A recent report from Peel Regional Police revealed the number of reported hate-motivated crime offences across Mississauga and Brampton increased by seven percent between 2021 and 2022. While advocacy groups say the numbers are troubling, they are no longer shocking. They attribute the steady rise in cases to digital echo chambers like social media that create large spaces to fuel hate crimes in communities, including in Peel.
Environment Canada released its climate outlook for the summer which predicted particularly hot temperatures that have now set in across much of the province. Ontario’s electricity grid has to expand and the PC government on Wednesday announced the largest new nuclear project in decades. But alternative energy sources such as solar and wind are falling behind the global take-up of greener electricity supply.
Peel Regional Police, in partnership with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, recently revealed a draft document of recommendations to address and dismantle systemic racism and discrimination in the regional police force, which has been under public scrutiny for years for not reflecting the community it serves. Racial profiling, discriminatory hiring and the refusal to promote deserving visible minority officers forced the Commission to intervene. The recommendations, 64 in total, are a culmination of work that began in 2020 to develop and implement strategies to identify and address systemic discrimination within the force after a 2019 report revealed a disturbing culture operating within one of the most diverse regions in the world.
Ontarians waste a great deal of food.
It’s a sad reality as the cost of staple items skyrockets, and a growing number of families are unable to put enough on their table. Wasted food comes with significant financial and environmental costs that are becoming increasingly hard to ignore for municipalities and corporations.
Evolving from its industrial/suburban past, the ongoing transformation of Mississauga’s waterfront is a story of two worlds colliding. The city is built out to its urban boundaries, and is rising upward in an urban trend typically pushed by developers seeking to maximize their investments.
It is becoming increasingly challenging for Mississauga City Council to shape desirable “complete communities” that create a vibrant street life for residents and local businesses.
As the healthcare system struggles under the PC government, Trillium Health Partners’ Credit Valley Hospital has been listed among the worst performing in the province.
According to data from Health Quality Ontario, patients at Credit Valley Hospital will wait an average of 43.7 hours in the ER before being admitted to a bed — more than double the time spent in hospitals across Ontario, and over five times the provincial target of 8 hours.
Gender-based violence has been labelled an “epidemic” in the Region of Peel.
While elected officials have strong words of support for advocates dedicated to ending the violence and helping survivors, they stopped short of providing any financial assistance to the cash-strapped organizations.
Mississauga’s Living Green Master Plan, which guided the City’s sustainability actions, is set to retire after a decade-long run. City staff have assured council and residents that Mississauga is not backtracking on action, in fact they are pushing ahead full throttle with further contributions to the Climate Change Master Plan and more specific and detailed plans throughout City departments that will help tackle some of the top priorities for climate mitigation and adaptation.
Patrick Brown urged regional staff to break the law through a motion that would have saddled Peel taxpayers with $11 billion of debt. Despite the absurdity of taking on such a crippling debt load, Brown argued the step was necessary to battle the ongoing housing crisis. That was until the true purpose of his motion became clear.
He was criticized for attempting to squeeze Mississauga into paying for Brampton’s future infrastructure needs (while refusing to expand his own city’s budget since being elected in 2018) after Peel’s dissolution.
Leading Mississauga Fire through one of the most challenging periods in its history, Chief Deryn Rizzi has stepped up to the task, with finesse. She is a dynamic force who was just named Ontario Fire Chief of the Year for the work MFES has done to keep residents in a booming city safe. Improving the department she took over in 2021, while tight finances and hyper-growth create ongoing problems, is a responsibility she seems perfectly suited for.
Provincial politicians arrived at the annual general meeting of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario to deliver praise for a profession that has suffered with low wages and crushing workloads for years.
While the PC health minister refused to acknowledge the role her government has had in this crisis, including their ongoing fight to preserve legislation that was labelled unconstitutional by the courts and has kept wages for nurses well below the rate of inflation for the last three years, opposition leaders took quick aim at the majority government’s track record, often to raucous applause from the nurses in attendance.
A non-profit organization breaking ground in Peel is hoping to strengthen climate initiatives across the region.
