Mental health and homelessness are the main challenges facing Ontario’s cities and municipalities, according to a group made of over two dozen elected leaders.
The Ontario Big City Mayors (OBCM) caucus meeting was held on Friday in Blenheim, on a Pardoville property overlooking Lake Erie.
According to OBCM Chair Marianne Meed Ward, the meeting focused on the need to address the homelessness crisis across the province, which also ties greatly into mental health and addiction issues. She emphasized the need for increased funding from the provincial level of government to tackle these ongoing challenges at the municipal level.
“This crisis is only growing,” said Meed Ward. “This is something that we’ve been advocating for from the government for several years and the time is now to act. This is a humanitarian crisis that is affecting every single municipality, large and small. People are dying in our streets and it doesn’t need to happen.”
She added that there is also a need for better coordination from upper levels of government and an action table to push policy changes forward.
“A lot of the issues are health-related and this is a provincial cost and a provincial jurisdiction,” said Meed Ward. “It is a very dangerous situation, not only for people living in encampments but for all of the residents who live around those encampments.”
Chatham-Kent Mayor Darrin Canniff said sharing ideas with other elected leaders helps to determine the best course of action when tackling shared challenges like the homelessness crisis.
“It’s essential that we come together as a group as the Ontario Big City Mayors. We go through a lot of best practices,” he said. “We learn from each other and that’s so important.”
The OBCM is made up of 29 mayors who collectively represent nearly 70 per cent of Ontario’s population.