Guelph Politicast – Guelph Politico: Recent Episodes
None
The City of Guelph is a system, a system that’s built on rules. Or policies, procedures and protocol to be more precise. Some of those systems dictate how city council functions, some of them lay out how local government should engage with the community, and some of them tell you what flags you can fly and when they should be lowered to half-mast. It’s time again to play roulette with the policy wheel and get smarter in the process.
First up, we will talk about the Access and Privacy Policy. You’ve probably heard about Freedom of Information requests? Well this outlines how and why you’re able to make them, but more than that it outlines how and why staff are able to access confidential information, how and why the City can collect that information, and the ways that all information at the City of Guelph is managed, stored, and, if necessary, destroyed.
Somewhat less well-known is the City Flag Policy. Mayor Cam Guthrie was inundated with hate for a social media post celebrated the raising of the Eritrean Flag at city hall last month to mark their Independence Day. No rules were broken, not that bigots care about rules, but for anyone wondering why city hall has room for the Eritrean flag, perhaps it’s time to introduce you to the concept of the “courtesy pole flag.” (Real term.)
So let’s dive into policy again on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/b2wea7zrja8y28g3/politicast_june18_2025.mp3You can check out the Access and Privacy Policy and the City Flag Policy by following the direct hyperlinks. You can also see all the City of Guelph’s “frequently requested policies, procedures and protocols” on the City’s website under the City Government tab.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
When Doug Ford and the Ontario government announced that they were expanding alcohol sales to grocery and convenience stores it was seen as a positive move to break up a government monopoly, but The Beer Store still has one important piece of that monopoly: returns. It was an effective example of what we now call the circular economy, but in making alcohol more available, has it cost us the most successful recycling program we’ve ever had?
Next time you buy beer or wine at the grocery store or the quick stop, look at your receipt: You’re still paying the 10 or 20 cent deposit on every can and bottle. If you take your empties back to The Beer Store, you can get that money back, but it’s becoming more convenient to get rid of your empties by dumping them out in the recycling. That undermines what’s been an incredibly successful recycling program through The Beer Store, which, at its peak saw an 80 per cent return rate.
Large grocery stores that sell alcohol and are more than five kilometres from a Beer Store are supposed to be accepting returns but the words “supposed to” are doing a lot of work because, as you’ll hear, this is being treated as more of a suggestion than a rule. In their own investigation, Environmental Defence only found one grocery store in Ontario meeting this criteria that is actively accepting empties, and this is only going to get worse as more Beer Store locations close.
One the people raising the alarm on this is Karen Wirsig, who is the plastics program manager of Environmental Defence. She joins us this week to talk about why The Beer Store’s recycling program has been so successful, and why maintaining it has been such an afterthought for the government. We will also talk about why grocery retailers are fighting the effort to expand the return program to their stores, the coming danger in 2026 with Beer Store closures, and what you can do to keep getting your deposit back.
So let’s talk about your empties on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/a3d6h3hki5ifta44/politicast_jun11_2025.mp3You can learn more about Environmental Defense at their website, or follow them on Instagram. You can follow Karen Wirsig on Twitter @ Karen_Wirsig where she posts about her advocacy efforts on reducing waste and plastic pollution. And if you want to support The Beer Store’s recycling program, take your empties back no matter where you bought them. You’re paying the deposit anyway.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.
Data is key to guiding health policy, and health units collect a lot of it, but formatting it, organizing it, and looking for patterns in it can be time consuming, meaning that you’re doing a lot of labour that has nothing to do with creating the actual health policy or solving a public health issue. If you’re thinking to yourself that this sounds like an ideal solution for artificial intelligence, you’re right!
At May’s Board of Health meeting, staff members discussed “Innovative Public Health with AI and Automation”, meaning the ways that Public Health is using artificial intelligence to enhance their work. The report offered examples of success like using A.I. to process vaccine records, generate immunization notices, and process lab results. You might have interacted with A.I. yourself if you’ve clicked on the “need help” icon on the Public Health website.
The staff at Public Health are very bullish about the possibilities of artificial intelligence, but for a lot of people there are no two scarier initials right now than “A” and “I”. In the realm of public health, there are even more pronounced concerns around privacy and the sharing of information, and there’s also an important need to share accurate information as well. So how are Public Health staff managing these big considerations?
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health’s Manager of Data & Analytics Michael Whyte and Data Scientist Justin Angevaare will tell you all about those considerations on this week’s pod. They will talk about the work that Public Health is using A.I. to achieve, and how they’ve decided the best ways to use it. They also talk about the ways that Public Health is governing the use of A.I. with policy, how they determine which programs they want to use and why, and what they’re working on right now.
So let’s get some good A.I. news on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/9j6hbjytsfyuc5y3/politicast_jun4_2025.mp3You can learn more about what Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health is up to in the realm of artificial intelligence by reading the staff report from last month’s Board of Health meeting, or Guelph Politico’s coverage of that meeting. You can stay up-to-date on everything to do with public health at their website, or on social media at @wdgpublchealth on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of Disney/Lucasfilm.
Last week, Future of Good released their first ever Changemaker Wellbeing Index, which highlights the pressures facing the workers in the non-profit sector and the results paint an increasingly bleak picture. They also paint a coherent picture, putting together the various pieces that we’ve been hearing about these last few years: Organizations are struggling for money, staff and volunteers, and now we have the data!
The Changemaker Wellbeing Index surveyed 1,100 Canadian non-profit workers, from frontline staff to senior leaders. Future of Good worked with GreenShield, ATB Financial, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, WES Mariam Assefa Fund, Definity Insurance Foundation and United Way Centraide Canada, while Environics Research did the heavy lifting with the surveying. What they learned was kind of shocking.
Of the 1,100 people surveyed, 36 per cent said that they “often or always” feel burned out or exhausted, 31 per cent said that they experience food insecurity, and that rises to 48 per cent for frontline staff, and one-in-three non-profit workers said that they’re ready to quit. At issue is low wages, and half of entry-level workers say they’re struggling because of it, so what lessons can we take from this survey and what solutions can be put in action?
Anouk Bertner, who is the executive director of Future of Good, will join us to talk about those lessons and more on this edition of the podcast. She will talk about how they put together the Index, and the methodology they used to get the most accurate picture possible. She will also talk about the perceptions of non-profit work, why arts and culture workers are being hit the hardest, why compensation is not the end of the story here, and why more money may not be the answer.
So let’s talk about the state of Canada’s non-profits in this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/842nmhze78swwpeh/politicast_may28_2025.mp3You can learn more about Future of Good at their website, which is where you can find a direct link to their Changemaker Wellbeing Index and get all the information and statistics that we talked about on this pod. If you’re interested in helping out local non-profits here in Guelph and Wellington, you can can see the list of various community services at 211 Ontario, and you can see a list of volunteer opportunities through the United Way website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock.
This week Guelph city council is taking a holiday break, and perhaps understandably, because it has been a very busy year in the chambers so far. The first four months of the year brought a lot of change, a lot of drama, and some pretty big decisions that tested the fiscal and political capacity of a rapidly growing Ontario city. Now, we will pause and take stock of just how far we’ve come so far…
January began with some unfinished business from last year, quite literally. Council heard the budget of the local boards and shared services, which accounts for one-third of the total annual city budget. That seemed to go pretty smoothly, but it was a reminder that Guelph’s fiscal picture, while stable, is facing tremendous pressures, which was a recurring theme through talk of debentures and risk management later.
Housing continued to be a big theme in the first trimester of 2025. There weren’t a lot of new housing development proposals, but there were a few big ones, and there was a few discussions about how hey can use the tools to make more affordability housing options happen, and make them happen faster, but the options are still fairly limited. Plus, council revisited the Public Space Use Bylaw in the process.
Although it doesn’t make the headlines, council also shook up itself. One councillor went on maternity leave and another took a leave of absence to run for higher office. There were also changes approved to council governance and a re-launch of the advisory committees of council, and at least one of them caused some blowback on city council before April was over. All this just constitutes the tip of a very big iceberg, can we cover it all in one pod?!
So let’s get into the event of city council in 2025 so far in this week’ Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/8m5rkkzb7hh85qzk/politicast_may21_2025.mp3Council is taking this week off, but will meet again on Tuesday May 27 at 6 pm. You can get all the previews, recaps and follow-ups on this website, Guelph Politico!
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
We have a weird situation: We’ve elected two new governments at both upper levels in the last four months and the hope is that they can turn things around, and yet, these are also, essentially, the old governments. How can we possibly expect better results from the new old people in charge, and are we even more alone than ever here on the local level? We’ll put this to one of the people whose job it is to advocate.
This week, the Ontario government announced something novel: changing municipal planning rules and fees to make the construction of housing faster. Despite the numerous regulations rolled back and the growing amount of money deferred from municipal coffers, Ontario is at the bottom in Canada in terms of housing starts. As for the federal government, well, it remains to be seen what exactly Mark Carney can deliver over and above his predecessor.
One of the groups designed to help co-ordinate the needs of fighting poverty locally is the Guelph & Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination, whose goal is to work collaboratively, and informed by diverse voices of experience, to take local action and advocate for system and policy change to address the root causes of poverty. It’s a worthy mission, but one that’s getting harder to accomplish as community frustrations about higher costs and limited options. So, can we still fulfill the project of eliminating poverty?
Dominica McPherson, who is the director of the Task Force for will talk about the current state of advocacy with all three levels of government and whether or not things have gotten better or worse on the poverty file in the last few years. She will also talk about why the focus needs to be on permanent housing solutions, how Guelph and Wellington have actually done well on developing those options and how we can keep that momentum going forward. Also, what are the efforts the task force is undertaking right now?
So let’s stay on mission with this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/hbfgz3u4s8iya52q/politicast_may14_2025.mp3You can learn more about the Guelph & Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination and get involved at their website. After recording this interview I did get an update that the Wellington-Guelph Health and Housing Community Planning Table will be releasing a report about the work that’s been done since the Health and Housing Symposium next month, so stay tuned for more information sometime mid-June
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
The recent federal election was the formal turning of the page from the premiership of Justin Trudeau to the one led by Mark Carney. For long-time political observers, the difference between the two men in both style and substance is stark, but there’s no doubt that the change in leadership in March is at least half the reason the Liberals got a near majority last week. And yet, the question remains: What happened to Trudeau-mania?
The date was February 7, 2013. The location was the Brass Taps, the pub on the second floor of the University Centre at the University of Guelph. Packing them in that day was Justin Trudeau, then a candidate for federal Liberal leadership. At this point, the Liberals were in the political wilderness, but there was a new kid on the block who had different ideas. The pundits didn’t really take Justin Trudeau seriously, but the young people in the Brass Taps that day did. They really, really did.
How did the excitement about Justin Trudeau and his “Sunny Ways” sour so completely that his mere removal from the ballot made the party he revived competitive again? Was it the right-wing smear job? Was it the rise of Trumpism and anti-woke sentiment? Was it the lingering social and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic? It could be all three and it could be none of it, but it’s one of the great questions of this political era, and this episode of the podcast.
To answer it, we’re joined by Mustafa Zuberi, who was, for a time, the president of the Young Liberals at the U of G and served as the Liberal candidate for Guelph in the recent provincial election. Zuberi was one of the thousands of young people drawn to politics by Trudeau and his idealism, so he will help us understand how he inspired so many young people, why that youthful energy started to move to the right in recent years, and how Trudeau might have been more of a victim of circumstance than ability.
So let’s talk about the rise and fall of Justin Trudeau on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/hjscyrhf5an2sciy/politicast_may7_2025.mp3You can follow Mustafa Zuberi on Instagram. You can check out the coverage from Justin Trudeau’s stop at the Brass Taps in 2013 on the original Guelph Politico Blogspot. And obviously, we will be keeping up with the latest developments from the new Canadian Prime Minister every Thursday at 5 pm on Open Sources Guelph on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
By the time you’re listening to this you know how it all turned out: Carney’s the PM, a plurality of voters went Conservative though not enough in Carleton to send the leader back to the House. The NDP are decimated, the Greens are down to one seat again, and the Bloc have called a truce in the name of “national unity”(?). What an election! Let’s live through it all again!!
From 8 pm to midnight on Election Night, the tag team of me and Scotty Hertz, plus CFRU programming director (and renowned Wikipedia editor) Christopher Currie, were live to air covering the results as they came into the CFRU newsroom… through the CBC’s live vote tracker page. The focus was local, with coverage of the two Guelph ridings, but our view was nation-wide from coast to coast to coast.
And there were some special guests as well! Over the course of the night we heard from Emily Blake, the associate editor of Cabin Radio, a Local Journalism Initiative reporting on the Dehcho region and the Northwest Territories’ housing crisis that’s funded in part by the Government of Canada. We also heard from Kim Siever from The Alberta Worker, an independent media outlet that focuses on labour and politics founded in April 2020.
So let’s relive the 2025 Canadian Election on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/2rfixf4me2f2hmq8/politicasst_apr30_2025.mp3Keep tuning in to Open Sources Guelph Thursdays at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca!
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If you listen to this show promptly on Wednesday then it’s just five more sleeps till Election Day! About a quarter of us have been so excited that we just couldn’t wait to vote; 7.3 million Canadians made voting part of their Easter weekend festivities, a new record. What’s been driving all this excitement? What about the party platforms? The manoeuvres of the national party leaders? And what the hell happened at those post-debate scrums?
Once you might have been right saying that the electorate was eager to replace an old and tired regime under Justin Trudeau for the slick sloganeering of Pierre Poilievre, but as he usually does, Trump changed everything. Not content to make himself the main character of American politics, the U.S. President’s large shadow has been cast over the 45th Canadian general election, and that means it could be Mark Carney’s game even more than Poilievre.
But this is the Guelph Politicast, so let’s talk about Guelph, which is a riding, but not the only riding with Guelph in it. Guelph is now carried over two ridings: Guelph and Wellington-Halton Hills North. That means when the election is over, about 20,000 Guelphites will have an entirely different MP from the rest of the city, and if the polls are to be believed, they will each be represented by two different parties. Perhaps the post-election period is going to be even more interesting than this whole election…
But that’s a conversation for a later day. This conversation is with Open Sources Guelph co-host Scotty Hertz, back by popular demand, to talk all about the election. We’ll discuss the added level of difficulty of covering two local races, the impact of splitting Guelph between two ridings, and the considerations being made by local voters. We will also talk about how people seem to be embracing stability, the politics of independent media, and why you shouldn’t move your stuff using a Cyber Truck(?).
So let’s talk about the Canadian election campaign in 45 minutes or less on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/fcvuf7hymhba3ze9/politicast_apr23_2025.mp3You can tune into election night coverage on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca on Monday starting at 8 pm, and if you’re interested in hearing interviews with the candidates running in Guelph and Wellington-Halton Hills North, tune in on Thursdays on CFRU or download OSG on Monday on this feed. You can also watch the interviews on Open Sources new YouTube channel. I will also be appearing at this week’s Breezy Breakfast at DeBar to talk more about the election, assuming that you haven’t had enough already
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
We’re at the end of another school year, and while some students are looking forward to summer, they’re also looking forward to next fall. Or perhaps even stressing over it. Housing is a big issue in Guelph, and it’s somehow even bigger when it comes to student housing. Last summer, the largest first-year student enrolment ever weighed on students and the greater Guelph community, but relief may be coming if city council doesn’t get in the way(?).
So what, city council doesn’t want student housing in Guelph? Let’s just say it’s complicated. This is about phase two of the Alma, which is on the site of the former Holiday Inn at Stone and Scottsdale. The renovation of the old hotel was phase one, and phase two will add another nearly 600 beds, but there’s a snag and it’s whether or not Forum Asset Management has to pay over $15 million in development fees.
The Ontario government has made student residences exempt from DCs, but there’s some question about how you define “student residences”; does that apply only to student residences owned and operated by a post-secondary institution itself, or can it also apply to a private for-profit development like The Alma that just so happens to be on land owned by a university? This will be a question that council will have to answer on April 29, and this week, we will hear about the stakes.
Owen Ellis, who is the president of the Real Estate Students Association at the University of Guelph, is the guest this week to talk about the current state of student housing in the city, and what options that students would like to see when they’re looking for a place to live in the Guelph. We also talk about the expectations and responsibilities for the University of Guelph, private developers, and why we all need to organize to do better for student renters.
So let’s dig into another great housing debate on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/4pbgcrg6d948ggch/politicast_apr16_2025.mp3You can check out the website for the app he’s working on here. City council will look at the appeal of the development charges for phase two of the Alma on Tuesday April 29, and that agenda will be published on the City’s website this Thursday. Remember: If you’re interested in hearing interviews with the candidates running in Guelph and Wellington-Halton Hills North (which includes parts of Guelph), tune in to Open Sources Guelph on Thursdays on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca, or download OSG on Monday on this feed.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
There are seven people running in Wellington-Halton Hills, but only one of them is a party leader. If you’re looking at this election and are thinking to yourself that it’s pretty messed up that the premier can just call an election 16 months early and in the midst of several intermingling crisis, and that there should be a better way, then you might be the type of voter that Ron Patava and Consensus Party is looking for.
Patava has previously been a guest on this podcast. He ran in Wellington-Halton Hills as one of a dozen Consensus candidates around Ontario, but in between then and now he has risen through the ranks to the leadership of Consensus. Not that Consensus is really focused on leadership, or course. It’s meant to be a stirring call to have ” a decision-making structure that involves and takes into account as broad a range of opinions as possible.”
Patava learned from this 2022 campaign: It’s not enough to be about building a new system, it’s about trying to do more to promote the types of change people are looking for everyday. As you will hear in this interview, he’s got three policy ideas in addition to creating a new consensus-based government. It’s compelling and slightly outside the box thinking, but even in an open riding like Wellington-Halton Hills, can a candidate like Patava get ahead?
He’s going to talk about that, how he was elevated to the role of leader, and whether or not the last few years at Queen’s Park have proved him right when it comes to needing a new way of doing government business. He will also tells us again about how a consensus government model would work, what he can do for the riding as a one man band, and why voters should take a flyer on him in this moment where a 34-year incumbent has left the field.
So let’s build consensus on this edition of the Wellington-Halton Hills Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/rxa5mtz9ug6xvyqa/politicast_feb15_2025.mp3You can learn more about the Consensus Party and his candidacy at their website. We will be cranking out another episode of the Wellington-Halton Hills Politicast this weekend, and, as you’re waiting, keep in mind that advanced voting is on February 20 through 22 and you can find out where to go at elections.on.ca.
NOTE: You will be able to hear interviews with all of the Provincial election candidates running in Guelph every Monday on the podcast version of Open Sources Guelph, and every Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca!
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
In some respects, Wellington-Halton Hills is the riding to watch this year because, for the first time in three decades. it’s competitive. Ted Arnott announced that he would not be seeking re-election at the end of the last term, and while the PC Party would like to hold on to this one, opportunity is knocking for the other major parties. Today, Ontario’s official opposition will make their case for the riding next door!
Of the four major party candidates in Wellington-Halton Hills, only one of them is not presently a politician with a municipal council. Between those four, there’s also an even split between candidates representing the urban side of the riding, and the more rural parts. Simone Kent is the from the rural side, and she’s the one major party candidate who’s not presently in a political office, but that’s not to say that she doesn’t keep busy.
Kent has a unique resume being both a dairy farmer and an education worker. She’s stayed active in organizations like Centre Wellington’s environmental committee and Jersey Ontario, a non-profit association for Jersey cow owners and breeders. Farming, education, the environment, grassroots organizing: that’s about as good as it gets for a resume for an NDP candidate, but what does Kent think of the issues, and what does she want to do as the first MPP in nearly 35 years whose not Ted Arnott?
We will get an answer to that and other questions on this week’s edition of the podcast as Kent talks about why she’s running and being the only major party candidate not already in politics. She will also talk about what an NDP-led Ontario government will do for Ontarians, and what kind of premier Marit Stiles would be. Also, she will discuss, whether Doug Ford has been ignoring Ontario’s farmers, and the issues she wants to put front and centre in these last two weeks of this very truncated campaign.
So let’s dig into the NDP case on this edition of the Wellington-Halton Hills Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/64mux3q8v793np84/politicast_feb12_2025.mp3You can learn more about the Ontario NDP, their candidates, and their platform at the party’s website. We will be cranking out another episode of the Wellington-Halton Hills Politicast this weekend, and, as you’re waiting, keep in mind that advanced voting is on February 20 through 22 and you can find out where to go at elections.on.ca.
NOTE: You will be able to hear interviews with all of the Provincial election candidates running in Guelph every Monday on the podcast version of Open Sources Guelph, and every Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca!
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
ACORN is on the frontline of fighting the housing and affordability crises for low and moderate income people and in Ontario they’ve invested a lot of attention lately on one bad guy, Michael Klein. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the so-called “King of Renovictions”. Last week the two sides came face-to-face, sort of, at the Landlord Tenant Board, but don’t think this is the end of the fight!
On January 21st, Hamilton tenants living at 221 Melvin Avenue went to the LTB for the first of 20 such board hearings around a single respondent who’s bought apartment buildings around the Golden Horseshoe, Michael Klein. Klein’s pattern is clear: He buys a building, issues N13s, people move out of their rent controlled units, and jacks up the rent after some cosmetic change. He’s even doing it here in Guelph with three buildings on Brant Avenue.
At the heart of Klein’s scheme is a misunderstanding on the part of tenants about their rights. An N13 is meant to be used when you need to demolish the rental unit, do extensive repairs or renovations, or convert it into a non-residential use. ACORN argues that this is purposeful, it’s a strategy to take affordable housing and squeeze more profit out of it, which is why they want the LBT to consider all 20 cases as one. It’s one way ACORN is taking on what might be its biggest and boldest protest yet!
Jacquie Wells, who is one of the organizers of Waterloo Region ACORN, will join us this week to talk about who Michael Klein is, how deep the issue with renovictions in Ontario goes, and how many Michael Klein types are out there. She will also talk about the strategies Klein uses to lean on tenants to get them to leave, and the difficulties that ACORN and other activists have experienced trying to organize against him. And finally, she will discuss what comes next in the fight against renovictions.
So let’s talk about taking down The King on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/89ggppcxhgdtv4wb/politicast_feb5_2025.mp3You can learn more about ACORN at their website, where you can find their 2024 Michael Kein report. You can also follow ACORN Waterloo Region on Facebook and Instagram. There’s also an article that was published on Guelph Today over the holidays that’s worth reading because it features rare commentary from Klein himself
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of ACORN Waterloo Region.
It’s hard to think of any aid agency busier these days than the Guelph Food Bank these days, and to prove it, they went to city council last November during budget delegation night to ask for help. It might come as a surprise to learn that the Food Bank has never received any government funding, but it’s proof that food insecurity is now outside their control, and it’s the reason for changes that they’ve started to undertake.
