The Western Ontario Wardens' Caucus' 2024-25 Strategic Priorities Were Presented To Huron County Council This Week

by Bob Montgomery

Western Ontario Warden's Caucus Executive Director outlined their strategic priorities at this week's county council meeting.

Kate Burns Gallagher says she'll be presenting their priorities for 2024 and early 2025 at this weekend's Association of Municipalities of Ontario Conference as well as at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association Conference in January and she says they're looking forward to meeting with the provincial ministers. There are four specific priorities and they are housing, infrastructure, workforce and mental health, addictions and homelessness. “So when we look at housing, infrastructure and workforce, they are really all together, you can't have one without the other, you need the housing for your workforce, you need the workforce to build your housing and you need the infrastructure to support all of them.”

Burns Gallagher says in the past twelve to eighteen months they've had forty-billion dollars worth of investments and thirty-thousand jobs come into their area through various manufacturers. They need housing for those individuals, they need training to up-skill the people who are already here and they need infrastructure to support that investment. Things like roads, water, wastewater and broadband. She says they very much want to support the investment that has come into the area but they need the government's help with funding. They also want to make sure that small rural municipalities have the same access to government funding as larger urban municipalities do.