Jennifer Smith

Councillor Wendy Schau has submitted a Notice of Motion asking that the Town of Milton formally urge the Federal Government to reverse it's decision to do away with the mandatory long-form census.

In this, Milton would be joining the growing and virtually unanimous chorus of municipal governments and organizations condemning this decision - including the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

I think Schau's motion is worth quoting here in full. Here's hoping it gets the unanimous support it deserves.

ITEM: Elimination of Mandatory Nature of “Long Form” Census

WHEREAS; All orders of government use Statistics Canada’s Census data to inform their policy decision making and program/service implementation as they rely on the reliability and validity of this information. Business, non-profit organizations and universities also heavily use this data for their respective purposes.

AND WHEREAS; The data used is generally extracted and analyzed from the mandatory “long form” questionnaire which asked one-fifth of Canadian households questions on issues such as work, education, housing, income, child care, migration, ethnicity and family life.

AND WHEREAS; A survey methodology that relies on voluntary responses will compromise the efficacy of the data resulting in a significant negative impact on municipalities’ capacity to conduct reliable, accurate analysis of municipal issues on a longitudinal basis and on all municipal, provincial and federal government programs/services driven by the Census data.

AND WHEREAS; The federal government eliminated the mandatory nature of the “long form” of the upcoming 2011 Census through an Order in Council, without the consultation that generally takes place before such changes in well-established government operations are decided upon.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT; Milton Town Council urges the federal government to reconsider and reverse the decision to eliminate the mandatory nature of the “long form” of the Census.

AND FURTHER THAT; A copy of this resolution be forwarded to the Federal Minister of Industry Tony Clement for action, to all Halton municipalities for support, to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario for circulation and consideration, and to local MP Lisa Raitt.

The 1901 Census for Canada, showing just how long
we've been asking some of these questions

UPDATE: The motion was carried, unanimously.

If you live in Hawthorne Village, you might be familiar with Rick Di Lorenzo's massive Halloween display and haunted house. He's one of those people who keeps those Halloween megastores in business every year.

This year, Rick decided to use his terrifying attraction to raise funds for the Milton District Hospital Foundation by moving it to the Pirate Festival, held at Country Heritage Park over the August long weekend. He put the word out that he was looking for help organizing and promoting the event, and I volunteered along with Zeeshan Hamid.

I even offered to bring some of my husband's Halloween props, but the guys decided they might cause too many people to run screaming from the place.

We'll be holding two promotional events - one at the Milton Mall this Saturday and another at the Farmer's Market the next weekend - where shambling zombies and garish ghouls will be handing out flyers that will give you a dollar off your admission to the Pirate Festival.

Want to help out? We are looking for volunteers to dress up in costume and say "Boo!" for a few hours. Check our website under 'volunteers'.

You can also help promote the event by inviting friends and family to visit our Facebook event page - and of course by bringing them to the Haunted House.

This is going to be a lot of fun, and will hopefully raise a significant amount of money for the hospital. See you there!

MILTON HAUNTED HOUSE TO MAKE MILTON DISTRICT HOSPITAL A LESS SCARY PLACE

MILTON, ON - The Milton District Hospital Foundation will be getting a much needed financial shot in the arm thanks to three local residents.

Rick Di Lorenzo, Jennifer Smith and Zeeshan Hamid, who met while campaigning for the upcoming municipal election, have decided to raise funds for the Milton District Hospital Foundation by hosting a haunted house at this year's Pirate Festival at Country Heritage Park.

Di Lorenzo's elaborate annual Halloween production is legendary in his Hawthorne Village neighbourhood. This year he decided to share the scares with the rest of Milton and raise money for a good cause at the same time.

"We've all been hearing the concerns from our neighbours about the hospital" says Smith, who helped put Di Lorenzo in touch with the Pirate Festival organizers. "While we can't bring about provincial approval or funding of the expansion right now, we can help take a little bit of the pressure off by doing this".

The Haunted House aims to raise $5,000 for the Hospital Foundation. It will feature frightful animatronic figures and creepy costumed volunteers, some of whom will be making promotional appearances at the Milton Mall on July 17th, and at the Farmers' Market on July 24th.

The Haunted House will run from July 31st to August 2nd, 10:00am to 6:00pm inside the gates at the Pirate Festival at Country Heritage Park, 8560 Tremaine Road.

For more information, visit the Haunted House website at http://www.MiltonHauntedHouse.com, or contact Zeeshan Hamid at (416) 823-6993, Rick Di Lorenzo at (416) 821-1219 or Jennifer Smith at (905) 878-4205.

On Thursday evening, Heritage Milton met to decide whether to recommend the designation the St. Paul's Church sanctuary as a heritage building, or to allow the Church to move forward with its request for demolition. Either recommendation would toss the ball back into Town Council's court and force a final decision at the next council meeting on July 19th.

