# The Joe Biden of Windsor-Essex Politics

An episode of [Rose City Politics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247337855), 9 Mar 2024, 54 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/58984123/the_joe_biden_of_windsor_essex_politics.mp3

Jon, Frazier and Doug are your panel for a discussion of Tecumseh's successful application to the Housing Accelerator Fund, Fairmount Properties suing Windsor over the Grace site development, and MPP Lisa Gretzky's comments around transparency relating to the recent health care cyberattack. Rose City Politics is brought to you with the kind support of LiUNA Local 625: Building Better Communities. Support the show at Patreon.com/RoseCityPolitics. Read our stuff in Biz X Magazine, or online at BizXMagazine.com and RoseCityPolitics.ca

## Transcript

[0:24] Making your ideological foes sound like chipmunks is an excellent way to go. Hey,
[0:30] everyone, welcome to her Come on, man's sticking on it. Hey
[0:35] everyone, welcome to Rose City Politics. It is March the ninth. Regular
[0:39] panel includes Doug sar Tory Fraser Fathers, myself, John lydkey head to patreon
[0:43] dot com slash Rose City Politics. We are in biz x magazine as well.
[0:48] Be sure to like, share and subscribe and ros City Politics broadcast live
[0:52] on tape thanks to the kind support of Luna six two five Building Better Communities.
[0:58] Why what I'm supposed to say? Yeah, that's the that's the avoided.
[1:03] You got to come back retroactively. I wanted to do a little bit
[1:07] of housekeeping. It's a new segment that we're going to be dropping in here
[1:10] where there were things that we touched on last week that have actually come to
[1:12] a resolution. I would like to just close the loop on. So the
[1:18] public school board has moved ahead with the new name for Kingsville District High School
[1:21] as Emigration Academy. Some residents have expressed frustoration that they've been ignored, because
[1:26] what says public consultation like? While ignoring the public, the only thing that
[1:30] could be more insulting than this would have been to call the school that we
[1:33] ignore the public school. So let's go on. I love it so much.
[1:45] And the second loop that I wanted to close here, the City of
[1:49] Windsor did hold a public consultation regarding the condo development on the parking lot of
[1:53] roseland Gulf and former curling club, and some residents have actually expressed reustoration that
[1:57] they've been ignored, because what says public consultation like ignoring the public. Well,
[2:00] the only thing that can be more insulting than this would be to call
[2:02] the condo development the we ignore the public condoct Ah, there we go,
[2:07] there's the payoff. Very nice. Let's get into the actual show right now.
[2:13] The town It's company has been approved for four point three eight million dollars
[2:15] from the Housing Accelerator Fund over the next three years. They've got to build
[2:19] one hundred and thirty seven units. They got twenty five percent of it upfront.
[2:23] The rest is going to be distributed annually, conditional on meeting targets.
[2:27] They had applied for seven point eight million dollars. Now they've got to implement
[2:30] nine initiatives to be guaranteed all the funding. Those include expediting the process for
[2:37] applying for funding for additional housing growth related projects, pre zoning lands for four
[2:42] plexes, providing information kits for ADUs that's additional dwelling units, waving the permit
[2:47] process, permit fees excuse me for ADUs, pre zoning the town's main streets
[2:53] community improvement plan to accommodate missing middle housing including duplexes, triplexes, townhouses,
[2:58] and mid rise of apartment buildings. Allowing residential use in certain areas of Manning
[3:04] Road and commercial districts. Expediting the permitting by implementing a new E processing system,
[3:10] reviewing parking requirements for new developments, and embedding incentives and fee reductions for
[3:16] main street rentals. There will also be a Housing Advisory Panel created which will
[3:23] be making recommendations to Council. Again, the town of to come See approved
[3:28] four point three eight million dollars from that housing accelerator fund. We didn't get
[3:34] approved here in Windsor. So this is one of those stories that we're going
[3:38] to be watching our surrounding municipalities towns getting our bread and butter. Can I
[3:45] start by asking about the policy Frazier I wanted to just pick your brains on
[3:51] this. Like the nine initiatives that COMEC has announced, they all seem like
[3:57] they would promote housing to me, I'm curious in your opinion do you think
[4:01] they're impactful and which of these do you think will be the most impactful.