While the group hopes to propel Mississauga further down its path to sustainability and help Brampton revitalize its lagging environmental efforts, two major pieces of provincial legislation forced by the PC government will drastically hamper these efforts.
Nine months after the provincial government issued an MZO for a sprawling warehouse development along Torbram Road in Caledon’s southeast end, the applicant, Rice Group, is holding public meetings to hear the concerns of residents.
Constituents want to know why they were not part of any consultation on the development before its approval, and feel they are only now being included as part of the lip service by those responsible for their treatment.
With only four months until the end of Caledon’s one year interim control bylaw limiting aggregate operations, residents and councillors are cracking down on town staff to complete necessary studies and policy upgrades within the remaining time. The Town has taken the steps to hire an outside consultant and develop an aggregate community working group. A review provided to the Town by the Region of Peel surprised residents, suggesting Caledon’s aggregate situation is far better than what the evidence suggests.
A councillor is working to forge community connections at a time when municipal engagement is hitting historically low levels. After coming onto council last year and finding out the area he represents only had one residents’ association, Ward 6 Councillor Joe Horneck has made it a priority to bridge the gap between residents and municipal government.
Almost 20 years after being promised a second hospital, the Phase-2 plan to expand Peel Memorial is still light on details and years away from seeing construction begin, while projects in cities across the GTA with much better per capita hospital bed numbers have leapfrogged ahead of Brampton which continues to suffer a healthcare crisis.
As Mississauga’s municipal leaders navigate the city’s independence from Peel Region, councillors say a byelection would be the best option to replace Mayor Bonnie Crombie. She made her candidacy for the Ontario Liberal leadership official on Wednesday. Calls are mounting for her to step down as the head of Ontario’s third largest city as it faces historic decisions.
The community of Malton — a displaced island isolated from the rest of Mississauga, between the airport and Brampton’s borders — has historically been an outlier, disconnected from the rest of the city. A new project decades in the making is finally going to change that.
While smoke is hanging low across much of the country, Canadians are calling on the federal government for details on how a net-zero electricity grid will be achieved by 2035. A massive deep water drilling project planned by two European oil giants off the east coast has been delayed for three years — environmental groups continue to question why the federal Liberals support a project that sets our clean energy policies back by decades.
The PC government wants legislation to better protect those suffering from intimate partner violence. A motion by MPP Christine Hogarth seeks to create Ontario’s own version of “Clare’s Law” which allows individuals to obtain information from police about their partner’s abusive past. A local organization wants new tools in the province to address intimate partner violence, but says there is a lack of resources to properly support those who come forward for help.
Despite the PC government scaling back portions of Bill 97 that would have allowed the carving up of valuable farmland, concerns remain high among environmental and agricultural organizations that significant risks remain after Premier Doug Ford revealed his true feelings about Ontario’s Greenbelt, labelling the world’s largest collection of protected greenspace nothing more than “a scam”.
A report coming before regional council Thursday is aiming to provide transparency and establish principles that staff can use to proceed with already approved programs and projects in the wake of the PC government’s Hazel McCallion Act, which seeks to dissolve the Region of Peel by 2025.
The report notes that preventing staff from leaving during the transition process will need to be a top priority.
The Region of Peel worries about staff retention as the break-up of the upper-tier government is set to get underway.
Caledon is staring up a steep slope to reach its goal of net zero by 2050.
A program dedicated to helping Peel families and their newborns has been drastically underfunded for 15 years. Increased investment from the provincial government remains uncertain.
Wildfires are burning across the country, with forecasts predicting much of the country will be covered by a haze of smoke by early morning Wednesday.
Climate experts have been warning about the dangerous ripple effects of increasing wildfires for years. The degraded air quality across much of Peel Tuesday, may only be the beginning.
After being denied the opportunity to delegate at the Peel District School Board’s trustee meeting, community members finally had a chance to speak out against the removal of Kola Iluyomade’s name from the centre for Black excellence at one of its committee meetings. A written delegation falsely accused advocates at the previous week’s board meeting of being “violent” while trustees are claiming a changed policy prevents them from using Iluyomade’s name, despite the actual intent of the policy to recognize equity advocates just like him.
