This Week at Council: Traffic, Containers and Conduct!

There was something for everyone at this month’s Committee of the Whole meeting. If you have concerns about traffic safety in Guelph, or environmental protection in form or less plastic waste then this was a good meeting for you, but if you’re looking for something meaty there was a lot of back and forth about the update to the council Code of Conduct, as well as the new make-up of advisory committee. So let’s dig into it all in this week’s recap!

Committee of the Whole Meeting – March 4, 2025

It was a busy day at city council from governance to plastic to traffic. After a closed session concerning the expansion of the Alma project on Scottsdale, for which Mayor Cam Guthrie was very emphatic that Councillor Leanne Caron did not take part in due to per pecuniary interest, the committee dug into the packed slate.

Acting GM of the city clerk’s office Dylan McMahon led council through the final report of the Advisory Committee of Council review and the changes coming later this year; 14 different ACOCs are now being reshuffled and reconfigured to seven. (You can see the list in the Politico preview of this meeting.)

Council listened to McMahon layout the changes, and then Caron offered some amendments to button up what she felt were holes in the composition of a couple of committees. One of them was the new Heritage Advisory Committee, presently Heritage Guelph, whose ranks Caron wanted to expand to include educators, community engagement experts and members of heritage organizations. DCAO Jayne Holmes said that engagement and promotion aren’t really perspectives needed for the heritage committee, and the emphasis needs to be on technical expertise given the workload. Committee approved all of Caron’s amendments, except the heritage ones.

Next, it was the Midterm Governance Review, and there were a couple of sources of friction here.

First, there were a lot of questions around Section 8 of the new Code of Conduct, a policy about the use of social media. Council had concerns about how overly prescriptive it sounded when it comes to the ways they can use social media during elections, and whether it would be a contravention to discuss their records on sites like Facebook or Blue Sky during the campaign. There were also concerns about whether the policy would allowed councillors to promote local businesses within their ward and whether or not posts from 20 years ago could be the basis for a new complaint. Councillor Erin Caton, who has been the recipient of much online harassment, voiced their concern that the policy’s requirement for councillors to avoid blocking users would leave them more vulnerable.

Laura Dean, a representative of the integrity commissioner Aird & Berlis LLP, explained that the wording was kind of overly broad by design. For example, the average person does not see a difference between a personal and business social media account for a councillor, so members have to use caution when posting anywhere. As for harassment, councillors will need to use the “reasonable person” test, which can be admittedly pretty subjective; what does a “reasonable person” fin objectionable or harassing? As for promoting a business, that’s fine so long as it’s “occasional and unsolicited”. Guthrie noted some concerns about the potential limits on free expression, especially in the realm of endorsements of elected officials at other levels of government.

Ultimately, McMahon said it was clear that council had numerous concerns about section 8 and suggested committee refer it back to staff for retooling, which is what they decided to do. Looking for the retooled Code of Conduct to come back in May now.

The other area of controversy was numerous motions made by the Accessibility Advisory Committee last October in the wake of not getting engaged over the Public Space Use Bylaw. The Governance Review effectively rejected the suggestions, including, most importantly, having AAC input on the recruitment and appointment of new members. Caton tried to table motions to give AAC the autonomy they sought, but it was rejected by the majority of council.

Before the changes to the Procedural Bylaw, Guthrie read a statement from Councillor Carly Klassen, who will be the first person on council to benefit from a new policy for the pregnancy and parental leave of members.

After the lunch break, council dug into an addition to the single use plastic policy to make it so that area restaurants have to accept reusable containers for in-store dining and non-drive-thru takeout. Kris Barnier, the Central Region VP for Restaurants Canada, was the one delegate here and tried to persuade council against the move citing the precarity of his industry’s position right now. He said this was a bad time for such a major change and it will cost businesses more to accommodate the new requirement in terms of space and resources when so many of them are already operating on the margins.

In response to the concerns raised by Barnier, Guthrie wondered if they should try a pilot program first, but manager of business and technical services Heather Connell noted that 45 per cent of Guelph eateries are already making allowances for reusable containers, which makes a pilot rather moot. Hoping to overcome the stated concerns, an amendment was placed on the floor to exempt all-you-can-eat buffets and salad bars, or any establishment with its own reusable container policy, which seemed to allay most of the concerns among committee and it was approved.

The last item was the Vision Zero Action Plan, which will look at expanding community safety zones beyond schools and the installation of more automated speed enforcement cameras to help curb speeding and cut down on road injuries and fatalities. Three delegates spoke about the challenges of being a road user who’s a pedestrian or cyclists, including Guelph Coalition for Active Transportation chair Andrea Bidgood who described her experience being hit by a car while on her bike in 2020.

Committee was mostly bullish on the policy and in some ways were concerned that it didn’t go far enough, like how northern parts of Woolwich Street fall outside the parameters for the expanded safety zones when there already concerns about speeding in this area. Other councillors had notes about things going too far, like how automated cameras hand out tickets to speeders in the dead of night when no cars are around or the loss of traffic lanes for transit priority lanes in the future. Still, council approved the action plan unanimously.

Before wrapping up, there were some words about the present trade war. Guthrie reiterated that 98 per cent of what the City of Guelph buys is Canadian and they’re trying to do more, while CAO Tara Baker added that the intergovernmental office is co-ordinating with partners on the best ways to respond and to present a united front against the economic insanity from south of the border.

Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.