THUNDER BAY – Though the ice storm outside froze the travel plans of Premier Kathleen Wynne and some of the delegates scheduled to attend the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association’s annual conference, inside the show soldiered on despite contending with the occasional power outage.
NOMA’s annual gathering kicked off Wednesday at the Victoria Inn, despite the ongoing freezing rain that hit Thunder Bay overnight and continued throughout the morning that made highway travel treacherous.
“It’s amazing how many people are here because I know the north shore is stranded and there’s a lot of people who can’t even get out of their communities to get here,” said NOMA president and Kenora mayor Dave Canfield.
The start of the conference was delayed by nearly 30 minutes after trees fell onto power lines, knocking out electricity to about 5,000 customers on the south side of the city.
The highlight of the opening day’s agenda was a scheduled fireside chat between Canfield and Wynne, which was scrapped after the cancellations of flights to and from the Thunder Bay International Airport kept the premier in Toronto.
Canfield said organizers are hoping to arrange a video conference with Wynne on Friday afternoon, right before the bear pit session featuring Municipal Affairs Minister Bill Mauro and Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault.
“Instead of the ministers or premier giving a speech, I would sooner our delegates get an opportunity to ask questions and tell the premier and the ministers how they really feel and try to get the answers they want to get,” Canfield said. “It was going to be, I think, a great setup but we’ll have to improvise and figure out where we go from here.”
Canfield said he was planning to ask the premier questions relating to energy, forestry and the impact of Municipal Property Assessment Corporation reassessments on municipal tax bases.
In addition to Wynne, the presentations from the presidents of the Association of Ontario Municipalities and Rural Ontario Municipal Association are up in the air due to travel issues.
Canfield said the schedule will likely have to be reconfigured throughout the rest of the week.
“It’s a really good lesson because you understand for us, it’s something that happens and not that we get a lot of ice storms but (we get) snowstorms,” Canfield said, noting Kenora, Dryden and Ignace were hit earlier this week. “These things happen. It’s still April and we can’t change the weather.”
