MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following concerns Tiny's planned municipal building construction.
Dear Editor,
Last December, Hon. Paul Calandra, Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, issued a response to concerned Tiny Township residents’ Oct. 22, 2024 petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. The petition had requested that the provincial government call upon Tiny Township council to hold a referendum regarding whether or not to proceed with its proposed new municipal administrative building project or consider more viable, much less expensive alternatives.
In his response, Minister Calandra stops short of ordering a referendum as requested. Nevertheless, as I pointed out in my deputation at council’s January 8 regular meeting, by dwelling on key details of the referendum process, and even pointedly stating that council did not have to wait until the next municipal election to hold such a referendum, he tacitly indicates his approval of such an exercise in direct democracy in this instance.
Furthermore, in the letter’s final paragraph, the Minister, setting the context with a general reminder that “municipal elected officials are accountable to their residents for their decisions,” “encourage[s] Tiny Township Council and its residents to continue their dialogue and work together to reach a resolution of the matter.”
Surely (I continued) this does not mean council should proceed as before, in total disregard of Tiny residents’ and Petitioners’ grave concerns about the wisdom of Council’s new build and their call for a reconsideration of options.
My deputation was actually a restatement of major points in a letter to council I submitted Dec. 21 on behalf of the petition’s nearly 7,700 signatories.
Both deputation and letter urged council to (in the letter’s words) “follow the Minister’s direction and dialogue with our group to attempt to find a way forward that permits the people of Tiny’s voices to be heard and acknowledged,” by a referendum or some other democratic method. Both failed miserably in their purpose.
Note too that, if they (council) were truly interested in “dialogue” as per Minister Calandra’s enjoinder, they would have put their objections to me during my deputation in order to hear my replies. Instead, they chose to wait with their comments until the CW meeting, when they knew I would have no opportunity to respond.
Regarding my letter to council, I was assured by both staff and the mayor that it would be up for consideration at council’s next committee of the whole (CW) meeting.
The Feb. 4 council meeting came and went, with not a peep from anyone about the letter, since no member of council brought it up for discussion during the CW meeting. Even the mayor was silent, despite his assurances beforehand and his protestations of open-mindedness in my conversation with him afterwards.
The incidents related here are just the last few in a long, unbroken pattern of council’s (Dave Brunelle excepted) smug dismissal of Tiny residents’ well publicized, entirely reasonable misgivings regarding the new build and alternative proposals for town-hall improvement, and of its stubborn refusal to engage openly, honestly with their arguments.
One such alternative proposal – well researched, on a new campus building – has been drawn up by Drew Ironstone (a now retired County of Simcoe employee).
On Feb. 12, Ironstone learned that his request to make a deputation on the proposal at council’s Feb. 19 regular meeting had been denied, on the flimsy pretext that to permit him to speak on it again would violate the “no-topic-more-than-once-by-
The mayor could have waived that mere procedural convention but chose not to. It was a clear-cut case of suppression of alternative viewpoints: he has repeatedly indicated he had no desire “to rehash this whole thing” again.
Having tried every imaginable way to follow Minister Calandra’s direction, all for naught, we are at a loss for what to do next, and urgently need the provincial government – especially the municipal affairs minister and our local MPP – to help us break the impasse.
Borys Kowalsky
Tiny
