CBC London mayoral debate on London Morning

All right, this morning we have three leading candidates for mayor who say they're the right person to lead London in the next four years. London's grown significantly over the past four years, and so have the challenges facing the city. Joining us are candidates Josh Morgan, Susan Stevenson, and Kirsten Crowes. We'll be speaking to more candidates tomorrow as well, so stay tuned. All three of you, thanks for joining us. Yeah, good to be here. Ryan's got a timer going on inside of the booth over there. I'll look at it at a clock over here. We'll start politely saying that's time until I'm forced to sing you off like the award shows there. We've got about 60 seconds for the questions, but we'll try and give as much space as we can to each of you to respond to the questions that we have from Londoners here. We're going to start with downtown, one of the defining issues of the campaign here. What's the single biggest change you would make to downtown London, and how would Londoners know it was working? Josh Martin, let's start with you. Yeah, so we need to continue to work on public safety in the downtown core. I know we've built lots of residential density that's actually helping, 1,500 more people, 1,500 more units in the downtown, 2,000 people. But public safety is obviously a really critical role. London Police have done some amazing work. They've increased foot patrol teams, integrated mental health workers, and public health nurses. People are not only having drugs seized but getting referred to service, and that balanced approach is exactly what the city needs moving forward. We need to continue to do more of that because you create safety on the streets in the downtown. You can support the downtown plan and you can actually start to grow the downtown with the residential density there. That's one of the pathways to the future. But I'll say it again, you can't move forward without a plan. The downtown plan is a good plan. Thanks for that. That's Josh. Morgan, Susan Stevenson, the question being, what is the single biggest change you would make to downtown London and how would Londoners know it was working? Yeah, we need a place for people to go and we need pathways to recovery. So the Ontario government abandoned the failed harm reduction model in April of 2024, and London hasn't yet followed suit. So we need to stop enabling the public drug use, and we need to give people pathways to recovery for those coming out of detox and rehab. They need sober shelters and sober housing options. And people will know because they will see a cleaner, more safe downtown. Thanks, Susan Stevenson. We go now to Kirsten Crowes. Again, the question, what is the single biggest change you would make to downtown London and how would Londoners know it was working? Yeah, I'd like to see downtown London be that vibrant economic hub that it used to be. So I want to see public transit increase in there, making sure that we're getting good traffic flow through there. Public safety is another issue, but public safety isn't just policing. We know that there's a multi-tier approach that we can take to it. I also want to make sure that we're making it vibrant in the sense of culture for art, music, and really promoting those to get people to come into the downtown, walk around, spend their dollars, and rediscover it. Thanks for that, Kirsten. That is the first question that we have. It leads into the second one here about dealing with homelessness, addiction, and mental health challenges. And something that you all spoke about here as well is the idea of what government plays what type of role during your campaigns. What would you, as mayor, actually do differently if the province doesn't provide the services that you say London needs? Susan, we'll start with you. Yeah, well, we definitely need more mental health and treatment spaces, but right now we do have the detox spaces. We've got Quinton Warner with a four-month program and Teen Challenge with a 12-month program. We have several recovery houses. The municipal piece is sober and safe shelter and housing, and that's where we're failing, and we have gaps in the system For people who want treatment and need to wait a few days, there isn't a safe space to hold them in that space of recovery. And for those who come out, again, we don't have pre and post shelter spaces. And our social housing is rampant with illegal drugs, the same as our shelter. So it's very hard for people to make effective use of the provincial things that are available currently. Thanks, Beth. Susan, Chris, and I go to you. What would you do as mayor differently if the province doesn't provide the services that you say London needs? Yeah, I think we have the capabilities and resources to build a robust system here on our own. We have so many great frontline organizations that work on different things. I would just like to see it networked better so that we're collecting and sharing more information so we can make better decisions for the system as a whole. And I would also want to see the plan I have is prevent, correct, and create so that we're preventing people from becoming unhoused. We're correcting any policies and programs, and then we're also creating those spaces for people to go