CROMBIE: The answer to long-term food security is employment. I’ve advocated in the past to double the ODSP and increase Ontario Works programs as well. But I think one of my achievements while mayor, something I’m very proud of my record, was bringing in a lot of investment into Mississauga and creating jobs. I’ve brought in $9 billion of expansion and investment into the city and that resulted in…I always say tens of thousands of jobs, but it’s probably hundreds of thousands of jobs over nine years because we did so much of it. 

I’m also very proud that we supported our food bank. I took it on as a cause. Unfortunately we have a food bank, but we have a great system here. It’s so important to support [the food bank]. So as mayor, I ran the mayor’s Thanksgiving food drive, we also had a holiday drive and we’ve raised $5.2 2 million for the food bank over the years with the support of the community.

Obviously, we’ve challenged companies to donate, high schools to donate, individual business people, places of religious worship. I will say the masjids step up every time. So, they’re really great supporters and it’s fantastic how the community rallies and steps up, but they just need a little encouragement. I mentioned that the food bank needed support both at the food bank debate and I think at the Poly Corner debate and they created a portal for me and three days later when I checked, we had already raised $40,000 just by my mentioning it.

So people just want to be prompted to donate and I’m really grateful that our community is so giving. But again, it’s unfortunate that we have people using food banks. 

We have to protect jobs and right now, we’re under tariff threat. So we need to protect the jobs that we have and we need to continue to bring investment into the city and so we want to create a service where new companies are guaranteed quick approvals within 90 days because that’s one of the big barriers to operating in some cities — the approval process takes so long. So, we want to ensure that’s in place. We have people that are highly trained and highly skilled and want to work here. So we want to invite investment and create more jobs and prosperity.

PARRISH: I’m a little appalled that no senior levels of government are taking any responsibility for this. This is all charitable and volunteer work and we are in enough of a crisis that I think senior levels of government should be getting involved in making things happen to make things better. 

I’ve personally been running an event they call the milk fund for 13 years. I raise about $250,000 a year and I personally write small checks $2,000 to $5,000 to breakfast clubs. I give our central food bank $25,000 a year. I give some of the other larger food banks money. So, I help personally. 

Secondly, I’ve had discussions and we’ve started the process. The region of Peel owns a big property but it’s surrounded by large parking lots and a big green belt. We’re now making arrangements for building a food bank warehouse there and offices on free land, so that they’re not paying rent in the millions for many years. I think it’s going to make a difference. In the region, we put about $2.5 million into the budget every year to assist them with shelving and storage and refrigerators and so forth. And when I was a new councillor, I raised money to buy them a refrigerated truck, the first one they had. So, I’ve had a good partnership with them. I also worked with some of the Muslim folks this year who had a special fundraiser during Ramadan.

The other thing is we did a lot of changes in Mississauga. I did a housing task force and I think because housing is so expensive now, that’s why we’re having a food crisis. And if we could get housing prices lower and rents lower, then that would make a big difference. So, we’ve had quite a bit of success over the last two years. Our rents have dropped 9% because we’re now giving huge bonuses to developers who are putting on rental buildings with two and three bedroom units. So, I think effective housing helps with food insecurity.

CROMBIE: We had started the process when I was mayor. We had a housing task force and we had a group called Making Room for the Middle. We needed to build middle-class housing, but we needed affordable and deeply affordable housing. 

We did structure a relationship with a religious organization called Indwell based out of Hamilton and they are building supportive housing. They’ve now built 170 units in Mississauga — the first one is right across from my home. [It’s] 68 units and it’s so successful that they’ve built more and they do provide wraparound services for mental health and addiction.

I also really think that development charges have had their day and I think we need to eliminate them entirely. It will help reduce the cost of building and it will reduce the price to the family that will end up purchasing the home, and we have a federal and a provincial government that have waived the GST. 

