Federation of Urban Neighbourhoods
Communities Count. Civic Matters.
In this issue:
F.U.N. AGM and Transportation Forum
Mississauga Mayor McCallion offers words of support to ratepayer groups at MIRANET AGM
Drive-throughs issue and OMB hearing
Liability insurance for community groups
Rainbarrel.ca offers rain barrels as a fund-raising vehicle for not-for-profit groups
On October 20 2011 the new Ontario Cabinet was sworn in at Queen‘s Park. Kathleen Wynne is now responsible for working with municipalities as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. She will also serve as Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. She was most recently Minister of Transportation. Dwight Duncan remains Minister of Finance and adds Deputy Premier to his responsibilities. Brad Duguid becomes Minister of Economic Development and Innovation. This ministry brings together Ontario’s economic development, international trade and innovation initiatives to focus on job creation and economic growth.
So much municipal activity is governed by provincial legislation. We hope that by FUN’s sharing of information we will learn about each other and our provincial government and that this will result in responses to our various concerns.
We recently took several steps to improve the outreach to our members and make neighborhood associations more aware of our existence. What follows are the results so far, largely thanks to the superhuman efforts of our communications and membership directors, Janice Brown (from Hamilton) and Harry Eaglesham (from Markham).
With a provincial election happening in October 2011 there is a sense that things are being viewed and created increasingly from a political and less from a policy perspective. This is to be expected but it makes it less likely that there will be substantial legislation carried forward in the next few months.
Two matters where there was substantial public involvement in 2010 and on which consequently there is interest and expectancy that the government will deliver new policy in 2011 are the anti-SLAPP Advisory Committee (chaired by Dean Mayo Moran from University of Toronto Law School), and the Five Year Review of the 2005 Provincial Policy Statement.