Mayors from across Ontario met at the Prince Arthur Hotel in Thunder Bay last week for the annual 2025 Ontario Big City Mayors Meeting where they took part in a roundtable discussion to develop policies, advocacy and partnerships.
Ontario Big City Mayors (OBCM), from 29 cities with a population of 100,000 or more, represented nearly 70 per cent of Ontario’s population at the gathering.
Thunder Bay Mayor Ken Boshcoff said the city provides a great environment for the mayors to gather.
“The conversations were mostly about the taxation, sustaining services, some of the new automated enforcement systems, red light cameras, speed cameras, all those types of things that are now in common use in many parts of the province,” he said, adding that making sure that the distribution primarily of provincial programs affects medium sized cities, was a priority issue for Thunder Bay.
Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed, chairwoman of the OBCM meeting, said they had “quite a discussion” and passed a resolution on automated speed cameras.
“Our members really are wanting to hopefully strike a balance with the premier,” Meed said. “We’ve heard the concerns that he’s raised about the cameras and we’ve put some suggestions together for how to scope and tweak the program to limit it. We think there’s a way to improve the program short of an outright ban.”
Meed says they also passed a resolution asking the provincial and federal government to lift GST and HST on new homes up to $1.5 million.
“We’re in a housing crisis, and every little bit that we can do to help reduce the cost of a home is really important,” she said, adding they passed a resolution to ask the government to prioritize energy, infrastructure, transportation and housing.
“We’ve also asked the government, at both levels, to prepare a strategy as we head into winter and cold months around homelessness and the additional concerns around mental health issues and addictions on the street, which are often very interrelated,” Meed said.
The OBCM began the Solve the Crisis campaign two years ago, requesting measures to be taken to address this growing crisis on the streets.
“We’re now asking for a winter plan. Winter is coming, and people are still without shelter, and that is a huge public safety and public health crisis,” she said.
Although tariffs have been a huge topic of discussion at previous OBCM meetings and continues to be a concern for the mayors, it wasn’t a focus of Friday’s discussion.
“In our, the previous resolutions and work that we’ve done around tariffs, we’ve asked for the very thing that Canadians need to eliminate Canadian trade barriers among provinces, and we need support for workers,” she said.
Mayors on both sides of the border have been working with their partners at the federal and provincial levels.
“Collectively and individually, we have been reaching out to our counterparts, reaching out to whoever we can, and also offering our advice and support for other levels of government to really address this issue,” Meed said.
The group was treated to a tour of the city and Kakabeka Falls following the Friday meeting.