According to Feed Ontario, over one million people accessed a food bank in Ontario between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024, which is an increase of 25 per cent over the year before and an 86 per cent increase since 2019-2020, the last year before the pandemic. To put that in context, one out of every 16 people in Ontario have been to a food bank lately, and if you think Guelph has escaped this deluge you would be wrong.
That’s why the Guelph Food Bank went to city council last fall. With 4,000 individuals using the Food Bank each month, which is more than double since before the pandemic, the Food Bank needs government help for the first time. Its main location at 100 Crimea Street will now serve as a kind of distribution centre from where the food will flow to 10 satellite locations around the city. The Food Bank is adapting, and while they can’t do it alone, they do have a plan
Carolyn McLeod-McCarthy, Managing Director of the Guelph Food Bank, will join us this week to talk about that plan, and the pressures that they’ve been dealing with over the last few years that are unique to them. She will also talk about working with food pantries, co-ordinating with all local groups to fight food insecurity and going to city council to ask for financial help for the first time. And finally, she will talk about what the fight against food insecurity might look like in a few years.
So let’s dig into the changes at the Food Bank on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/vazw53gzy7vwticj/politicast_jan29_2025.mp3To learn more about the Guelph Food Bank, what services they provide, how you can volunteer, or how you can donate, you can visit the Food Bank website. You can also call the Food Bank at 519-767-1380 during their office hours, which is Monday through Friday 9 am to 5 pm. You can also follow them on the socials @guelphfoodback on Facebook and Instagram.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of Guelph Food Bank Facebook.
The CAO position is the highest ranking official in local government that doesn’t have the job title of either mayor or city councillor, and it’s the only staff position at city hall that’s hired by a committee made up of the mayor and councillors. So yes, it’s a pretty important job, and it’s not like there’s any shortage of issues or needs for the new woman in charge as she enters her first full year in charge.
It was about this time last year that Scott Stewart announced that he would be retiring by the summer. Stewart had been the CAO for five years, and they were probably the most challenging five years any CAO has experienced in the history of Guelph. (Well, so far.) He got a lot done, but there also ended up being a lot of work for Tara Baker to do once she picked up the baton in mid-September. Fortunately, she had something of a head start.
Before becoming the CAO, Baker had spent 13 years at Guelph city hall, including the last eight as the City Treasurer and the General Manager of Finance. If the emphasis is to be put on affordability now, as it was with the last budget she worked on as Treasurer, it puts even more pressure on Baker as she’s managing all the spinning plates in her new office. On this edition of the podcast, she will tell us what comes next.
Yes, Baker joins us this week to talk about why she wanted to be the CAO, why she thinks she stood out from the other applicants and the changing role of the CAO position after the introduction of Strong Mayor Powers. She will also talk about the search for a new City Treasurer, and the greater emphasis on affordability when it comes to City business. Also, she will discuss the changes she’s making to the job, and what she wants her legacy to be when it becomes her turn to retire from the role.
So let’s get the 4-1-1 on the new CAO on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/94uumv2358ua24iv/politicast_jan22_2025.mp3You can see Baker’s plan for goals and objectives for the coming year as part of the council agenda package for the January 28 meeting here, and you can just learn more generally about the CAO office here. And speaking of podcasts, you can check out Baker’s appearance on Breezy Breakfast from last October and you can find that pod on whatever platform you listen to his one on.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of Tara Baker/X.
The 2025 State of the City is coming up soon – Thursday February 6 to be precise – and as we always do at this time of year, we’re going to roll the audio from the previous year’s State of the City as a refresher course. The goal is to remember where we were at the time, where the mayor wanted to take us, and where we ended up now before Mayor Cam Guthrie starts looking to the future again!
Do you really need to listen to this to be reminded of the most salient point of last year’s State of the City address? Here’s the most relevant quote: “When cities are faced with strong issues, it requires a strong team to tackle them. However, to set the tone and the pace, you need a strong mayor. Therefore, effective today, I am announcing that I will use the Strong Mayor powers throughout the rest of this term.”
That was the moment Guthrie changed the game, and it came as a really big surprise to his council colleagues, many of whom were sitting front row or centre at the speech. Beforehand, the mayor gave away no hints that he was going to drop this bomb despite years of reticence, if not opposition, to the existence of such powers, but that was the headline coming out of the State of the City in 2024. Was that the end of the story though?
Of course it’s not, and on this week’s edition of the podcast you will hear the whole speech, including a Q&A afterwards, where Guthrie saluted outgoing CAO Scott Stewart, talked about the success securing Housing Accelerator Funding, and promoted the then-theoretical Public Spaces Use Bylaw. He also announced the formation of the Joint Social Services and Land Ambulance Committee, and gave out the annual volunteer awards.
So let’s flashback to last year’s State of the City on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/p3rjfkaewxau9aja/politicast_jan15_2025.mp3The 2025 State of the City will take place on Thursday February 6 at 7 am at the Delta Hotel and Conference Centre hosted by the Guelph Chamber of Commerce. Learn more by clicking here. There will, of course, be full coverage on Guelph Politico when it happens.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Last year was very busy for Guelph City Council, and the last four months of the year were perhaps the busiest. In fact, the business of council has gotten so busy to properly cover it all this “Year in Review” podcast now has to be done in three parts, splitting the year into three near equal sections for over two hours of combined content. So now, at the end, the final part of this trilogy.
The big thing from the back third of 2024 was the confirmation vote for the 2025 budget. Earlier in the year, Mayor Cam Guthrie used Strong Mayor Powers to direct staff to get the budget down to an overall four per cent increase, and there was a great deal of consternation about what that would mean. Council didn’t get all the way to that four per cent mark, but it was a heck of a ride getting there!
And speaking of rides, there was a lot of drama over, of all things, fireworks. Guelph tried to rework its fireworks bylaw only to get burned when many people felt that it went too far. There were also metaphorical fireworks in the form of Mayor Guthrie’s advocacy outside the council chambers, the eventual fate of the OR Lands, and a certain greenhouse on the campus of the University of Guelph which still may or may not be demolished.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this recap covering all the council action from September through to December. That’s 17 different meeting (well, 16 when you consider that one meeting took place over two nights) and countless hours of back and forth over motions, counter-motions, concessions and compromises. Culled from the files of Guelph Politico, and a couple of thousand tweets, let’s remember where we’re going before we decide where to go next.
So for one more time, let’s recap what happened at city council in 2024 on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/vrawf4rmxhqywaw9/politicast_jan8_2025.mp3Everyone will be back around the horseshoe again on January 14 for the first Committee of the Whole meeting of the year, and you can keep following all those developments at Guelph Politico and through the Tip Sheet newsletter.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If you’re listening to this on New Year’s Day then you might be welcoming 2025 with relief, or maybe even trepidation. If you thought last year was a rough ride it may be an hors d’oeuvres compared to what comes next, but before we get into all that, we’re going to formally say goodbye to 2024 by talking about the year that was, and the year we wanted it to be!
There was a lot going on in Guelph in 2024, did you hear that we’re having a housing crisis? There was the use of Strong Mayor Powers, the push to make the OR Lands a national urban park, and the closure of the old Nestle bottling plant in Aberfoyle. There was also almost a transit strike, not to mention a weeks-long strike out on Dunlop Road at the Cargill Plant. A lot can happen in 12 months, and it did.
But what was 2024 really about? That is a difficult question, but Mike Ashkewe was a pretty good person to ask. He’s a member of the Accessibility Advisory Committee and an Indigenous activist, and he’s a regular at the weekly Breezy Breakfast gatherings downtown, which makes a triple threat when it comes to local politics. Perhaps he can help us make sense of this tumultuous year…
Ashkewe will join us talk broadly about what we learned in the year 2024, what we will take with us on into 2025, and why he’s decided to get more active in local politics. He will also talk about finding community, and what it takes to make the hard choices even if they’re not the most popular. Also, we will make some pop culture references to our current predicament, and talk about why where you live matters.
So let’s talk about the year that was yesterday on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/3hd7e5huyd7b3pgi/politicast_jan1_2025.mp3Mike Ashkewe, who has his fingers in many pies and you can find links to all those pies at his personal website. You can find his podcast This Week in Geek on all the major podcast platforms, and you can follow the Guelph Storm Trackers “@guelph_storm_trackers” on Instagram.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It makes sense spending Christmas with a Kevin. The Kevin we’re talking to this Christmas though sits at the intersection of fighting poverty practically and fighting a growing spiritual malaise. In fact, he was the first and most obvious choice for this year’s holiday chat by the fireside, and he joins us this week to not only talk about the crisis around homelessness, but also the accompanying crisis of compassion.
Yes, the special Christmas guest this year is executive director and pastor of Royal City Mission, Kevin Coghill. Homelessness is a city-wide issue, but the focus was downtown this year. Not even 50 yards from St. George’s Square are the front doors of the Royal City Mission, which offers services to people who are homeless and living in poverty, which also made it a source of contention for downtown business owners and residents.
The RCM was often cited as doing good work for the community while being tagged as the cause for the growing encampments in the square due to its proximity. It’s the epitome of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, so Coghill and his team decided to do everything could. But Royal City Mission doesn’t just deal with corporal needs, they also deal with spiritual ones, which is why Coghill is going to help us reflect on a difficult and dispiriting year.
Coghill will join us to talk about how he ended up at Royal City Mission, how the mission has changed over the years, and why change is not always a bad thing for the volunteers and staff at Royal City. He will also talk about the crisis in compassion, the difference between gathering and service, how he deals with disappointment, and the ways he tries to stay optimistic. Coghill will also explain why his doors will remain open to everyone in the community.
So let’s spend Christmas with Kevin on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/v9vhwwemn4g4znkh/politicast_dec25_2024.mp3To learn more about Royal City Mission, it’s programs and services, and how you can help them out by visiting their website. You can also follow them on social media at rcmguelph on Facebook and Instagram. If you’re interested in learning more about the people helped by Royal City Mission, you can get a copy of the book, Stories From the Mission, for a suggested $25 donation. The proceeds go to help fund the Royal City Mission.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
What do you think this year will be remembered for in the annals of Guelph history? Will it be the debate over the Public Space Use Bylaw? Was it the announced closure of the consumption and treatment site downtown? Was it when the mayor re-opened the 2025 budget to try and shave off two-thirds of the proposed levy increase? In any event, all roads lead back to one place, or rather, one person.
In a sense, the first day of the political year was February 8. That was the date of the State of the City speech at the Delta Hotel and Conference Centre where Mayor Cam Guthrie said that he was going to use Strong Mayor Powers in three specific ways: To find a place for a tiny home encampment, leverage City-owner property for affordable housing and to cut the Guelph 2025 budget down to something more affordable. It was a surprise move by Guthrie, but it would not be his last this year.
The Strong Mayor Powers were the first of a couple of different pivots: He joined the Government of Ontario demanding that CTSes no longer operate within 200 metres of schools or daycares, he joined other mayors demanding that the Province use the notwithstanding clause, and he joined Mike Schreiner and Lloyd Longfield in dumping cold water on the community effort to declare the OR Lands a national urban park. So to help close the year, we’re going to go inside the mind of…
…Mayor Cam Guthrie! He joins us this week on the podcast to hear about why he might have some regret about the way he announced his use of Strong Mayor Powers, how he might use them again, and how he’s tried to rebuild trust with the members of council. He will also discuss why he’s not totally against CTSes, why he’s hedging on support for a national urban park, and balancing criticism and collaboration with upper levels of government. Also, what is he thinking about for the 2025 State of the City?
So let’s dig into this Strong Mayor Year on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/gai8kcnwhgf9djhv/politicast_dec18_2024.mp3You can follow the mayor at CamGuthrie on Twitter and at MayorCamGuthrie on Facebook and Instagram. You can also check out his website for news and updates, or send him an email at mayor [at] guelph.ca. Council will not be back in session until Tuesday January 14 for the first Committee of the Whole of the Year, and that agenda will be published on Thursday January 2.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If you feel like active transportation options are under siege at the moment, you’re not alone. The Ontario government is coming for municipal bike lanes while cities like Guelph, facing unprecedented financial barriers, are seeing robust active transportation networks as a “nice to have”. We’ve spent the last few years trying to undo decades of building our cities around the personal automobile, but is the war on bike lanes finally here?
In September, the Guelph Coalition for Active Transportation held an unusual event, a ghost ride in honour of Susan Bard who was struck by a car and died from her injuries while riding her bike on Victoria Road North. Before the ride, Mike Darmon told everyone gathered at city hall that he hoped that this would not be a regular occurrence, but the death of Bard was as a sign that these are not safe times on Guelph roads.
At around the same time, there started to be rumblings about new legislation at Queen’s Park, a law that would stop municipalities from installing new bike lanes on major arterial roads, and then removing some of the ones already there. It seems that in some quarters, the blame for congestion on Ontario roads is all this quote-unquote useless space for bike lanes, so they have to go. Also, here in Guelph were scaling back on some investments in active transportation, at least the off-road variety in trails and parks.
To look at all this, we’re joined by the two public faces for GCAT, Mike Darmon and Adrian Salvatore. They will talk about increasing concerns about safety on Guelph’s roads, and the way we think differently depending on our mode of transportation. They will also talk about how to understand bike lane use, why the statistics the Ontario government cites are flawed, and whether bike lane use should be viewed through a road safety lens as well as an infrastructure one. And finally, what’s next for GCAT?
Let’s dig into this War on Bike Lanes on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/aevdud4zabavrg9b/politicast_nov13_2024.mp3You can stay connected to the Guelph Coalition for Active Transportation at their website, or on the socials @activeguelph. If you’re concerned about active transportation infrastructure, budget delegation night is Tuesday November 19 at 6 pm, and you have until this Friday at 10 am to sign up as a delegate on the City’s website. Bill 212 – Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act is currently before the standing committee at Queen’s Park, and the public comment period closes on Wednesday November 20.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Watching the Accessibility Advisory Committee meetings over the last several months there’s a particular undercurrent that some members of the committee feel like they’re not being listened to, and that there was a disconnect between their expectations and what City of Guelph staff wanted them to do. And then came the Public Space Use Bylaw and the waters got even choppier.
At their February meeting, the AAC passed a motion asking for some dedicated engagement of their own on the topic of the Public Space Use Bylaw. Part of the AAC’s role is to advise council on policy and how it might impact the disabled community in Guelph, and there are a lot of people among the unhoused population who have some kind of disability.
But as you know, the Public Space Use Bylaw never came back for engagement with anyone, it was dropped on an unplanned meeting of council in late August where it was approved by council and then put into effect at the beginning of last month. The October meeting opened with an uncomfortable rake out over the AAC’s disappointment, and the belief that once again that they were not listened to about a vital matter of accessibility and the protection of the rights of the disabled.
So following up on all of this, we’re catching up this week with Lorelei Root, who is the chair of the Accessibility Advisory Committee. She will talk about what happened around the scheduling of October’s meeting, staff’s discomfort talking about process in open session and why she and the vice-chair thought it was important to air all this in the public. She will also talk about the feedback the AAC wanted to give around the Public Space Use Bylaw, and whether the committee has now won its hard fought autonomy.
So let’s talk again about fighting for accessibility on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/jibm7edjmjt48tr4/politicast_nov6_2024.mp3The Accessible Advisory Committee will meet again on Tuesday December 17, and you can catch up on the coverage of all of this year’s meetings so far on Guelph Politico. According to reports, eviction notices have been handed out to people encamped in St. George’s Square and they have until next Wednesday November 13 to move. Stay tuned for updates as they develop.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If you think traffic and travel are bad now, it might not compare to what awaits if Guelph Transit workers go on strike, or are locked out by the City. It could be worse. In so much as these things never happen at the best possible time, it might be even worse for Guelph Transit now as they hit new ridership records and try to justify increased expenses as City Hall is looking to save pennies. So is transit job action a foregone conclusion?
You may remember the last time there was job action around Transit. It was late summer 2014 and Guelph ended up going more than two weeks without a transit system. Ten years ago, the city was different. This was before the 99 Mainline, before Conestoga was more of a draw, and before Guelph Transit broke two different ridership records in the same year. A shutdown stemming from job action will throw all that progress away.
So what’s at stake? Basically, the workers are looking for a cost of living increase and a pathway to a better work-life balance. Driving around town is hard enough, but trying to put a happy face on City policy, maintaining customer service, proctoring fares and helping people find their way using an app that Transit has no investment in? Is it so surprising that workers are looking for a raise?
Scott Bate, who is the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1189, will join us this week to lend some insight into these matters. He will tell us about a day in the life of a transit worker, what they’re bargaining for, and why they don’t plan on accepting any concessions from management. He will also talk about what’s going to happen when time runs out for the no-board report, and why they’re trying to get the word out early about a potential job action.
So let’s talk about job action on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/g8peaykwcd7pampy/politicast_oct30_2024.mp3The no-board report expires on November 7 at which point the union can strike, the City can lock them out, or the whole thing might go to arbitration. So what way is it going to go? We’ll have to wait and see, so stay tuned to Guelph Politico for any updates and keep on an eye on the social media feeds of both the City of Guelph and Guelph Transit respectively.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Here, at the end of October, there’s a lot going on from new budgets to potential strikes to changes to our recycling, so it seems like a good time to pause and talk about some recent events before the news gets even crazier. This week, we’re going to catch up with a friend from a different show, and we’re all going to catch up with all the important issues going on in the news. The Guelph Stuff!
It was revealed last Thursday that the 2025 budget confirmation now includes nearly five per cent less spending than what was approved last year. Almost everything other than housing support and mandated services have been deferred or eliminated from next year’s budget, but are we ready for what all these budget cuts might mean as the city continues to grow and change?
There’s also been a lot of concern about the growing number of tents and homeless encampments. Last week at a meeting of the Ontario Big City Mayors, the heads of the province’s 29 largest cities, including Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie, called on the provincial and federal governments to take immediate action, but have we finally run out of compassion on these issues?
In transit news, the workers of the ATU 1189 might be either going on strike or will be subject to a lockout sometime early in November. A no-board report was filed last week, which begins a 17-day countdown that either leads to mediation or job action, and while there’s never a good time for a transit strike, this comes at a particularly precarious time. Is Guelph going to be bus-less in a couple of weeks?
We will also cover a series of motions at the Accessibility Advisory Committee that tests how dedicated the City of Guelph is to giving them their proper autonomy, and the changes coming to Guelph’s recycling program that are coming into effect in January. To help us out with this analysis, we will be joined by Open Sources Guelph co-host Scotty Hertz who will help us press the button on these hot button issues in the Royal City.
So let’s dig into that Guelph Stuff on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/k45tn423iy4pxdw6/politicast_oct23_2024.mp3You can hear Open Sources Guelph every Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca. You can also catch the re-broadcast at select times and download the podcast version every Monday from the show’s website. Also, we will follow up on all these stories as they develop on Guelph Politico.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
A number of Ontario municipalities including Brampton, Woodstock, Milton, and Halton Hills have banned fireworks outright, and several others including Kitchener are looking at new regulations. Here in Guelph, a new permitting system is on the table; City staff and some councillors think that this may be the best of both worlds, but others think it’s the worst, including members of the fireworks lobby!
The last review of Guelph’s fireworks bylaw was in 2013, but council passed a decree last year to move up the timing of the next review by several years due to repeated complaints to councillors about small fireworks displays in area parks, and the setting off of fireworks, mostly by young people, at odd days and hours before and after those commemorations.
Guelph’s proposal to fix all that is to implement a permit system. Essentially, if you want to set off fireworks you will have to go to the City and pay a fee, which will then allow you to buy fireworks and set them off at one of Guelph’s preferred locations so long as you have insurance, safety inspections, an animal safety plan, and something called a licensed display supervisor. Problem solved, right? Not to fast because the people whose livelihood is tied to their sale and distribution have notes.
To provide them, we have Aleem Kanji, who is the chief advocacy officer for the Canadian National Fireworks Association. He’s going to talk about his work advocating for safe fireworks use, fighting the nation-wide trend of fireworks bans, and why he thinks bans don’t ultimately work. Kanji will also talk about his advocacy to Guelph council, his response to the majority support in this city for a ban, and his counter-arguments to some of the talking points in favour of a ban.
So let’s talk about the fireworks over fireworks on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/76u3px2p7wi6vej9/politicast_oct16_2024.mp3You can learn more about the Canadian National Fireworks Association at their website. The question of Guelph’s new fireworks bylaw will be coming back to city council for ratification on Tuesday October 29, and that agenda will be published on the City’s website on Thursday, and you will have until Friday October 25 to sign up to delegate if you like. In the meantime, you can check out the reports from Committee of the Whole.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If you want to know the history of a place, go to the cemetery, and this is no less true for Woodlawn Memorial Park. It’s natural in this Halloween month to seek out some spookiness, and conventional wisdom says that there’s nowhere spookier than the local cemetery, but our guest this week spent a lifetime promoting a simple message: Your local cemetery is not a very scary place.
Woodlawn Cemetery opened in 1854, and at the time it was at a location that was well beyond the Guelph city limits. This was purposeful because in 1853, Guelph passed a bylaw that said you couldn’t have a cemetery in the city limits, which at the time affected three cemeteries in the core including the Union located along Baker Street parking. We know the end of that story 160 years later.
In all that time, the story of so many Guelphites ended at Woodlawn, and for 44 years that meant it ended at Paul Taylor. As a young man he brought is experience in construction to his first job at the cemetery where he was, of all things, a gravedigger. The year was 1977 and a few years later a still young Taylor found himself in the position of superintendent, which is a position that would later be renamed General Manager. In 2021 he retired, and now he’s bringing that experience to this podcast.
Taylor joins us this week to talk about his life’s work, and his life’s passion. He will tell us how he’s worked his whole career to change the perception of what a cemetery is, and thee cemetery’s role as keepers of local history. He will also talk about whether hanging out at the cemetery as a place to enjoy the outdoors might be more than a trend, his favourite places at Woodlawn, the things about the park only he can appreciate, and the surprisingly bright future for burials among millennials.
So let’s talk about why the cemetery is awesome on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/2brs2txkm9us8kqe/politicast_oct9_2024.mp3You can learn more about Woodlawn Memorial Park at their website. At their website, you can book a tour, or get pdf copies of maps and brochures that will show you places of interest in all 80 acres of the property. You can also stop by the office on weekdays from 8 am to 4:30 pm to get information and recommendations for where to visit.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Last week was a very busy news week here in Guelph, four stories that each, in their way, tell the story of a growing city when it comes to the economy, public safety and accountability. For this episode of the pod you’re going to hear the news as it’s covered, live (ish) from around town as we get into some real shoe leather reporting from the streets of the Royal City. This is “Raw Audio News!”
First we will talk to Paul Hanna, executive VP of member relations, governance and corporate services at the Co-operators along with Shawn Fitzgerald who is the VP of real estate and workplace services. After the official grand opening of the new Co-operators headquarters in the city’s south end last week, they talked about the shape of office work post-COVID and why it’s good business to build in an environmentally sustainable way.
