Let us wrap up a very busy, and a very difficult 2025 in the council chambers. You can click here for the amended agenda from City Hall, and you can click here for the Politico preview. For the complete blow-by-blow of today’s council meeting, you can follow along with the thread below, or you can watch the whole meeting for yourself by watching it on the City’s website here. Continue reading “RECAP: City Council Meeting for December 16, 2025”
Since they resumed sitting the week after Thanksgiving, the Government of Ontario has been throwing a lot at us, and then on Halloween they proposed sweeping changes to conservation authorities in Ontario. If it feels like we’ve been here before we kind of have, and while conservation authorities have weathered provincial meddling before, can they survive it again? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #493 – They’re Coming for the Conservation Authorities… Again (feat. Phil Pothen)”
November’s Grand River Conservation Authority board meeting took a break from the immediate concern around next year’s budget. Sort of. The debate continued about the fate of select nature centres and the outdoor education program, and that’s a decision that was reserved another day to get more information. For everything else on the agenda, you can check out the recap… Continue reading “RECAP: Education Programs’ Fate Stymies GRCA Board Again”
It’s been a busy couple of months at membership board of the Grand River Conservation Authority, so by comparison November’s meeting is going to be a little bit lighter. (Also, the annual general meeting is next month so it’s a small respite.) For this meeting there’s the usual financial updates, some tenders to approve, plus some human resources policies to update, but the big thing, again, has to do with outdoor education. Continue reading “MEETING PREVIEW: Grand River Conservation Membership Meeting for November 24, 2023”
Unlike a lot of boards and committees that are meeting for the first time in this pre-holiday, post-election period, the Grand River Conservation Authority Board of Directors had a pretty big agenda to cover from changes created by Bill 23, new fees at parks, and the shocking (!) increase to the cost of worms. Want to learn more? You can click here to see the agenda for the board meeting, and below you can watch the YouTube broadcast of the meeting, or see the live tweets. Continue reading “RECAP: The GRCA Board Copes with Rapid Changes in First Meeting of the Term”
It’s a difficult time for conservation authorities across Ontario. Pandemic? Yeah, that’s part of it. Conservation authorities can’t take part in their usual programming, and they’ve lost normally dependable funds because of that, plus there are all the new precautions they have to take in areas of their parks that are open. But that’s just the beginning of the current headaches for conservation authorities. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #262 – The View From the GRCA Board”
A little over a week after passing a budget omnibus bill that forced some sudden and substantive changes to the Conservation Authorities Act, the Minister of the Environment is now inviting everyone to take part in a working group to get input on developing new regulations for conservation authorities, and how best they should be governed. Continue reading “One Week After Passing Omnibus Bill, Ontario Gov’t Wants to Talk Conservation”
Time is running out for action if changes to the oversight role of conservation authorities is of particular concern. On Thursday morning, Green Party of Ontario leader and Guelph MPP Mike Schreiner held a media availability, and leaned on the support of over 100 groups from around Ontario, to make one last push against, what he calls, an “attack on conservation authorities.” Continue reading “Schreiner Demands the Government Pull Changes to Conservation Authorities”
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