Taken by ‘surprise’: Residents debate amalgamation during St. Catharines council session (St. Catharines Standard)

https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news/council/st-catharines-councillors-amalgamation/article_d0a94a30-8047-58cc-92c7-96a2ac3e1bc2.html

Taxpayers argued for and against governance reform initiated by Niagara Region Chair Bob Gale during a packed city meeting with councillors.

Updated 44 mins ago

March 4, 2026

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St. Catharines city councillors listen to a presentation from Gilles Marceau, one of 25 delegates who spoke about amalgamation during a special council meeting on governance reform on Monday. Marceau did not take a position on amalgamation but asked for evidence-based facts for people to trust the system.

Karena Walter/St. Catharines Standard

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By Karena WalterReporter

Will amalgamation water down citizens’ voices and dilute democracy?

Or will it give Niagara a larger voice and more efficiencies?

Residents for and against amalgamation argued their cases in front of St. Catharines city council Monday during a special meeting on governance reform that packed council chambers.

Twenty-five people made presentations over the four-hour meeting before councillors weighed in with their thoughts. The majority of speakers were against, with several for and a few who didn’t take a position either way.

The issue was thrust into the spotlight after Niagara Region Chair Bob Gale sent a letter to the minister of municipal affairs and housing saying there is an “urgent” need for governance reform in Niagara and he is contemplating changes “to maximize efficiencies and benefits.” He sent another letter to Niagara’s 12 mayors on Feb. 19 requesting their thoughts on a one-or four-city model by March 3.

“I object strongly to how the chair of regional council has handled this, with no proposed public consultation and with two weeks for feedback before recommending that the province sweep us all into a megacity or into four cities,” said resident Kate Werneburg.

“This took most ordinary Niagarans completely by surprise. This is not a movement that’s come from a groundswell of support, a grassroots issue. This has instead been imposed on us by higher powers. All of this is undemocratic.”

Werneburg said she couldn’t see how the proposal benefits St Catharines or its neighbours across the region when they know from studies like those done at the Fraser Institute that amalgamation does not save money.

She said instead, amalgamation limits people’s involvement in their own governments.

“Less representation in government gives the balance of power to the majority and stymies minority voices.”

Resident Saleh Waziruddin had similar concerns about representation, saying amalgamation will benefit developers.

“When there are more councillors and more representatives, our voices count more, organized people have more power. When there are fewer officials, organized money has more power because it can focus on lobbying fewer people,” he said.

“Amalgamation waters down our votes but doesn’t water down developers’ millions, it amplifies it.”

Resident Ann-Marie Zammit said forced amalgamation is a power grab to dilute democracy and allow developers to profit off the land in Niagara.

Zammit said while constituents extend a level of trust, mayors cannot operate in a vacuum and make unilateral decisions such as amalgamation.

“Amalgamation is not the answer. It should not even be an option on the table, and taking away elected leadership from constituents won’t result in any significant savings and especially won’t increase accountability from our government.”

But Penny Dickinson, a senior citizen with a background in tourism marketing, said St. Catharines residents will have a far bigger voice at the provincial funding table if there are 500,000 people versus 135,000.

She said if they’re going with their hands out now, the province isn’t going to pay attention because it has bigger fish to fry, but a larger population will mean something.

“I think when people talk about their fears, I think the fear of not amalgamating should be just as great as the fear toward amalgamating,” she said.

Resident Allen McKay said he doesn’t believe the current structure of a two-tier system is serving Niagara residents as effectively and affordably as it could.

He said a Berkeley consulting report from 2000 identified many of the same issues that Niagara is dealing with now — duplication among tiers, blurred accountability, inefficiencies and barriers to co-ordinate planning.

“Three decades later, taxes are still rising faster than inflation, infrastructure deficits persist and accountability remains layered and unclear. If that doesn’t suggest a need for structural change, then I don’t know what does.”

Resident Bryan Blue said there have been plenty of discussions and opportunities to make the current system run effectively and efficiently “and it’s not.” He said he wants to see better services, stronger competitiveness and reduced duplication.

Blue said when accountability is shared, clarity suffers, and when clarity suffers, timelines extend. And when timelines extend, costs rise.

“A more consolidated structure offers something powerful — one accountable authority, one budget, one plan, one clear line of responsibility. That clarity alone improves service delivery,” he said.

“For residents of St. Catharines, that means fewer handoffs and more direct answers. And for businesses that means predictability.”

But some residents warned of drawbacks from amalgamation based on living in other areas.

Resident Vicki-Lynn Smith shared her experience in Orleans in the City of Cumberland before being amalgamated into Ottawa in 2001. She said Cumberland had a surplus and Ottawa had a deficit. Snow removal service went down for her and taxes went up.