to and address their needs. Josh, I turn to you. What would you do as mayor if the province doesn't provide the services that you say London needs? Well, I'll be honest on the question. You need the province. You 100% need the province. So if the province isn't going to help us, then across the entire province, things are going to get worse. You know, you need a provincial-wide strategy to actually solve homelessness. So we can continue to do what we're doing here. where we've helped 1,500 people exit the streets and find safe, stable, secure housing. You know, this idea that we would turn all the shelters into sober shelters, all that's going to happen there is you're going to have half-empty shelters and more people on the street. If you don't have a complete system, if you don't fill the gaps, and yes, we need treatment and recovery beds, yes, we need more mental health beds, but we need health care dollars in the system. The province is actually critical to this, and any answer that doesn't recognize that the province is the centre of this is missing the boat. Susan, I want to give you a chance to respond to that. Is there anything you would say about his comments about the idea of what you could do with the shelter system? Yeah, there's always this extremist kind of response. So it's not all shelters would be sober, but there would be a pathway for those seeking recovery. And right now what we're doing doesn't work. So we need to have a complete system with no gaps in it so that as the province expands, we're able to move with it. Right now what we're doing isn't working. We're going in circles and we're not using the provincial funding properly. I want to talk about funding more here. The cost of running the city tax dollars is a big conversation when people in London talk about who they want to elect next, what their bill will look like. How much should property taxes increase over the next three or four years? We were looking for a number here. And what would you be willing to cut or delay to keep taxes at that level? Kirsten, what are you looking at here? Yeah, I think a good starting point. I'm not in there. I haven't seen everything in detail, but I think a good starting point for any policy should be inflation or less, because there are certain things in the budget tied to inflationary measures, wages, different things for construction, WSIB, but we already know different things are going up, such as water is going up, and I would really like to see us focus on, instead of cutting or adding, it's how can we better use the resources we already have, so reallocate some of that funding from under-subscribed programs to from over-subscribed programs or under to over, sorry. And I would also like to see us look at efficiencies using digital technology so we can either amalgamate, eliminate redundancies, or also maybe get a better result if we get better value for money on a new tool. Josh, how would you see property taxes changing over the next four years? Can you give us a number and what would you be willing to cut or delay to keep taxes at that level? Yeah, so a number would be in the three percent range. I think that's reasonable. If you think about the amount of service review dollars and efficiencies we can generate, as well as if we're responsible, continue to be responsible with the surplus and put it towards debt mitigation and reduction, you can get in the 3% range. And I'm glad that Susan goes after me because she has yet to answer how she's going to get down to 1% with a goal of zero. You have to find $70 million. You're not going to find that in efficiencies. And although I've asked time and time again, I still don't have an answer or haven't heard an answer to what's on the table to cut if you're not going to find the savings. Susan, we turn to you now in the order, but also from that as well. Would you like to pick up with what you would do for the next four years, the number and what you'd be willing to cut or delay? Yep. I have committed to less than 1% in 2027 and 2028 with zero as the goal and inflation or less in the last two years. And we owe it to Londoners. We overtaxed them in this term. We didn't do the work that was needed to keep the taxes in this rate that now the mayor says is reasonable but wasn't reasonable in this term. There was a talk of there's no magic money. Well that's what so many Londoners tried to tell us when we approved an 8.7 and a 7.3 percent tax rate. There is money to be had in that budget. We saw 10 million dollars found for the end wave capital projects within our operating budget in a line that was never shared with council. So I know that there's money there and I look forward to doing the hard work that Londoners deserve to find it. Just to follow up on that, when you say you know that there's money there, is there anything that you have circled? Yeah, well, there is that contingency budget operating line that I've mentioned. And then there's also a lot of programs and services that could be done more effectively where we can find value. And things that were added in the last 10 years, we have not seen an actual to budget line by line in over 10 years. So there's programs and services there like the housing collaborative, the waste of money at 122 baseline and the BRT