Next, we will hear from Staff Sergeant Michael Davis who oversees the tactics and rescue unit. He was on hand last Thursday as Guelph Police unveiled their new community rescue vehicle, which has generated a lot of attention online, and you will hear from him in a media scrum about why this purchase was necessary and how it will be deployed.
Third, we will hear from Mike Darmon, Corinna Matteliano, Adrian Salvatore, Jennifer Juste, Ken Yee Chew and Mike Schreiner, who spoke at a Ghost Ride on Saturday. The ride was organized by the Guelph Coalition for Active Transportation to honour Susan Bard, one of their members and an avid cyclist who was killed in a motor vehicle collision on September 6. These speakers, including Bard’s daughter Matterliano, will talk about road safety in Guelph and how we need to do better to protect all road users.
And finally you will hear briefly from Faye Dzikewich, she is the mother of Nathaniel Schofield, a 36-year-old Arthur man who died while in police custody at the Rockwood detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police. Nathaniel’s friends and family held a march to protest how they’re still waiting for answers from the SIU about how this healthy father of six who was arrested and held for a relatively minor offence when he died.
So let’s get into some raw audio news on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/4nariihdfqppc44d/politicast_oct2_2024.mp3You can follow up with all of these stories on the main Guelph Politico website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If it’s September, that means it’s time to start the United Way’s annual fundraising campaign. A linchpin when it comes to support for all kinds of area non-profits and charities, it’s worth noting that this year’s campaign comes at a time of great need. Today, we’re going to learn from the head of the United Way about how they’re coping and how they’re still trying to answer the call.
Earlier this year, the United Way gave out $1.5 million to 51 programs. Now, $1.5 million split 51 different ways may not sound like a lot of money, but in the case of the Sanguen Health Van, which was initially funded by the federal government but only for the first few years of existence, the United Way’s assistance allowed it to continue to operate and offer living saving services.
A few extra thousand dollars can go a long way, which is why it’s an important and underreported fact that after the various levels of government, the United Way is the biggest source of funding for charities and non-profits. The United Way has also taken a lead role in helping to raise funds for the new supportive housing projects in Guelph, securing $3.5 million for the cause in what has to be a record amount of time. So what’s next?
Glenna Banda, executive director of United Way Guelph Wellington Dufferin, joins us today to discuss what the United Way does and how it does it, why the organization’s influence in the community goes beyond fundraising, and the pressures for funding right now. Also, she will talk about the lessons learned from the Home for Good campaign, what happens if they can’t reach their funding goals, and how the charitable sector has changed in the last 10 years for the better and for the worse.
So let’s talk about fundraising on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/3wq5sfsvzmki5mqh/politicast_sept25_2024.mp3To learn more about the United Way, or to find out about how you can donate or arrange a campaign in your own workplace, you can visit their website, call them at 519-821-0571, or visit them at their office at 85 Westmount Road. You can also follow them on social media “@untiedwaygwd” on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of United Way Guelph Wellington Dufferin.
So has anything interesting been happening at Guelph city council lately? Of course, there has! We’ve already covered the first third of 2024 on a previous podcast, and we will now visit that middle third, a period of time that is supposed to be more of a laid back political time as people rest and recreate over the summer. But no! The last four months at council have been all business, and this is the business!!
Now are things you can expect ever year around the midpoint. The annual shareholders meeting for Guelph Municipal Holdings Inc and Guelph Junction Railway for example, or the presentation of the audited financial statements from the previous fiscal year. There’s also constantly a new batch of new planning amendments to look at, which is key to answering the housing crisis.
Speaking of housing, this issue was the spectre that haunted much of council business this whole year. In terms of specifics from the last few months there was the Guelph Tiny Home Coalition, a proposal to sell off parcels of parkland, and the unexpected late summer return of the Public Space Use Bylaw. From the fate of the Drill Hall to the return of online voting in 2026 and all points in-between, this was council’s business the last four months.
Let’s catch up with council business on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/tj4275cixz76zstm/politicast_sept18_2024.mp3As always, city council is meeting every week, so for full coverage keep coming back to Guelph Politico for all the previews, recaps and live coverage, and get all Guelph news sent directly to you inbox four times a week by subscribing to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet newsletter on Substack.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Sometimes in this business, you go looking for the story and sometimes the story finds you… Last week, former Terry Fox Run organizer David Picard talked about his years of work putting this event together, and then he offered an opportunity: How would you like to hear from the woman that started it all? This week, we learn about the beginning of the Terry Fox Run and we’ll learn how she did it.
Terry Fox died at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. B.C. on June 19, 1981; he went into the hospital complaining of chest congestion and then he developed pneumonia. He fell into a coma and died nine days later. Terry had to abandon his Marathon of Hope the September before because the cancer was in his lungs, and he literally couldn’t run any further than Thunder Bay. It was 143 days and 5,373 kilometres after his history making run began.
The first Terry Fox Run in his honour happened just over two months after he died. Over 300,000 people across Canada took part raising $3.5 million, which was a down payment for the $850 million that the run has raised since that time. It’s hard to believe something this long-lasting and influential was slapped together in just a few months, but that’s what happened in the summer of ‘81, and Betty Stone was the person in Guelph who heard the call. This week, she’s going to tell us how she answered.
Betty Stone joins us on this week’s podcast to talk about her background as a teacher at King George School in Guelph, how an idle conversation before the start of the school year lead to the first Terry Fox Run, and how it quickly became a whole community effort. She will also talk about how something this big was organized in the pre-social media age, the outsized role of schools in supporting the Terry Fox Run, and why we still need heroes to look up to.
So let’s talk about the beginning of the Terry Fox Run on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/gbysj3nzri38yb4v/politicast_sept11_2024.mp3This year’s Terry Fox Run will take place on Sunday September 15 at Silvercreek Park at the corner of Wellington and Edinburgh. You can sign up to take part in the Terry Fox Run at the website for the Terry Fox Foundation, and you can follow the Guelph organizers on Instagram. If you have any questions about the run you can send to Theresa McGeragle at terryfoxrunguelph [at] gmail.com. To here last week’s podcast with David Picard click here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of Guelph Mercury/Guelph Museums.
The first Terry Fox Run took place in 1981, just a few months after the young man it’s named after passed away, and a little over a year after his Marathon of Hope came to an abrupt end. Over the last 43 years, millions and millions of dollars have been raised for cancer research, including over $1 million from Guelph alone, and all of this was done through the power of some very passionate volunteers. This is the story of one of them.
Tuesday July 22, 1980 was “Terry Fox Day” in Guelph, it was the day that the man himself passed through the Royal City while on his Marathon. He ran through town, stopped at city hall and was welcomed by Mayor Norm Jary and other dignitaries, and then continued on his way down the road to Halton Hills. It was a little over a month later when Terry called it quits, though not by choice.
One of the people inspired by Terry’s run was David Picard, and he started running too. He organized a run at the Ontario Reformatory where he worked, and then when the OR closed he started organizing the city run. The passion is still there after over 40 years, but Picard is now passing the torch to someone new with this year’s Terry Fox Run, but today he’s making a pit stop on this podcast.
Picard joins us to talk about his history with the Terry Fox Run, why he’s stayed with it all this time, and why he’s now ready to hand off the reins to someone new. We will also talk about his collection of memorabilia, and Picard’s experience following in Terry Fox’s footsteps. After that, he will discuss the ins and outs of organizing the Terry Fox Run, the outsized roles that school students play in its success, and why the community keeps coming out year after year.
So let’s run for a good cause on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/heqxxmrc6dcbbtr5/politicast_sept4_2024.mp3This year’s Terry Fox Run will take place on Sunday September 15 at Silvercreek Park at the corner of Wellington and Edinburgh. You can sign up to take part in the Terry Fox Run at the website for the Terry Fox Foundation, and you can follow the Guelph organizers on Instagram. If you have any questions about the run you can send to Theresa McGeragle at terryfoxrunguelph [at] gmail.com.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
As we do at the end of August, we’re marking Drug Poisoning Awareness Day, and it hasn’t been a great week for the people fighting this issue. Last week, the Ontario government decided that no safe consumption site can be within 200 metres of a school or daycare, including the one at Guelph Community Health Centre. The drug poisoning crisis is not getting any better, and now there’s the possibility that it’s going to get worse.
In 2023, at least 62 community members died due to substance-related fatalities Guelph and Wellington according to new data from the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario. This is the highest number of lives lost on record. This is on top of the fact that someone dies from drug poisoning every two-and-a-half hours across Ontario. The conditions are dire, any progress being made is slow going, and there’s the constant presence of stigma to overcome.
What’s been clear in the last several weeks is that this community is reaching what Dr. Erin Dej called “compassion fatigue”; fed up with the crisis, people just don’t want to see it anymore, and now their leaning on the policies of “Just Say No”, which never worked in the first place. This week’s podcast was recorded before the announcement about safe consumption sites, but as you will hear, it’s another pressure that community activists didn’t need right now.
Our guests this week are Jean Hopkins, manager of the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy, and Leandra Gilbert, a peer support worker at Guelph Community Health Centre. They talk about the most recent health alert about the drug supply, and the difficulty trying to end the stigma around substance use in the community. They will also talk about the timing of the public space use bylaw debate, fighting the crisis with a patchwork response around the province, and what they would do to remake the system to better fight drug poisonings.
So let’s talk about the current state of the Drug Poisoning Crisis on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/7sw6y7anxnmws8qd/politicast_aug28_2024.mp3You can learn more about the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy at their website, and you can learn about the Consumption and Treatment Site and other services at the Guelph Community Health Centre site at their website. If you’re listening to this on Wednesday, the annual commemoration of Drug Poisoning Awareness Day is Thursday at noon in St. George’s Square in downtown Guelph.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Housing. It’s an easy problem to diagnosis but it’s a hard problem to solve it seems, and that has seems to have stopped the Government of Ontario from even trying. Cabinet ministers have probably been getting an earful about that this week at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference, but there’s one member at Queen’s Park that still hasn’t given up, and you will never guess who…
This past February, we were joined on the pod by Guelph MPP and Green Party of Ontario leader. The topic was his private member’s bill, the Homes You Can Afford in Communities You Love Act, or Bill 156, which aims to change planning rules across Ontario to allow for fourplexes and four story apartments in neighbourhoods and allow for mid-rise buildings ranging from six to 11 stories on transit corridors and main streets.
Now, there’s been no movement on Bill 156 since it was sent to committee in February, but it seems like the Ontario government isn’t doing much to try and fill the void by bringing any new policy of their own. Now, seven months after this first went to air, Ontario cities are even more desperate for housing solutions that will help alleviate the pressure on them, so can Schreiner’s ideas still be the solution we’re looking for?
This week you will listen to Schreiner talk again about his thoughts on how the housing crisis got this bad, the elevator pitch for the bill, and why he thinks it’s a good compromise to create density while maintaining neighbourhood character. We will also talk about municipal politics with planning, and how the bill tries to prevent NIMBYism. He will discuss “sharing the pain”, the other factors in housing like labour and the economy, and Schreiner’s expectations for the debate next week.
So let’s chat again with Mike Schreiner on the subject of homes on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/qebhsnqw4mujqq3d/politicast_aug21_2024.mp3You can learn more about Bill 156, the Homes You Can Afford in Communities You Love Act, at the Green Party of Ontario’s website. The Ontario legislature will not sit again until after Thanksgiving, which is assuming that we don’t end up going to the polls before then. Also, look for news coming out of this week’s AMO conference in Ottawa.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It was about this time last year that the so-called Greenbelt scandal blew-up. Although the issue had been simmering since fall 2022, the persistent efforts of journalists and activists to get to the bottom of the decision to separate and sell-off portions of protected land resulted in the land being restored, the minister responsible replaced, and the RCMP looking into whether or not anything criminal happened.
It started with the Ontario government’s plan to remove parcels of the Greenbelt and allow for new housing developments there despite Doug Ford’s promise that his government would not touch the Greenbelt. Here in Guelph, hundreds and hundreds of people came out on a cold Sunday morning to express their outrage, and so did people in other cities across Ontario, an it was an outrage that didn’t burn out over the months that followed.
Then things started changing last summer. Ontario’s auditor general released a scathing report into how the Greenbelt land swap came about, and that started a chain of events ending with Ford putting all that land back. This was a few weeks after a massive protest outside Fordfest at Bingemans in Kitchener, which was organized in part by the Grand River Environmental Network. They pushed hard to save the Greenbelt, but they’re still pointing out that there’s a lot of work left to do.
This week we’re joined again by Kevin Thomason, who is the vice-chair of the Grand River Environmental Network. He’s going to talk about how GREN worked hard organizing people, why so many people took the encroachment on the Greenbelt so personally, and why Fordfest in Kitchener was Doug Ford’s Waterloo, so to speak. We will also talk about why climate change isn’t a bigger issue after the wildfire season we just experienced, and whether the provincial government has learned any lessons in the last year.
So let’s take another victory lap for the Greenbelt on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/7p35qnt4vnsi6vnk/politicast_aug14_2024.mp3You can learn more about the Grand River Environmental Network at their website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It took a while to get here, but the Grand River Conservation Authority membership last month approved a management plan for the Niska lands, aka: the old Kortright Waterfowl Park, but this is not the end of the journey. For nearly 20 years there’s been a fierce back and forth about what comes next for the property and who’s responsible for its protection, but even with a plan in place now it doesn’t mean that the controversy is over.
When we last tackled this topic on the podcast it was October 2023 and the draft land management plan had just been presented to the GRCA board. That plan was adapted by the GRCA board at their June meeting along with its three recommendations: To engage with the City of Guelph and others about future maintenance and use; to manage and monitor the sensitive environmental demands; and dispose the portion called “Agricultural Field B”, which is on the south side of Niska.
Now, what you have to understand is that it’s the plan that’s been approved, not necessarily those directions. Just because it’s been recommended that some land be sold necessarily means that it will be sold, and there’s an entirely separate process that needs to happen before any decisions are made, so let’s talk to some of the decision makers. In this case, Guelph/Eramosa Township Mayor and GRCA Chair Chris White and GRCA Chief Administrative Officer Samantha Lawson.
White and Lawson will talk about the next steps, where responsibility lies for the City of Guelph and the Conservation Authority, and who the other stakeholders might be when it comes to the fate of the lands. We will also talk about protecting the environment, the concerns raised by the public about protecting the area’s ecosystem, the pressures from the provincial government, and how the role of conservation authorities has changed as a result of those pressures.
So let’s talk about the Niska Land’s future on this week’s episode of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/2a48g2wv44g5nkbt/politicast_aug7_2024.mp3You can rewind to episode #392 to hear the first part of this two-parter with Dr. Hugh Whitely and get his point of view on the issue here. You can see coverage of the issue on Guelph Politico, and you can see the Niska Landholdings Management plan on Grand River Conservation Authority’s website here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Programming Note: The Guelph Politicast will be taking the next two weeks off and will be back with new episode on Wednesday August 28.
A couple of weeks ago at city council, a group of leaders representing four frontline agencies appeared to support the idea of a tiny home project in Guelph. The head of the Guelph Community Health Centre appeared on this podcast a few months ago, and so did the head of the Canadian Mental Health Association, plus the CEO of Guelph General Hospital was our special Christmas guest this past December. So if you’ve been counting, that leaves one more…
The Stonehenge Therapeutic Community has been doing the work for over 50 years when it comes to helping people in Guelph battling addictions and mental health issues. It started as a small, farm-based residential treatment program for men and women in 1971 and has expanded over the decades to include all types of services like compassionate care, peer support, safer supply, and yes, housing.
Stonehenge’s latest achievement is helping to launch the supportive housing project on Shelldale Crescent, the Kindle Communities, a massive community effort that was more than two years in the making. Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story, but this is an issue that can’t be solved by any one agency, or any one group of agencies, so the work is ongoing as the staff of Stonehenge look for new opportunities to help the growing need.
Kristen Kerr, who is the executive director of the Stonehenge Therapeutic Community, will give us some insight into that work. We’re going to talk about the origins of Stonehenge, and how it got the same name as that famous landmark in the English countryside. We will also talk about the current pressure on frontline agencies, how Stonehenge is responding to the growing trend of compassion fatigue, and where Stonehenge might take harm reduction next now that the Kindle Community is almost complete.
So let’s uncover the secrets of Stonehenge – the Guelph version – on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/mwv4pyqwcy54qqmk/politicast_july31_2024.mp3You can learn more about Stonehenge at their website. Drug Poisoning Awareness Day will take place on August 22 in Mount Forest and August 29 here in Guelph, and you have until tomorrow, August 1, to order a “Remembering Lives Lost” t-shirt, which you can do through the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
What could have been a small one-day story about disagreements around the table at Stratford city council has become emblematic of a bigger issue. Aside from the fine line between criticism of our civic leaders and outright threatening behaviour, there’s also a question about whether their mayor and council are being as open and transparent as it should be, and one man – famously – has his doubts.
Members from Get Concerned Stratford have appeared on this podcast before. The group itself was born out of concerns around Stratford council’s efforts to approve the construction of a controversial glass plant in the city. But the circumstances that led to the Xinyi controversy lingered, even with a new council, and it all seemed to come together at a council meeting on February 26.
At that meeting, there was a report about the use of closed meeting protocols that showed Stratford council was frequently making decisions in-camera, but attention instead went to a matter of zoning where two delegates – Mike Sullivan and Barb Shaughnessy – were accused of making statements that were allegedly threatening and disrespectful. They both got three-month bans from council and that’s where the controversy – and this podcast – really begins!
Sullivan joins us this week to tell us about what happened at the February 26 meeting, how he learned that he was temporarily banned from council and what happened the first time he showed up anyway. He will also tell us about his efforts to learn more about what goes on in closed meetings, the repeatedly failed attempts to get the ban lifted, and where the battle goes now that the ban has expired. Also, where’s the fine line between legitimate criticism and an ad hominem attack?
So let’s look at what’s going on in Stratford with this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/tn9xgg5jdaggcx3r/politicast_july24_2024.mp3Some late breaking news at Monday council’s meeting it was unanimously decided that the Respectful Workplace Policy would be reviewed by staff, but only two members of council voted to suspend the policy. You can learn more about Get Concerned Stratford at their website here. You can find links to the videos of council meetings at the City of Stratford at their website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo Courtesy of Get Concerned Stratford Facebook.
The housing and affordability issues are massive, and to think that one action at one level of government is going to have a measurable impact is not understand that. This week at city hall, Guelph council will talk about proceeding with a tiny homes encampment, but that’s one finger in one hole of a dam that needs a lot of repairs.
Reaching back into the files of Open Sources Guelph, we highlight three interviews that lay out the structural and systemic issues that led to the housing and affordability crises:
All the way back last March, we talked to Dr. Paul Kershaw, the founder, lead researcher and executive chair of Generation Squeeze who told us about what the then-upcoming federal and provincial budgets mean for young people, and others in Canada looking some government relief in an expensive world.
In October, we were joined by Craig Pickthorne from the Ontario Living Wage Network to talk about affordability, the minimum wage hike, and the giant gap in-between. This came before it was announced that the living wage in Guelph and area had gone up to nearly $21 per hour, which is about $5 difference over the current minimum wage.
And from November, we will hear Wellington County councillor and chair of the Social Services Committee David Anderson who’s going to talk about working with the City of Guelph on creating solutions to the great and increasing community need.
So let’s talk about the broader issues in fining housing solutions on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/5tccgru2d3jbzc8w/politicast_jul17_2024.mp3You can tune into Open Sources Guelph every Thursday at 5 pm. You can also catch up with the goings on at city council by subscribing the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet newsletter on Substack.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of ACORN Waterloo Facebook.
There’s a lot of work when it comes to the grind of municipal governance and policy development, but it doesn’t always start with city council (though it does often end with them). So on this episode of the podcast we’re going to try and cram six months of work by eight different committees into 30 minutes of audio, from the retirement of the library’s head to the debate over a bus chime to the ongoing issues around housing.
This week we will cover the highlights of the Accessibility Advisory Committee, the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Board of Health, the Grand River Conservation Authority, Guelph Police Services Board, the Guelph Public Library Board of Directors, Heritage Guelph, the Joint Social Services and Land Ambulance Committee, and the Transit Advisory Committee between January and June.
This is not an exhaustive list of those committees activities, but it will give you some idea of what they’ve been up to. Some of this work has already made its way to council like several approved heritage designations, or the move to online voting for the next municipal election, and some of it’s coming up in the near future, like a final decision on the Guelph Tiny Homes Coalition proposal. This is a chance to go inside and see how the proverbial sausage is made before it comes to market at city council.
So let’s see what the boards and committees have been up to on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/hinyzjvzvajnq5dm/politicast_july10_2024.mp3There’s a Guelph Police Services Board meeting next week, but for the most part committees are not getting back to business until September. To see full recaps, and committee meeting previews, check out the “Local Boards and Committees” page on the Guelph Politico website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Our daily news is overflowing with stories about the breadth of the housing crisis, and governments are responding with new measures and funding, but these actions are based in a system that wasn’t designed to handle a problem this massive, or this complicated. This partially explains why nothing we’ve tried so far has had the impact we’ve wanted, so do we truly understand homelessness on a systemic level?
For too long, homelessness and poverty has been phrased as personal choices or, more likely, personal failings: You didn’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps hard enough, or you’re spending too much money on specialty iced coffee and avocado toast. We know that’s bunk, because in the last 30 years there’s been massive changes in the economy, wealth redistribution, social services, and downloading from upper levels of government. It takes a system to make someone homeless.
At the Health and Housing Symposium in April, Dr. Erin Dej talked about her definition of homelessness, and systemic and structural causes of homelessness. Dr. Dej is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University, and a postdoctoral fellowship with the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness at York University, and as a “critical criminologist” she’s dedicated her career to better understanding how people end up homeless in Canada.
So on this week’s edition of the podcast we will dive deeper with Dr. Dej on some of the issues she raised in her talk at the Symposium. We will discuss why it’s so hard to find housing solutions, the difficulty overcoming jurisdictional barriers, and the limitations in having individual municipalities being incubators for housing solutions. We will also talk about the ongoing fight against stigma, the new fight against “compassion fatigue”, and what could we do if we rebuilt the system from scratch.
So let’s get smarter understanding homelessness on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/kjhsxxku2kvybd4e/politicast_july3_2024.mp3If you want to see Dr. Dej’s scholarly work, you can find links to her academic papers on Google Scholar, but for something a little more accessible, you can check out her recent appearance at Waterloo Region Community Town Halls. You can also check out the coverage from day three of the Health and Housing Symposium here on the Guelph Politico.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Hillside Festival. Have you heard of it? Every July, the population of Guelph decreases, and the population of the island in Guelph Lake radically increases. They’re all drawn there for an annual celebration of music and community that’s still going strong after 40 years, and this is despite changing musical tastes, changing economic concerns, and even a global pandemic. So what’s the secret to their ongoing success?