“There’s no benefits. And anywhere I’ve looked, anybody I’ve talked to that’s gone through this, not one person has ever said there’s benefits in this.”

Trish Houtby grew up in Fenelon Falls, which amalgamated into Kawartha Lakes in 2001. She said the negative impacts have led people to call the new body the “City of Kawartha Mistakes.” She said people don’t feel taken care of in the same fashion that they did when they were separate entities.

“The positive impact of joining a larger city has never truly been realized by the locals,” she said. “Often the larger cities receive new shiny things and the small hamlets are left out.”

Houtby said she doesn’t fear change but fears doing things for the wrong reason.

“I’m not here for the quick dopamine hit of saving a small amount of money now, only to have the cost of my services rise dramatically due to poor thought and planning,” she said.

“In my personal opinion, amalgamation makes it easier for the province to download more things and I just don’t see how that would benefit us. Just because our current premier wants to push things through, let’s not become the next Kawartha Mistakes.”

A recording of the meeting Monday will be submitted to the regional chair, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and local MPPs.

Residents will get another opportunity to address council on the issue. Councillors passed a motion to have an additional special council meeting scheduled in the near future so residents and community partners who didn’t speak Monday can present their views.

The city will also be collecting feedback on its Engage STC web page at the request of council.

Speech against amalgamation to St. Catharines City Council (special meeting)

 Mayor and Councillors, I am Saleh Waziruddin.

Taxes going up is given as one of the main reasons for amalgamation. As some of you have already pointed out, that’s because problems are being given to municipalities to solve without the money, which is at the federal and provincial levels. Amalgamation won’t change that.

The same work needs to be done as before, and that work still needs to be managed. If anything, bigger government means more layers of managers, with even bigger salaries at the top for managing more.

Studies of Ontario amalgamations, ranging from the Fraser Institute to the Munk School, have found not even one case where taxes went down from amalgamation. They didn’t just go up but went up a lot everywhere except for one case where they held the line, they still had increased taxes but not by as much, but their debt ballooned, so it’s the same problem.

Another reason given by the Regional Chair at his State of the Region address is it makes it easier for developers to file fewer applications or deal with fewer rules. I think that’s who this is really for. We should be able to decide on development in our own areas and have different rules from those across the peninsula or down the Lake. It’s taking the little power and control we have away from us in favor of developers.

When there are more Councillors and more representatives, our voices count more, organized people have more power. When there are fewer officials, organized money has more power because it can focus on lobbying fewer people. Amalgamation waters down our votes but doesn’t water down developers’ millions, it amplifies it.

Amalgamation is being done by surprise with minimal consultation, by someone who was barely elected in the first place and not elected but appointed as Regional Chair, and this shows how what’s happening makes a farce out of democracy and representation. It’s being shoved down our throats and most of us don’t like the sour taste of the dictatorial way this is being done.

This came up nearly 10 years ago when Council defeated a plan for double duty Councillors, which is related to amalgamation because it made the same point about having too many elected representatives – representatives of us! It was Councillor Phillips who said then, “if it isn’t going to save citizens any money, why would they reduce representation?“ It’s as true today as it was 10 years ago.

We elected you to use your voice, please use it to send a message loud and clear that we don’t want amalgamation, it won’t save money, it will water down our voices, and is being rammed through so carelessly.

Thank you.

Speech to Niagara Regional Council on replacing Transit Public Advisory Committee with a Customer Insights Panel (focus group)

Councillors I am Saleh Waziruddin.

Disbanding the Niagara Transit Public Advisory Committee and replacing it with a Customer Insights Panel is part of a larger problem happening with advisory committees in Niagara and beyond: they are being turned into focus groups for staff, in this case that’s the literal meaning of Customer Insights Panel. This is what Public Relations does, it shouldn’t be how government works.

Governance is something that is too big to be done by staff and elected officials alone, and resident input cannot be staff-driven. You know as elected officials there is such a thing as antagonism between your roles and staff, and between yourselves even, and as the elected officials you have the political power to direct staff and make or delegate the final decisions.

But there is a third piece of this puzzle, the residents. I’m talking about us. It’s not enough that you hear from your constituents when there’s a problem, or that staff survey them in focus groups. A way for residents to have an active role in governing ourselves, interacting with elected officials and staff, is also needed, and replacing an advisory committee with a customer insights panel is the logical destination of how this has been eroded step by step over the years. 

Being able to contribute to your work not just as a one-to-one constituent but as an advisory committee empowered by the municipal government or abc (agency, board, commission) and part of its structure can do much more and much better if given the chance. Yes, it will have some antagonism too, just like what happens within your Council or between Councillors and staff, but that is a necessary part of the process of governance that’s being squashed.

