers, and I think that speaks to some of the initiatives that were put in place, services that were put in place. So there can be hope. It is a worsening issue. It's worsening everywhere. But there are examples of areas where we were able to get a handle on the issue. But we're always just focusing on a band-aid, you know, band-aid solutions. We're always focused on that incident response when really what we need to be doing is investing

upstream and really looking at prevention. But unfortunately, we're all in a position where we don't have the luxury of doing that because we're focused on crisis management. When we look at our provincial health care system, we spend 1.5% of our health budget, our total health budget, on prevention. That should be a telling, a very telling what that investment is and where we have to go in the future. It's not a health care system. It's a sickness treatment system. It's a treatment system. Which is really not what you want.

That's right. Yeah. Go ahead. Certainly for us as well, as we look at what certainly the issues that we were dealing today, the crisis that we have today, but certainly as Peter was saying, we also be looking upstream the next 10 years, 20 years. What does that look like? We're seeing in our community a lot of more collaboration, having the police actually work with the hospital, work with the city, work with bylaw, putting all the professionals together. It's a collaborative approach of how we're going to be addressing this. But we're seeing the levels of fentanyl and these types of drugs

that are so potent coming into our communities that even these professionals have never had to deal with that before. And the demand is just exacerbating. So one of the things as we talk at Nolan, because we talked about this today, is saying, well, we can't do this alone. This is not a municipality that backs because health care is mainly a provincial issue,

certainly often funded by the federal government as well. So there needs to be more funding, more collaboration, and more integrated approach with municipalities, with the province, and with the feds to address this and not ignore this. So again, we're seeing some examples of how we're trying to do some supportive housing for folks that were on the street,

that we're housing them, we're trying to give them some supports, and we're trying to do some supportive housing for folks that were on the street, that we're housing them, we're trying to give them some supports, and we're seeing good results. So there is a way forward, but not everybody is able to have good results from this program. But how do we deal with that population that fails all the programs that we threw at them, right?

We invest more and more, and then we're not seeing the results, so who's taking care of these people that are on the streets? And I always often say, I'll give them my house with a fridge full of food and your house with a fridge full of food and they won't even take it. And so they are at a place in their lives where they're not well at all, but then they can opt out. They can say, I don't want help, so don't help me, but yet I need services

from the system. So that's where we're at as a society and we've never seen that as a society in Ontario, certainly in Canada. What would you add? Well, I would add that, you know, as you get further away from Queen's Park, the stats get worse. So, you know, depending on which highway you take, you might get to North Bay first, you might get to Sudbury first, bad stats, bad stats. You get to the Sioux, stats are worse than there. You get to Timmins, the stats are worse than there and Thunder Bay as well. So the further away you are from the Sioux, stats are worse than there. You get to Timmins, the stats are worse than there, and Thunder Bay as well. So the further away you are from the centre of power,

the less attention the problem gets. And as a result of that, as we discussed this morning in our NOLA meeting, each one of our communities is putting municipal dollars into providing health care. We are not health care providers. We do not have the expertise. We do not have the tax base. We do not have the ability to pay for health care. We are not health care providers. We do not have the expertise. We do not have the tax base. We do not have the ability to pay for health care services.

But supportive housing is happening in Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury. Supervised consumption sites are happening in Timmins and were happening until recently in Sudbury, all paid for with municipal dollars. Our revenues grow based on additional residences and businesses establishing in our community. They don't grow based on how well the economy is doing or how well a steel plant performs or anything like that, but provincial revenues do. So they have, as the economy grows, more dollars to spend on services. And if you're

going to treat everybody the same, that means $1 in Toronto is going to be $1 in Sault Ste. Marie, when in Toronto, you might be able to get a service in Mississauga. So that dollar goes further, whereas in Sault Ste. Marie, your closest service center might be Sudbury, might be Toronto. So $1 in the Sault is actually not an equal way of spending health care dollars. It creates an inequity in the system. I think our viewers understand the challenges and opportunities, as you like to call them, of life in Northern Ontario a lot more now than they did half an hour to 40 minutes ago.

So, and it probably makes sense to give the local guy the last word on this program. What do you think? So, thanks so much to the four mayors from Northern Ontario for joining us on TVO tonight. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it. tonight. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.