[4:04] So you have to put those policies in the context of their target one hundred
[4:09] and thirty seven units, so you know, and that's over the next three
[4:13] years. So you're saying it's you know, thirty five forty units a year,
[4:17] tip of thing, or whatever the number is. I'm doing. Math
[4:19] is hard, right now, you know, odds are there's going to be,
[4:27] you know. I think the one interesting piece is pre zoning lands for
[4:30] four plexes. That's not necessarily language saying four plexes by right, which is
[4:36] interesting to me. It's not saying four plexes everywhere, it's pre zoning certain
[4:42] lands for it. So whether that's done universally or just on say new developments
[4:46] into Coomcy, I think that will be interesting. I think all of these
[4:51] policies will in theory, you know, encourage new housing to come up and
[4:56] like go into existing areas up to CUMSY. I think where they're going to
[5:00] to get the bulk of the one hundred and thirty seven new units is a
[5:02] new subdivision got top proved last year, and most of those units are just
[5:04] gonna come up next year. Like the e permitting system for example. That's
[5:09] where I that the bulk of this money is actually going, because four point
[5:13] whatever million dollars that they got is not actually a significant amount to build.
[5:16] So it's mostly gonna be like, let's buy this software, let's train our
[5:19] staff, and that's gonna take you know, what was ten copies of something
[5:24] and turn it into one copy of something, and it's just gonna expedite sort
[5:28] of the general sort of permitting process for the town. They're gonna have to
[5:31] collaborate as well with saying our lake share on the Manning Road stuff, because
[5:35] isn't like half of Manning Road into Compsy and the other half in Lake Shore,
[5:40] Like that's the boundary line. So I imagine there's gonna be some collaboration
[5:43] there. And but yeah, like I think all of this is in the
[5:46] right direction. I'm gonna be it's gonna be interesting to see who's on that
[5:48] housing advisory panel, uh if, and when that thing gets announced like who
[5:55] is the housing gurus into Compsy, who are to leave that panel? I'm
[5:59] not sure who that is, but like, certainly I think all of these
[6:01] things are things that Windsor's already done. To be fair, right, we
[6:05] already have you know, thees wave fore ADUs, if I remember correctly,
[6:10] you already have allowed you know, they already have an information kit on their
[6:13] website about Adu's They've already you know, the existing plans around transit corridors and
[6:17] main streets for duplexus Triplex that was already implemented through the and approved. You
[6:23] know, despite the Housing Accelerator Fund not being so to Compsy's just coming in
[6:28] line at a much smaller scale to what Windsor's sort of done. They're getting
[6:31] a little bit of money for it. It's not going to transform the housing
[6:34] crisis in our community. It's not going to transform the housing crisis into Coumpsy
[6:38] and you know it is what it is, Okay, So excuse me.
[6:44] That's interesting and I'm really glad that I asked And if if Tacompsy already had
[6:51] a subdivision going in that was going to meet the bulk of its targets.
[6:56] The one way to look at this is that it's more of a carrot than
[6:59] a stick, because the you know, the the policy, the policy choices
[7:05] that they made, as you point out, are not very far from where
[7:09] Windsor already is. So this is not you know, in my view anyway,
[7:14] one way to look at it is that it's not a It's not intended
[7:17] as it was in Windsor. I think that the potential for this funding was
[7:21] really used as a cudgel to try to bring Windsor into line. And and
[7:27] so I have to wonder too if you know how much of how much of
[7:31] to Comesy securing this funding was to Compsy's own merit and how much of it
[7:38] is playing politics and using Comsie as a foil to demonstrate that Windsor is not
[7:45] serious about housing. I think you're absolutely right about the foil. We've seen
[7:48] this play out between MP cousmeritric throughout the media, really using this as a
[7:55] you know, a platform to stand on and sort of points at Windsor saying,
[7:59] look what you could have over here, but you chose not to to
[8:03] comps he also wants to present themselves as a more progressive city than they've traditionally
[8:07] been you know, just a small team as a town, and this fits
[8:11] in with that. Again when you look at the media interviews that Mayor McNamara
[8:15] has been doing, he's been boasting like, look, four of flexes,
[8:18] Come on, We've already got six plexes that we've been I don't know why
[8:22] he's Joe Biden right now, apparently with the voice that I'm doing, but
[8:26] he's been boasting about that they've got six plexes out there, saying we already
[8:30] go above and beyond. So this is obviously being used as a bit of
[8:33] a political football by mkus Marchuk and Mayor McNamara, and for good reasons.
[8:39] It's a win that was manufactured and both sides get to walk away with something
[8:43] that they can trumpet. Yeah, no question. And I'm just stunned by
[8:46] the image of Gary McNamara as the Joe Biden of Windsor Essex politics. I
[8:50] think that actually has legs. I'm going to think about that a little bit.
