Skip to content

City announces its top five priorities for provincial election

'These five priorities are crucial to ensure Guelph is future ready, and they can’t be achieved without provincial support and partnership,' says mayor
20210420 Guelph City Hall RV
Richard Vivian/GuelphToday file photo

With a provincial election less than a month away, city officials have released a list of its top five issues they feel deserve attention from candidates vying to form the next provincial government.

“These five priorities are crucial to ensure Guelph is future ready, and they can’t be achieved without provincial support and partnership,” said Mayor Cam Guthrie in a news release. “I hope voters will ask candidates about these priorities and keep them in mind when they go to the polls on June 2.”

The city’s priorities include:

  • Renewing the municipal and provincial infrastructure funding framework to take some of the funding pressure for capital projects off property taxpayers
  • Enhance inter-regional transportation with the establishment of two-way, all-day GO train service to the city, along with infrastructure improvements to highways 6 and 7
  • Work with municipalities to increase affordable housing supply “while respecting local decision-making” and recommit to ending chronic homelessness in Ontario by 2025
  • Improve access to mental health and addiction supports by increasing funding for the Integrated Mobile Police And Crisis Team, which sees mental health professionals attend calls alongside police officers, to allow it to become a 24/7 service and address the $29.6 million annual funding gap across the community’s broader mental health and addiction continuum of care
  • Provide funding to “unlock” municipally managed contaminated properties, known as brownfield sites, for affordable housing projects, commercial development and other community needs.