Ontario Council tables uploading proposal with Minister

Ontario Council President, Joseph Zebrowski, has written to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, John Gerretsen, with a proposal (pdf) that would transform how Ontario-program co-ops are funded and administered and bring all housing co-ops in the province much closer together.

The Ontario Council is asking that the proposal be considered as part of the Provincial-Municipal Fiscal and Service Delivery Review announced by Premier McGuinty this past summer. This review, led jointly by the Province, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the City of Toronto, is looking at which level of government should deliver and pay for a range of social and health services, including co-op and non-profit housing. The final report is due in the spring of 2008.

The Council’s proposal calls on the Province to:

• upload the cost and program control for Ontario-program co-ops to the provincial level
• enter into an agreement with the Agency for Co-operative Housing for program administration, and
• amend the rules in the Social Housing Reform Act to provide a more effective program framework for housing co-ops.

This is our second attempt to bring Ontario-program co-ops under Agency administration. In the last months of our successful campaign in 1999 to stop the transfer of federal-program housing co-ops to the Ontario government, we mounted a lobby to have provincial co-ops uploaded to the federal government. We won significant political support but our efforts came too late to be successful.

Now we have a second chance. The Fiscal and Service Delivery Review gives us an unexpected and likely one-time opportunity to fix some of the biggest problems that provincial co-ops face and bring all Ontario housing co-ops together under Agency administration. The Agency for Co-operative Housing has expressed its readiness to extend its administrative role if the Ontario government is in agreement.

The Ontario Region is now beginning the work of building support for the proposal at the municipal and provincial levels. In the weeks ahead we will be calling on co-ops to join in this campaign to secure the future of co-op housing in Ontario.

For more information on the uploading campaign and how you can help, contact Harvey Cooper at hcooper@chfcanada.coop or by telephone at 416-366-1711 or 1-800-268-2537, extension 237.

Information on line:

• Ontario Region proposal to upload Ontario-program co-ops (pdf)
• Letter to Toronto Mayor, David Miller (pdf)
• Letter to Association of Municipalities of Ontario President, Doug Reycraft (pdf)
• Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing’s Provincial Municipal Fiscal and Service Delivery Review
• Who does what? Take two. Newsbriefs, Ontario Edition, October 2006 (pdf)
  

Campaign materials:

• Stronger Together brochure
• Special Bulletin No. 1
• Outline for campaign letter - Ontario-program co-ops
• Sample letter for Ontario-program co-ops
• Outline for campaign letter - federal co-ops
• Sample letter for federal co-ops