that we're able to find those savings. When we talk about these types of reviews, Chris, and I know inside of your platform is something where you're looking at a rotating department review. Yeah, so I think before you decide what program is working or isn't working, you have to kind of measure the baseline. So I would like to see over a four-year term rotating department review where you're looking at, okay, what are we doing? Are we getting best value for money? What are the outcomes? Where are we aiming? So I think we need to start with a strong vision and then work through how are we going to get there with what we have and where can we improve on it? Because I think the goal should be always constant improvement. And Josh, I turn to you here. I just want you to respond to what Susan had said there, the idea of there being millions inside of that budget that can be found. Yeah, so I'll respond to both things. One is we do do service review each and every year. It's a line-by-line, zero-based budgeting, program and governance reviews, Lean Six Sigma, department by department, and it finds between $4 and $8 million per year in savings. So we do that. you know, second, there isn't extra money in the budget. You can't say, hey, we found some money for Enwave. We spent it on Enwave and then say, we're going to use that money for the future. You know, this is not how municipal government works. There's only so much dollars you can find. And you got to put things on the table to cut if you're going to try to dig $70 million deep into the budget. Susan, I saw you put your hand up. I'll give you a moment here. Yeah, I did. Because the thing is that Enwave money, it's in the multi-year budget, this very big number that's built into the operating budget that council was never told about. This is on top of our reserves and the $125 million in surplus that we had over the four years. So the fact that you can throw all these accounting buzzwords out, they have not been transparent or publicly done. Council has not done it. This is staff and administration saying they've done everything. Don't worry, they've found everything that they can. Taxpayers have elected us to do that work. Josh? Yeah, that's not how administration works. Administration prepares the budget. Every member of council is there for the budget discussions. Even in the 8.7% increase, you know, the councillor voted for pretty much everything in there. Public safety, housing, was very proud to add transit hours that I didn't add in the budget. You know, you can't vote for everything in the budget and then say it was too high. And, you know, you can't just go after civic administration when there was only one member of council who can't seem to find the information in the budget, can you show us Josh, post it, I've got to go to the next question here we have three candidates for mayor here on London Morning, it is 8:23, we have Kirsten Crowe, Josh Morgan, Susan Stephen here, Stevenson here as we talk about some of the issues that Londoners are most focused on we just talked a bit about accountability in different ways, give me one thing that City Hall is currently doing that you would stop doing because you don't believe taxpayers are getting enough value for their money, Kirsten we'll start with you, yeah I think um for a lot of it we need to look at how we're reviewing things so as I said I would like to do departmental reviews but there's certain items going in like there's over 250 applications being used in IT, over 400 databases we now know that there's technology available whether it's through AI or other programs that could maybe lower the burden as we look at costs rising a lot of these programs are being sent from a license-based platform to cloud subscription-based, which is actually increasing the cost. So I think we need to look at internal policies first on how we're doing things and how we want to do things going forward to make sure we're moving along with technology, we're getting good value for money, and that we're doing these reviews in a positive way. It's not to look at cutting things, but it's look at how can we do better and how can we get a better outcome with what we have. Okay. Josh, the question to you, So give me one thing City Hall is currently doing that you would stop doing because you don't believe taxpayers are getting enough value for their money. Sure. So there are portions of the procurement policy that I think we need to adjust and modify. Right now, I think we disadvantage London firms in some cases. And if we can build components into the procurement policy by getting rid of some of the requirements that basically favour Toronto-based firms, we're going to support local jobs, we're going to support local firms, and that money is going to cycle back through the economy. So I would get rid of some of the stuff in the procurement policy that disadvantages local firms. We still have 30 seconds with your time. How come that's only happening now? Yeah, because it's feedback that I've gotten through the course of this term, right? We've got a lot of construction happening, met with a lot of labor industries, happy to have support and endorsement from the various labor unions. And one of the things and feedback I get is, you know, by history