A new program from the PC government is mandating naloxone kits in “high risk” workplaces in Ontario.
It’s a welcome measure that could help to mitigate the opioid crisis that is killing a disturbing number of Ontarians every year. It remains unclear exactly how many employers will be required to carry the life-saving medication.
A new report from Ontario’s auditor general exposes the declining health of the province’s greenspaces and wildlife.
It’s a report the PCs have refused to mention, highlighting the failure of this government to protect the environment and battle climate change.
A recent Minister’s Zoning Order to double the size of a historic waterfront development in Mississauga—from approximately 8,000 units to 16,000—has left local residents feeling betrayed.
The decision was made despite zero consultation with the City or the community and tramples on nearly two decades of planning between local officials and residents who worked tirelessly to revitalize the former waterfront site of the Lakeview power plant.
The Ontario Health Coalition announced results of a regional and province-wide survey on the privatization of healthcare in Ontario after the PCs passed a new delivery model that will allow private clinics to perform certain procedures covered by the province’s publicly funded system.
Critics warn this will eventually lead to a two-tier system that will benefit the rich and marginalize low-income earners.
Bill 97 has been tabled to help build 1.5 million homes by 2031 but conservation authorities and municipalities are encouraging the PC government to make changes to the proposed legislation that will create a more uniform approach to development across Ontario municipalities while curtailing carbon-emitting sprawl.
On Thursday, the PCs walked back plans to divide up farmland for future development.
News of the PC government’s decision to break apart Peel Region was met with mixed reviews. Mississauga celebrated, Brampton lamented, and Caledon was left with more questions than answers.
Now, all three municipalities are looking to the provincial government for more information about the unprecedented decision to dissolve regional government in Peel.
Trustees at the Peel District School Board may have already voted to ignore a vow to honour late activist Kola Iluyomade by attaching his name to the future Centre for Black Excellence, but that’s not stopping advocates from continuing their effort to see PDSB make good on its promise.
The oldest structure in south Mississauga, Lakeview Park School, is for sale, and without protection from the Heritage Act, if it isn’t scooped up by the City or another public body, it runs the risk of being demolished.
As the Region of Peel is set to dissolve by 2025, there are a lot of unanswered questions about its current climate change plans and how the two independent cities of Brampton and Mississauga will fare fighting climate change without the support of an upper-tier government.
Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services has been facing infrastructure pressures caused by years of financial neglect at the hands of elected officials. Now, with historic growth slated for the city’s south end, above its stretched out lakeshore, fire union president Chris Varcoe says fire infrastructure needs to be rethought to protect current and future residents along Mississauga’s waterfront.
The Region of Peel and its lower-tier municipalities have been designated for third-party audits by the Province to examine whether their finances can support the increased housing supply mandated by the PC government’s fast-tracked housing legislation.
Bill 23, which forces municipalities across Ontario to support the construction of 1.5 million new homes — and the infrastructure to go with them — by 2031, is estimated to cost Peel over a billion dollars in lost revenue mainly from development charges and parkland fees.
After finding out about a massive MZO development in his ward through a memorandum on an April meeting agenda, Caledon Councillor Doug Maskell asked council to repudiate the actions of former mayor Allan Thompson, and for the MZO to be revoked while filing an FOI request to get more information on how the process unfolded.
With signals pointing to Bonnie Crombie’s early exit as Mississauga’s mayor, councillors will have to decide how to replace her, and what to do about some of the biggest decisions the municipality has ever faced.
A new head of council would have to navigate the dissolution of Peel Region, negotiate Mississauga’s transition into an independent single-tier municipality, while managing the Hurontario LRT’s construction and massive development projects to meet the province’s ambitious housing targets.
Advocates from Peel’s Black communities protested in front of Peel District School Board trustees after all but one voted against a commitment to honour Kola Iluyomade, a beloved activist who unexpectedly passed away in 2021 following a long fight to eliminate systemic discrimination and anti-Black racism from the school board.
Advocates in Peel’s Black communities are voicing frustration with the Peel District School Board after trustees appear to be turning their backs on a commitment to honour Kola Iluyomade, a tireless activist who passed away unexpectedly in 2021 following years of work to eradicate systemic discrimination and anti-Black racism from the troubled school board.
