Large urban Mayors across Northeastern Ontario have converged on Timmins this week.

While Timmins Mayor Steve Black has been busy with the Stars and Thunder Festival. But he’s also been entertaining the Mayors of Sudbury (Brian Bigger), North Bay (Al McDonald) and Sault Ste. Marie (Christian Provenzano) as part of semi-annual Northern Ontario Large Urban Mayors (NOLUM) meetings.

Thunder Bay Mayor Keith Hobbs, the other member of NOLUM, had prior commitments and couldn’t attend.

Black says this week, they focused on four major topics: allocation of FedNor dollars, the DSSAB Act review, rail and transportation corridors in Ontario and the drug crisis.

“(The government) announced an increase to the FedNor budget, but in our opinion, it’s not significant and substantial enough increase to put us on equal ground with the other development agencies across Canada,” Black said on FedNor funding, “Obviously, it’s not a standalone agency like the other agencies as well, so that still has some concerns for us in terms of what they’re able to do and we’d like to see them have the resources from a staffing perspective to really be able to focus on some of the big national projects such as the defense strategy and some of those procurement processes.”

“We think Northern Ontario’s at a disadvantage compared to some of the other regions and really being able to have our federal economic development agency heavily involved and on the front (lines) looking for how clients in Northern Ontario and businesses in Northern Ontario can take part in those large Canadian contracts.”

On the DSSAB Act Review, he points out Ontario as “really the only province in all of Canada who funds EMS and social services through a municipal level.”

“It’s our opinion that that should be taken back over by the province and similar to any other province in Canada,” Black said, “They should be the ones funding those core services. They’re provincially responsible services and that’s where it should be funded from.”

Rail and transportation corridors will be a key in the North, whether it’s the industrial rail park in the east end of Timmins or the big one: the Ring of Fire.

Black says NOLUM is optimistic after comments made by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne as of late—including some made here in Timmins—and it will be a big topic during upcoming AMO meetings.

“We see the billions of dollars being tossed around Southern Ontario in terms of light rail and high speed rail transportation networks and we’d like to see not necessarily a similar, but a substantial investment in Northern Ontario,” Black said, “The basic rail, the freight lines to ensure that our economic development opportunities can come to fruition.”

“Rails a critical component of the future of Northern Ontario and we’d just like to see a relative commitment to Northern Ontario that we’re seeing in Southern Ontario right now and unfortunately at this time, we’re not seeing that to our rail networks and it is a concern to us.”

Now to the drugs. Black says stats and situations are going up, and there’s increasing concern among NOLUM members to put a clamp on it as soon as they can.

“We obviously feel, first and foremost, for the safety and health of our residents,” he said, “It’s something that we think we need to do a little more lobbying towards the upper levels of government to put some funding behind that, to try and help address that issue.”

“When you talk health stats and the number of deaths due to drug issues, and you start comparing them to other things like car accidents and the amount of focus that goes into vehicle safety on the roads and the amount of dollars that go behind those campaigns. We think it’s time to give similar treatment towards the drug crisis in Ontario.”

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