and process, you know, we've got a procurement policy that sometimes local firms aren't as competitive in. And we need to do that. If we're going to buy Canadian, buy Ontario, we've got to buy London, especially when the city's buying. Okay, I turn to Susan now. Susan, can you give me one thing City Hall is currently doing that you would stop doing because you don't believe taxpayers are getting enough value for their money? Yeah, those procurement changes should have been done a long time ago to protect Londoners. Consultant fees. We spend almost a million dollars on downtown and economic development strategies when we know that it's homelessness, public safety, and parking that are the issues downtown. Londoners want their money to go to action, not more consultant reports. So I think that's one of the main things that we could do. We had $60,000 just go to a special constable study before they even asked council if we wanted a report and $40,000 for warming centres that we never even used. Susan, you have some time here as well. On the procurement front, is this something that you tried to take on when you were in the councillor role? Yeah, we had the procurement policies come forward that I'm sure staff spent a very long time on that came through in one big swoop with hardly any time to look at them and we've heard from firms about the issues that are happening and about the extra money that taxpayers are paying because of the problems within the procurement okay i want to go to something here that i make sure we give ourselves some time for because londoners raise this all the time when i came back i went to white oaks and i said hey folks what's the number one issue that you have they said traffic they said hey i can't get around the city i'm happy to see the work getting done but i can't believe it's being done in a way where I can't get to where I need to go to on time. So I'm wondering, your priority when you think about the next term, is it building major transit projects, fixing existing roads and bottlenecks, or changing how Londoners move around the city and why? Susan, we'll start with you. I think the change is to prioritize taxpayers and make sure that their mobility throughout the city and that the businesses and homes that are impacted by these construction projects are the top priority. And we've got the planning and processes in place to ensure that the businesses survive and that the people are supported, whether it's mailboxes, which weren't put in on Dundas Street, whether it's bus stops that are continually moving and construction that sits idle. Londoners want the construction managed by council in a way that protects them and their daily lives. Kirsten, on the question of how you would handle traffic and transit, would it be building major transit projects, fixing existing roads and bottlenecks, or changing how Londoners move around the city and why? Yeah, I think before I would move forward with any major capital projects for expansion, I would want to see how much is it going to cost, what are the benefits, and how long is this going to take? Is this something that the people want to take on right now? I think we do need to create a more robust public transit system for sure. There are certain areas of the city already it doesn't go to. I also think that we need to be very thoughtful about it before we're looking at tearing up roads, and sometimes it needs to be done, but we have the Traffic Management Centre here in London. They collect data. We've implemented certain things with technology for smart lights, but there's other components that haven't been adopted yet on the technology side in order to really utilise it. So I want to make sure we're being thoughtful about where we're planning our infrastructure projects and construction projects so that we're being mindful of how people are moving through the city. Josh, how would you handle this? Yes, so one of the things we can do is we can speed construction up. We can go faster by working later shifts. Deputy Mayor Lewis, Councillor Lambing came up with a great idea to look at extending shifts to 11 p.m. You know, I think there are some projects where we can actually do overnight construction as well. The other thing, too, is we have an integrated transit management system that runs out of Byron. One of the things we don't do is we have an integrated AI and an analysis of that data management system to try to see if there's better ways that we can flow traffic around the city. We've got well over 150 lights that have been converted to a smart system. But how those lights interact and integrate with each other, I think we can use some, this is where we can use AI at the municipal level, I think more effectively to analyze that and get traffic flowing around the city. But ultimately with construction, we're still going to have to do construction. We've got to find a way to do it faster. And penalties, if you go past the date that you're supposed to finish on. Okay. I appreciate all three of you joining us this morning. I got to leave it there because of time. I'm sure that there's more questions that people have to ask and there's more debates for you folks to be speaking at as well. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Thank you.