Regional Councillor Report
Submitted by:
Colleen Jordan, Regional Councillor Wards 3 & 4
Regional Council - May 4, 2005
Cherrywood Residents Association - Bruce
Flattery
On behalf of the residents association a request
was made that the Region rescind the amendment to the motion made at
the April 13th meeting, that was the Region=s
response to the Provincial Draft Growth Plan.
This amendment requested that the Cherrywood Community be
removed from the Protected Countryside designation and be designated
as Growth Area in the final Growth Plan for the Greater Golden
Horseshoe. The lands in question are designated Agricultural in the
Region=s
Official Plan. The lands
are also part of the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserves that the
City of Pickering had agreed to protect in 1999, by way of
agricultural easements. These
agricultural easements were recently terminated by Pickering in
Minutes of Settlement with the developers who had initiated a lawsuit
that the easements were not legal.
A monetary settlement of an initial $2.5 million and a future
$60 million once building permits are issued settled the lawsuit.
A Notice Of Motion to rescind the motion of April
13th was
received by Council and will be considered on May 25th.
Parking Addition
Regional Council did not endorse but instead
received for information the report recommending a fifth floor be
added to the parking garage at an additional cost of $2,725,800.00
which would have provided another 177 parking spaces. The need for the
additional parking is due to the Provincial Courts requirement for
more than the 250 parking spaces identified when the parking garage
was originally approved in November 2004.
Staff reported that additional parking can be
accommodated on the north side of Rossland Road and on site. Some
councillors also suggested that car pooling and other modes of transit
be encouraged.
Note: Ajax Councillor=s did not support the original
recommendation to build the parking garage at an expense of $14.5
million citing that a parking lot could be built on the north side of
Rossland for about $3.7 million.
AlPHa - Association Local Public Health
Agencies - April 22, 2005
The reports in the wake of SARS which chronicled
the demise of public health prompted the provincial government to
embark on a renewal of public health.
Phil Jackson Director Strategic Planning
Implementation Branch reported on government initiatives to renew
public health. These
measures include improving the response and sharing of information
between public health agencies in times of outbreak and crisis, the
implementation of the Emergency Medical Team which can be dispatched
expeditiously and moved to respond to critical care crises and
regional infection control networks which bring together acute care,
public health and long term care representatives which will be rolled
out to cover the province. It
is also recognized that core infection control competencies are
required across sectors. The
goal is to ensure the independence of the Chief Medical Officer of
Health and to build public health capacity provincially &
locally.
Dr. Susan Tamblyn, Chair of the Provincial
Capacity Review Committee provided insights into the areas that will
be subject to review. These
include governance and structure of local public health agencies,
human resources (recruitment, retention and gaps forecasting),
funding, research and knowledge transfer and accountability mechanisms
and practices within individual health units.
Focus groups and interviews with health unites will provide
input to the review. An
interim report will be provided to the Chief Medical Officer of Health
by July 2005. The final
report should be presented by the end of the year.
APower
Walls@
- Bill 164 - Smoke - free Ontario Act
Non-Smokers' Rights Association
Association of Local Public Health Agencies
NEWS RELEASE
Health agencies sound alarm about threat
to tobacco "Power Wall" advertising ban
TORONTO Health agencies joined with medical
officers of health at Queen's Park today to warn Ontarians that unless
Bill 164, the Smoke-free Ontario Act, is amended, one of the McGuinty
government's key tobacco control campaign promises may be lost.
The Non-Smokers' Rights Association and the
Association of Local Public Health Agencies (alPHa) which represents
medical officers of health and boards of health across Ontario, urged
the Liberal government to keep its election campaign promise to ban
the "power walls" of tobacco that advertise cigarettes to
kids in more than 8,000 Ontario convenience stores.
"Cigarette power walls are tobacco
advertising, pure and simple," said Linda Stewart, executive
director of alPHa. "And governments across Canada have promised
to stop tobacco advertising that impacts on kids. Tobacco companies
know how power wall tobacco displays sell cigarettes, especially to
kids, and so does the Ontario government. The government's decision to
back away from a full ban on tobacco advertising in stores is a
political decision based on tobacco industry pressure. It has nothing
to do with public health or the protection of Ontario kids. We have to
persuade the Premier to change course."
"My sense of the issue is that the Premier and
the Health Minister may not understand how powerful tobacco power walls
are or how they influence our kids," said Jeffrey Gottheil,
president of J. Gottheil Marketing Communications and an expert in point-of-purchase
advertising. "The report we are releasing here is clear. Tobacco
power walls are the most important advertising medium available to the
tobacco industry today. If you don't ban cigarette power walls as they
have in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, your kids, your neighbour's kids,
your grandchildren are exposed to what is arguably the most aggressive
marketing tool that the tobacco industry has used in the last
decade."
"Cigarettes kill nearly one out of two of
their long term customers," said Dr. David McKeown, medical officer
of health for the City of Toronto and a member of alPHa. "Why would
we expect kids to take the risks of tobacco products seriously when
cigarettes are sold prominently next to candy, gum and hockey cards in
corner stores? Tobacco power walls undermine the work that parents and
health professionals are doing to warn kids about the health risks of
smoking."
"One of the purposes of power walls is to
normalize cigarettes," said Ms. Stewart, "and the industry is
prepared to spend a king's ransom in order to maintain this legitimacy.
Unfortunately, it is a completely unwarranted legitimacy. And it is
contributing to the difficulty we are having in reducing youth smoking
rates."
"When a government backs away from an election
promise, someone usually loses out," said Garfield Mahood, NSRA
executive director. "But when a broken promise involves steps to
stop an epidemic, when it involves measures to keep a drug addiction
away from kids, failure to honour that commitment literally will cause
deaths down the road. We are hoping to persuade the Premier and the
Health Minister that the future health of our kids is important enough
to justify standing up to the tobacco lobby."
"With a straight face, the tobacco industry
tells legislators that the purpose of power wall tobacco advertising is
to persuade smokers to switch brands," said Francis Thompson,
policy analyst for the NSRA. "This is pure economic nonsense and
the industry knows this. The extraordinary amount of money spent on
tobacco power walls is to create a climate conducive to bringing kids
into the market. Power walls also encourage former smokers to relapse
and start smoking again and create an army of dependent retailers who
will ally themselves with the manufacturers."
"This problem will not be resolved by anything
short of a complete point-of-purchase tobacco advertising ban,"
said Mr. Mahood. "We want these products out of sight and out of
mind. They cannot be visible to children. Anything less will create a
loophole that the industry will drive a truck through."
"We plan to make this an issue," said Ms.
Stewart. "I think when health units and health agencies see that
Bill 164 will allow power wall promotion to continue, they will be truly
unhappy."
The NSRA is a national non-profit tobacco control
organization with offices in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. alPHa is a
provincial association that represents medical officers of health and
boards of health across Ontario.
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