We need semis and row houses and fourplexes and duplexes and sixlexes and town homes and stack town homes and garden suites. And yes, we were one of the first municipalities that allowed basement apartments, secondary units, and we’re proud of that. But I think providing more variety. People don’t need a 4,000 square foot house for goodness sake. You can raise a family in 1,200 square feet, 500 square feet, but they just need that option in the market that the development community wasn’t building. So, that’s where I think we need to incentivize three and four bedroom units rather than something that’s 600 square feet. 

PARRISH: Well, that was my biggest concentration.

The week after I got sworn in, we pulled together a housing task force with 25 developers, which grew to about 36. Our first meeting, they came in and told us everything we were doing wrong as a city and our planning department that was slowing things down and increasing costs. We fixed all that. 

One of the things we brought in was three strikes and you’re in. If you’ve submitted your plans twice and they keep coming back with more problems, the third time, you go into a big room and you have your red pens and we have our red pens and nobody leaves the room until it’s fixed. We’ve not had one incident in two years where you had to use the red pens in the room. So, our staff knows that they’ve got to be very precise with what they send back and the people who are submitting know they have to be very responsive. So, it’s working out really well. 

The second thing we did was we reduced development charges 50% right off the bat and we also deferred them until occupancy. And the reason that’s so important, when you’re building a high-rise building, it’s three years in the process, but they have to borrow the development charge money to pay the city right at the beginning when they get their plans approved. We’ve now deferred that and the province picked that up. That’s part of the provincial deferrals.

CROMBIE: We have a planning committee and we welcome the debate. 

When both the Brightwater and the Lake View developments were being built out, there was a significant amount of community interaction that held town halls in those communities with those residents and the resident groups and the ratepayer groups. So I will say there was a significant amount of interaction and consultation and collaboration with the community.

We have a planning committee that approves all the applications, right? Staff will review them and sadly that’s the part that takes too long and it frustrates everyone and of course time is money. What happens is they put in an application and the staff send back comments and then, they review those and resubmit their designs and then, the staff have new comments on the new designs and then, they have to wait for approvals and traffic studies and it’s just endless. That’s the part that has to be streamlined and so part of my plan is to really find out where those bottlenecks are and kind of break that open to really facilitate a smoother process and get approvals done much faster.

PARRISH: Well, we’ve streamlined that. We’ve changed our official plan for the city. 

We used to have 14 different types of building units. We now changed it to two. It’s very simple, a large lot or a small lot. And we will approve anything on those lots, fourplexes, duplexes, singles. You can’t go into the middle of a single family housing place with a small lot and put a duplex on it. It wouldn’t fit. 

A lot of the legislation coming out of the province has gotten rid of the ability to object and their need to give what they call MZOs. That’s a minister’s zoning order. If the community fights a project that the developer wants to bring in, they used to issue MZOs for those properties because they were developer-friendly and we need housing. They’ve gotten rid of the ability to appeal, but they’ve also gotten rid of a lot of the regulations that were holding up buildings and were controversial in neighbourhoods. 

CROMBIE: Let’s start with the traffic and gridlock and congestion that this city faces. It’s quite crazy. 

I understand the [Hurontario] LRT is being built and we’re quite proud of that. But the problem with the LRT is we don’t have any understanding of why it’s so delayed. If there are delays, I’d like to know what they are and why they’re happening and will there be penalties for the delays. 

I drive by Hurontario all the time and I never see any construction work. I don’t see enough movement, not enough activity, and I’d like to know why. 

The other problem with the traffic and congestion is the gridlock. And actually, I just picked up my car from maintenance, and the owner of the shop that did the oil change said, “You’re got to synchronize your lights better, Bonnie.” And I said, “It’s part of my plan.” And talk to me in 10 days, and hopefully we can get that done. So there’s a lot of really simple fixes. 

