Provincial Representatives Visit the Chamber

Provincial Representatives Visit the Chamber

Throughout the month of October, the London Chamber of Commerce had the privilege of hosting Marit Stiles, leader of the Ontario NDP and leader of the Opposition as well as Rob Flack, MPP for Elgin - Middlesex - London and Associate Minister of Housing for Ontario. We were also pleased to speak with Stephen Lecce, the Ontario Minister of Education, on the future of education in Ontario. Marit Stiles was joined by London MPPs Terence Kernaghan, Teresa Armstrong, and Peggy Sattler and spoke on the issue of housing in Ontario. Stiles presented a proposition for the Ontario government to create a new government body titled Homes Ontario that would serve as a public home builder that would be capable of building 250,000 affordable homes across ten years all to be operated by non-profit and co-op housing providers. Following the announcement, city council voted in support of sending a letter to the Ontario government encouraging the motion to be debated; however, council did not vote to outright support the NDP plan.

The chamber also spoke to MPP Rob Flack about housing in the city and how to address issues of homelessness and addiction in the core. Among the potential solutions discussed was a need for more modular housing in the city. Modular housing is a method of construction that involves partially prefabricated sections of a house to be used in order to more quickly and more efficiently build new houses. This would both reduce the cost of the final product as well as speed up the construction process and avoid some of the issues of labour when building homes from scratch. Other opportunities that were discussed include the possibility of repurposing unused government owned land in order to develop housing and avoid the problems caused by vacant buildings.

The London Chamber of Commerce is encouraged by these discussions and looks forward to speaking with other members of the provincial and federal government. We thank all of the parties involved that took the time to speak with us.