Hillside is the little festival that could and by it’s fourth year it was too big for Riverside Park and moved to Guelph Lake. Soon the big names were coming to Hillside, it attracted Arcade Fire, Metric, and k-os on their way to international stardom, and it was prescient in other ways outside the musical. It was one of the first festivals to encourage the use of reusable cups and other green measures that are now just generally proforma.
Perhaps, it’s Hillside’s iconoclastic status that has allowed it to – if not thrive – then definitely survive in the face of numerous existential threats to the cultural sector post-pandemic. This is much to the relief of Kate Johnston who is managing her first Hillside as the executive director, picking up the baton from Marie Zimmerman who led Hillside through both the best of times and the worst of times.
Johnston joins us to talk about what last minute preparations for Hillside, what’s special about this year’s festival and what she’s looking forward to as Hillside’s top organizer. We will also talk about the challenges in the arts sector right now, how they’re managing with financial and volunteer support, and how Hillside continues to balance its Guelphiness with its tourist appeal. Also, how does Johnston wants to leave her mark on Hillside?
So let’s face the music on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/fdm863hw43hbgnxx/politicast_jun26_2024.mp3The Hillside Festival takes place July 19, 20 and 21 at the island on Guelph Lake, and you can get the full line-up and ticket information at their website. If you like the in-person, you can also buy tickets at the Bookshelf downtown. You can also follow the festival and get updates on special media @HillsideFestivalGuelph on Facebook and YouTube, @HillsideFestival on Instagram and TikTok, and @HillsideFest on Twitter.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
There’s a presidential election this year in the U.S., maybe you’ve heard about it, and like so much of American culture it threatens to block out the sun here, not to mention a lot of serious political issues we’re dealing with here in Canada. Why are we so obsessed with American politics and is it to the detriment of our own political enlightenment in this country?
We could intellectualize this by saying that what goes on in America is a sneak preview of what’s coming in Canada. The neo-liberal centrism of Bill Clinton presaged the arrival of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, the neo-conservative George W. Bush was followed by his Canadian equivalent in Stephen Harper, and many people are seeing a comparison between Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre with the performative outrage over woke and a lean towards economic populism.
We also have a cross border alt-right feedback loop. Yes, you can say that something like the Freedom Convoy was fed by Trumpism and other appendages of the MAGA machine, but Canada has given them Gavin McGinnis, Lauren Southern, Jordan Peterson, and patient zero for the “Satanic Panic”, Michelle Smith, was a resident of Victoria, B.C. So should we ignore American politics, or ignore them at our peril? Our guest this week spends part of his year in Florida, and he might have an answer!
Oliver Rockside, a Guelph Politico booster and friend, podcaster, and former colleague from the Gang of Four show on CFRU, joins us this week to talk about the state of play living in a gerrymandered area of Florida, what it’s like today talking to Americans, and whether or not he’s seeing some warning signs here in Canada that were following in their example. Also, are we too focused on American politics here in Canada, and does it have a negative impact on understanding our own issues in this county?
So let us consider American politics on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/bwjafujqnp9gjrkz/politicast_june19_2024.mp3You can check out the Oliver Rockside podcast universe by listening to his music show In Your Ear Holes, the Law & Order podcast The 27th Precinct, and the now complete Star Trek pod 78 Episodes 30 Good Ones. We will continue to dip into the American election for the next few months on Open Sources Guelph, which you can hear Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of Jeenah Moon/Pool/AFP via Getty Images.
For this week’s podcast, we’re taking it on the road! There are two big protests of a sort happening in Guelph right now, one is technically a strike, and the other is an encampment on campus. Both are local stories with implications beyond the city limits, both are examples of renewed interest in direct action, and both started at around the same time. So how are things going out there, and are these actions having an impact?
On May 27, nearly 1,000 workers at the Cargill plant on Dunlop Drive went on strike after 82 per cent of the members represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 175 rejected a deal with management. The primary issue, unsurprisingly, is the cost of living. Striking workers at Cargill Dunlop are angry, they’re fighting for a small increase to their take home pay when just last year the company saw record profits. Their frustration is palpable.
Meanwhile, down at the University of Guelph, there are others experiencing frustration. The day after Victoria Day, a group of student activists set up an encampment to demand that the U of G divest from any company that does business with Israel, and work to end discrimination on campus. These demands have not been well received by the university who have spend more time trying various ways to get rid of the encampment as opposed to negotiating with the campers.
First, we will talk to Ashland Kearns and Melissa Bortolon, workers at the Cargill Dunlop facility and members of striking UFCW Local 175, who will tell us about how the strike is going in week three, what they’re on the picket lines for, and the pandemic impacts of working at the plant. Then, on campus, “Lavender”, one of the encampment organizers, will tell us the reasons why the University of Guelph group started an encampment, the lack of engagement with the U of G admin, and the effort to get the full picture of the university’s investments.
So let’s go on a field trip on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/93yy7naf4ajsqjqe/politicast_june12_2024.mp3You can follow the progress of the strike at the local’s website. And you can also stay up-to-date with what’s happening at the People’s Plaza on Instagram at UoGforPalestine. There will be a special convocation vigil on Friday June 14 at 3 pm.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
There’s been a lot of discussion recently about boosting Guelph’s tourism profile. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities are working hard to rebuild their shattered tourism industries and Guelph is no exception, which is why the City of Guelph this week launched the Tourism Grants Program, designed to support the development and attraction of new tourism initiatives across Guelph. So here’s an idea…
Last fall, Guelph Politico explored the possibilities of dark tourism in Guelph for a special Halloween episode of the show. The Royal City, with its relatively sunny disposition and progressive appeal, doesn’t look like a bastion for all things morose or macabre, but that’s the candy coating for a seedy underbelly. And, as a bonus, Guelph is already well on its way to being a dark tourism hotbed.
Our thriving dark tourism industry is largely grassroots. It’s people like Greg Taylor, and Jay Wilson, and Bonnie Durtnall, people who have turned their fascination with the dark corners of Guelph into a lucrative side hustle. But would it surprise you to know that the University of Guelph actually has a professor who studies dark tourism? Perhaps he might be able to answer this question: Is Guelph a dark tourism hot spot and we don’t know it?
This week, we’re joined again by Brent McKenzie, who is a professor in the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies at the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph. He will give us a formal definition of “dark tourism” and talk about the local examples of the trade. He will also talk about the grassroots nature of dark tourism, whether dark tourism can go “too far”, and some of McKenzie’s favourite dark tourism experiences whether they’re in Guelph or not
So let’s talk again about Guelph’s dark tourism future on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/f2xtttv7n5n65ebv/politicast_jun5_2023.mp3There are many ongoing local dark tourism experiences in Guelph including Ghost Walk of Guelph, Jaywalking with Jay Wilson and his performance of “The Unfortunate Man” for which you can fine tickets at Eventbrite, and a wide variety of history walks and tours with Guelph Urbex. You can find information about the Tourism Grants Program at the City of Guelph website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
At next week’s Committee of the Whole meeting, Guelph City Council will look at the fate of the Drill Hall; staff wants to put it up for sale, but there’s at least one group in Guelph that wants to do something with it now. It’s an idea called the Guelph Centre for Visual Art, and it could feature exhibition space, artist studios, educational and meeting space, and so much more. But does city hall share their vision?
This is a tale of two long-term projects. The first is a story about creating a centralized arts building in Guelph. Nearly 20 years ago, a group called the Guelph Arts Platform tried to create to create a collaborative art space with cheap studios, exhibition areas, and networking opportunities, but for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the Great Recession, the project fell apart.
That brings us to the second part of the story, which is the Drill Hall. Constructed in 1866 so that members of the local militia could run drills (hence the name), the hall outlived its purpose by 1911 when the Armoury opened across the street. Over 100 years later, we still don’t know what to do with the Drill Hall, which is why City staff will be recommending that council authorize them to put it up for sale, but there is one group that wants to put the Drill Hall to some practical use as an arts centre. Can it be done?
Former city councillor Mike Salisbury and Lise Anne Janis think so, and they’re leading the effort to establish the Guelph Centre for Visual Art. They join us this week to talk about the plan, why this time will be different, and why the centre should be considered key in discussions around downtown revitalization. They will also discuss government support for the arts, the stakes at Committee of the Whole next week, and why an arts centre matters in the middle of these tough economic times.
So let’s drill to the bottom on this Drill Hall debate on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/gvmwgv3nkx3z9dak/politicast_may29_2024.mp3You can learn more about the Guelph Centre for Visual Art at their website, and you can also follow them on Instagram. The Drill Hall will be discussed at the Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday June 3 and you can see the report now as part of the agenda, which you can find on the council page of the City’s website. You have until Friday 10 am to sign up to delegate or to send a correspondence.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of the Guelph Centre for Visual Art.
Time flies when you’re having fun in the council chambers, which brings us to the first recap podcast of the year. We started off slow with one meeting in January, and then things go really busy in February and March, including one meeting that was really two meetings, but all together they were 12 hours long. Remember what that one was about? Remember what any of them were about?
So there was one meeting in January and it cued up a meeting in February, the one about the Public Spaces Uses Bylaw. If there was an award for the most contentious/controversial meeting of the year, this will likely still be the winner when we get to the end of the year. That ties into the overarching theme of the first third of this year, which is housing. There was the payment in-lieu plan for downtown parking, fourplexes, and a new development charges bylaw.
If you’re forgotten any of these developments than this is the podcast for you. We will go through all the meetings from January to April and cover the highlights from each meeting. And yes, there was a lot of development and planning stuff to chew on, but there was also some heritage protection, infrastructure renewal, tree protection on private property, and, for the procedural nerds out there, an honest to goodness investigation by the integrity commissioner.
So let’s recap the first few months of 2024 in council business on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/pxnxtk59qs5ne3ji/politicast_may22_2024.mp3Obviously, city council is meeting every week, so for full coverage keep coming back to Guelph Politico for all the previews, recaps and live coverage, and get all Guelph news sent directly to you inbox four times a week by subscribing to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet newsletter on Substack.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
This is the 20th anniversary year for the Special Olympics, which speaks to the tremendous success of the event, and while it is about the competition in some respects, these games are mostly about fun and camaraderie. In an era where we talk so much about kids being attached to their screens, what can be more essential than some good, old-fashioned sports?
Today (Wednesday), over 700 athletes from over 60 schools are competing in various track and field events, some of which are adapted so that all kids can compete regardless of their capability. There’s no doubt that playing sports has a positive impact on young people, but sometimes sports aren’t welcoming to kids with all abilities, which is why something like the Special Olympics was created.
There are over 100,000 Special Olympic events around the world every year, including the one here in Guelph and Wellington hosted by the two main school boards. Participants will compete in 50m, 100m and 200m races, standing/running long jump, and softball throw, as well as adaptive events for those with physical challenges including obstacle course, basketball shooting, T-ball, Popbottle bowling and a 40m walk/run. Organizing all this must be quite the logistical challenge, right?
Nicole Hearn, a special education resource teacher with the Wellington Catholic District School Board and an event committee member for the Guelph-Wellington Special Olympics, is going to tell us about it on this episode of the podcast. Plus, she will talk about the importance of physical education in a well-rounded school experience, balancing the spirit of competition with the promotion of fun and exercise in sport, and why this year’s event is even more special than usual.
So let’s talk about making the Special Olympics special on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/3h4k2256fxz93a3p/politicast_may15_2024.mp3If you’re listening to this on Wednesday, the Special Olympics are being held today at St. James Catholic High School in Guelph. You stay up-to-date with all Special Olympics news at the Upper Grand District School Board and Wellington Catholic District School Board websites, and on Facebook.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of Wellington Catholic District School Board.
Earlier this year, Statistics Canada reported that there has been a five per cent increase in positive responses in the proportions of adults who reported excellent or very good mental health, a strong sense of belonging to their local community, and a high level of life satisfaction between 2021 and 2023. And yet, considering that still less than three out of five adults report excellent or very good mental health, we still have a long way to go.
If you’re listening to this on Wednesday, then we’re halfway through Mental Health Week, which is an annual commemoration by the CMHA to promote better overall mental mental health in communities across Canada, and boy does that need some promotion. The theme of this year’s Mental Health Week, and yes there is a theme, is “Be Kind.” Meaning that we’re focusing on “the healing power of compassion” and appreciating that “kindness is equally intrinsic to our humanity.”
It’s hard to think of a better time to send out a message about kindness and compassion. Have you been on the internet lately? To say that there’s a lot of anger and hate and vitriol seems like an understatement. Then we’re seeing online hate and disgruntlement affect us here in the real world as more politicians are seeing anger and division as powerful campaign tools, and foreign governments see dividing a people against each other as a way of achieving their own transnational goals.
It really feels like we need to call a time out and ask each other sincerely, “Are you okay?” which is what Helen Fishburn is here to do this week on the podcast. She’s the CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington and she’s going to discuss the overall mental health condition of the Guelph community right now, what it means to have “mental health literacy”, what the various levels of government could be doing to lend a hand, and how you can work to improve your own mental health.
So let’s talk about getting better, mentally speaking, on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/9kjti564e2rap3ec/politicast_may8_2024.mp3You can see all the programs and events that the CMHA has planned for Mental Health Week at their website. If you do find yourself in immediate crisis you can call the Here 24/7 helpline 1-844-HERE247 or 1-844-437-3247 for one-stop access to 11 different local agencies that work in mental health and addictions, and you can also call the Suicide Crisis Helpline at 9-8-8. If you feel like you need help, do reach out and ask for it.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Image courtesy of CMHA.
Every year, four or five people are plucked from Guelph’s sporting history and are immortalized for all eternity on the walls of the Sleeman Centre, but one doesn’t spend a life in local sports to be immortal. It’s a passion that can span a lifetime, which is what decades of Royals might say about Paul Ante, who has been one kind of Guelph Royal or another for the last half-century.
Paul Ante been a part of the Guelph Royals Intercounty baseball team for over five decades as a player, coach, manager, and administrator. He’s helped lead the team to championships, and he runs baseball clinics every year to help even younger players to develop their skills. Imagine all the lives that Ante has touched in 50 years being involved with the Guelph Royals and Guelph baseball.
And Guelph history is so indelibly tied with the sport of baseball. The Guelph Royals organization has existed in one form or another since 1861, and it even roped in George Sleeman in the 1880s who invested big in order to bring American talent to Guelph. The Royals are such an institution that they also survived their own near-death experience in 2016, and that’s owed to the dedication of people Ante, who will once again be at first base on opening day later this month!
Ante took time out from getting ready for the 2024 baseball season to join us on this inaugural edition of the Guelph Sportscast to talk about his life and career in baseball in Guelph, how he feels about getting into the Hall of Fame, and what he thinks is the secret to his success in baseball. He will also talk about the difference between being a coach and being the boss, what to look out for in the upcoming season, and the role that sports has played in shaping his life and career.
So let’s play ball on this inaugural edition of the Guelph Sportscast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/s87pbgdqs4q3vpai/Sports_May2024.mp3Paul Ante will be inducted into the Guelph Sports Hall of Fame at the Induction Ceremony & Kiwanis Sports Celebrity Dinner on Wednesday May 15 at the Italian Canadian Club, and you can find info on tickets and other inductees here. The Guelph Royals 2024 season home opener is on Saturday May 18 at 1 pm at Hastings Stadium. You can get all ticket information at the Royals’ website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of SOAR Images.
As we count down to the 200th anniversary of the Canada Company settling Guelph in just three years, you can expect to hear more about how we’re honouring our history in Guelph, both pre- and post-settlement. Between that moment John Galt cut down that first tree and this moment listening to this podcast, there’s been a whole lot of Guelph history, and one man has published a new collection about some of those lesser known bits that you should definitely know.
This week, we’re joined by Ed Butts, a local author and historian. Butts has dedicated much of the last decade inspecting all of Guelph’s nooks and crannies, looking at all the forgotten tales, the forgotten celebrities, the newsmakers and royals who came to town, and all the times that no one liked what was in the headlines. Butts has taken all this and woven weekly adventures through Royal City history for Guelph Today, and the Guelph Mercury before that.
Now, Butt’s collected some of those tales in a new booked appropriately called Guelph Stories. From the origin of certain Guelph landmarks, to all the mysterious and still unsolved crimes in Guelph’s underbelly; from that time after World War II when Guelph City Council banned midnight movies to Anne Jamison who lived in Guelph between her birth in Ireland and Hollywood fame on the radio, Guelph Stories is 300 pages of local character that money can’t buy (although buying a copy of the book will cost you $30).
On this week’s podcast, we will go behind the pages, as it were, to talk to Butts about how the book, and the history, came together. He will tell us about how his Guelph Story started, how he seeks out the history he tells and how, sometimes, the history comes to him. We will also talk about how he knows when he’s found a good story, and how he separates fact from legend when he’s doing research. Also, which local history nerd would win a round of Jeopardy! that focuses on Guelph history?
So let’s dig into the story behind Guelph Stories on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/kcxu8i9wm4bgm8em/politicast_may1_2024.mp3You can get your copy of Guelph Stories at The Bookshelf independent bookstore downtown, and at the gift shop of the Guelph Civic Museum. You can also email Butts about getting your copy by sending your order to edpbutts [at] yahoo.com. You can also stay up-to-date, so to speak, with all of Butt’s latest insights into Guelph’s rich and varied history by reading his weekly column at Guelph Today.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If it’s the end of April, then you know it’s time for the annual National Day or Mourning. Although the pandemic is over, it’s worth remembering there was a whole class of workers who had to keep working as it happened, and that meant intentionally putting themselves at risk. This was important, but even before the pandemic, workers across Canada in all sorts of work were taking risks every day, often unknowingly, and they still are.
According to the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada, in 2022, there were 993 workplace fatalities recorded in Canada. Among these deaths were 33 young workers aged 15-24. Now, there are dangerous jobs in the world, jobs that can expose you to dangerous people, or dangerous circumstances, but would you classify climbing a ladder under the category of “dangerous work”? Sometimes the little dangers become big problems with high personal costs.
According to lore, two labour activists were driving to a union meeting in 1983 when they were stopped for a funeral procession. The deceased was a firefighter who died in the line of duty – he died on the job – and they were struck by an idea: Not everyone that is killed on the job is given this kind of remembrance. The Government of Canada legislated the Workers Mourning Day Act in 1990, and since then workers in Canada stop on April 28, and remember colleagues hurt and killed on the job.
Here in 2024, we will be joined by Sarah Neath and Janice Folk-Dawson from the Guelph and District Labour Council. They will talk about the things they think about during the National Day Mourning, the things they hope you’re thinking about, and the things that they want the people in power to think about in order to make sure that fewer people die on the job. Also, they will talk about how affordability plays into issues around worker safety, and their own experiences with workplace safety.
So let’s talk about marking another year of people killed on the job on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/juub4tqpuytjuzyi/politicast_apr24_2024.mp3The local commemoration for the National Day of Mourning is on Sunday April 28 at 1 pm at Goldie Mill Park off Cardigan Street, and that will be followed by a reception at Diana’s Downtown on Upper Wyndham. You can also follow #DayofMourning on social media to stay on top of all the events and all the advocacy that comes along with the issues behind worker safety on the job across Canada. You can follow the Guelph and District Labour Council on Facebook or at their website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Image courtesy of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers.
Doors Open Guelph is one of dozens of similar events across Ontario that celebrates local history and heritage by throwing open the doors to buildings that are typically pretty inaccessible to the general public. There’s no shortage of history and heritage nerds in Guelph who all have their favourites so how are the sites chosen, why are they chosen, and why are these buildings on the 2024 tour?
The Ontario Heritage Trust started organizing Doors Open events around the province in 2002 and Guelph started doing it’s own a few years after that and it’s been a regular appointment every April. Well, almost every April. You might recall that there was a pause in going to strange places four years ago with the COVID-19 pandemic, and while that means there are still no tours of private homes that doesn’t mean there’s no shortage of juicy stops on this year’s tour!
On Saturday April 27, a dedicated group of community volunteers will be ready to receive you at nearly dozen different places around Guelph. You can go from duelling city halls downtown, to the home base of the Guelph Black Heritage Society; from Dublin Street United Church, which is marking their sesquicentennial this year, to the literal end of the line at the mausoleum of Woodlawn Memorial Park. Also, you can blind yourself with science at the Guelph Research and Development Centre on Stone Road!
This week, we’re joined by Susan Ratcliffe, who is one of the organizers of the annual Doors Open Guelph, and she will take us through the program to talk about each property, the secrets it holds, why it was chosen, and what you’re going to see when you get there. We’re also going to discuss how Doors Open is organized, how the program comes together every year, how pandemic concerns are still impacting what appears, and Ratcliffe’s personal, favourite pick from this year’s line-up.
So let’s learn more about these Doors that will Open on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/nwq4z28ic7wms6qs/politicast_apr17_2024.mp3You can take part in Doors Open Guelph at all the locations we discussed on Saturday April 27 from 10 am to 4 pm, and you can get the full of locations and addresses at the City’s website. You can also take part in Doors Open After Dark, which takes place the day before from 5 pm to midnight at the Guelph Civic Museum.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
We’ve heard a lot about tiny homes lately as the housing crisis has gotten worse, but they’ve been a thing for a while. Somehow, it’s both a niche real estate trend, and a new innovation in accommodating Canada’s unhoused population, but it’s the latter that we’re interested in today because we’re going to talk about one of Guelph’s two tiny home projects meant to tackle homelessness.
In Kitchener, there was this idea called A Better Tent City. In 2020, various community partners teamed up to turn an industrial lot into a community of tiny homes that would offer low barrier housing with access to hygiene and sanitation facilities, and connection to services and healthcare on a path to stable housing. It also gave the opportunity for shelter to people who have partners, or companion animals, neither of which are allowed in your typical, traditional shelter.
Kitchener’s success with Tent City has been an inspiration for communities around Ontario and across Canada, and that includes Guelph. Mayor Cam Guthrie used his Strong Mayor Powers to direct City staff to start to develop a plan for A Better Tent City-style encampment, and while that plan is in progress, a group called the Guelph Tiny Homes Coalition announced that they had already starter their own project and they’re out to prove that a housing first solution is the best solution.
Liz Hales, who is one of the organizers of the Guelph Tiny Homes Coalition, joins us to talk about the reasons she wanted to take part in this project as a nurse practitioner, the paradigm changing idea that housing is healthcare, and why having a permanent place to live is key to assuring a property recovery from medical procedures. She will also discuss who all is on this team, what they’re doing right now in terms of organizing, and what kind of help they’re looking for and when they need it.