[8:54] Yeah, I agree with you, Like, it's definitely a manufactured solution.
[8:58] And I know, for example, not every municipality in Essex County put
[9:01] in housing accelerator fund proposal like I know Leamington didn't from my understanding, because
[9:05] they don't on administration recommendation because of sewer capacity issues and that they didn't have
[9:11] they wouldn't be able to build to the targets that they needed to or allow
[9:13] some of the density that they would need to. And so part of this
[9:16] is just to comp se being in sort of the right place at the right
[9:20] time and covering the right rioting to sort of drive this. So it'll be
[9:24] interesting to see if like Amasburg gets funding or you know, some of the
[9:28] other communities in Essex County get funding and have similar announcements going forward, because
[9:33] I think that will then show again it will be a repeat performance. I
[9:37] think of you know, well, here's what else is happening in the region,
[9:39] whereas Windsor's been left out. Yeah, this is a good opportunity to
[9:41] crowdsource too. If you live in the county and you know that your town
[9:46] applied for housing accelerator funds, let us know. I also think that it's
[9:52] interesting just to think about what you said, John, and this is a
[9:56] total tangent and too bad what you s said about to come see wanting to
[10:01] present a more progressive face to the public and generate a more progressive image,
[10:05] and I think there's generational change and attracting a new generation of residents is something
[10:11] that is interesting. But I also connect it to something that Fraser has been
[10:15] calling out for years, which is the you know, the the friendliness towards
[10:20] developing their urban centers among virtually all municipal municipalities in the county. They're all
[10:28] trying this pivot. They're all building more bike lanes, they're all beefing up
[10:33] their downtowns, building lots of amenities. And you know what is interesting to
[10:39] me is that as Windsor lumbers towards the development of Sandwich South in like an
[10:45] effort to compete with the county's ability to just like you know, convert swaths
[10:50] of farmland into new housing tracts at will, the county municipalities are far more
[10:56] deftly competing with Windsor's urban advantage because Windsor is the city that doesn't want to
[11:01] be a city. Look at what's happening in most of the county towns right
[11:03] now. You have distilleries that are opening up, whether they're on main streets,
[11:09] are within a really short five minute bike ride. There are breweries that
[11:13] are opening up in downtown you've got the Grove boutique hotels. I mean these
[11:16] are organic developments that are now being spurred or excuse me, these these are
[11:24] inorganic developments that the municipality is putting in as a result of an organic growth
[11:28] that came about through its own market based factors. And that's I think what
[11:33] the big difference is is here in Windsor, we're always going to try to
[11:37] go top down and shoehorn things in, whereas if you just, you know,
[11:41] let the market sort of dictate what it wants, and we know what
[11:43] the market does want, we just keep standing in front of the market here,
[11:46] over and over and over again. Yeah, I think if there's a
[11:50] sorry Fraser, I just want to get this point out. I think there's
[11:52] an element of Windsor. In Windsor, the pie is big enough that you
[11:58] can, you know, you can watch the pie diminish by a few percentage
[12:03] points every decade or so and still be more interested in how big your slice
[12:07] is. Compared to the county municipalities, where there's so much room for growth
[12:11] and so much opportunity for growth, they probably see things different. So actually,
[12:15] I don't entirely agree that this is entirely like this organic market based approach
[12:20] because I think, you know, part of the reason why the county is
[12:22] developing the way that the county is developing has been the exodus from Windsor,
[12:26] right and the historical you know, you get your first house in Windsor and
[12:30] then you move out to the county, that sort of thing. And what
[12:33] the one space in Essex County where there is a time penalty or a time
[12:39] cost is getting into the city from the county for an amenity. And so
[12:43] this is why there's that demand out in the county for some of these amenities,
[12:46] is because like I could go to Sandwich Brewery, but if I live
[12:50] in Lake Shore, I have to take easy Row all the way to the
[12:54] other end of ec Row, and it's you know, for a Windsor context,
[12:58] it's like a thirty minute commune, which is atrociously long, you know,
[13:01] And so like that's why this is happening. That's where you're starting to
[13:05] see, you know, these time cost penalties come into play is in from
[13:11] urban exurban fringe into urban center and Windsor. And so this is where and
[13:16] this is you know, the arguments that I've made about you know, the
[13:18] core and Windsor has being to be reimagined because you know, you're not going
[13:24] to bring those people back downtown again really, other than for once or twice
[13:28] a year for the fireworks or whatever with or whatever. They're not gonna come
[13:33] down on a random Saturday night unless there's a reason, because they have an
[13:35] equivalent amenity just down the road. And so we have to start rethinking,
[13:41] well, what is the center of the Windsor actually going to be. Do
[13:43] they have water parks? Actually they do? Like doesn't the war where the
[13:48] deer where the deer crashed into the center there and they got water parks.
