Welcome to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet, a twice-a-week newsletter meant to “tip” you off about some of the important stuff going on in the Royal City. It arrives directly in your inbox on Tuesdays and Fridays.
This edition is the second of two special editions of the Tip Sheet going out to the you, one of the people who contribute to the financial health of Guelph Politico through Patreon and Paypal. Starting tomorrow, people will be able to subscribe to the newsletter on the Guelph Politico website.
Another week, another big pre-election event! Lakeside HOPE House hosted a community breakfast Wednesday morning that offered the people that use HOPE House’s services the chance to engage with the candidates and talk about the issues that matter to them.
And if politics and breakfast wasn’t enough, the Canadian Federal of University Women came out to hold a pop-up voting booth, which let people get into the practice of voting and informed on what they need to cast their real ballot in October. The CFUW will be hosting other pop-up voting booths at the University of Guelph and the various branches of the Guelph Public Library throughout the fall.
To read the full story, click here.
In other election news from the breakfast, Juanita Burnett made her first appearance as the Communist Party candidate for the Federal Election. This would be Burnett’s third time running for the Communists, but her first Federal campaign.
In case you missed it, Paul Taylor announced his intention to run again for the None of the Above Party on this week’s Guelph Politicast. Taylor ran under the None of the Above banner in the 2018 Provincial Election, where he finished in fifth place.
And another thing, you may not know that Guelph also has a Christian Heritage Party candidate running in our riding for the first time in 13 years. The candidate’s name is Gordon Truscott, and he sat down with Guelph Politico for a Q&A, which you can read here.
So this is the complete list of declared and acclaimed candidates for Guelph (so far) in the upcoming Federal Election (in alphabetical order):
Juanita Burnett, Communist
Steve Dyck, Green Party
Aisha Jahangir, NDP
Lloyd Longfield, Liberal
Mark Paralovos, People’s Party
Dr Ashish Sachan, Conservative
Paul Taylor, None of the Above
Gordon Truscott, Christian Heritage
For all the latest coverage of the 2019 Federal Election from the Guelph angle, you can go directly to that Politico page by clicking here.
Also in the News…
A bus service between Owen Sound and Guelph is in limbo after a Request for Proposals (RFPs) came back with zero compliant bids for potential transit operators. The City of Owen Sound is going to try and reach out to Greyhound directly, and perhaps other providers, to see if there might be any potential interest, but it means that the bus service can’t start running as soon as Own Sound would like. That City got $1.45 million from the Ministry of Transportation’s Community Transportation Grant Program last year for a five-year pilot. Read more about these latest hiccups here at the Owen Sound Sun Times, and have a listen to this Guelph Politicast episode about the service from last spring.
A new University of Guelph study says that the surest way to close the gender pay gap is to get your PhD. The first study of its kind found that the higher the level of education you have upon graduation, the smaller the gender pay gap is because the average wage for men and women PhD grads is the same. “Making that jump from one graduate program to another is paying off for females,” said Prof. David Walters of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. The study was published in the journal Higher Education Policy, but get the Coles’ Notes version here.
The Ontario government celebrated the opening of the Ontario Beef Research Centre up the road in Elora this week. Reps from the University of Guelph and the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario were on hand to mark the occasion with Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Ernie Hardeman as the new facility will create new support for animal welfare research, as well as meat quality and safety. "This new, state-of-the-art facility will open new frontiers for agricultural research and elevate livestock farming to even greater heights," said Malcolm Campbell, Vice-President (Research) at Moo U. Read more here.
The Guelph Police Service is reminding you not to use the rail bridge over the Speed River at Macdonell and Wellington as a shortcut after a year that’s seen too many emergency trips to get people (and bodies) out of the river. There’s a nice video message over on the Guelph Police website.
The City of Guelph’s artist in residence Mallory Tolcher will unveil her outdoor exhibition #GuelphMovesMe on Tuesday September 3. The work consists of 12 hand-drawn portraits of Guelphites getting physical outside posted along the Silvercreek and Eramosa River Trails. You can learn more about the project here.