So let’s talk tiny on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/5284c3/politicast_apr10_2024.mp3To learn more about the Guelph Tiny Homes Coalition, you can go to their website. Under the “Get involved” tab you will find a link to that volunteer form where you can give the group your information and where you want to help out. As for the City of Guelph project there’s a deadline of April 26 to hear from property owners who have land within one kilometre of downtown that they’d like to donate. If this sounds like you, send an email to purchasing [at] guelph.ca.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of A Better Tent City.
HIV/AIDS Resources and Community Health, or ARCH, suddenly announced its closure last week. Losing ARCH impacts a wide variety of people in Guelph and area, whether that’s HIV prevention and care, needle exchanges and harm reduction, or gender affirming and trans healthcare. For these people, ARCH has been the first and only place they could turn for help, so who’s going to fill the void?
The short answer is a team-up of the Guelph Community Health Centre and the AIDS Committee Of Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and Area, otherwise known as ACCKWA (pronounced “aqua”). They have big shoes to fill because ARCH was a pretty huge part of the local healthcare picture for decades, emerging at a time when there was not just a tremendous stigma for people diagnosed with HIV, but when an HIV infection was almost certainly a death sentence.
ARCH was radical at the time of its inception, inclusive, sex-positive, anti-oppressive, and focused on harm reduction as a first line of defense. And for members of the queer community, ARCH was very important, especially in the realm of gender-affirming care because many trans activists will tell you that even in 2024 it’s hard to find a doctor that will take you as you are and not what you were born as biologically. That’s a lot for one group to cover, so we’re getting two!
This week, we’re joined by Guelph CHC executive director Melissa Kwiatkowski, and ACCKWA executive director Ruth Cameron, who are here to talk about logistics. They’ll discuss the changes to the delivery of services formally covered by ARCH, the division of labour between CHC and and ACCKWA, and how new clients needing those services can best access the help they need. Also, we will talk about the ongoing need for HIV/AIDS education and awareness and the growing number of services covered by CHC.
So let’s get into the change face of care in Guelph on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/z4jvbv/politicast_apr3_2024.mp3If you are a patient receiving HIV or gender-affirming care, or if you take part in the needle exchange programs, you shouldn’t notice too much of a change in your service. But if you have any questions or concerns, you can get in touch with Guelph Community Health at 519-821-6638 or info [at] guelphchc.ca, or you can get in touch with ACCKWA at 519-570-3687 or by visiting their website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
The City of Guelph has two goals, one to be a net zero community by 2050 and the other to be 100 per cent powered by renewable energy at the same time, and while 2050 is still a good 26 years away, it’s going to get here sooner than we think. This week, we’re going to go over the climate action report card, how is Guelph doing as we’re trying to turn the tide?
From the moment Guelph city council established their net zero and 100 per cent renewable goals in 2021, local climate activists have been asking to see a plan and interim goals. Guelph has a reputation for being one of the most environmentally-friendly cities in the county, but the devil’s in the details and people have been wanting City Hall to do go beyond bike lanes and electric vehicles.
There’s also a matter of logistics. City hall has been trying to help us out with things like the Guelph Greener Homes program, which offers interest free loans to homeowners to make environmentally-friendly renovations, but that’s only going to help about 600 households; Guelph has 55,000. And then a new controversy arose this week with the Ontario government preparing to override a decision of an Ontario Energy Board, forcing city councils around the province to weigh in.
What a perfect time to be joined again by Evan Ferrari, who is the executive director of eMERGE Guelph, an environmental consultancy. Ferrari will tell us about the current state of Guelph’s conversion to net zero, and how there’s still a lot of work to do. Also, he will talk about how climate action is getting lost in the housing and affordability crisis, and the hiccups in the shift to EVs. And finally, he will look at how the climate deniers have changed the game with new talking points.
So let’s look at where we are in the local climate fight on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/26qi8m/politicast_mar27_2024.mp3You can learn more about the advocacy and services of eMERGE at their website, or by following them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin. You can learn more about the City of Guelph’s Greener Homes program at the City’s website. Also, to learn more about the natural gas decision of the Ontario Energy Debate at council this week, you can catch the meeting coverage on Guelph Politico.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
The last few weeks have been busy news weeks, so on this edition of the podcast we’re going to lift the veil of news gathering and take you behind the scenes to see how ~~the sausage~~ the media gets made. To do that, we’re going to talk to an Ontario cabinet minister about promises, hear from local fire officials about safety, and discuss how best to not get scammed.
First up, we will go back to last Thursday when Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Paul Calandra was in Guelph announcing that we were receiving $4.68 million for our progress in achieving local housing targets. While Calandra was here, he was asked about the premier’s past comments about Guelph and our own desire for the provincial government to take a housing pledge. Hear how he answered.
On that same day, there was a media availability in front of a house on Edinburgh Road South. It was the site of fatal fire last week that cost two people their lives, and it seemed to happened because there was a definite lack of smoke detectors in their home. You will hear from Guelph Fire Chief Brian Arnold and Ontario Fire Marshal Jon Pegg about why you need to put safety first.
And finally, a sneak peak for the next edition of Open Sources Guelph! This is Fraud Prevention Month, which is still happening every March since it was first held now exactly 20 years ago. Sadly, fraud has not gone away and it’s only seemed to become bigger business, and that’s why we wanted to talk to Jeff Horncastle of the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, and you will hear him talk – in part – about how to stay safe from scammers.
So let’s listen to the news as it happened on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/pj8rnj/politicast_mar20_2024.mp3You can learn more about all of these stories on Guelph Politico. You will be able to hear the full interview with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre’s Jeff Horncastle on Open Sources Guelph, which airs tomorrow (Thursday) at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca!
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
As listeners familiar with the work of Guelph Politico are aware, improved transit is a pretty big part of the mission, and more often than not, we’re talking about local transit. But did you know that transit can take you to places outside of Guelph’s urban boundaries? This is somewhat tricky because regional transit, both to and from Guelph, is lacking, and we’re not alone. That’s where a new advocacy group wants to make a difference.
Before looking at the pan regional picture, let’s look at what you have when it comes to getting out of Guelph on a bus or a train. First, you’ve got the Kitchener Line GO Train. Then there are several GO bus routes including ones to Toronto, Milton, Mississauga, Hamilton and Waterloo. There’s also RideWell and the Guelph Owen Sound Transit but almost all those options don’t run on the weekend.
What’s weird is that the demand is clearly there for more service. The Hamilton-Waterloo bus was an immediate success, and social media is littered with pictures of packed bus platforms at the Mount Pleasant GO Station on the weekends as people wait to head further west. Those of us who live at the far end of the GTHA and beyond continue to struggle, and are often left to our own devices to fill the gaps, plus no one’s looking at the broader regional picture…
…Until now. This week, we’re joined by Haadhi Faizal, the founder of the advocacy group, More Transit Southern Ontario, who’s going to talk about the gaps in regional transit, the difficulties of trying to pick your battles when there are so many, and how trying to co-ordinate between the municipal transit systems is part of the problem. He will also talk about building density around transit stations, and how we can get more people involved in the fight for more and better transit.
So let’s talk about more buses and trains on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/kpzkfe/politcast_mar13_2024.mp3You can learn more about More Transit Southern Ontario at their website or by following them on @MoreTransitSO on Twitter and YouTube. In terms of local regional transit expansion, there’s an open house for the business cases to build a rail line connecting Union Station and Cambridge through Guelph on Thursday March 21 from 6 to 8 pm at City Hall. There’s a virtual meeting on Tuesday March 19 too, and you can get all that information at engagewr.ca.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It’s rare these days to work in the same place for over four decades, but when you go to the Guelph Public Library this week you may notice that one long-time face is no longer around. Maybe you didn’t notice because you were so obsessed with the thought of heading into the DVD stacks to find more Denis Villeneuve flicks, high on the hit from Dune: Part Two. If any of this sounds right, this podcast is for you!
First, we will insert a little End Credits action into this show by replaying the definitive ranking of Denis Villeneuve movies pre-Dune from September 2021. The Quebec-born director has risen through the ranks from being the darling of homegrown Canadian cinema to being a major Hollywood filmmaker, but American reviewers ignore those quirky first Canadian flicks. We don’t!
After that, we will re-play our interview with now former-Library CEO Steve Kraft from last September where he talked about his career, why he wanted to become a librarian in the first place, and how technology has changed what a library is all about. He also talked about the Library’s future, from the new building to all the branches, plus he discussed the demand for library programs, and if there’s anything libraries can’t do.
So let’s talk books and movies on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/7xc45z/politicast_march6_2024.mp3The Guelph Public Library Board of Directors has formed a CEO recruitment committee and they will be dedicated to hiring a new CEO sometime later this year. Dune Part Two is no in theatres everywhere and you can listen to the full review on this week’s episode of End Credits.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
One of the problems covering issues of homelessness in the media is that it’s hard to find people to be the face of those issues. You see this in just about every news story, “person X is experiencing issue A”; it’s a way of personalizing the issue and making it relatable to the audience, and it’s one of the reasons why the homelessness crisis is so unrelatable. That’s where Greg Dorval entered the picture a few weeks ago.
As government representatives and social services agencies got together for a two-day Health and Housing Symposium at the Delta Hotel and Conference Centre, Dorval pitched a tent in the back of the Wellington County Administrative Centre. Dorval had decided to become an ambassador for the people living rough in Guelph, and his point was clear: We’re here, and we need assistance greater than what’s been received.
Dorval also set up shop in advance of a special meeting of city council, one that discussed a new bylaw that regulated the use of public spaces on City-owned property. Developed in 11 days, City of Guelph staff felt like they were trying to walk a fine line between human rights and safety concerns, but people living rough and their advocates saw it as an attack on people who had no place to go. Dorval was one of the delegates at that meeting, but he still has more to say.
On this edition of the pod, we catch up with Dorval as he talks about how he felt sitting through the rest of the meeting, and trying to find some peace of mind when people are saying unkind things about people living rough. He will also talk about his initial uncertain interactions with Wellington County staff and how he turned that into a path forward on the issues. And finally, he will talk about the need for continuity of care, and how we wants this to be the last winter anyone lives in a tent in Guelph.
So let’s hear more from Greg Dorval on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/j6jh2y/politicast_feb28_2024.mp3Greg Dorval continues to take up residence in St. George’s Square to demonstrate for more assistance for people who are unhoused. The City of Guelph’s Public Spaces Use Bylaw is on hold for the time being, and there will be a third day of the City and County’s housing symposium that will be open to public participating sometime in April. Thanks to Bry Webb and Christopher Currie at CFRU for setting up time in studio to record in studio even as a band warmed up!
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
When the Ontario Legislature resumed sitting this week, Guelph MPP Mike Schreiner wasn’t sitting alone as the only Green member. The fact that Aislinn Clancy won handily in Kitchener Centre might be a sign that people are interested in listen to Green ideas, and the Legislature will get a chance to show they they’re listening next week by sending Schreiner’s private member’s bill to committee and naturally, he thinks they should!
Bill 156, the Homes You Can Afford in Communities You Love Act, changes planning rules province-wide to allow for fourplexes and four story apartments in neighbourhoods and allow for mid-rise buildings ranging from six to 11 stories on transit corridors and main streets. The bill would also let these changes stands by not allowing them to be taken to the Ontario Land Tribunal for review, a process that can delay projects for years. It would be a game changer.
Now, some of this work is being done on the local level, Guelph included. But you’ll hear from Schreiner this week that while these are positive developments, it’s hard to make permanent planning changes one municipality at a time, especially when they can be appealed to the OLT. So doesn’t it make sense to change it province-wide all at the same time? Schreiner is banking on the idea that it does, and this week, he’s going to try and sell it to you on this very podcast.
Schreiner will talk about his thoughts on how the housing crisis got this bad, the elevator pitch for the bill, and why he thinks it’s a good compromise to create density while maintaining neighbourhood character. We will also talk about municipal politics with planning, and how the bill tries to prevent NIMBYism. He will discuss “sharing the pain”, the other factors in housing like labour and the economy, and Schreiner’s expectations for the debate next week.
So let’s talk about Schreiner’s bill with the author himself on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/axeakb/politicast_feb21_2024.mp3You can learn more about Bill 156, the Homes You Can Afford in Communities You Love Act, at the Green Party of Ontario’s website. As you heard, Bill 156 will come up for second reading next Wednesday, February 28, in the Ontario Legislature, which returned to work yesterday for the opening of the winter sitting.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Google, TuneIn and Spotify.
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It’s one week till the Big Book Sale, the annual event that the Friends of the Guelph Public Library was created to administer over 15 years ago. It was a fundraising project launched to show… More
This year, Guelph Public Library CEO Steve Kraft is celebrating 40 years as a dedicated employee of the Guelph Library, rising through the proverbial ranks – or is that stacks – from the counter in… More
This weekend is Labour Day, and boy is there labour activity these days. From the Canadian Media Guild workers at TVO to employees at Toronto area Metro grocery stores to municipal workers in Cochrane Ontario,… More
It happened again on the August long weekend. Offload delays at the Guelph General Hospital created some long line-ups for ambulances, and a couple of days before that there was another Code Red. The story… More
In August, there’s usually no council business to talk about but there are unusual times so on the same day the annual mid-year council recap goes live we get a super-unusual August council meeting. In… More
“Hot enough for ya?” A charming conversation starter in summers past, but here in August 2023 it seems more like a damning curse. Last month was the hottest month on the planet in a few… More
“John Galt, novelist, colonial promoter. Galt was superintendent of the Canada Company, a colonization company created to settle part of Upper Canada. During that time, he founded the town of Guelph (1827); the town of… More
As you may know, Ontario has set the goal of building 1.5 million houses by 2031, and Guelph’s share is 18,000, but there’s a difference between setting a goal and having the means to reach… More
Dhwani, which in the Gujarati-language means “The Voice” or “The Sound”, launched back in March and it immediately tested a few assumptions. Could you successfully start a newspaper in the year 2023? Is there an… More
There’s been a lot of discussion around the council table lately about the future of cycling in Guelph and whether or not staff and council are serious enough about taking on the challenge, and some… More
For decades, Crime Stoppers has offered itself as a kind of investigative middleman: If you didn’t want to go to the police yourself for whatever reason, you could leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers… More
Coming out of the pandemic, the future of sports and recreation has been top of mind because we were all encouraged to get outdoors during the lockdowns. It was the safest, and in some cases… More
Last Friday, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark announced that so-called Strong Mayor powers were being extended to 26 of Ontario’s biggest cities, including Guelph. The move was not shocking, and going back… More
You may know Mike Ashkewe. You might have read his insightful columns at the Guelph Mercury Tribune, or you might have heard him on the radio talking about video games and pop culture, or you… More
The business of managing the City of Guelph goes beyond the confines of the council chambers, so starting this year Guelph Politico has expanded its meeting coverage to nine local boards and shared services committees.… More
June 1 marks the start of meteorological summer and that sunny and warm weather makes you want to go into the water. You’re also – hopefully – putting on sunscreen in order to reduce the risk of skin cancer, but in the last few years there’s been some reason to question whether sunscreen is as safe for our waterways even while it protects you from UV light. Should everyone still be free to wear sunscreen?
In fall 2020 there was a study out of the University of Alberta that suggested that the active ingredients found in sunscreen have detrimental effects on freshwater ecosystems. The researchers exposed water fleas, Daphnia magna to be more precise, to three common ingredients in sunscreen and the results showed that exposure to ultraviolet filters (UVFs) over a 48-hour period prevented the fleas from navigating through their environment.
This was kind of a big deal. Other studies showed that ultraviolet filters were having an effect on very sensitive sea water life forms like coral, but these are water fleas, one of the most common creatures found in almost every freshwater everywhere; if they’re feeling the effects of sunscreen ingredients leaching from people’s skin, then what is the total environmental impact from UVFs? That same team has been working on answering that question, and they recently released new findings.
The lead author of both studies, Aaron Boyd, is the guest on this week’s podcast. Boyd’s a grad student and researcher in the Department of Biology at the University of Alberta, and he will tell you about the ingredients in sunscreen, the difference between studying the effects of sunscreen in salt water versus freshwater, and why Daphnia magna are the chosen test subjects for these experiments. Also, where will the research go next and is it okay to wear sunscreen without killing a lake?
So let’s talk about sunscreen on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/ehe3bm/politicast_may31_2023.mp3This is a link to an article on the University of Alberta for the original 2020 study and this link will take you to an article about the latest research. For the scientifically literate, you can read the original research paper published in the March issue of the Journal of Hazardous Materials. TL;DR – It’s definitely okay to wear sunscreen while you’re out there having summer fun. Don’t leave home without it.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
We’re coming up on the end of the first year of the Ford government’s second term, and it’s been a highly consequential year if you work in one of Ontario’s 444 municipalities. At times, it felt like there was an announcement every week about some change to how cities conduct oversight or run their own planning processes. It’s enough to make you ask, “what will happen next?” and last week we got the answer.
It’s called Bill 112, the Hazel McCallion Act, and it will turn the three municipalities in Peel Region into three independent entities: Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon. On the surface, this kind of makes sense; Mississauga is Canada’s sixth biggest city, and Brampton is the ninth; on the other hand, interfering with Ontario cities has seemed to be the Ford government’s raison d’etre, and now it’s being done in the name of solving the provincial housing crisis.
Housing is supposedly the reason for a lot of these changes, from Bill 23 to the dissolution of Peel Region. It’s the idea that government red tape is getting in the way of more housing starts, and if more government equals more red tape, then getting rid of government should make it easier to get houses built. Is the tangled web of municipal governance in Ontario really the source of all our housing troubles?
We put this hypothesis to the test this week with Andrew Sancton, a professor emeritus of Political Science at University of Western Ontario. He’s going to talk about the history of municipal governance in Ontario, and how we ended up with regional governments in some places. He will also talk about whether or not the time has come to give cities more autonomy, and what may come from the pending review of the other regional governments in Ontario, even after they already did one.
So let’s talk about the supposed problem with local governance on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/yhgjiv/politicast_may24.mp3Bill 112 has passed first reading but there’s just two weeks left in the spring sitting of the Legislature, so it may not get passed before the house rises on June 8. The Government of Ontario has set the date of January 1, 2025 as the first day of an independent Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon. An announcement will be coming soon about the appointment of regional facilitators to assess other regional governments.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If you’ve ever been downtown on a Friday night from November to April, then you know how much of the action is centralized around the Sleeman Centre. The Guelph Storm have been a local institution since their inaugural season in 1994, a Friday night beacon for Royal City hockey fans, so in honour of all that, we’ll talk to the man who turned the Dukes of Hamilton into Guelph’s team.
Mike Kelly became the first general manager of the Guelph Storm in 1991, and by the 1994-95 season the team finished first in the OHL, which was an accomplishment that won him the distinction of being voted the OHL Executive of the Year. Two years later, the Storm made it to their first ever Memorial Cup though they ended up losing the OHL Championship. The Peterborough Petes won that year, but they were also hosting the Cup.
Kelly moved on from the Storm in 1997 for different gigs in the OHL, and overseas with the Alleghe Hockey Club in Italy, but he came back to Guelph in 2010 where he helped lead the team to one more OHL championship and Memorial Cup appearance in 2014. He retired from hockey completely in 2017 but he took to the ice at the Sleeman Centre last month to be honoured after the announcement that we was joining the Guelph Sports Hall of Fame with four other local sports legends.
But for our purposes, we’re focusing on Kelly, who talks to us about how it feels to end up in his second Hall of Fame, and how his two loves, hockey and education, informed everything he’s done in his career. He will also talk about his best day as the Storm’s general manager, and the worst day. Plus, did he know which Storm players would go on to have a future in hockey, and how did he manage it when it turns out they didn’t? Also, does he still follow the Storm in retirement?
So let’s talk about local hockey history on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/crfrps/politicast_may17_2023.mp3The 2023 Guelph Sports Hall of Fame Induction and Kiwanis Sports Celebrity Dinner is tonight, Wednesday May 17, at the Italian Canadian Club. All of this year’s inductees will then be immortalized on the wall at the Sleeman Centre with all current members of the Hall of Fame, and you can learn more about the Hall here. The Guelph Storm are done for the season, but you can stay connected to the team at their website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of the Guelph Storm.
There are about 1,700 food-based businesses across the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph region, and they all get regularly inspected, but sometimes accidents happen, just like it did last month at a luncheon for International Women’s Day at an Orangeville hotel and conference centre. We’ve made it through the COVID-19 health emergency, but what happens when the health crisis is something we ate?
On March 8th, Family Transition Place in Orangeville held their annual International Women’s Day Celebration Luncheon, and for the first time in three years it was in-person. The venue was the Best Western Plus Orangeville Inn & Suites, the number of guests was in the neighbourhood of 244, and at some point during the event, people started getting sick.
By 2:30 that afternoon, the reports started coming in. People were sick with various symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, and nausea and the likely source was something they ate at the luncheon, food prepared by an outside caterer used by the hotel. In all, 88 people said that they experienced symptoms, and eventually the culprit was identified as Bacillus cereus. It was on the quinoa and sweet potato in the chicken bowl, but how did Public Health put it all together?
Paul Medeiros, who is a Manager of Environmental Health at Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, will walk us step-by-step through the investigative process, from the reporting, to the investigation, to the testing, and the conclusions. We will talk about the ways that Public Health prepares for these crises, whether there’s more general awareness about public health in these now post-pandemic times, and how new food-based businesses are making the job of food inspectors harder. Plus, what happens next time?
So let’s talk about investigating a lunch gone bad on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/2utrss/politicast_may10_2023.mp3You can check out Medeiros’ report in the May Board of Health meeting package at the Public Health website, or you can see Guelph Politico’s coverage of the meeting for the relevant links. Mangez!, Guelph Politico’s dine safe guide, still gets published at the first and 16th of every month, but if you just can’t wait, can see all the latest inspection results here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Sandwiched between May Day and Cinco de Mayo in the first week in May is Star Wars Day, May the 4th. It’s a portmanteau, “May the Force be with you” becomes May the 4th be with you. May the 4th. Star Wars is more than a good time at the movies for some people, but what drives someone to spend hours studying pictures and videos to figure out how to make movie accurate Stormtrooper costumes?
You can call what the 501st Legion does cosplay, but that’s actually too simplistic in their case because they have standards. Their costumes aren’t just sorta accurate, they are screen accurate and if you’re going to be an official member of the 501st Legion you have to measure up. Now it’s not a contest, the community is very welcoming and helpful if you want to join up, but the point is that these people take their fandom seriously.
The 501st is more than 4,000 members strong with garrisons across the U.S. and around the world, including the Canadian Garrison, which launched in 1999 and has over 200 active members. They show up at charity events, fundraisers, movie premieres, parades, promotional events, and conventions, and, as you can imagine, May the 4th is basically their Christmas. This week, we’re joined by Santa.
Jim Sobota, who is the C.O. of the Canadian Garrison of the 501st Legion, will talk to us about how he got involved in the organization, and what he finds appealing about dressing up as a Stormtrooper. He also talk about the difficulty level making movie-accurate Star Wars costumes, and how various members choose the costumes they make. Also, Sobota discusses what type of event he would like to do but hasn’t done yet, and his favourite Star Wars movie or series.