[13:54] Man, there's like a water slide there, like the Vallmer Center there.
[13:56] Right, we might only build one of those like every twenty years, is
[14:00] all. Man, we're in trouble. Don't worry. We're gonna build a
[14:01] library. Right, I'm not sure if they have libraries out there. All
[14:05] right, I think we sucked the juice out of this topic. I agree,
[14:07] let's move on to this next one here. I'm gonna bear with me.
[14:13] There's not a lot of moving parts here, but it is a bit
[14:15] more of a complex story because we're gonna have to get into a little bit
[14:16] of a court case here, which is not something that we often do on
[14:20] Rose City. Budn't like the comment before the courts, No, no,
[14:22] we don't. Fairmont Properties, though, has announced that they're pursuing court order
[14:28] and legal action to avoid Windsor's decision to terminate an agreement to redevelop the city
[14:31] owned former Greece Hospital site into a one hundred and forty two million dollars global
[14:35] village and their notice of application to the Superior Court. The company is alleged
[14:41] that Windsor has unilaterally, without notice and in bad faith, terminated its agreement
[14:45] despite a binding obligation that Fairmont was the city's exclusive development partner for the University
[14:50] Avenue West property. Well Windsor Mare. They also say Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkins
[14:56] and counselors put forth erroneous and defamatory media statements fall accusing Fairmont of delay when
[15:01] the company quote was in fact in full compliance with a timetable agreed upon and
[15:07] dictated by the city. They also say that the mayor and councilors purported ignorance
[15:13] of the raison data of the project, which was the proposed construction of desperately
[15:18] needed student housing. Well. Mayor Dilkins says that they him and Council continue
[15:24] to stand behind City Council's decision as it relates to this file, and they
[15:28] will vigorously defend their position. And the Mayor then also said that they wouldn't
[15:31] he wouldn't comment further because it is before the courts. So what happened?
[15:35] Fairmont had plans for that six acre vacant green space that ended in December of
[15:43] twenty three when council decided not to sell the property three years after agreeing to
[15:46] Now, let's go back to twenty twenty. Drew Dilkins said that he wanted
[15:50] the project to be moving a lot more quickly. Fairmont announced following their request
[15:54] for an expression of interest, but hadn't broken ground at that point. Mayor
[16:00] Dilkin said council would issue another request for an expression of interest at the time
[16:04] currently Fairmont takes issue with that that's in the court application right now to notice,
[16:08] and Dilkins said that Windsor would enforce a more strict development timeline. Now
[16:14] jump back to where we're at today in twenty twenty four. That new request
[16:17] for an expression of interest still has not been issued. That's a key point
[16:21] that's going to be coming up later on in court, although not here in
[16:25] this spiel. Fairmont says the project was back on track after the COVID pandemic
[16:30] and increase construction costs. And according to the court application, they say Windsor
[16:33] proposed and Fairmont agreed to extend the timeline to negotiate a development agreement and an
[16:40] agreement of purchase and sale for the property until November thirtieth of last year,
[16:45] and the closing date was extended to January thirty first of this year, which
[16:48] was even after Council voted to terminate the project. The company was issued extensions
[16:52] and delays, and they say it was solely as a result because of city
[16:57] caused delays and not as a result of any actions or commissions by Fairmont.
[17:03] As their application. Now, you got to also remember this all I has
[17:07] to do with the fact that Fairmont had entered into a memorandum of understanding with
[17:11] Saint Clair College to accommodate up to four hundred students at this development. Now,
[17:15] the company says, we're going to be irreparably harmed if Council's resolutions aren't
[17:21] quashed. Killed undone, put away overturned, and they say the city,
[17:27] they say they need to have good faith negotiations resumed. The reason for this
[17:33] is because their global village that was going to be developed here in Windsor was
[17:37] Fairmont's quote first foray into the Ontario and Canadian markets. And they say that
[17:41] this unilateral, bad faith decision by city council will indelibly tarnish their reputation and
[17:48] standing in the entire Canadian marketplace. You know, I'm not a lawyer by
[17:53] any means, but this looks like a pretty good case on face value,
[17:57] if what they're purporting to be true. I'm just praying this gets a discovery.
