Falls to host urban municipalities conference
Topics of discussion include policing, cannabis, accessibility, roads
Infrastructure, health care and cannabis will be among the topics discussed during this week’s Ontario Small Urban Municipalities Conference and Trade Show in Niagara Falls.
More than 200 delegates are scheduled to attend the 65th annual event, which takes place at Sheraton on the Falls Hotel and Conference Centre.
The event brings together mayors, councillors and senior municipal staff members to dis- cuss issues of importance to small communities in Ontario.
Ontario Small Urban Municipalities is the executive committee of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario for communities under 100,000 in population.
AMO is a nonprofit organization that represents almost all of Ontario’s 444 municipal governments.
“Niagara Falls has really become the place to be for executive conferences in Ontario,” said Mayor Jim Diodati.
In the recent past, Niagara Falls has hosted AMO and Feder- ation of Canadian Municipalities conferences.
Like AMO, FCM is an organization that aims to influence debate and policy, but on a national stage, as the advocacy group represents more than 2,000 Canadian municipalities.
“We are thrilled to be the host location for small municipalities to gather and connect this year,” said Diodati.
“We look forward to great discussion and exploring topics that are important to residents and cities at this year’s conference,” he said.
Speaker session topics include: policing modernization; infrastructure investment in Ontario; the municipal role in health care; charting a new course with legal cannabis; Ontario’s new municipal accountability frontier; and Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act compliance.
There will be two keynote speakers.
On Thursday, John Miller, award-winning journalist, editor and professor at Ryerson University, will speak about alternative delivery models for community newspapers.
On Friday, Andrew Coyne, a Canadian syndicated columnist with Postmedia, and a national commentator for CBC TV, will speak about the current political landscape and what it could look like in the future.
The conference begins Wednesday evening and concludes Friday afternoon.