So let’s see if the Fourth is with us on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/hdkds2/politicast_may3_2023.mp3To learn more about the 501st Legion, go to their website. You will be able to see the Legion this week in-person on Thursday at the REC Room in Toronto, at the LEGO Store in Yorkdale on Friday, and at Heroes Cards and Comics in London and GNU Books in Oshawa on Saturday for Free Comic Book Day. The 501st Legion won’t be there, but you can take part in Free Comic Book Day festivities at The Dragon in Downtown Guelph on Saturday.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
If it’s the end of April, then it’s time for the Workers’ Day of Mourning. For 40 years, workers across the country have stopped to remember those who lost their lives on the job and to inspire workers to fight to prevent further tragedies. It’s widely considered a rare opportunity to make a point that only sometimes penetrates our common narrative: Are all workplaces as healthy and safe as they could be, and are they equally safe for everyone?
According to the WSIB Ontario, the number one workplace injury in 2021 and 2022 was sprains and strains. The second? COVID-19. CUPE Ontario notes that workers are “facing increased pressure to ‘get back to normal’”, and interestingly, workers have gotten “back to normal” in one very specific and disappointing way according to the WSIB… There were 255,318 claims in 2022, which is about 2,000 short of the 10-year high in 2019, right before the start of COVID.
In the wake of the pandemic, which despite what you may have heard is still not technically over, the pressure on workers, and the pressure to look out for their own health and safety, is immense. Staffing pressures are forcing workers to put in more hours, and increased workloads make it harder to focus on the so-called little things, like whether the work your doing is dangerous, or even if you’re qualified to do it. And what ever happened to 10 sick days?
This week, we will examine that and other questions with the President of CUPE Ontario Fred Hahn, and co-chair of CUPE’s Health and Safety Committee Brittany Nesbitt. They will talk about their personal thoughts on this year’s Day of Mourning, what health and safety issues they’re seeing right now, and the ongoing health and safety impacts from COVID-19. Plus, they will talk about empowering workers to look out for their rights and their concerns about the relaxing of child labour laws in some U.S. states.
So let’s talk health and safety on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/r9h4nz/politicast_apr26_2023.mp3The Workers’ Day of Mourning is this Friday April 28. The Guelph commemoration hosted by the Guelph & District Labour Council takes place at Goldie Mill Park at 5:30 pm with local labour historian Bonnie Durtnall as the special guest speaker. You can learn about all the various CUPE campaigns and work actions at their website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
This has been an exceptionally busy week for the City of Guelph’s planning department. As the staff were getting for the final approval of the new Comprehensive Zoning Bylaw this week – the first update in nearly 30 years, remember – the Government of Ontario dropped their decision on Official Plan Amendment #80, the latest version of Guelph’s Official Plan. It never rains, but it pours!
Cities, towns and villages all over Ontario were required to file updates to their Official Plan before last year’s municipal elections, and Guelph was one them. But because the Ontario government had an election last summer, it’s created a kind of backlog at the ministry, so even though Guelph passed OPA80 last summer, we only just got the provincial approval last week.
In all there were 18 changes, and none of them can be appealed because the last word goes to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. The most controversial part of the decision was that the skyline of Downtown Guelph can now max out at 23 storeys, which has provoked a lot of doom and gloom scenarios in the news and on social media, but that’s an oversimplification. Today, we’re going to dig a bit deeper.
To help us, we’re joined by the City of Guelph’s General Manager of Planning and Building Services Krista Walkey and the City’s Manager of Policy Planning and Urban Design Melissa Aldunate. They’re going to talk about the impact of the changes on various other pieces of Guelph planning business and the complexity of planning downtown beyond the maximum building height. They’ll also discuss why Guelph has limited options around major transit stations, and why you don’t need to worry about Guelph growing beyond its borders in the immediate future.
So let’s get the 4-1-1 on OPA #80 on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/a3k7e7/politicast_april19_2023.mp3You can see the decision on OPA80 from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing here, and you can see the staff memo on the decision that was provided in a council information report here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
When we’re talking about the housing crisis we frequently talk to activists or government representatives. This is understandable, but there are a lot of pieces to the housing puzzle and we don’t lean on all of them equally, and in so much as we want to vilify the people who take part in the open housing market that so many of us are priced out of, we still need them if we’re going to have a hope in developing solutions to the crisis.
So where do realtors fit in? Where do they see themselves in developing solutions to this housing crisis? Do they even think about it at all? Well, one realtor definitely does, and she even wrote about it on her website. Kelly Caldwell confesses that she’s not an expert in municipal politics, but she put together an eight-point plan that even got the mayor talking about some of her ideas.
And some of Caldwell’s ideas might surprise you: Fund housing assistance programs, increase wages and introduce universal basic income (UBI), increase protections for renters, allow for something call community land trusts, and initiate reforms of the real estate industry itself. Interesting thoughts, but more broadly speaking, what is the responsibility of people working in the market to help solve the housing crisis? What is the responsibility of realtors specifically?
Caldwell joins us on this pod to explore these and other questions. She will talk about why she wanted to start writing about the housing crisis, and what role she sees people working in real estate playing to help solve the problem. She will also talk about whether her industry is equipped to deal with a system in crisis, and why wanting your investment in housing to pay off is about more than just greed. Plus, Caldwell will offer her advice for home buyers and sellers alike in this market, even if they don’t want to hear it.
So let’s get another view of the housing crisis on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/4i9kda/politicast_apr12_2023.mp3You can find Kelly Caldwell at her website, and you can also find her blog posts there including her latest one called simply “NIMBY in Guelph”. You can also find her contact information there if you wish to engage her services as a realtor, and you can also find her on social media @RealtorKellyCaldwell on Facebook and @kcaldwell on Twitter.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Pickleball is huge. Don’t believe it? Consider this line from a recent CNN Business story: “The number of people playing pickleball [in the U.S.] grew by 159 per cent over three years to 8.9 million in 2022.” Here in Canada, a survey by Pickleball Canada last year showed that eight per cent of Canadian households have one pickleball player who plays the game at least once a month. This is a growing trend too.
That’s why members of the Pickleball Guelph Association delegated to the budget confirmation meeting in January. Their concern is having too many members and not enough space, plus there’s no dedicated pickleball courts in Guelph. The game’s being played on tennis and badminton courts, which are different games with their own rules and regulations despite the fact that they’re all games with rackets and nets.
But more than the personal enjoyment of local pickleball players, groups like the PGA are making pickleball the centre of a plan to draw tourism to the region by hosting tournaments. There’s no doubt that pickleball is a growing sport, and that it has more room to grow since it’s unisex, all-ages and family-friendly, but is pickleball the next big thing, or are we sitting on a pickleball bubble? To get a better handle on these, and other questions, we go to the source…
This week, we’re joined by PGA members Rick Thompson, Ryan Thompson and Susan McDaid who will tell us pickleball’s origin story, how each of them found their way to the sport and why they combined their efforts with others to form the Pickleball Guelph Association. They will also talk about co-ordinating with other pickleball groups across Canada, and how advocacy is a double-edged sword in terms of encouraging more people to get into a game that’s struggling to manage the numbers it already has.
So let’s talk about the pickleball revolution on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/sdxyaw/politicast_apr5_2023.mp3The PGA’s next intro to pickleball session is sold out, but you can email the PGA at info [at] pickleballguelph.com to learn how you might be able to get involved. Indoor pickleball games hosted by the PGA are played Saturday nights and they’re adding a new night on Tuesday starting on April 11. You can learn more about pickleball in Guelph by going to the PGA’s website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo Courtesy of Guelph Wellington Seniors Association.
James Gordon decided last year that eight years on city council was enough and that he would step away to return to his first love, music. Of course, Gordon never really left music to take part in local politics; all the while he was on council he was still touring and still releasing new music as a city councillor, but can he now quit politics so easily? We’re going to find out…
Before his successful elections to Guelph City Council in 2014 and 2018, and even before his first political run as the local NDP candidate in 2011, Gordon was an accomplished singer, songwriter, producer, and instrumentalist. He was also a successful activist and community organizer; he co-founded the Hillside Festival, the Canadian Songwriters’ Festival, the Guelph Civic League, the Guelph Arts Platform, and Wellington Water Watchers.
Last May, Gordon announced that his formal career in politics was at an end. He wanted to make more space on council for a new generation of leadership, which meant embracing his musical career again, the Other James Gordon as it were, and this week he’s having an official launch for not just one, but two different books. So is this the official relaunch of Gordon the musician. It could be, but has he really been able to leave politics behind?
On this week’s podcast, we’ll learn if Gordon still feels compelled to keep an eye on council business, and how it feels like to be on the outside again after all those years on the inside. He will also talk about picking up where he left off with his music, being on the road again, and how he’s been able to cope with the changes to the music business in the age of streaming. Plus, Gordon will talk about his new activist work abroad, and whether he’s done with politics for good.
So let’s talk to the other James Gordon on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/y43dj3/politicast_mar29_2023.mp3You can find links to Gordon’s music and other projects, as well as a list of upcoming tour dates on his website. Gordon will be holding his double book launch tonight at the Bookshelf Cinema starting at 7 pm, tickets are $10 at the door. If you’d like to learn more about the efforts to build a health clinic in Ciruko in the Democratic Republic of Congo there’s a GoFundMe page where you can learn more.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo By Trina Koster.
We’ve always thought of Guelph as a uniquely artsy place, but is that still the case? Like with just about every aspect of life, COVID-19 had an effect on the arts; it’s hard to get out and see a band, or a local theatrical production, or to take part in a local festival when there’s no going outside. But as we recover from COVID we’re learning that the pandemic is not the only pressure point on the arts and local artists.
This is where we talk about the ubiquitous housing crisis because the average income for an emerging artist is, well, not a lot. If it’s hard for someone who makes a good living to find somewhere to live in Guelph, imagine how hard it is for someone who works part-time so that they can spend much of the rest of their time on their craft. Of course, but it’s not just about a place to live either, what about cheap rehearsal or studio space?
The issues around physical space are one of the things that are having an effect on local arts and artists, and as we head into prime festival season in the spring and summer, it makes sense to take account with an expert. This week, we will engage the expertise of Paul Barson, who is a quadruple threat as a member of the Downtown Theatre Project, organizer for Guelph Fringe, lead singer of the Vanishers, and a director on the Guelph Arts Council’s board.
Barson sits at the intersection of local music, the performing arts and arts administration so he’s the perfect person to have an honest discussion about Guelph’s arts scene. We’re going to talk about how far back the present challenges to local arts go, and how much of the blame for those challenges goes to COVID-19. We will also talk about the role of the arts council, whether or not there needs to be a combined advocacy from Guelph’s arts groups, and whether we’re on the verge of a local arts renaissance.
So let’s talk about the state of the arts on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/d625md/politicast_mar22_2023.mp3The next performance of the Downtown Theatre Project is Venus in Fur from May 24-28 at the Red Brick Cafe and you can learn more about the group here. The Guelph Fringe Festival will return on August 10-13 and you can learn more the festival here. You can listen to the music of the Vanishers on Apple Music and Spotify, and you can subscribe to the Guelph Arts Council newsletter at their website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of the Guelph Fringe Festival.
It was this week three years ago when the City of Guelph announced that they were closing all their public facilities, when the University of Guelph started sending all students in residents home, when all Guelph students started online learning, and every business in town, except for the most essential, closed their doors. It was start of the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, and three years later we still have questions.
First, let’s think about how far we’ve come. In less than a year we had vaccines emerge that offered reasonably good protection from the virus. We were also able to emerge out of lockdown thanks to the public’s willingness to take sensible precautions like masking and physical distancing. Was the response perfect? No, one lockdown turned into two and three and even four, but there was a heartening collective response for the greater good.
But then something changed in the last year. The mandates and protections started going away, but the virus did not. Cases locally have not gone under 100 since mid-fall 2021, and Guelph’s once commendable 90 per cent rate of full-vaccinated has now fallen to less than 30 per cent as people are failing to keep up with boosters. Outbreaks are still being reported in long-term care homes, but completely gone is the urgency and sense of community. So are we done with COVID even though it’s not done with us?
That’s one of the questions we’ll consider on this personal edition of the podcast that will dare to ask all the COVID-19 questions you might only ever think about. Why have we given up on masking and vaccines even though the virus is still among us? Was “zero COVID” only ever a pipe dream and did someone mislead us about that? What are people with disabilities and medical complications supposed to make of our disinterest fighting COVID? And what does a “steady” number of COVID cases mean for the future?
So let’s talk about COVID-19 on it’s third birthday on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/uxuxhy/politicast_mar15_2023.mp3You can still get the weekly local case count and long-term trends about the spread of COVID-19 at the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health dashboard and it’s updated every Wednesday morning. WDG Medical Officer of Health Dr. Nicola Mercer will be our guest on this week’s episode of Open Sources Guelph Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It was about this time back in 2019 that Guelph and Wellington County were announced as the winners of the Smart Cities Challenge. The challenge was to develop a circular food economy that was going to reduce food waste, promote sustainable food development, and increase access to nutritious food and produce. By many metrics, the project has been a success, so what happens when the funds run out this year?
To start the Smart Cities Office, Our Food Future, Guelph and Wellington County got $10 million from the Federal government, and they nearly doubled that investment between an additional $17 million from various sources plus almost $2 million from in-kind donations. That money has, among other things, diverted over 86,000 tonnes of food waste, turned nearly 76,000 tonnes of food waste into new products, and saved over 116,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
Not too shabby, but the primary funding for Our Food Future runs out in December. A February report to the Committee of the Whole explained that the Our Food Future office is on track to deliver on all its milestones; some projects will come to their natural conclusion while others will end up under the umbrella of one of Our Food Future’s many community partners. But will there still be an actual Our Food Future office in 2024, and what happens to all that work if there isn’t?
David Messer, who is the executive director of Our Food Future, joins us this week to talk about that. He will discuss the accomplishments of Our Food Future, how the pandemic might have helped accelerate the goals of the project, and the office’s usefulness creating one place for anyone interested in the circular economy to collaborate. He will also talk about the long-term impacts of Our Food Future and why the office won’t just disappear before New Year’s Eve at the end of the year.
So let’s talk about the future of Our Food Future on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/ayvepu/politicast_march8_2023.mp3You can find out more about Our Food Future at their website. There’s also been two different reports about the work of Our Food Future presented in the last month, one to Guelph Committee of the Whole and the other to the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Board of Health just last week, and you can see the coverage of both those meetings here on Guelph Politico.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
The weather has been pretty good reminding us this past week that winter is dangerous, especially when driving on snowy icy streets. That’s why we salt, but the evidence is building that we salt our roads too much and it’s had a profoundly negative impact on our rivers and streams. So are we sacrificing our water quality for winter road safety, and is there a way that we can have both?
It was about two years ago that a study was released in the journal Facets that found levels of salt in rivers and streams exceeded federal exposure guidelines in 89 per cent of samples from four different watersheds in the greater Toronto area, and that one-third of the studied sites showed that one-quarter of all species are impacted. The real concerning part though was these sample were taken in the proverbial dog days of summer, late July and August.
If salt levels are hitting dangerous levels in summer, what must they look like in the winter with all the winter maintenance? Or what happens in a winter like this, where we get a winter storm, lay down salt, and then watch it wash away with a rise in temperatures, melting and then rain before starting the process all over again? Lauren Lawson, who’s an ecologist, conservation scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto, will try and answer those questions.
Lawson joins us on this week’s podcast to talk about our history with road salt, why high salt levels are so dangerous to waterways and animal life, and why it’s so dangerous to human beings as well. She will also discuss why the salt levels are so surprisingly high in the summer, and whether or not the damage to the environment is reversible. And finally, she will talk about best salt management practices, and how Lawson made this problem her academic life’s work.
So let’s talk about things getting too salty out there on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/cqdqda/politicast_mar1_2023.mp3You can watch a webinar Lawson hosted for Watershed Canada here, plus you can check out this info sheet with facts and information about proper and sustainable use of road salt. You can also find the City of Guelph’s own salt management plan on the City’s website, and you can follow Lawson on Twitter and through her website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Thursday marks one-year since the official end of the “Freedom Convoy”, a series of protests against COVID protection measures, vaccine mandates and lockdowns that paralyzed downtown Ottawa and border crossings at Windsor and Coutts for weeks. Yes, the Convoy flamed out, but the complex web of thoughts and ideas behind the Convoy are still out there.
The images from the Freedom Convoy, especially in the Ottawa Capital Region around Parliament Hill, are pretty indelible. You might think about the appearance of Nazi regalia or the party atmosphere with people in hot tubs, or people moving around jerry cans filled with diesel, or trucks and vehicles running all hours of the day. Still, the average Canadian had no idea how the Freedom Convoy came about, or how online radicalization turned into full blown civil disturbance I.R.L.
This week, we’re joined by a few of the people connecting those dots at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies, an independent think tank dedicated to the critical study of the far-right in Canada. This panel includes Dr. Luc Cousineau, the co-director of research who studies gender and power; Dr. Amy Mack, the other co-director of research who focuses on how social media radicalizes people into entho-nationalism and white supremacy; and Kathleen Mah, a research fellow investigating critical public health and anti-mask groups.
This distinguished panel joins us to talk about their immediate academic reaction to the Convoy, and how they’ve been tracking the groups and leaders after the Convoy was broken up a year ago. They will also discuss how we can use education without being accused of indoctrination, and how real problems feed into far-right extremism without presenting any real solutions, And finally, they will talk about the responsibility that politicians have in spreading information whether they’re pro- or anti-Convoy.
So let’s talk about the future of the Convoy, even if there is no Convoy, on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/y9rizs/politicast_feb22_2023.mp3You can learn more about the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies at their website, or on Twitter. You can read the report from the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency at their website, and we will be discussing it on this week’s Open Sources Guelph on Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It hasn’t gotten any better. Last year about this time, the news was grim with stories about the banning of certain books, political influence on what’s being taught in schools, and rhetorical fist fights on whether library material is appropriate given the subject matter. What little difference a year makes because Freedom to Read Week rises again with more threats against Free Expression.
You might have heard the news about some of the things going on in Florida with the passage of legislation like the “Stop Woke” Act, which has seen entire libraries boxed up at schools, or Gov. Ron DeSantis’ conservative takeover of a small liberal arts college. But this is not a Florida phenomenon, or even an American one. Here in Canada several anti-woke politicians ran for school boards last fall, and the Government of Alberta’s been recently accused of interference at Athabasca University.
So just in time for all this news is Freedom to Read Week, an annual endeavour from the Book and Periodical Council that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Last year, Shelagh Paterson, the executive director of the Ontario Library Association, joined us to contextualize some of these issues which are still ongoing 12 months later.
So this week we will revisit Paterson’s appearance on the podcast in 2022, and you will hear her talk about the meaning of intellectual freedom and freedom of expression, as well as censorship, and how we can deal with the misinformation and disinformation landscape without censorship. Paterson will also talk about how not all libraries are created equally, the digital divide in terms of access to information, and the other kinds of barriers that should remind us that not everyone’s access to information is equal.
So let’s talk again about Freedom Read Week issues in this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/dvezqs/politicast_feb15_2023_repeat.mp3Freedom to Read Week runs from February 19 to 25 this year, and you can find all sorts of materials here. You can also click here to learn more about the Ontario Library Association. If you want to cut out the proverbial middle man, you can visit your local branch of Guelph Public Library, and they can probably point you in the right direction of some challenging materials.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Picking up where we left off in January, council will continue with their review and refresh of the Strategic Plan. This work will guide the business corporation for the next four years in terms of goals, and the funding to reach those goals through the multi-year budget. Budgeting will be one of the things we focus on at this meeting as we march closer to July and the approval of the new plan!
NOTE #1: Since this meeting is a workshop there are no delegation opportunities at these meetings.
NOTE #2: In addition to appearing in-person, this meeting will also be live-streamed on the City of Guelph’s website here.
Strategic Plan Refresh: Workshop with City Council #2 – Continuing with the city council-approved refresh of the Strategic Plan, the horseshoe will take another step forward in the process. At this workshop, council will go over the connection between the Strategic Plan and multi-year budgeting, and then dig into a review of the strategic pillars and the objectives.
In terms of that second part, council will consider each of the strategic pillars on their own and in connection to each other. They will review each pillar’s goal statement and objectives and consider what’s missing from the pillars, if they’re meeting the City’s most pressing needs, and how best to implement a plan to meet those goals and answer those needs. Council’s feedback will then be incorporated into the consultant’s work to refine the new pillars, and this work will be refined further when council meets for their next engagement session in March.
SEE THE COMPLETE AGENDA ON THE CITY OF GUELPH WEBSITE HERE.
The story is familiar at this point: A Code Red is called, and there are no ambulances available to respond to an emergency. It’s a piece of the healthcare puzzle that doesn’t get a lot of attention; we sit up when we hear the words “Code Red”, or when we see those line-ups of ambulances on social media, but the problems are ongoing, and in many ways they’re the same problems affecting other aspects of our healthcare system.
A couple of weeks ago, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) local 231 posted a picture of a long line of ambulances on Delhi Street. The message was that the same sort of burnout previously discussed with doctors, nurses and other hospital workers are affecting paramedics. They burnout too! If you and your colleagues are doing 9,400 hours of overtime, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched to think that some paramedics might be wanting a career change.
You don’t hear about these issues as loudly from the paramedics point of view when compared to nurses or doctors though, so it takes some doing to get that first hand perspective. How are the people who man – so to speak – our ambulances dealing with this current healthcare crisis? Today we fix that by talking to Nick Di Ruzza, the president of the OPSEU Local 231, who take us behind the scenes of the Code Red state of emergency.
Di Ruzza will talk about what a day in the life of a paramedic looks like both before COVID-19 and today, and he will also talk about Paramedics Services’ success despite their challenges. He will tell us about the human resources issues his local is trying to overcome, and how paramedics approach standards of care beyond answering emergency calls. Later, he will discuss the problems around doing advocacy on behalf of paramedics, support from management and what the community can all do to help.
So let’s make room for paramedics in the healthcare discussion on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/9cjnka/politicast_feb8_2023.mp3You can follow OPSEU Local 231 on Twitter. Guelph Wellington Paramedic Services Chief Stephen Dewar has been delivering a monthly report about the demands on the service at the Wellington County Social Services Committee Meeting, and the next one’s in March. To learn more about our local paramedic service, you can find them under the “Living” section of the City of Guelph website or on Twitter.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
For this first new podcast of 2023, let’s clear the air. In the process of going non-stop, 52 weeks a year on all the issues that come at us on a regular basis, how often do we just stop and take stock? How can we keep up with everything and not get caught in the undertow? How can we overcome that feeling that we’re not doing enough and stay hopeful in an ever changing world?
