‘Not opposed to some kind of change’

Green party’s Aislinn Clancy part of committee reviewing effectiveness of regional government

Kitchener Centre MPP Aislinn Clancy wants to help determine the fate of the city hall she left behind.

Clancy left her Kitchener city council seat upon her election last November to the provincial legislature. She was appointed this month to a committee of MPPs that is reviewing the effectiveness of regional government in Waterloo Region and elsewhere.

MPPs held a hearing on municipal reform in January in Kitchener. Clancy, who did not attend, wants MPPs to report back to Municipal Affairs Minister Paul Calandra, who has the authority to change municipal government but is not bound by their recommendations.

“I’m not opposed to some kind of change,” said Clancy, elected as a Green party candidate.

She declined to identify reforms she prefers, saying her goal would be to preserve municipal jobs without adding to property taxes or reducing services.

“I’m not going to presume an outcome,” Clancy said. But one outcome she does want is the release of a secret report on regional reform.

Former regional chair Ken Seiling and former deputy minister Michael Fenn wrote the report in 2019 at the request of the province. The government of Premier Doug Ford spent $127,177 to receive it but has kept it hidden, calling it confidential advice.

“It’s the public’s money and it’s the public’s information. It’s their right to know what data was gathered,” Clancy said.

Minutes from January’s public hearing show many complaints about how residents have been failed by a municipal system directed by 59 politicians elected to eight overlapping councils. Highlights:

Street of endless repair

Former Waterloo councillor Melissa Durrell said a street in her neighbourhood was ripped up twice in four years after city and regional governments failed to coordinate repairs.

“The first was the City of Waterloo, upgrading our pipes, sewer and water systems, which was great. We needed to have it done. But less than a year later after they buttoned up the asphalt, the region ripped up all that new asphalt once again as it was moving pipes for a water treatment plant,” Durrell said. “I actually had a digger sitting on my front lawn for quite some time.”

Gone but not forgotten

Business leader Ian McLean said squabbling municipalities failed to craft a joint proposal to retain the longtime Schneiders meat plant in Kitchener. When the plant closed

in 2015, its jobs went to a new Maple Leafs Food plant in Hamilton.

“We had three or four different proposals here in the Region of Waterloo. We didn’t put our best foot forward and we didn’t all say, “Do you know what? We’re not losing this,” said McLean, president of the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.

Ginny Dybenko, former dean of business at Wilfrid Laurier University said “Maple Leaf Foods wanted to expand in Kitchener but ended up going to Hamilton as a result of competition between Kitchener and Cambridge.” Trapped and unable to grow Wellesley Township Mayor Joe Nowak said the village of Wellesley wants to add homes and jobs and has land for it, but is stuck until regional government advances a sewage upgrade it has delayed to 2041.

He said regional staff told the township there is no need to expand the village because no sewage capacity is available, while conversely telling the township there is no need to add water capacity because no land is available for development.

“This has created a chickenand-egg situation — which should come first? — resulting in neither being provided,” he said.

Wilmot Township Mayor Natasha Salonen said delayed upgrades to a regional pumping station have stalled a new Catholic school that’s approved and funded for the Baden suburb.

“The township will now have to develop a workaround to service this important development due to regional delays,” she said.

Woolwich Township Mayor Sandy Shantz said the village of Breslau is expected to grow much bigger, but can’t plan for a town core because of growth restrictions imposed by regional government.

“If we have an expanded area that we can work with, we can plan for that core and we can make an informed and intelligent plan that will work going forward. We can look for places that make sense for affordable housing, that make sense for a grocery store, that make sense for those kinds of infrastructure that are going to be required really quickly,” she said. “We can’t do that now.”

Fired up about a fire hall McLean, a former Waterloo city councillor, said a Waterloo fire hall on the east side of the city might be in the wrong place to best protect residents.

“When I was on council, it might have made sense to do it in Conestogo,” he said, citing a village just outside the Waterloo border.

“We didn’t entertain those conversations saying, ‘Where would the right place be to actually serve residents?’ It’s another example of where the artificial political boundaries prevented us from having a full discussion about where that would be.”

Don’t grow old in Woolwich

A community group asked to create a small retirement community in Woolwich Township “but needed an independent water and wastewater system to make that happen. We couldn’t get the needed regional approvals and the project has died,” Shantz said.

Regional government said no to a communal water system out of concern it would be liable for taking it over if something went wrong, she said.

Shantz said plans for a nursing home in St. Jacobs are stalled because an acre of land is needed outside a regional boundary that limits village growth.

“In order to facilitate development — and I’m not at liberty to talk too much about it — we needed some land just outside the current urban boundary,” she said. Adding that land could take five years under the current planning process.

Border homes in limbo

Regional Chair Karen Redman said a subdivision planned on the border of two municipalities has stalled because of a fight over cross-border servicing.

“This is holding up hundreds of new homes directly beside an existing subdivision, with regional water and road servicing ready and waiting,” Redman said.

“It’s a housing development that has been approved. It is right beside an existing housing development. There are two municipalities that are arguing, jurisdictionally, over who gets credit for it. The approvals have been made, the services are at the doorstep, the transit is running past, and nothing is being built because it hasn’t been resolved.”

Sometimes it works

Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic said municipal collaboration worked well to save local jobs when aerospace firm Héroux-Devtek saw a need to expand its Kitchener operation.

“We didn’t have the space. They were either going to stay in the region or go elsewhere,” he said.

Kitchener helped relocate the plant to Cambridge. The firm then found a way to keep its Kitchener plant open and is now delivering landing gear for the Boeing Dreamliner, he said.

A few other delegates also said the structure of local government works well.

“It has forced us to recognize that it’s pretty different trying to serve the needs of a high-tech worker living in a 42-storey condo in Kitchener, versus the Old Order Mennonites in Wellesley and Woolwich townships,” heritage advocate Kae Elgie said.