THUNDER BAY — Time is of the essence for city leaders as they plan their upcoming meetings with provincial ministers.
Mayor Ken Boshcoff knows this very well, as he will be part of a delegation from the city that will be in London for the Association of Municipalities Ontario conference, which begins Sunday.
Boshcoff said there is a short amount of time to present their case to the ministers, associate ministers and parliamentary assistants.
“It's important not only for the elected people to get together, but a chance for our administrators to also to meet on this annual basis to really touch base, especially with our provincial ministers,” he said.
Boshcoff stated housing will be his focus.
“There is no doubt that [once] Thunder Bay [gets the Strong Mayors powers], we will be in a pretty good position to really take advantage of some of the accelerator programs that the provincial government has [to offer]. [We also want to let the] government know that we have adopted the policies required to ensure that we can accelerate the housing because everybody now in our city knows we're in a real crunch right now,” Boshcoff said.
Thunder Bay was one of three communities in Ontario’s Big City Mayor’s group left off the list of cities getting strong mayor powers on June 16.
The province cited a lack of a housing strategy submission for the omission of Thunder Bay, Chatham-Kent and Sudbury. City officials have said that Thunder Bay was not asked to submit a housing pledge, which has been seen as a requirement to being granted strong mayor powers, last year.
The conference wraps up on Aug. 23.