Let’s stop and think about where we are on Wednesday February 1, 2023. The pandemic isn’t over, even if we’re pretty much acting like it’s over. We have issues with homelessness and mental health, but despite a community-wide response it feels like we’re only making a drop in the bucket. We’re faced with economic inequality, social inequality, environmental degradation, and, oh yeah, the Nazis are back! No wonder we have a mental health crisis.
It’s easy to get stuck in this feeling of malaise. Public participation is down with pitifully low voter turnout and a dramatic decrease in the number of available volunteers. People are feeling tapped out after three years of being on their toes, always adapting to a shifting landscape that often pivots on a dime, so it shouldn’t be very surprising that people don’t have the energy for even paying attention to politics, let alone changing the world. If you’re somewhere between anger and exhaustion, you’re not alone.
To help us sort these conflicting feelings, we’re joined by John Borthwick, who is the minister at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in downtown Guelph. He’s going to talk about how to centre ourselves in the maelstrom of issues coming at us everyday, and why we should embrace the adaptability of human beings. He will also discuss the struggle to listen and understand each other despite our differences, and why nostalgia is both attractive and damaging. And finally, he will talk about his 20 years in Guelph, and how the community has changed for the better, and the worse, in that time.
Let’s talk about starting fresh on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/8wmb7f/politicast_feb1_2023.mp3If you’re in need of spiritual guidance you can find Reverend Borthwick at the pulpit every Sunday morning at St. Andrew’s on Norfolk Street, which is also still broadcast on YouTube on the church’s channel @standrewsguelph. For something a little more secular, you can follow him on Twitter.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Every year, the Mayor of Guelph is invited to an event called the State of the City where he or she gives a speech to the members of the Chamber of Commerce about the current issues facing Guelph and how city council plans on addressing them. It once was said that to understand the future, you have to look to the past, so what was on the mayor’s mind last year when he talked to the Chamber?
The 2022 State of the City took place on March 31, delayed from the usual late-January/early-February perch for the event due pandemic circumstances at the time. (Remember, there was another lockdown last January.) It was an election year, so Guthrie was going to be called on to set the stage for his then-undeclared re-election campaign, not to mention some advocacy and politicking that could be done in the then-upcoming provincial election too.
So how much has changed since the last State of the City? Guthrie was re-elected, and so was the Progressive Conservative government in Queen’s Park, and while COVID-19 has receded further into the background, the effects of the pandemic are still lingering. But cities have also been whammied by massive policy changes from the Province that don’t seem to address the problems and only create new headaches for municipalities like Guelph to deal with.
There’s an entire suite of issues that might make the final cut in this year’s State of the City, but on this edition of the podcast, we’re going back to 2022. Mayor Guthrie used the conceit of the then-internet phenom Wordle to lay out the City of Guelph’s priorities in five-letter word chunks, and you’ll also hear from Medical Officer of Health Dr. Nicola Mercer who was honoured by Guthrie during the State of the City for her leadership during the pandemic.
So let’s go back in time to last year’s State of the City on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/4ja37c/politicast_jan25_2023.mp3The 2023 State of the City hosted by the Guelph Chamber of Commerce is Thursday February 2 at 7 am at the Delta Hotel and Conference Centre on Stone Road. Tickets are $50 for members and $70 for future members. To find out more information, call the Chamber office at 519-822-8081 or go to the Chamber’s website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Next week, council will have their meeting to confirm the 2023 budget, which, on the surface, seems like a relatively ordinary and straightforward procedure, but it may be a pretty big hint at the challenges that are coming for the members of city council, old and new alike. In terms of the new, and the challenges they’ve already been facing, this seems like a good time to get to know a few more of the new council players.
So we kick off the second part of a two-part recap featuring recent interviews with the new councillors with Carly Klassen of Ward 2. She will talk about standing out in the very competitive Ward 2 race in last year’s election, and her first few weeks as the sitting councillor. She also talked about the emergence of Bill 23, how that’s impacted the job description and responsibilities of being a city councillor, and the recent renaissance of root cellars in the Ward.
We’ll then talk to Ward 4 Councillor Linda Busuttil, who will chat about transitioning from the school board, improving the representation of Ward 4 at City Hall, and the ways she wants to change the job. She also talks about her thoughts around Bill 23 and its impact on council business, how the legislation doesn’t tackle the affordability issue, and how it also undermines the proverbial toolbox for city council to solve problems.
And last, but not least, we’ve got Ward 6’s Ken Yee Chew who will talk about the campaign strategy that led to him upsetting the near-certain re-election of an incumbent, and the political make-up of Ward 6. From there, he talks about Bill 23 from his perspective as a councillor and as a municipal planner, and why the legislation will create as much stress among City staff as it will in the community. Also, he’ll talk about his concerns about the separation of South Guelph from the rest of town in the new Federal riding maps.
So let’s talk to some our new council friends – again – on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/sg4biz/politicast_jan18_2023.mp3You can hear new interviews every week with Guelph councillors and other government newsmakers on Open Sources Guelph, Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca. Also, keep visiting Guelph Politico for all the latest coverage about all the latest city council meetings.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
On Open Sources Guelph we talk to all members of city council regularly, so it seemed fitting to kick off this new council term last fall by talking first to the five new councillors. For the next couple of weeks on this podcast, we’re going to collect those initial interviews starting with the new reps from the odd number wards in Guelph as we get to know the new players at the council table.
Both Bob Bell and June Hofland, the previous Ward 1 and Ward 3 city councillors respectively, were elected in 2006 and they left some pretty big shoes to fill in terms of experience and longevity at City Hall. The new councillors for those wards, Erin Caton and Michele Richardson, join council at a time of unique challenges even before the provincial government really piled it on in the weeks between the election and the inaugural meetings of the new term.
So with that in mind, we talked to Caton last fall on Open Sources about the things that made a difference for her in the election campaign, developing working relationships with her fellow councillors and increasing representation for people with disabilities on council. She also talked about some of the initial moves she was planning for her first weeks on council and how provincial directives might interrupt the well laid plans she campaigned on.
We also talked to Richardson, who told us about how she, as the one woman running in Ward 3, was elected over several male challengers. She also talked about being thrown into the deep end with Bill 23, and whether the agenda she ran on as a candidate is in danger because of big provincial changes to council business. Also, Richardson discussed how she’ll manage her day job at Wellington County with her new duties plus she talked about some recent development news in her ward.
So let’s talk to some our new council friends – again – on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/rwjnz8/politicast_jan11_2023.mp3You can hear new interviews every week with Guelph councillors and other government newsmakers on Open Sources Guelph, Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca. Also, keep visiting Guelph Politico for all the latest coverage about all the latest city council meetings.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Here’s the first episode of the podcast for the year, and what are we talking about? Stuff that happened in the year that just ended! Before we let 2022 go for good, we’re going to go around the horseshoe, the one in the council chambers at 1 Carden Street, one more time. There weren’t that many council meetings between September and December, but that doesn’t mean nothing interesting happened.
There were exactly a dozen meetings at Guelph City Council between the time councillors breaked for summer and the time they adjourned for the year in December. Obviously, there was an election in between, which meant there was a mid-season cast shake-up. We said goodbye to five of our favourite council characters and we said hello to five new ones!
In terms of the substance (the storylines?) there were some surprises this fall, but not all of them came courtesy of the councillors themselves. The Government of Ontario cast a very big shadow on these last dozen council meetings with their rapid and massive changes to planning policy and the governing rules of council. There was also the spectre of ongoing internal friction when it comes to heritage matters.
Those are just two of themes that will stick out on this council recap episode of the podcast. We will re-visit pre-election conundrums around a massive redevelopment on the old Days Inn property and an emergency re-work of the single-use plastic policy. Post-election, we dive into the repercussions of Bill 23, the heritage versus homes debate around Fife Road, some big changes to a couple of key City advisory committees, and so much more!
So let’s cover the small number of highly impactful council meetings from Fall 2022 in this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/6zy7t3/politicast_jan4_2023.mp3The 2023 slate of council meetings begins on Tuesday January 11 with a workshop and a Committee of the Whole meeting. To see those previews, and to stay up to date with the latest developments, keep visiting Guelph Politico.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
There were good news stories, bad news stories, and some very bad news stories. Progress was made in some quarters, and there was regression in others. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. It was a long 12 months in some ways, but they all seemed to pass by very, very quickly in the grand scheme of things, so what is there left to say about the year 2022? We’re going to find out!
So there were two elections this year, but both sets of elections were stymied with much lower voter turnout than our worst case scenarios had envisioned. And speaking of worst case, how about that Bill 23? It was announced the day after the municipal election, and probably caused worse hangovers than any of the celebrating done by the election’s winners – or losers – the night before.
Remember when we had another lockdown first thing in January? That was quickly added to the justification for the Freedom Convoy, and support for that was pretty strong locally. Those protests would peter out by the spring, but some people would try to turn their anti-mandate activism or other far-right ideology into electoral candidacy in the fall. In the end 2022 created a lot of concern for members of the community who are part of marginalized groups.
All of this is just the tip of the iceberg on this week’s edition of the podcast as Open Source’s Guelph co-host Scotty Hertz joins us to offer some last words about this election year, and some opening thoughts about the new council term. We will also talk about why the homelessness issue became easier to see in the last year, plus cyber attacks, healthcare issues, local hate crimes, and the changing of the guard at various Guelph organizations in the last several months.
So let’s talk about 2022 one more time on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/79xusj/politicast_dec28_2022.mp3Reminder: you can listen to Open Sources Guelph every Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca. If you miss hearing the show on terrestrial radio, you will be able to catch it on the Guelph Politicast channel as usual on Monday. And stay tuned for more new episodes of this podcast and other shows as we kick off 2023 this Sunday.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
For the last couple of years, we’ve used the Christmas week episode of the podcast to sit down with an influential Guelphite and talk a little more broadly about life and politics while looking back at some of the year’s highlights. This week’s podcast interview comes to you via a Zoom call from the hallways of Parliament Hill, which was the site of what the Canadian Press calls the Biggest Story of the Year.
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: 2022 was the year of the Freedom Convoy. No question. For three weeks earlier this, Downtown Ottawa was ground to a standstill as hundreds of people and dozens of trucks set up residence to protest, well, pick your cause. Guelph MP Lloyd Longfield was one of the members who voted in favour of invoking the Emergencies Act, so how does he feel about that now?
Closer to home, Longfield is one of the members of Mayor Cam Guthrie’s special downtown advisory group, which was set up to find immediate to long-term solutions to homelessness and mental health issues in the core. Now, some major supportive housing projects in Guelph currently under construction have benefited from Federal investment, but just how much can the Federal government do about very local circumstances?
We’ll ask Longfield those and some other questions on this holiday edition of the pod. He will talk about his takeaways from the year that’s coming to an end and his personal experience with the Freedom Convoy earlier this year. He will also talk about working on Guelph issues and getting a new deal for Canada’s cities. Plus we will discuss what’s coming issues-wise in 2023, and what his Chamber of Commerce experience is telling him about the economic outlook in the next year.
So let’s tuck in for Christmas with our local MP on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/nvbvqs/politicast_dec21_2022.mp3You can reach out to our area MP at his website, or on social media @lloydlongfield on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, or @lloyd.longfield on Facebook. Look for Longfield around town over the next month as the House of Commons will not sit again until January 30.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It was a big year for abortion after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June ended the universal right to a legal abortion in the United States. But why do we care up here in Canada? Protests in the U.S. this summer were echoed by ones here in Canada, including a gathering here in Guelph, and the reason why is pretty obvious: We have our own issues with abortion access.
If you’re a woman or pregnant person in Guelph and you want to get an abortion for whatever reason, what do you do? Where do you go? Is there anywhere inside the city limits of Guelph you can seek a surgical abortion? The answer is no, and that’s one of the reasons why the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court hit so close to home. Even though abortion laws are drastically different in Canada, we have many of the same problems of access.
You see, abortion services tend to be close to big cities, and our big cities tend to be concentrated in the southern most areas of the county. Getting to these cities is an issue because our regional and national transit networks are lacking, and what if you need more than a couple of hours of care, or time off work, or childcare? Phrased this way, you can understand why women’s rights and health advocates are worried and how restricting abortion access anywhere can impact us here in Canada.
On this week’s podcast we’re joined by TK Pritchard, who is the executive director of the SHORE Centre in Kitchener to about those impacts. They will tell us about what options people have accessing family planning services locally, and why not all options should be considered equal. They will also talk about how the U.S. Supreme Court embolden anti-choice actors here in Canada, and why we need to make abortion a part of the total healthcare conversation. And finally, Pritchard will talk about why family planning is about more than just abortion.
So let’s talk about why issues of abortion access are a Canadian issue too on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/3qzdhx/politicast_dec14_2022.mp3You can learn more about the SHORE Centre in Kitchener including a list of their services and how you can access them at their website, and follow Pritchard on social media @TKPritchard. If you’re interested in advocacy to increase abortion access in Guelph and Canada, you can seek out the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, or the National Abortion Federation Canada.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It was about one year ago that Guelph City Council approved a slate of motions to accelerate the City’s shift to net zero and 100 per cent renewable. The meeting was especially notable for the number of young people who came out to delegate about their panic around the climate’s future, and their concern that governments are not moving fast enough to act. So where do we sit on this Race to Zero?
The biggest takeaway from a report in June about the Race to Zero initiative was that corporate greenhouse emissions have been reduced from the 2018 baseline, but those corporate emissions only account for three per cent of Guelph’s total emissions. In other words, the City can lead, but it will be up to the people in Guelph to do their part too. But how do we do that?
Per the Environmental and Sustainability report, over 26 per cent of CO2 emissions in Guelph come from transportation. Making a dent in that load will require people driving less and take some of cars off the road, and that’s where the City comes in because they could make it easier to take transit with more routes and more frequency while Guelph Transit converts their vehicles to EV. That’s one-quarter of Guelph’s carbon footprint, but what about the rest?
To answer that question, and others, we’re joined by Byan Ho-Yan, the manager of Energy and Climate Change at the City of Guelph. He will talk to us about the limits of what the City can do to affect our climate change goals, and the ways that they can rally the community to take care of the other 97 per cent. He will also talk about the progress made so far, what’s coming up in 2023, and the one thing he wishes everyone knew about the City of Guelph’s fight against climate change.
So let’s talking about fighting climate change at the city level on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/wf5kyx/politicast_dec7_2022.mp3You can learn more about the City of Guelph’s energy and climate change plans as well as the 2021 Environmental and Sustainability Report here. It seems appropriate here to remind everyone that Guelph’s ban on select single-use plastics including shopping bags, ring containers, and polystyrene foam containers and cups will be starting on January 1.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Tuesday marks the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, and it’s the 33rd anniversary of what’s typically referred to as the Montreal Massacre. In terms of public displays of gender-based violence,… More
While the 13 members of the new city council will have the next four years to refine their ideas about the issues facing Guelph, it feels like we just forget the people who also ran… More
Last week, we covered the transition from the previous council to the new, and this week, we look far-ish into the future to the next election, the one in October 2026. You will hear in… More
On November 15, five new city councillors are going to formally take their seat around the horseshoe, and they’re five people bringing a variety of skills and experiences to the table. Joining them are eight… More
Science, technology, engineering and math make up the four letters in “STEM”, which is the subject of a new exhibit at the Guelph Civic Museum. In “Iron Willed: Women in STEM”, you can travel through… More
You probably know who all the new members of city council and the school board are, but do you know how it all unfolded on Election Night? Preserved for posterity, and for the edification of… More
You may have heard that there may be a teachers’ strike coming. Another disruption to the learning of Ontario’s students is the last thing anyone – from parents to government to the teachers themselves –… More
School board elections don’t normally get a lot of attention, and that’s exactly how some people like it, but what happens when parents organize and start advocating for the kind of school board they want?… More
There was a Guelph man named Matthew Wozenilek who passed away in 2016. He was well-known for his “Stop Ableism” campaign, a one-man effort to make Guelph more accessible one fight at a time, including… More
This week, the Guelph Chamber of Commerce posts the recorded Q&As they’ve done with the candidates running in each of Guelph’s six wards, and the mayor’s race, deviating from the live format they’ve done in… More
Have you ever stopped to think about all the waste generated in the last 30 months since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic? How many masks, gloves, wipes, syringes and containers we’ve thrown away? It’s… More
For 20 years, the fate of the old Ontario Reformatory Lands have been a matter of some question, and the answer to that question is complicated by the tangled web of ownership. As successive governments… More
Young people across the country are heading back to school this week, and there’s going to be a lot of pressure; pressure to get back to normal, pressure to catch up on lessons after pandemic… More
While there will be council business to discuss in a couple of weeks, the main thrust of local political issues lately can be summed up in one word: “Election.” The municipal election takes place here,… More
A year ago this coming Friday, the people of Wheatley, Ontario, part of the municipality of Chatham-Kent in the south west corner of the province, were just sitting there minding their own business around diner… More
The “official” end of the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa was Wednesday February 23, but it was a long road to get there, and it wasn’t really the end. Although the COVID-19 mandates that sparked… More
We’ve talked about a lot of heavy stuff on the podcast this year – the pandemic, sexual violence, trans healthcare, mental health and reconciliation all to name a few. So before we take a summer… More
What kind of year has it been at Guelph city council? A busy one. Things have been pretty much nonstop at city hall so far as council business was concerned, which makes sense because this… More
When you think about helping Guelph’s most vulnerable downtown, you think of Chalmers. They’ve been doing it for decades, and they’ve continued to do it though good economic times and bad. While the politicians look… More
On Monday, Patrick Brown announced that he would be running for re-election as the Mayor of Brampton. It was a no-brainer because it seemed pretty unlikely that he’s going to get back in the Conservative… More
While every city council term brings its own unique challenges, it’s safe to say that no one’s seen challenges quite as unique as the ones experienced over the last two-and-a-half years. As we head into… More
The rail crossing on Edinburgh Road has been the site of some controversy lately. The City of Guelph initiated the study of seven different street level rail crossings along the Metrolinx line across town, and… More
It was at the beginning of March 2020 when Dr. Mercer first appeared on the Guelph Politicast to talk about COVID-19: What would happen if, and when, COVID-19 came to Canada? A few weeks later,… More
With this being National Indigenous History Month it seems appropriate to look at how our local government is adapting to make Indigenous communities a more active part of governance at City Hall. How can we… More
In his first book, Learning to Live: From the Loss of My Parents to Mental Health Advocate, Noah Irvine writes his memoirs. It might seem a bit weird for a 21-year-old kid from Guelph to… More
Much of the hate and vitriol aimed at the LGBTQ+ people comes from religious communities still promoting ideas in the 21st century that being anything other than straight and cisgender is a violation of centuries… More
Affordability has kind of hijacked the priorities this election, but once it would have been possible to see healthcare being the number one issue of the 2022 campaign. From more funding for our overburdened hospitals,… More
May is Sexual Violence Prevention Month, but he haven’t really had much time to talk about that because these last few weeks have been pretty bad for anyone concerned about equal rights. domestic abuse, gender-based… More
It’s not easy being Green, the song says, and for the longest time running as the Green Party candidate in any election was seen as kind of a long shot. Mike Schreiner proved Greens can… More
Back in the early days of the Ontario government under Doug Ford it looked like their autism policy might sink them. Their initial approach to funding and support for kids with autism had the effect… More
What is the Consensus Party? In short, they want to get rid of the party-based political system because they think partisan politics are making it hard to pass meaningful, representational democratic change. Yes, you heard… More
If we talked about Ontario public schools last week, then it should follow that we talk about Ontario post-secondary issues this week. The pandemic generation, if we can coin such a phrase, are coming of… More
Wellington-Halton Hills is a big riding, extending from Puslinch to Centre Wellington and out east all the way to Erin and Halton Hills, so experience counts, and it’s hard to get more experience than Ted… More
Covering education issues has been weird the last couple of years during the pandemic; while keeping schools open for in-person learning was a priority, teachers felt that their concerns weren’t being heard. Now, education is… More
If there’s one thing we can agree on, it’s that people shouldn’t be forced out of their home after a minor dispute with their landlord. Yes, that happens, and it happens often, but it’s been… More
Historically, women played a pretty big role in the brewing of beer. Starting in ancient times, brewing was fairly female-dominated, but that changed in western culture around the same time the brewing process became industrialized… More
In good company after last week’s episode with Marlene director Wendy Hill-Tout, and just in time for both Canadian Film Day on April 20 and this year’s edition of the Hot Docs documentary film festival… More
We don’t get a lot of movie premieres here in Guelph, so when one happens it’s kind of a big deal. Coming to the Bookshelf Cinema this Friday is Marlene, the story of self-selecting Guelphites… More
*You might be forgiven to think this whole COVID-19 pandemic is in the bag. It’s been a week-and-a-half since the mask mandates were repealed in Ontario and in the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health region, and like… More
There’s a lot of interest in the excavation of Baker Street. Maybe it’s the ghoulish quality of uncovering remains from an old graveyard, or maybe it’s because this is all literally happening on the main… More
We have come to know what it’s like to live with COVID-19, even if we don’t like, but almost exactly two years ago today, we were freaking out. Remember wiping down your groceries with anti-bacterial wipes? Remember the run on toilet paper? Remember when we thought we could stamp this out in two weeks? Times sure have changed, but are we really at the end of COVID considering how it began?
On this day in 2020, March 16, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health announced the region’s first case of COVID-19. The anonymously famous person was a man in his 40s who just returned from a trip to Atlanta, Georgia and then tested positive at the Headwaters Health Care Centre in Orangeville. Meanwhile, the list of shutdowns, closures and cancellations got longer and longer.
Those were weird, wild, and crazy days. News was coming fast and furiously, and no one knew what what was going to happen next. Two years later, we’re still being affected by COVID even though we’re trying to make a case to ourselves that the pandemic is over. Meanwhile, only 14 per cent of people in low income countries have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and in South Africa, where the especially virulent Omicron variant was first detected, less than 30 per cent of people have been fully vaccinated.
So on this edition of the podcast we are going back to where it all began. On the week of March 16, 2020 Open Sources Guelph co-host Scotty Hertz produced an hour-long daily newscast to bring people the latest news and information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on the people of Guelph. As we listen, let’s remember just how far we’ve come in the last two years. Yes, it’s felt like we’ve been spinning in place for the last 24 months, but let us also recognize the progress we’ve made.
So let’s go back to beginning on this week’s Guelph Politicast.
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/ey3qth/politicast_mar16.mp3 Looking two years later, the Government of Ontario has announced the end of mask mandates on March 21, but some people are trying to keep the mandates in place for schools Check out those details here and here. The government also has an eye to end all COVID restrictions at the end of April, but we will keep you posted with all the latest developments here on Guelph Politico.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Just in time for this podcast, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released another report last week, which was described by UN Secretary-General as “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” So what’s the current provincial government’s record on fighting climate change, and with an election that’s now less than three months away?