But I will say the northwest of the city is very underserved. Churchill Meadows, Meadowville, Lisgar areas [are] underserved with public transit. We have to look at that and better bussing to UTM whether from Malton or even from Kipling subway station on the GO train lines. So if you’re in the south of the city, the Lakeshore line works pretty well because it’s half either 15 minute or half hour service. So that one’s great. In the north end, a train on the Milton line only runs in the morning and picks people up and then takes them back home from Toronto at night. But the people who live in Toronto can’t get to work in the pharmaceutical companies, because the train doesn’t run from Toronto to Mississauga, even though their parking lots are adjacent to the GO train station — this doesn’t make any sense. The train moves in the wrong direction. But we’ve been waiting for 30 years for additional funding on that line to get either a third rail or a missing link to make all day two-way on the Milton line. We’re still waiting and we’re still hoping it will be transformational, but it’s taken a long time and I know it’s expensive. The Lakeshore line needs to be electrified and then we can put more stops on it.

I’ve just learned about this smart technology bus called Argo and they’re using it in Brampton and it’s really revolutionary. It’s like Uber for a small bus. It’s like, first mile, last mile, and it’ll pick you up at your home and take you to the closest GO train or bus station that you need to get to. 

And then of course, the big news is that I’ve been advocating for a subway and I think it’s just time. We finally have the population density in Mississauga to warrant one and I would do a feasibility study and build the business case. 

PARRISH: We’ve dropped almost 20% in our ridership in the last year. We’re building up about a $13 million debt right now with transit. 

Brampton has tried what they call the Argo buses. So I went out to visit a facility and have a look at some of these buses. They’ve only got 10 seats and they’re all electric, which is good for the environment, and they are programmed with software so that you can phone them up. This will cut out some of the inconvenience, but it’s going to add to costs. So, we’re looking at large shopping malls like Square One and others to say, “Would you like to participate in this? Because we’re going to take our shoppers right to you.” And then they push a little button on their phone and they get picked up and get taken back. And obviously, they’ll be on routes that are programmed so that you’re not going all over the city. You’re just going into one area. I don’t exercise strong mayor powers at all. I do everything with votes of council. But I am planning on looking into this.

CROMBIE: It’s been a challenge for young people to get that start, to get that first job. 

What I think works really well is those co-op placements and then, you find out what you like and what you’re interested in and then, those companies if they like you, they end up hiring you when you finish your education. Those are really good and we need more paid internships for our young people. We have them in the City. I’d like to create more. 

We have 100,000 businesses. Most of them are small, but the big ones, we do sector rounds and the idea of promoting our young people and telling them that they’ve got to give these kids an opportunity, a first shot is really really important. 

We would put that on the agenda to create jobs and co-op opportunities, internships, and they’ve got to get their foot in the door, right? That’s all it takes.

We have some really great youth engagement programs at the City. We have a Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council. I think it’s defunct now. It was active under me, but I’m not sure they’re meeting anymore. And we have youth counselors at the City as well. And we have many boards that I’d like to put youth on too to get some exposure.

PARRISH: 79% of our population out here has post-secondary education. We have Sheridan College and we have UTM. So we have a well educated workforce and we have adventuresome people, because we have so many immigrants that are willing to leave their countries where they’re obviously successful or not but mostly successful and they come here and they start businesses. Those are the people we depend on to create jobs. 

When I have been listening to the debate in Toronto, I’m wondering, how are you gonna magically create jobs for youth? We do have a centre at Square One where we have youth entrepreneur training and they are invited to use a bank of offices there that are set up so that it it could be your office and if you’re bringing in a client it’s your office and there’s a small rental fee and Oxford’s been participating quite heavily.

So, we have youth groups in the summer and we have prizes for the most successful or the ones that are making the most progress. But generally speaking, we have over 500,000 jobs in Mississauga. We don’t have 500,000 people that can work. So, we went up 24,000 last year. I imagine with the tariffs there might be a little bit of a slowdown, but the companies that are here, the entrepreneurs, the small business owners, those are the people that make the jobs. We do our bit but we don’t have a very strong economic development department, but I think we depend on the people who are coming in with the small and medium-sized businesses to do that for us.