The Pakistani activist Aitzaz Ahsan described his country as a “bonsai democracy” because from outside the store window it looks like a democracy but it is actually stunted and pruned every time it tries to grow into a full tree. That is how the residents’ roles in government in Niagara and beyond have become as well.

Residents will apply to advisory committees when they see that they are effective, listened to, and given a role to contribute to governance. The governance review says that there is a recruitment problem for the public advisory committee, but there wouldn’t be if it was supported in making the contributions it can make. Riders will clamor to apply to be on the committee when they see it as a vehicle to contribute. That’s how more people will be interested and get involved. Getting residents involved is part of your leadership role, part of working collaboratively not just with each other and staff but with your residents as well.

The governance review says it’s a best practice to have insight panels, or staff-driven focus groups, but often what’s the most common practice is called a “best practice” but is just the common denominator, the worst practice. We should strive to do better than most, to go beyond and not just try to copy what everyone else is doing.

The public advisory panel should be retained and strengthened, supported, and given opportunities to pro-actively send recommendations to the Niagara Transit Commission Board. We need to reverse the “bonsai democracy” of residents’ role, it shouldn’t just be a display model for the store window. Only when we allow the garden to bloom will we solve the recruitment and effectiveness problem. Going further down this dead-end garden path we’ve been on is the wrong direction. Bring us out of the cold.

Thank you.

Letter to Niagara Mayors and Regional Councillors Against Amalgamation

 Dear Mayors and Regional Councillors,

I oppose any amalgamation of municipal governments in Niagara and am asking you to express opposition to this to the Regional Chair and provincial government.

The Regional Chair’s February 19 letter blamed the current structure for "successive tax increases," but studies show that, if anything, amalgamation would increase taxes even more.  The Fraser Institute found “We find very little evidence of tax savings or cost reductions. In most of our cases, the tax burden on individual households increased.” (pg. 25, https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/municipal-amalgamation-in-ontario-rev.pdf)

The Chair’s letter also called "Council’s recent decision to delay final approval of the 2026 operating budget pending a detailed Chair’s review" dysfunctional, but this is not the fault of lower-tier municipalities.

Amalgamation “reduced the opportunities for citizen involvement” (pg. 27) according to a study by the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance from the Monk School of Global Affairs (http://archives.enap.ca/bibliotheques/2013/10/030566310.pdf), which also said, “two tier structures may be more effective in allowing municipalities to reap the benefits that come with large size, while retaining the responsiveness typical of smaller municipalities.” (pg. 1)

Losing lower-tier elected officials will mean less access and accountability for those who live here in favor of corporations and developers, many from outside the Region, who are already being heavily subsidized by our taxes in grants and rebates. 

Sincerely,

Saleh Waziruddin

Letter to Procedures and House Affairs Committee (Parliament of Canada) Re Longest Ballot Committee hearings

To: Procedures and House Affairs Committee, Parliament of Canada

Re: Longest Ballot Committee Hearings

Dear PROC members,

I was a candidate for the Longest Ballot Committee in a 2023 Winnipeg by-election but before then was a candidate for the Communist Party of Canada in two federal elections, one of which was the one where your committee chair MP Chris Bittle was first elected. I think my MP will agree that I am a serious candidate based on the one candidate’s debate I was included in. I resigned from the Communist Party a year before I ran for the Longest Ballot Committee and am not a member of any political party now.

As someone who has been an election candidate with a physical disability, it is perverse that changes being considered to serve voters with disabilities would actually make it more difficult for candidates with disabilities. Voting is important for participating in elections, but so is running for office.

Gathering 100 signatures is not easy, and raising the limit would make what is almost impossible even closer to being impossible. Passing around petitions at association meetings, as was mentioned in your meetings, is a luxury enjoyed by candidates from large political parties. For those running as independents or for smaller political parties, getting any signature is difficult because voters who are already involved with other political parties fear they could be seen as disloyal for signing the nomination form for another candidate. In the federal elections I ran in, nearly half my time was spent gathering signatures (and the other half was spent trying to get included in debates).

Requiring only one official agent per candidate (even per riding) is also another unfair barrier. The work of an official agent requires some specialized knowledge and expertise, and if this work is not done properly a candidate might be barred from running in a future election. This is why some small parties already have only one official agent for all candidates, to ensure that the work is done properly. Requiring every candidate in a riding to have a different official agent is an unfair barrier because there are only so many people available who have the capacity and availability to serve this important function. Having someone who cannot do the work well could mean the penalty of not being able to run again.

Please keep in consideration the right of people with disabilities to run for office, not just to vote. As you heard in your meetings many countries handle very long ballots with no problems for voters with disabilities. You should accommodate voters with disabilities without perversely adding barriers in their name that take away their ability to effectively run for office.