The Provincial government under Premier Doug Ford has been very active on the environmental file, from dismantling the province’s clean energy initiatives to MZOs, but is any of that going to matter when it’s time to vote? The provincial response to the COVID-19 pandemic will undoubtedly be the issue of the 2022 Provincial Election, but that doesn’t mean that environmental issues should be ignored.
Of course, these issues have been discussed in the media, and among environmental activism groups, not to mention inside the halls of Queen’s Park. The Auditor General reported back in November that in two years the Ontario government had only completed six of 22 recommendations to improve climate outcomes, so if you feel like the Ford government is not committed to fighting climate change, you’re not alone. This week we’re joined by one of the people who’s very concerned about that lack of action.
Keith Brooks, Programs Director for Environmental Defence, will join us to talk about what grade he’s giving the Ford government and whether climate change is going to be a big enough issue in the coming election. He will also talk about the the different topics under the environmental file and where the Ford government is most vulnerable. And finally, he will discuss lessons learned from the pandemic about fighting climate change, and what Environmental Defense will be doing before June 2.
So let’s talk about the Ontario government’s report card on environmental issues in this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/daggjq/politicast_mar9_2022.mp3 To learn more about Environmental Defence and their various programs and advocacy efforts, you can find them online. To learn more about environmental issues, and their bearing on the upcoming provincial election, Guelph Wellington Coalition for Social Justice will be dedicating one of their Informed Democracy town halls to that topic, and it will be on Wednesday April 20.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
As you click play on this episode, we’re officially in a new phase of the pandemic. More restrictions were lifted on March 1, and Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health is assuring us that it’s only a matter of time now till our masking days are behind us. So it’s good news, right? Maybe. Let’s ask the local expect if the reason for optimism is real!
In our last edition of “Still COVID” back in November, “Omicron” was just another Greek letter. That changed pretty rapidly just a couple of weeks later when that variant started ripping through the population, prompting another brief lockdown in January. Our hospital had three different outbreaks since December, most public health workers spent their Christmas vacation handing out boosters, and let’s not forget those long line-ups for rapid tests.
But now things are looking up. Case counts are going down in general, and so are the number of patients in hospital and in the ICU. As of March 1, all proof of vaccine mandates were lifted here in Ontario, and the state of emergency in Guelph was declared over. On top of that, spring is almost here, and that means a seasonal decrease in COVID cases. So can we now look at COVID-19 as just another seasonal illness?
That’s definitely one of the things we want to talk to Dr. Mercer about. She will also talk about what we learned from the Omicron wave, and her thinking about when her public health order about masking might be revoked. She will also discuss whether the most vulnerable in our population are getting enough consideration as we’re re-opening, when school restrictions might be rolled back, and what the future of COVID might look like going forward.
So, for the eighth time in two years, let’s talk COVID with Dr. Mercer on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/nc6sfe/politicast_mar2_2022.mp3 You can stay on top of all the latest COVID-19 precautions and statistics at the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health website here. If you’re interested, there’s a (still virtual) Board of Health meeting on Wednesday March 2 at 2 pm, and you can see the agenda here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
The University of Guelph has been one of the leaders in COVID-19 research, and in the wake of Omicron, one specific area research took on new importance as the regular channels of COVID testing were overwhelmed. The future of monitoring COVID-19’s prevalence and resilience may be in wastewater testing, and we have the man that could write book on it if he weren’t so busy.
This week, we’re joined by Dr. Lawrence Goodridge, who holds the Leung Family Professorship in Food Safety in the Department of Food Science and is the director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety. His research has focused on food-borne pathogens, antibiotic resistance and food fraud, but it turned out that his work was transferable to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thanks to the work of Dr. Goodridge and his colleagues, wastewater testing has become a fairly reliable indicator of how bad COVID-19 has spread in our community, and finding where the new cases are, which has been very important due to a lack of PCR testing and the surge in the number of new Omicron cases. More than that, wastewater testing could be key to stopping future waves of the virus’ and protecting public health in other areas.
Dr. Goodridge will talk to us about how wastewater testing of COVID-19 works, why it works, and how the global pandemic managed to accelerate the development of the science around it. He also talks about how wastewater testing is being used in public health reporting, and the challenges and limitations when it comes to scale. He will also discuss how this research can continue to be used as we work to the end of this pandemic, and how wastewater testing can be used to prevent the next pandemic.
So let’s go behind the science on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/hbk7dk/politicast_feb23_2022.mp3 You can read about Professor Goodridge’s work with wastewater testing at the University of Guelph’s website. You can also see the results of regular wastewater COVID-19 testing on both the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health website and the University of Guelph website, and those numbers are update every day Monday through Friday.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo courtesy of the University of Guelph
Freedom to Read Week is a chance to talk about issues of censorship and free expression, especially in the context of what we can read and access at our local and school libraries. There’s been a lot of back and forth in the news lately about what young people should be allowed to read, or not, in their school library, so for this podcast, we got the biggest librarian we could find.
To mark Freedom to Read Week 2022, we’re joined by Shelagh Paterson, the executive director of the Ontario Library Association. In the last month, there have been two big stories in the news about the content of school libraries. The first was about a graphic novel removed by a Tennessee school board for reasons not related to the narrative. The other was closer to home, with allegations of transphobia for a school board delegation about appropriate books for kids.
These are the ideal conditions for this year’s commemoration of Freedom to Read Week. A project from the Book and Periodical Council, Freedom to Read Week is an annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That’s the logline, but what about the practical reality when it comes to what books go into libraries, and who gets to make the decision?
Paterson will join us to talk answer that, and other questions. She will talk about the meaning of intellectual freedom and freedom of expression, as well as censorship, and how we can deal with the misinformation and disinformation landscape without censorship. Paterson will also talk about how not all libraries are created equally, the digital divide in terms of access to information, and the other kinds of barriers that should remind us that not everyone’s access to information is equal.
So let’s talk about Freedom Read Week issues in this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/kjickx/politicast_feb16_2022.mp3 Freedom to Read Week runs all next week from February 20 to 26, and you can find all sorts of materials here. You can also click here to learn more about the Ontario Library Association. If you want to cut out the proverbial middle man, you can visit your local branch of Guelph Public Library, and they can probably point you in the right direction of some challenging materials.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Canadaland once said of Kurt Phillips that he was hunting Nazis online before it was cool. Experts in online hate like Phillips have been very busy lately following the developments of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, which has now launched several branch convoy protests, including the most recent one on the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. How did it get this far?
For the people covering Canada’s far-right the last couple of years, recent events are not that surprising. People angry about COVID-19 restrictions often become the willing pawns of neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, antisemites, and other far-right groups who see disaffection with the government as a gateway to their hateful ideology. If you see what’s happening in Ottawa and think it’s a bunch of ill-informed yahoos making noise, you’re only partially right.
No one knows that better than Phillips, who has been scouring the dark corners of the internet uncovering the Nazis and other far-right hate mongers since 2007. He was the founder and former lead writer for Anti-Racism Canada and he’s currently a board member of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, but when he’s not working humbly as a history and social sciences teacher in Alberta, he’s still a keyboard warrior exposing Canada’s far-right.
Phillips joins us this week to offer his analysis of what we are seeing in Ottawa and beyond. He will talk about how we got here, and why we should not be surprised about current events. He will also talk about some of the marquee players in the movement, and how you can tell the grifters from the true believers. And finally, he will discuss what happens next, and whether the mainstream media is up to the task of understanding what the convoy is really about and who’s driving it (pun intended).
So let’s compare notes about Canada’s far-right politics on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/us6k4g/convoy_phillips.mp3 You can follow Kurt Phillips @ARCCollective on Twitter to get up-to-date coverage and insight about the Freedom Convoy from his unique perspective. You can also see insight and analysis about Canada’s far-right movement at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. Another good resource is Friend of the Politicast Dan Collen, who’s actually on the ground in Ottawa, and you can find his reporting @SpinelessL on Twitter.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Photo By Adrian Wyld of the Canadian Press.
This month, there are Winter Pride events in Guelph, and Pride events are all about promoting visibility and acceptance for the LGBTQ+ community. But while the Pride movement’s come a long way, there’s still a long way to go for complete equality. Consider healthcare. We like to think our healthcare system in Canada is barrier-free here, but the barriers for trans people can be immense.
According to a report from TransPulse Canada last summer, 1-in-3 non-binary people said that their primary healthcare provider had no knowledge about trans or non-binary health needs. On top of that, 1-in-4 reported that they do not have access to in-person spaces specifically for non-binary people, only 47 per cent said they were comfortable discussing non-binary health concerns with their doctor, and 59 per cent said they were misgendered daily. And that’s just the beginning of the struggle.
It’s one of the reasons why New Democrat MPP Suze Morrison brought forward a private members bill called the Gender Affirming Healthcare Advisory Committee Act to Queen’s Park. It directs the Minister of Health to create an advisory committee to review gender-affirming healthcare in Ontario, and come up with a list of recommendations to improve access and coverage for trans people. It’s in committee now after passing unanimously at second reading, but time’s running out because of the pending election.
This week, we’re joined by Fae Johnstone, executive director of Wisdom2Action, to talk about the gaps in health coverage for trans people in Ontario, and why they need Bill 17 to become law now. Johnstone will talk about the specific barriers to healthcare that trans people are facing, and the places in Canada doing trans healthcare better than Ontario. They will also discuss the economic barriers to healthcare that many trans people face, and whether there’s such a thing as systemic transphobia in healthcare.
So let’s dig into how we can do trans healthcare better in this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/fksqtb/Feb2_Johnston.mp3 Bill 17, the Gender Affirming Health Care Advisory Committee Act, is presently in committee at the Ontario Legislature. You can learn more about Johnstone’s organization Wisdom2Action by clicking here. You can also see the bi-annual updates the health and well-being amoung non-binary people by visiting the TransPulse Canada here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
Think about this for a second: Where can you go in Guelph if you want to use your French language skills? Seriously. This is a bilingual country, and unless you have friends or family that speak French or live in an area with a lot of French speakers, where do you go, and who do you talk to, if you want to speak French? That maybe about to change.
Thomas Gallezot is originally from France but he’s made his home in Canada, first in Toronto, but more recently in Guelph, which are two places not exactly notable for their local French culture. Of course, there are francophone people in the Royal City, but where can you go to hang out with other French people? For that matter, where can you go to flex those French language skills you spent so much time honing in school? Gallezot had a similar thought.
There are actually a lot of different French houses in Canada, including one in Ottawa, where you think it would be easy to find French speakers since Quebec is literally just across the river. La maison de la francophonie d’Ottawa is a cultural centre with sports and rec activities, health services, cultural events, language courses, childcare, employment help, and services for newcomers, which all sounds pretty good, right? So what would it take to create a maison de la francophonie in Guelph?
The person best suited to answer those questions is Thomas Gallezot, and he will talk about coming to Canada, and whether he was surprised by the lack of French facilities here. He will also discuss what a French house in Guelph might look like, and how it’s essentially about tearing down walls between Canada’s two solitudes. And finally, Gallezot will discuss the potential fundraising avenues, how the old Drill Hall might make a nice location, and what he hopes to get out of the project personally.
So let’s talk about speaking French on this week’s edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/766ac9/jan26_gallezot.mp3 If you want to help out with the cause of getting Une maison de la francophonie à Guelph, or if you want to learn more about the mission, you can go to the Facebook page set up for the project and join.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
As of January 1, 10C Shared Space took over the management of the Guelph Farmers’ Market. The goal is simple: turn an underperforming asset that’s only open five hours a week into a new economic hub and accelerator that ties together food security, sustainability, local markets, and opportunity development. Getting there is an ideal challenge for Guelph’s community changemaker.
According to the Farmers’ Market website, the property was home to Guelph’s first building, which was a market house, a central place where area farmers could sell their produce and goods. Essentially, this is was the beginning of downtown Guelph, and while the market house didn’t last, the area that became Market Square became a centre of local commerce by the middle of the 19th century.
Fast forward to last November when city council approved a plan for 10C to take over management of the market. It’s hard to think of a better partner to run the market, and 10C’s plan includes more hours, different vendors like a weekly arts and crafts market, culinary events to promote food tourism and education, and a common community space that can be used for a variety of different events. It’s a bold plan, so how does it begin?
10C co-founder and executive director Julia Grady joins us on this edition of the podcast to talk about why 10C is a good match for the Farmers’ Market, and what some of the plans are for the space. She will also discuss the importance of a thriving Farmers’ Market to downtown Guelph, and the mandate to create a profitable market in the next five years. And finally, she will talk about how the pandemic has changed the market, and when people might start to see some of the changes 10C is initiating.
So let’s talk about the Farmers’ Market of the future on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/pd7pxf/jan19_grady10C.mp3 To learn more about 10C, go to their website here, and to learn more about the Guelph Farmers’ Market, including a list of vendors and the current capacity limits, click here. To find out more about the potential changes coming to the Farmers’ Market, check out the highlights from November’s Committee of the Whole meeting here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
With all things COVID back on the front burner, it’s easy to temporarily forget everything that happened in the last few years around fighting systemic racism and embracing social justice. The City of Guelph is trying to make progress towards a more equitable and representative system seriously, but let’s ask the person who knows best: Is the City of Guelph making real progress on tackling issues of systemic racism?
This week, we talk to Sara Sayyed, the senior advisor of Equity, Anti-Racism and Indigenous Initiatives at the City of Guelph. Her job is to look at ways to dismantle systemic racism and promote racial equity in all manners of City business from policy, to planning, to the delivery services. No one wants to think that they’re a participant in a racist system, but understanding how our systems might influence society’s lack of equity is an important step forward.
For a job this big, you need someone plugged into the community, someone like Sara Sayyed. She’s been the community services director of the Guelph Muslim Society, and she’s served on a number of local boards including the Guelph General Hospital Board, and the Guelph Community Foundation. She’s had her finger in a lot of proverbial pies, which is why she was able to hit the ground running since being hired by the City of Guelph last summer.
Now, Sayyed joins us on the podcast to talk about what systemic racism looks like in Guelph, and whether the City of Guelph is keeping up with the pace of demand for change. Then, she discusses the 2022 Municipal Election and getting more People of Colour into local politics and running for local office. Sayyed also talks about issues of trust, the importance of having uncomfortable conversations, and how she’s made the transition from being a community activist to being part of the proverbial machine.
So let’s talk about the mission to end systemic racism on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/vhbbka/jan12_sayyed.mp3 You can see the latest corporate update on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the November 26 council information report, and the next update will be coming up this June. The City is also in the process of updating the Community Plan to include a community standard for the elimination of systemic racism, and you can follow along with updates here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
City council gets back to business next week, but before we open the book on 2022 we need to sign off on what happened in 2021. Picking up where we left off in episode #286 of the Guelph Politicast, and the last meeting of council before summer break, we start in September and follow the blow-by-blow of every fight around the horseshoe. There were even some non-fights.
What will the last four months of 2021 be known for? There was a big decision to invest millions of dollars in new transit services over the next decade, which was really great. Council also reaffirmed its commitment to fighting climate change with 10 recommendations to accelerate the Race to Zero, and they passed the draft update to the Comprehensive Zoning Bylaw as well as the draft secondary plan for Clair-Maltby.
But there was a dark side too. Some of the debates around the 2022-2023 Guelph Budget were pretty contentious. There was a call to review the governance of the Downtown Business Improvement Area, but a lot of the debate seemed to be built around misunderstandings. Speaking of misunderstandings, there was a solid week there in October where council was stuck on the demolition of an old farmhouse.
So this week on the podcast, the first of 2022, we will dive into the last four months of city council and take you through them meeting by meeting, subject by subject, touching on all decisions from the major to the minor. From an optimistic view of the pandemic landscape in the late summer, to being confronted with the pessimism of Guelph’s young people when it comes to climate change, these were the last moves around the virtual horseshoe in 2021.
So let’s recap September, October, November and December at city council on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/t49ruk/jan5_council_recap.mp3 You can check out the previews, recaps, and post-views for all of last year’s council meetings under the city council tab, and you can also get Politico’s city council post-views sent directly to your inbox by subscribing to the Tip Sheet. The next meeting of city council is the Committee of the Whole on Monday January 10 at 2 pm, and you can click here to see the preview of the meeting.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
This is the last episode of the podcast for 2021, and in the spirit of the season we’re going to access our memories from the last 12 months. This was a long hard year, nothing went the way it was supposed to, and it threw a lot of roadblocks in our way, but now, at the end of the year, we will take stock of all that’s happened, and how it might affect us in the new year.
Where do we begin talking about the news in 2021, and what’s the number one story of the past year? Is there anyway that it isn’t COVID-19? Guelph may be one of the most vaccinated communities in the country, but we’ve been feeling the heat from a new COVID variant these last few weeks and we’re ending the year with the same feeling that we had at the beginning of the year: Will this ever be over?
But the pandemic was not the only story this year. Social justice issues were still in the news with multiple marches in the summer. There was also a Federal Election this year, not that it changed much of anything. Housing was a big issue, we finally sold the Guelph Innovation District lands, and then there was that one-week period where Guelph City Council couldn’t decide if they actually approved the action they thought they did.
Richard Vivian, the city hall reporter at Guelph Today, joins us this week to review this year of Guelph Stuff. We will discuss what the number one news story of the year is, and how we practically come full circle in fighting COVID. We will also talk about what’s coming in the new year, including election talk and whether, at this point, Cam Guthrie is mayor for life. And finally, we will remember some of the local political leaders we lost in 2021, and if we have any new year’s resolutions.
So let’s talk about a year in Guelph Stuff on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/xj9add/2021_ender.mp3 You can check out Richard Vivians’ news and politics coverage over on GuelphToday.com, and you can check out some year end insights here on Guelph Politico, and in this past Saturday’s Market Squared column on Guelph Today as well.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
In less than two weeks, we enter the year 2022, and that’s an election year in Ontario. In the spring, Premier Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives will aim to make a case that they should be re-elected for a second term, but the knives will almost certainly be out for them. But what about the one Green MPP in the legislature? What kind of year will 2022 be for him?
Three-and-a-half years ago, Mike Schreiner made history winning a remarkable 46 per cent stake of the vote and becoming the first sitting member of the Green Party in the Ontario Legislature. Some saw it as a sign of the Green Party’s growing relevance in Canada’s political picture; others saw Guelph voters sending a caucus of one to the provincial parliament, but even the most cynical would have a tough time saying that Schreiner hasn’t been effective.
Re-election though many not be easy. The Liberals have been seriously rebuilding themselves for the last few years to be back in fighting shape, and the NDP will be looking to breakthrough and seize government power for the first time since 1995. Meanwhile, the PCs will be playing defense, but Ford himself has made repeated visits to Guelph this year, and has said out loud that he thinks he can win Guelph in 2022. In a way, this is going to be a tougher election for Schreiner than 2018.
On this holiday edition of the podcast, Schreiner will talk about this term at the Ontario Legislature, and whether he thinks that he’s silenced the doubters who thought one person couldn’t make a difference at Queen’s Park. He will also talk about how the pandemic changed things politically, and the unique challenges of running for re-election next year, plus the weight of expectations to create a bigger footprint for the Greens in the legislature. And does Schreiner have any regrets this Christmas?
So let’s have a nice holiday visit with Guelph’s MPP on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/7zz7my/christmasmike.mp3 You can find Mike Schreiner’s constituency website here, and you can learn more about Green Party policy and direction here. He is also active on social media, and you can find him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Bookmark this for later, but the Ontario Provincial Election will happen on or before Thursday June 2, 2022.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
One of the first episodes of the Politicast this year was a conversation with Councillor Leanne Caron about heritage issues in the City. It would kick- off a year with a lot of heritage issues on making the front page, from discussion about inadequate communications to the controversy around the demolition of 797 Victoria Road North. So the year ends how it began, with a discussion about Guelph’s heritage issues.
Here in Guelph, we really love our heritage buildings. It’s an interesting character quirk, perhaps born in the 1960s when a big portions of the historic downtown was torn down and replaced with modern buildings. Heritage loving Guelphites are always worried about history repeating itself, and there are many heritage buildings falling into disrepair due to “demolition by neglect.” That concern was a recurring theme this year.
But there was also some good heritage news in 2021. The Drill Hall downtown is in the process of being reclaimed, the Cultural Heritage Action Plan was passed by city council despite some controversy, and the old Ontario Reformatory property was endorsed as a potential heritage district with the backing of the Provincial government. So it was a consequential year for heritage, but how does the head of the heritage committee feel about it?
P. Brian Skerrett, the chair of Heritage Guelph, will join us to answer these and other questions on this week’s podcast. Skerrett will talk about how this year has seen a change in the dynamics between his committee and the City staff, and the multiple pressures on local heritage buildings. He will also discuss how neighbourhoods can evolve and change while still protecting heritage assets, and whether Guelph has turned a corner in protecting its own history.
So let’s talk about this year in heritage on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/ahwy4i/heritage2021.mp3 You can stay on top of the latest meeting information for Heritage Guelph by clicking here, and you can learn more about the City’s heritage plans the City of Guelph website here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.
It’s not often you pick up a copy of the Globe & Mail and see your sister and her family on the front page, but it’s also not everyday that a town somewhere in Ontario almost blows up. Around dinner time on August 26, two buildings in Wheatley’s downtown area exploded. The source, apparently, is a gas leak, but nobody’s sure and dozens of residents were relocated for safety. One of them was my sister.
Let’s rewind. In June, people in the downtown area of Wheatley had to be evacuated when area businesses detected a whiff of hydrogen sulphide gas, but residents were allowed to go back home even though they didn’t find the source of the smell. The process was repeated again late in July when a gas monitor detected another leak, but the hazmat crews said that the source of the gas was “deep within the earth. A thermogenic gas response.”
The monitors went off again on August 26, and 90 minutes later, while in the process of getting people clear of the area, at least two buildings were destroyed, several more were damaged, and people living in the area around the core were evacuated again, but this time, they haven’t been allowed to go back. One of them is Stephanie Charbonneau who is a school teacher, mother of two, and a resident of Wheatley, Ontario. She’s also my younger sister.
It’s rare that you have a personal connection to a story like this, so I invited Stephanie to pop onto Zoom with me and talk about Wheatley’s problems on this week’s podcast. We talk about what happened before, during and after August 26, and we also talk about the information void, and whether the Wheatley disaster has gotten enough attention. We will also discuss the political reaction to the disaster, and how residents are being proactive to stay informed about when they might be able to go home.
So let’s talk about what happened in Wheatley this week on the Guelph Politicast!
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/wu3j9i/steph_wheatley.mp3 The Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry is currently exploring the cause of the explosion, and they will likely be the source of any update about what happened last summer. There is a GoFundMe page raising money for people affected, and for a pretty good tick-tock about what happened in Wheatley, check out this piece by Matthew Trevithick, a reporter for 980 CFPL in London.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.