CROMBIE: So, mostly in the Region of Peel, there is a welcome centre for newcomers that was built with federal money, $19 million, but better services are needed to help people integrate. Often they do that within their own communities; like the churches and the mosque welcome their own and help their own people navigate the system. It’s insufficient, there isn’t a good process in place for sure and sometimes the schools, the colleges, the universities help get students settled in. Newcomer families often feel the same, it’s not easy.

We should try to make it easier however we can to support newcomers. It’s hard to reach them too, right? They don’t often reach out to us. They use people they know or their own cultural communities or religious places of religious worship to get integrated.

PARRISH: Our influx of international students has been sorely dropped because of the federal policy.  [The students are] coming in from all over because they have relatives that live outside of Mississauga. 

As far as helping them, one of the things I would like to do, and we’ve been working on for about a year, is to build a new music centre in Mississauga. Build it on the park beside the Living Arts Centre and then, tear down the Living Arts Centre. We also want to put in a Metal Works in there as a music school here.And we would like to build a high-rise rental building on some of the property where the old Living Arts Centre is and put in heavily subsidized units — Indwell — and you’d put in units where they pay $300 a month as they’re going to the music school instead of traveling by bus all over the place and coming in from all over. 

[We’re] really big on getting the downtown rebuilt.

CROMBIE: So, let’s talk about the good and the bad. 

The company is suggesting that this is pro-economic development. Not really. Because when you have a property the size of four football fields, you expect more high quality long-term jobs. The jobs in building the data centre are really in construction, because let’s be honest, there might be a handful of people that will work there because it’s a data centre, right? Maybe a dozen at best versus other uses. So, I worry that it’s not the best and highest use for the land for economic development reasons either. 

Now, we’re not anti- AI data centres. We have nine or 10 of them right now. It’s just the scale of this one and the proximity to the residents. 

There are also significant downsides that we’ve learned about from the experience in the US: it’s tax on the electrical grid — do we even have the capacity? Then, they would certainly have to pay their fair share. And then there’s the use of water. We are now moving into putting wastewater into a public utility run by an outside board according to the premier. Will they have the ability to evaluate the needs of this thing and be able to service the water needs? And then, there’s the question of noise. It’s a different kind of noise than traffic congestion or the buzz of the 401. It’s a higher pitch. Could it be irritating? Could there be environmental damage? Could there be environmental spills? There are all these downsides that we just don’t know enough about it.

And then the last one, I’ll alert you to, what if it’s a US data company? Do we want a US company holding our data? I think they did the right thing by putting the interim control bylaw, but the more I think about it, frankly, it shouldn’t move forward.

The province at some point has to step in and say, look, it’s not appropriate to put those things [that are] hyperscaled. Not every municipality should have to deal with this each and every time and debate it.

So too many questions, too many unknowns, too many unresolved issues. But I think certainly the province should come in.

PARRISH: Yeah, we have nine and people aren’t even aware of them. They couldn’t tell you on a map where they are. 

We did stop a big prologus project that was going on, because there was a big cry. If I can be really honest with you, I think it was a pre-election thing. Everybody was running in little circles and trying to find issues. 

I went to a company last week, toured it. It builds the components for data centres. It was fascinating and the gentleman there said to me data centres are the brain of a country, do you want our data centres in the United States? Of course, your first reaction is no way. 

My husband thought he was having a heart attack a couple weeks ago. I was out on the road somewhere. My daughter took him to Emerge and they did a whole bunch of tests and he got the results on his phone before the doctor came in to talk to him. That’s what you have data centres for.  It’s a valuable tool. It’s something that we need to have control over here in our own city, in our own country. 

We asked our staff to do a full study, talk to the experts, talk to the people who are concerned about hydro, talk about coolants, talk about all this stuff and come back with a really thorough report and a recommendation: should we allow them or should we not allow them? If we do allow them, should they have certain restrictions on them? They were working along quite nicely. It was supposed to be coming out in January, but now of course the temperature’s gone up — literally — and everybody’s very worried about it. 

If they come back and say, “Nope, these are the parameters. These are the regulations. You no longer just had to get a building permit. You have to get interior permits and you have to have regulations,” I would support it, because it is the brain of our city and of our country and we want to have our data here. 