Sincerely,

Saleh Waziruddin

Speech to Niagara Regional Council on Winter Thresholds for Sheltering Unhoused People

 

Councillors I am Saleh Waziruddin.

You’ve heard before how the Province and Federal government should fund more affordable, supportive, and social housing  so that we don’t need shelters and threshold policies, and I’m sure you’re working for that. I’m not here to tell you that, though it’s worth saying again.

The Region has a tiered approach to action at different temperatures, but the approach to shelter is all or nothing: either you get a shelter, or you get the streets, which could kill or hurt you.

There is a tiered approach to shelter. Some cities have warming centres, Toronto has “winter respite sites” – these don’t need the same resources as a full shelter. If we can’t house and feed everyone we can at least have a place to get out of the cold and stay alive.

Not every place might be able to offer staff or food, but I am sure there places are willing to provide at least a warm spot for people to duck in to. It’s better than the alternative which is no alternative.

In many cities these less-than-shelter options are not triggered by temperature thresholds but are available throughout the cold season, like Toronto’s “winter respite sites.”

Some of the temperature thresholds are based on when it’s too cold for school children to have recess outside. But being outside for recess is a lot more comfortable than having to live outside all day. Even 10 degrees ABOVE freezing can be difficult after a few hours.

The Region factors in both temperature and wind chill, but it’s missing one more factor. The MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions found injuries more than double for each mm of precipitation. We definitely had a lot of precipitation in Niagara in the last few days. If we need to have thresholds, precipitation should be another reason to lower barriers.

In some of your discussions around why the threshold can’t be changed it’s brought up the average number of days for different threshold temperatures. But we shouldn’t set policies to meet capacity, we should set capacity to meet needs. 

One of you asked on the 13th if anyone had been turned away and the answer from staff was capacity hadn’t been reached, but that’s not the same thing. People like Bob Allen are turned away even without reaching capacity. Also shelters can be full in some places while there is still capacity elsewhere in the Region. Everyone needs to be given practical alternatives they can actually choose, but beyond that the Region needs to pro-actively find people and figure out solutions for them, even if it’s a half-solution, instead of limiting ourselves to what we’ve budgeted or planned for as all-or-nothing, nothing being death or injury.

Please pass the motion, no referrals please.

Thank you.

Ontario Autoworkers Threaten Plant Takeover If GM Moves Machines Out (Payday Report)

https://paydayreport.com/ontario-autoworkers-threaten-plant-takeover-if-gm-moves-machines-out/

Ontario Autoworkers Threaten Plant Takeover If GM Moves Machines Out

 PayDay Staff  Nov 19, 2025  0 Comments

The following story is by our Co-op Editor Saleh Waziruddin, who lives in St.Catharines, Canada.

INGERSOLL, ON - “We will physically take the plant,” said Unifor Local 88 plant chair Mike Van Boekel after GM missed a deadline from the Canadian Government to present its plan to keep the factory open. 

The GM CAMI plant had 1,200 workers before a shut down earlier in April, and production was supposed to resume last month. However, instead GM said they would be pulling production, laying off all of the workers. 

GM says this is because of low demand, but Unifor says it’s also Trump’s tariffs.

"The reality is that CAMI was hit from both directions by Trump as he aggressively acted to undo EV support and hit Canadian auto assembly plants with a 25 per-cent tariff," said Unifor President Lana Payne. 

The GM shut down comes at the same time as Stellantis is moving production planned for Brampton to Illinois, and some of Oshawa’s GM production is being moved to Indiana, because of Trump’s tariffs.  Stellantis also announced layoffs in Windsor, blaming tariffs. 

Three years ago the federal and Ontario provincial governments gave half a billion dollars to GM to retool at Ingersoll so it could change production lines. Now the plant is closing - a sudden and shocking blow to many.

"It's devastating," Ingersoll Mayor Brian Petrie told the CBC.  "There's been a lot of hard times for the employees and GM on this project, and to hear that it's going to cease production ... it's the worst-case scenario.” 

Canadian unions say that they are preparing for an all-out fight to resist the shutdowns as they fear more looms on the horizon. 

"If we don't push back hard against him (Trump) and against these companies, we're going to lose it all," said Unifor President Lana Payne earlier this year. 

An occupation of the Ingersoll plant could inspire actions elsewhere. Workers there say they are prepared to occupy the plant if need be to keep it open. 

"We have made our position with the company crystal clear: nothing comes in and nothing goes out. If they try to remove even one single thing from the plant, we are ready to take over. We are not kidding," Unifor leader Mike Van Boeckel said in a statement. "We are fighting to ensure CAMI stays open…we will do whatever it takes to protect our jobs, our members, and the future of this plant".