Finance committee  Thank you for the funding. One of the things I'm excited about with the housing accelerator fund is that it is going to actually help with internal processes at city hall. There is an element of it, or a bucket of the funding, that I know will help with the bricks-and-mortar side or the infrastructure side, and that's very important, but what I am very excited about is the internal structural changes that will happen at city halls.

Finance committee  I don't know why anyone would do that, but if they don't want to come forward and that means more money can come to Guelph, that's also fine. I would suggest that the structural issues within city halls have been a problem, and I mean that very respectfully. It's not on purpose.

Finance committee  Through you, Chair, I will say ditto to what Michael said. It's about looking to the federal government for leadership to bring people together and to get it done. That's not to repeat the get-it-done stuff that we already know needs to happen but just to set the rules and get it done, because we're all ready to go, including the private sector and non-profit sector and government levels.

Finance committee  I don't know what the recommendation would have been, because it was pulled because of the provincial changes.

Finance committee  No, it was strictly provincial. If the province had not stepped in to create those issues around the flood zone requirements, then we would have had a recommendation come forward from our staff to council.

Finance committee  That is correct. There's some context to that, though.

Finance committee  Certainly. The application did come forward to council. As the application was being reviewed by our staff, the province changed the zoning in that area to basically require extra steps to be taken by going through two different ministries at the provincial level before approval could be made at the municipal level, because it was in a flood zone.

Finance committee  It was, for a lot of reasons. We need more housing. The developer wanted to get people to work to build more housing. However, I think that the province saw that the area, being a flood zone, also created some environmental concerns, and they wanted to make sure their two ministries were brought to the table before the municipality was able to consider making an approval or any recommendation on that project.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I would say no, not really. There weren't. You rightly said that about a year ago there were about 10, and now there are 20. It has become a very big issue.

Finance committee  Sure.

Finance committee  I will say that the rapid housing initiative that was created by the federal government a couple of years ago did result in three different supportive housing projects coming online for this year, with one of them just about to come online. Actually, in my remarks I mentioned that the housing accelerator fund was announced at one of our supportive housing projects called Grace Gardens.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. The feedback has been nothing but positive. I know of some developers who have basically taken their projects that were shelved because of the fiscal arena we're in right now and have started to move forward with those projects. I know of one in particular just outside my city, in another city, that I was talking to the developer about.

Finance committee  We have licensing. People would have to do a licensing, and then we also will work on a complaint basis, of course. If we feel that there are issues coming in from people who are complaining about certain sites or whatever, then we would have inspections and whatnot to go out to verify.

Finance committee  I'm unsure about a more universal basis. It is usually by municipality, depending on the type of regime that they set up.