I would be very pleased, because right now we’re in limbo. We lost one big contract — as soon as that interim control bylaw was passed, they moved up to Brampton. It’s a huge loss to us, because it was a pharmaceutical company that was experimenting on new drugs and they wanted half the premises to be data just for them speeding their stuff through.

It’s so funny because I didn’t go to the public meeting that turned into a brawl, but my  chief of staff was there and everybody in the room was taking pictures with their cell phones and he said he wanted to get up and say, “Where do you think that data is going and how do you think that’s being processed?” But it was just unfortunate. But I think we may come up with a better system now that we’ve done a thorough investigation, which we were doing anyway.

CROMBIE: I was there today. I was at Jabal. I had shawarma, too. I’ve been at Ridgeway a couple times this week, actually. I love the plaza. I love the concept. I love that people love to gather there and it’s very cultural, so you can eat your way across every restaurant. They have everything. 

The problem was that the mall wasn’t really designed for that and and the flaw is that as services closed — like the local hair salon and doctor’s office — restaurants went in, and there really is not sufficient parking for the number of restaurants that exist. And listen, I’m not going to bring the city into the parking lot business because it’s not inexpensive. It’s very costly. But there are companies that do that in parks: precise parking. I think a portion of that mall could be a walking mall. But we need to open up more parking. That’s really the bottom line.

I know that the council has put a sort of an interim control bylaw on there being any more new restaurants. And there are lots of ideas on how to protect them all because first of all, these are job creators. These are entrepreneurs who have opened businesses. They’re working very hard and they’re employing our youth by the way, right? I asked them, they have a loose business council or loose business association now. I said, “I want you to count up the number of businesses and I want you to count the number of people you employ. I want to give a rough number of the taxes that you contribute to the city from Ridgeway Plaza, because I want to have some statistics on the good that this plaza does for the community.” 

Not to forget to mention that it’s kind of a tourist destination now, because everybody knows Ridgeway Plaza. If you’re in the UK or in the US, everybody knows Ridgeway. They’re even copying it in the US. 

But it does have a dark side. Okay, let’s be honest. There have been some incidents late at night.

There’s street racing and drag racing. There has been an increase in break and enters in the area, increased criminal activity, so it’s not all good.

Some of the restaurants are open 24 hours and it’s very cultural and people do gather there. It’s an opportunity for those communities to come together to celebrate and that’s good, but there have been clashes too. 

Suddenly, you had opposing sides clashing and that got concerning and there were a few altercations and I know that this mayor, she banned activity on both India and Pakistan Independence Day at the mall. That was really devastating for the business owners, because they weren’t giving any warning. And let me be honest, on big days like that you’re going to stock up, you’re going to have fresh food that’s going to go bad, because you’re expecting lots of customers.

But look, I’m both proud of it and it scares me at the same time, because I know the feedback from the residents. It’s tough to live in that area now, because there’s so many people coming in and out, people circling looking for spaces late at night, street racing — we’re all very aware of this and the police are too. 

But at the same time, I’m proud of them. I respect the business owners. They’re working so hard and they need to have a business association or BIA there too for pooling resources to help beautify the mall and maybe get a fountain in the middle and put some baskets up in gathering places. 

PARRISH: Well, let’s start with cultural significance.

I’ve been to the Middle East five times. I’ve been all through and in the evenings, all you hear in the little villages is voices and people having coffee and sitting there and chatting and being outside. That’s the culture. 

Also, if you fly around particularly Chicago and New York, you see ads for Ridgeway. So it’s an attraction. So we need to keep it as an attraction. 

There was a lot of difficulty particularly with young drivers, teenage kids zooming around in cars and screeching around in tires and all the rest of it. And we’ve had quite a few accidents. 

So they did put an interim control bylaw on it for a year to stop any new restaurants from opening. They’ve got 110 restaurants in there. So, if somebody decides they want to get out of that restaurant, you can put a restaurant in that space, but you can’t expand into the other stores until we get a little bit more control over it. 