There was quite the crowd crammed into the Milton Room, which was to be expected given the high emotions surrounding the fate of St. Paul's and now the publicity about the fire.  The various groups wishing to save the sanctuary all wore stickers saying who they were with, but it was hard to tell how many were there on the side of demolishing it and redeveloping the property.

There were six delegations, representing the Church Council, the United Church Presbytery, and members of the Milton Historical Society, Save the Sanctuary, and Neighbours of St. Paul's. They all presented very convincing arguments that left me as anguished as ever on the issue.  I certainly didn't envy the committee members their job.

In the end, they decided not to decide. Instead, they requested more documentation, thus putting off the deadline for a council decision until 60 days after that documentation is received.

This is the text of the resolution:

"Heritage Milton requests a heritage assessment for St. Paul’s Church, a post-fire structural engineers report and a copy of the St. Paul’s Church’s binder, that contains the inventory of heritage artefacts that are proposed to be retained, is submitted as soon as possible, so that they can be reviewed by Heritage Milton in context with the demolition application."

Unfortunately there was no time frame attached to this resolution, so in theory the Church Council could delay submitting these documents for... well, forever. Or until the next council takes office. Or until the church falls down of its own accord.  But even if the documents are supplied properly, the appeals process in the Heritage Act pretty much guarantees that the final, final decision is going to be made by the next Town Council.

Aside from the conflicting expert opinions about the true condition of the building and the ongoing mystery of the fire (which should be resolved in about 6 weeks by the Fire Marshall) there are other unresolved questions here that, as someone who will hopefully be on that council, I would like to have answered.

First is the question of the proposed redevelopment. By all accounts they are looking at least 7-9 storeys of life-lease condos, with everything except possibly the bell tower of the current sanctuary demolished. A preliminary concept drawing of a 9-storey condo and a re-built church was shown at last night's meeting, and the reaction from the crowd was ugly.

The height of the proposed building is at the insistence of the developers, who have assured the Church Council that anything less than 100 units would not be "economically viable".  This, despite the fact that Holy Rosary's Marion Courtyard - an almost identical type of life-lease condo building - seems to do quite nicely with four storeys, 50 units, and a footprint that would tuck nicely alongside the St. Paul's sanctuary.

I can only assume that there is a distinction being drawn here between 'viable' and 'profitable'.

Despite all this, the Church Council is adamant that nothing has been finalized, and that nothing will be finalized until they are given the go ahead to demolish the sanctuary. But given that the whole area is zoned with a limit of 4 storeys, and that pretty much every single person in the neighbourhood would vehemently object to exceeding that by a single foot, I frankly can't see any way of getting their plan approved short of shredding both the zoning by-laws and the Official Plan.


So, what happens if they tear down the sanctuary and council then refuses to allow the construction of the number of condo units they insist they need to make the scheme viable?  And how much pressure would that place on council to somehow accommodate the now homeless church?

This relates to my other concern, which is somewhat broader: the question of interest and responsibility.

If Council places a Heritage designation on St. Paul's - or any building for that matter - against the owner's wishes, one would hope that such an action would only be taken if there was an overriding public interest in that building's preservation. But if there is such a public interest (and in this case, I believe there is), does that not imply a public responsibility as well? And does that extend to a financial responsibility to contribute to its maintenance?

If anything good can come out of all this, it may well be the recognition that it isn't just the congregations of the many historic churches in Milton who have an interest in their continued existence.  From the social services they offer, to the tourists nd new residents they attract, to the history and continuity they represent - we all have a stake in this. And I have no doubt that if a decision is made to designate and preserve the sanctuary, the people of St. Paul's would not find themselves alone in their efforts to fund the repair and renewal of their church.


On a personal note, I want to say that although I am not a church member, my family has deep roots in the United and Methodist Churches, so I have a particular appreciation for that uniquely Canadian spirit of pragmatism, cooperation and compromise which lead to the creation of the United Church of Canada eight and a half decades ago.

Here's hoping that spirit will prevail here.

While the recently announced changes to the census are under federal jurisdiction, they will have a profound effect on municipalities and municipal governance if allowed to go forward.  The following letter was submitted to Hon. Tony Clement, Hon. Lisa Raitt, and the editor of the Milton Champion.

UPDATE: Apparently municipal staff in the cities of Calgary and Red Deer, Alberta are equally alarmed. They explain exactly how they use this data and what impact making the long from voluntary will have on their work. They also say that they have never heard anyone complain about having to fill out the census.

I've been having a lovely time at all of Milton's Canada Day celebrations today. I started off at the Veterans' Breakfast at Victoria Park this morning where I had the chance to share pancakes and conversation with some of our many veterans.

Then I wandered over to the Fairgrounds where over 40 new Canadians were sworn in as proud citizens




Then my husband and I wound up sharing a picnic table with a lovely couple who live in the neighbourhood, and spent a pleasant afternoon chatting with them and their friends.  While we were there I was approached by an enthusiastic supporter who asked if I had any of my campaign cards with me.  Of course I did, and she made sure she displayed them in a... prominent place.


She definitely has a place on my campaign team!