From housing to health care, local municipal leaders share their top priorities in this provincial election
Housing, homeless crisis and health care topped the list of concerns
Local municipal leaders are laying out their top issues and concerns ahead of the Feb. 27 Ontario election.
CBC Kitchener-Waterloo spoke to mayors or representatives of every local municipality and nearly all of them said they want to see issues including affordable housing and the homelessness crisis, access to healthcare, and infrastructure investment addressed by candidates.
Other concerns mentioned included the cost of living, the education system and transportation.
"What I really hope during this election is that every candidate and every party is talking about the concerns of municipalities," regional Chair Karen Redman said.
She explained that although the region's priorities may overlap with the cities and townships within it, they manage different sectors
The cities and townships, or lower tier municipalities, look after services such as recreation and maintaining certain roads while the region tackles social services and transit.
"We want to make sure that we continue to solidify the quality of life for people who live in the region," Redman said.
Homelessness and housing
A point-in-time count conducted Oct. 2024 showed more than 2,300 individuals said they were experiencing homelessness in Waterloo region - double the number of people from 2021.
Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe said it has been overwhelming trying to manage the growing numbers with limited financial aid.
"Ontario is the only province or territory in the entire country that this responsibility has been downloaded to us," she said. "The complexity of this is not something that municipalities can fund on our own."
McCabe added that her request for political parties is to look at the report issued by the Associations of Municipalities of Ontario (AMOS) on Jan. 9. It indicated that there are 80,000 known people who are homeless across Ontario — a 25 per cent increase from 2022.
In order to keep that number at bay, residents have sounded the alarm on a lack of affordable housing.
"Housing is a tough one," Woolwich Township Mayor Sandy Shantz said. "We can try to create the atmosphere for housing but we need developers and the region to set that up."
Health care
As of July 2024, there were 2.5 million people in Ontario who didn't have a family doctor.
That number came from the Ontario College of Family Physicians who said it was an increase of more than 160,000 people since their last count conducted six months prior.
As residents across the province struggle to find access to the care they need, those in rural communities have an even harder time recruiting health-care professionals to the area.
That's the situation in Wellesley Township.
Mayor Joe Nowak explained there is a small nurse practitioner's office in the neighbouring community of Linwood. He said a community group has offered to build a new office, but they don't have the staff to operate it.
"So we made that request to the government at the ROMA (Rural Ontario Municipal Association) conference," said Nowak.
"They have committed $1.8 billion to have everybody connected to a doctor, so we have to wait and see if that transpires."
Infrastructure
As the region's population continues to grow, municipal leaders say there are concerns about aging roadways and bridges.
Cambridge's city manager David Calder says the city is currently facing an infrastructure deficit.
Despite investing roughly $51 million in capital for improvements this year, Calder explained the city's deficit is over $100 million.
"We're behind in terms of renewal and having the financial capacity to improve our asset," he said. Calder spoke to CBC News as Mayor Jan Liggett was not available.
Nearby in North Dumfries, Mayor Sue Foxton said her roads are heavily driven on due to the township being a link to other municipalities and destinations.
This was highlighted when Cambridge enacted a truck ban in its downtown core, rerouting the transports onto the main bridge on Footbridge Road in North Dumfries.
"This bridge is going to need infrastructure money. It's going to cost us $12 million to repair, so we need the promise to help us do that," Foxton said.
Municipality funding
To help with the priorities of each municipality, mayors and representatives are asking the province for additional funding.
Some are calling the municipal funding model outdated and say they would like to see an entire reset of the process at all levels of government. They'd like a "new deal" similar to the ones Toronto and Ottawa have already signed with the provincial government.
"We can't be dealing with 21st century problems with a 19th century legal and fiscal framework," said Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic.
"We need to make sure we have the tools in the toolbox and the resources need to deal with these challenges and not on the backs of property tax payers."
That's a notion top of mind in Wilmot Township as councillors struggle to finalize their annual budget.
A report from staff published Dec. 2024 said the township needed to increase property taxes by 50 per cent.
Ongoing council meetings have be used to find ways to lower that number, and the budget is expected to be finalized later this month, but Wilmot Mayor Natasha Salonen said the township's residents shouldn't bear this financial weight alone.
"We don't have a funded capital plan and that's through multiple years of financial decision making that have really led us here," she said.
"With the state of economics going on on a larger scale, people can't afford to be making up that gap in one year."
Voters go to the polls Feb. 27.
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