Now, they’ve got a full security company that does their security. They have speed bumps. They have gates that go down when the parking lots are full. But what we really need there is behind Ridgeway, between that and the new mosque that’s going in, there’s a big vacant field that’s owned by a hotel operator. We should expropriate that land and put paid city parking there, stacked like four stories to get the cars out of the Ridgeway. It would take a year. It’ll pay for itself in five years and we wouldn’t charge an arm and a leg for the parking, but something reasonable and a check in or check out like they do when you shop in Toronto. 

Then, we can put more picnic tables and more seating and more outdoor stuff, because in the good weather, it’s a beautiful location and everybody knows the food there is incredible and you could probably eat your way through the whole place.

It’s something we should be cherishing, not giving them a hard time.

CROMBIE: So, first of all, our tax rates have skyrocketed in Mississauga. It’s one of the reasons it drove me to run for re-election as mayor, because I was leader for a brief time and I had some interesting private sector opportunities. 

But in speaking to community members — because I’m out often, whether I’m at the grocery store or Shoppers Drug Mart or even in a local pub listening to some music — people are just talking about the tax. 

I opened my own tax bill and almost had a quarter, like 10% a year —it’s just unsustainable. And we had never had a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. I’ve delivered nine budgets at an average increase in the city at 1.7% and when you combine with the region at 3.4%, taxes last year increased at 10%. 

This year increased at 10% as well. However, they took $33 million out of a reserve fund to pay down the tax bill, so that the increase was only 5.5%. Like that’s not sustainable to take money out of reserves or they won’t be there when you need them for whatever the reserve is for. It could be for paving roads or or storm water maintenance. Like it’s not there anymore. $33 million is gone. And people who are offering tax freezes, is that at 5.5%? No. You know, if they’re offering you a deferral on your tax increase. Okay, great. Are you giving seniors a deferral?

How are you going to make up that revenue? I’d like to know. Number one, these aren’t people with any financial skills who are offering these incentive programs, because it’s a bit of a senior scam. Then, the money goes into an account in the city and we put compounded interest on it every year. So, now you’re paying interest on top of interest every single year and before you know it, you’ve accumulated a little debt. And so when you go to sell your house or your estate goes to sell your house, you owe the city a lot of money and you had no idea. 

You thought it was just the increase on your taxes and you had no idea it was going to be charged. Anyways, this is a very bad tax plan. And then, for the freeze,  you can freeze for one year, but they pretty much did that this year and took money out of a reserve fund. You can’t do that every year. 

So, we have to go line-by-line. We have to cut. It’ll probably be some staffing, unfortunately. 

Maybe they’ll show you best practices from other cities. Like, I think it could be a very good thing, a useful tool, and I have nothing to hide. You know, everything I do is an open book. I have no idea why they would turn [having an auditor general] down, but they did. So, now it makes me extra curious to get in there and open up the books, so we would set a report card on what we wanted to accomplish, taxes at the rate of inflation.

I would have milestones of all my promises on affordable housing, on transit and a statement every year on where we are in achieving the goals we are. But number one is the taxes. Number two is policing, making people feel safe in their communities again, and number three is getting this community moving again, quite frankly. 

PARRISH: They hold you accountable every four years, for sure. I do a lot of public meetings. I have a Muslim Advisory Council and I made it a mayor’s advisory council. I also have a senior’s advisory committee that’s a mayor’s advisory committee. I’ve got an arts advisory committee; one of the other councillors chairs it for me, because he’s a crazy guy about arts and really into it. So, I’m accountable that way.  

I’m also accountable with public meetings on budget. We did something like 16 budget meetings this year. That accountability will be there.

My priority is to rebuild the city centre and there has to be a lot of consultation, particularly with the arts community. They’re very nervous that we’re just going to tear down the [Living Arts Centre] and not replace it — that’s not happening. So information is gold. You have to be able to hold enough public meetings and get serious input from people and not jump into it in a big hurry. But that’s my big objective is to get that city centre at least started.