Patrik Mathews, a Canadian Forces reservist linked to the neo-Nazi group the Base, has been missing since last Saturday night, which was the last time his family saw him. A story in the Winnipeg Free Press revealed that Mathews was part of the Base, a hate group that teaches members the finer points of ambush tactics, weapons training, explosives making, and guerilla warfare. According to Vice, groups like Base covet the recruitment of members of the armed forces because of their skill sets, which they can then use to prepare for, in their minds, inevitable race-based violence.
September 3 – Committee of the Whole. The meeting will be called to order Tuesday at 2 pm, and you will be able to follow along on Twitter at adamadonaldson, or on the live-blog page on Guelph Politico, which will be posted on Tuesday.
For the full breakdown of the agenda for this month’s Committee of the Whole, click here. The clerk’s office will release the consolidated agenda for the meeting later this afternoon. You can find it here.
September 9 – Planning Meeting. The agenda for the first planning meeting of the fall has been released, and it will look at a couple of compelling issues. City council will be asked for a final decision on the rezoning of 51-53 College Avenue West, will hear the statutory public meeting for the rezoning of 167 Alice Street, and it will be asked to consider brownfield remediation and heritage protection grants for a couple of projects.
The other agenda item is the first pass at Official Planning Amendment #69 (okay, get it out of your systems now), which will enshrine in the Official Plan the preferred framework of the Commercial Policy Review.
Get the full details on the planning meeting from the Guelph Politico preview here.
If you want to register as a delegate for any of these items on the Council agenda, then you have to get in touch with the City Clerk’s office by 10 am on Friday September 6.
Also coming up at City Council:
September 16 – Special Council Meeting. Council will be holding a special council meeting to discuss the recent developments on the Baker Street Redevelopment starting at 6 pm. You can catch up on those developments by clicking here and here.
September 23 – Regular Council Meeting.
October 7 – Committee of the Whole. Items from the Infrastructure, Development and Enterprise agenda will be discussed.
Why not start your long weekend with a tale of murder and madness from the streets of 19th century Guelph. Go Jaywalking this Friday at 7 pm. Details.
The Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Board of Health will meet at on Wednesday September 4 at 4 pm in the Trillium Room of the Guelph office at 160 Chancellors Way.
The Eden Mills Writers’ Festival Starts next Friday with several events happening on Friday and Saturday and the main event happening along Publishers Way in the village of Eden Mills on Sunday afternoon. Get all the details at the festival website.
The Federal Election version of the Better Ballot Initiative will launch on Wednesday September 11 at the 10C shared community space. Details will follow.
Sports fans! The OHL champion Guelph Storm will play their first pre-season game at home on Saturday at 7 pm against the Flint Firebirds, and then they play on Labour Day Monday against the Mississauga Steelheads at 2 pm. The Storm will play their first game of the OHL pre-season tonight at the Alder Rec Centre in Orangeville against the Steelheads.
If you missed any of this weeks shows, you can listen to them all, right now or any time, by subscribing to the Guelph Politicast channel on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.
This week’s Market Squared column on GuelphToday.com will be the semi-annual screed about labour issues in this modern life. Read it, and let me know what you think!
I will be one of the volunteers broadcasting live from Branion Plaza Saturday as CFRU covers Move-In Day at the University of Guelph. I will be doing the 12 pm to 1 pm shift with Abdul-Rahim Abdulai of FoodFarm Talk. Remember that Gordon Street will be shut down from 7 am till 7 pm as the Class of ’23 moves in to their accommodations!
Open Sources Guelph co-host Scotty Hertz will be playing music, including some old standards, at the Labour Day Picnic on Monday at Riverside Park. Come out, grab a hot dog, and bring a non-perishable food item for the Chalmers or CSA Food Bank from 12 to 3 pm.
Have a Happy and Relaxing Labour Day Weekend!
And finally, feel free to reach out to be by email at adamadonaldson [at] gmail [dot] com, or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, GuelphPolitico.ca!