His colleagues now wonder if trustees have learned anything.
The aggregate industry (or gravel industry, as it’s commonly called) has expanded across Caledon for years, limiting how the expansive municipality can be planned, while eating up some of Ontario’s most vital greenspaces. Elected officials continue their recent efforts to bring the gravel industry under control.
Peel’s Catholic school board is grappling with the sensitive dilemma around the flying of the Gay Pride flag, as those pushing for more inclusion and many who hold more traditional Catholic views about marriage don’t agree on the display of the rainbow colours in schools.
Invasive species are listed as one of the top five threats to biodiversity by the United Nations Biological Convention on Biological Diversity.
Conservation authorities and municipalities are encouraging residents to educate themselves about the invasive species in their area and what each individual can do to help stop the spread.
Despite promising more communication with residents of the Town, staff were absent from the most recent meeting held by the Forks of the Credit Preservation Group on the blast quarry application.
Only Councillor Lynn Kiernan was in attendance and she claimed staff were absent because there were no significant updates — a concern considering the Town’s moratorium on the approval of quarries ends in a few months.
The use of MZOs has increased significantly under the Ford government, giving the Province greater authority to dictate planning and development within its municipalities. Caledon has been faced within six MZO requests — five within this timeframe — and has essentially had no set guidelines for how to deal with these proposals.
A new procedure sets the framework for dealing with MZOs across the town, emphasizing the importance of proper notice and consultation — an issue that has recently been front of mind following a controversial MZO for a warehouse that will encroach into the Greenbelt.
In light of the PC government's response to Mississauga's request for independence, The Pointer is republishing a 2019 freedom of information investigation into the behind the scenes effort of senior staff at the Region of Peel, at the time, to undermine Mississauga's position.
The FOI documents revealed that a report by Deloitte was heavily influenced by Peel Region staff who did not want to see their government dissolved to make way for Mississauga to become a single-tier, independent municipality.
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown is now using the discredited Deloitte report to push back against any decision to grant Mississauga its independence.
After a four-decade crusade, the City of Mississauga will finally get its divorce from the Region of Peel and its neighbouring municipalities, Brampton and Caledon.
On Thursday, the PC government tabled the Hazel McCallion Act which, if passed, will dissolve the two-tier municipal governance structure, ending the Region of Peel as its lower-tier municipalities become independent by January 2025. Patrick Brown is now behaving erratically about how much his city should be paid ahead of the looming divorce.
The City of Mississauga has been blindsided by the PC government’s decision to issue a Minister’s Zoning Order to double the size of the approved Lakeview Village development without any consultation with staff or the public.
The shocking increase, to 16,000 units, was approved despite the inability of infrastructure in the area to support such a huge influx of new residents; this includes roads, schools, storm and wastewater, and transit.
Under the Conservation Authorities Act, Conservation Authorities are mandated to conserve, restore and responsibly manage Ontario’s water resources. However, the TRCA says most of its flood management infrastructure is outdated and not up to current standards. The cost to update infrastructure is far greater than the budget for these priority projects.
The bustling metropolis is in the throes of heavy growth with a projected 995,000 residents by 2051. A new housing plan focussed on “building up and not out” could determine how the city looks and functions in the future as homebuyers demand a more urban experience.
On Wednesday, City Council appointed Shari Lichterman as Mississauga’s newest CAO and City Manager. The move was made after former CAO Paul Mitcham’s departure from the City in February following allegations by a former female councillor, Karen Ras, that he was not supportive while she sought help during an alleged harassment campaign by another former council member. Lichterman takes over in the midst of Ras’s ongoing lawsuit against the City as Mississauga also deals with a number of critical files, including the $4.6-billion Hurontario LRT project.
NDP leader Marit Stiles asked the PCs to revoke the MZO for a massive warehouse project in Caledon after learning the request was made by the town’s former mayor behind the backs of council members and the public. Caledon residents have been struggling for years as the PCs continue to pass legislation clearing the way for developers to gobble up more greenspace.
