On Wednesday, a couple of U.S. states cancelled all COVID-19 restrictions to allow businesses to re-open to 100 per cent capacity and to no longer require mask mandates. That was speaking the language of one delegate at Wednesday’s Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Board of Health meeting who said that mandatory masking at area schools was “abuse” and “violates our basic rights.” Continue reading “Masking Skeptics Take Part in Board of Health Meeting”
A COVID update and patios are among the topics for this meeting. You can click here for the amended agenda from City Hall, and you can click here and here for the Politico preview. For the complete blow-by-blow of today’s council meeting, you can follow along on Twitter, or follow the tweets below. You can also watch the City’s own live-stream of the meeting here. Continue reading “LIVE BLOG: Committee of the Whole Meeting for March 1, 2021”
At Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting members of city council will receive another update about the region’s COVID-19 response, and that includes vaccine distribution. While there’s been a lot of talk about issues with supply, Committee will hear that Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph is actually doing better than Ontario and Canada at getting shots into arms. Continue reading “CoW: WDG Public Health is Outpacing Ontario and Canada on Vaccine Rollout”
As we’ve so often heard, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed almost every aspect of our daily lives, and doing business at Guelph City Hall is one of those aspects. Even as we look forward to emerging from the second wave, the City of Guelph is looking to make it easier to access their services online, whether you want public information or whether you want to rent a picnic shelter. Continue reading “City Increase Online Access to Information Services”
It was a very busy year at the Guelph Public Library even though they were closed for a big portion of it, and many members of the library staff were laid off. In terms of in-person operations, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the library, and library services, hard, but the newly released annual report from GPL tells a more interesting story, a story about why the library is still an essential community service even though it’s not technically “essential.” Continue reading “Guelph Library Says It Was a Busy Year Despite the Pandemic”
The above picture is from the good old days when Guelph MPP Mike Schreiner could have a town hall with people in person. On Wednesday evening, Schreiner took part in a wide-ranging town hall discussion by phone, and his office pegs the number of participants at around 4,400 people, which would be hard to do in-person under “normal” circumstances. Continue reading “RECAP: COVID, Housing, and Environment Are Major Concerns from Schreiner Town Hall”
March begins with a Committee of the Whole meeting, and there’s going to be a lot of work to cover at this first council meeting of the month. There’s going to be a lot of reports from Governance to consider, plus a big report about this summer’s patio program, and the quarterly update about the City and Public Health’s COVID-19 response. In terms of council work, March is coming in like a lion! Continue reading “Committee of the Whole Preview – What’s on the Agenda for the March 1 Meeting?”
Many areas of Ontario, including Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph, re-opened from the state of emergency on Tuesday. On that same day, Public Health unveiled its plan for a regional vaccine clinics, approved by Ontario’s COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Task Force, that will go into effect once additional vaccine resources become available. For most people in the region, this is the plan that will get them their jabs. Continue reading “Public Health Unveils Next Phase of Vaccine Rollout Plan”
From 2009 to 2014, a group of University of Guelph students who were fans of gaming, comics, anime and other geeky things organized a yearly winter convention designed to bring people together and share their passions. It was perfect in its way, but all good things must come to an end, but sometimes they come back, and they come back at the most surprising times. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #261 – The Impossible Return of Con-G”
Ontario was getting back to work on Tuesday. From regions of the province approved for re-opening, to the first day of the new session of the Legislature, returning to some degree of normalcy was the order of the day. At Queen’s Park, Guelph MPP and Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner got back to work with a media availability, and the announcement of a safe back-to-work plan for everyone. Continue reading “Schreiner Introduces Work Safe Plan Just in Time for Provincial Re-opening”
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