[18:03] Get to discovery, please, this would be so great. Put those
[18:07] files in open court to be able to say how this city operates behind closed
[18:11] doors. It's like you'll have the access to emails from the Planning Department and
[18:15] like senior administration and the Mayor's office and like saying like who you know what,
[18:21] Oh package of information arrived this day, who was it assigned to?
[18:23] How long did they take to look at it? You'll see the entire how
[18:26] the sausage is made around a major development project in this city. And if
[18:32] this thing gets to discovery, those files will all have to be released into
[18:34] open court, as I assume they would. Paramount would require those as a
[18:38] part of their discovery process, And it seems like the easiest thing to ask
[18:44] for, especially if they're accusing the city of delays. It would be like,
[18:47] oh, Fairmount emailed on this day, city didn't get back to them,
[18:49] and for six months or whatever, you'll be able to see the internal
[18:52] emails about well, why is this being delayed? Was their political involvement?
[18:57] All of those things would come to you know, would be this is a
[19:02] closest as close as you will get to a public inquiry and windsor so I
[19:04] would really I would be asking Santa Claus for this and putting like removing everything
[19:11] else off my list, except that everything that you say, Fraser leads me
[19:17] to think that the city is going to have to find some way to like
[19:21] keep this out of court. So how much are we going to settle that
[19:23] we will never know the number four again? Like that's my concern, Like
[19:29] what do we think the upperment? So it's already in court right, Like
[19:32] let's be clear here, so there will be there has to be a public
[19:36] element to this settlement, right, like they can, like there will have
[19:38] to be notified when the settlement happens. Council in camera will have to approve
[19:42] that settlement. They'll have to be an approval notice at a public session of
[19:47] that settlement. You can't hide the dollar value of that settlement because I'll appear
[19:51] in the budget next to a dollar value. So you know they're going to
[19:55] spend one hundred and whatever million dollars if and I'm not a lawyer, but
[20:00] like they also spent three years of process, including time of staff. You
[20:03] know, they have their own planners, their own engineers. All of that
[20:07] costs would be probably there. You know. Then you have the definition defamation
[20:11] damages, which unlike in the US, you know, probably isn't as much.
[20:15] But you're looking at tens of millions of dollars probably as a settlement,
[20:19] I would say, as a starting point, you know. And then that's
[20:22] my Again, I'm not a lawyer, but like if I'm just crunching numbers
[20:26] in my head, Like I don't know how big Fairmont is, but like
[20:30] you know, if you have a full time engineer working on that project for
[20:33] two or three years, well that works out to a lot of money with
[20:37] you know, various you know, benefits and stuff like that that you're going
[20:41] to recover. And then the defamation damages is a question mark that you'll have
[20:45] to see. We talk about the defamation damages here because we're on like they're
[20:49] on such opposite sides on this issue, with Mayor Dilkins saying they were late.
[20:56] We wanted them to go faster and they didn't, and Fairmont going,
[21:00] you guys were the ones who forced us to have longer deadlines than we necessarily
[21:04] wanted to. You unilaterally changed this like there is there like those are the
[21:08] complete opposite ends of an argument, and that is what makes this so incredibly
[21:15] juicy because the only way to resolve that is through facts on the table.
[21:19] There's a paper trail right right, like so and that that leads me to
[21:23] believe like and the nice thing about this, Fairmont's not local, right like,
[21:29] they don't have that local relationship system that would you know, no windsor
[21:34] club pulicides exactly. And so let's be honest, like, and they're American,
[21:40] So suing when a development project goes sideways is what developers do in the
[21:42] US. And so you know whether or not they're going to get the amount
[21:47] of money that they ask for. I have no idea, but like I
[21:51] could see them going to bat and wanting to like if they had big plans
[21:55] for Canada. You know, part of making big plans for Canada is even
[22:00] if this project doesn't work out, but if they soon they win, like
[22:03] suddenly the next city that they go and work with is going to behave a
[22:08] little bit differently. Yeah, and it's really interesting to flip it around.
[22:12] Obviously Fairmount is concerned about their reputation in the Canadian market, but just to
[22:18] bring up the inevitable Cairo Copenhagen stuff, like what does what does a big,
[22:25] high profile thing like this Due to Windsor's reputation as a target for serious
[22:32] out of town developers, I think it's a big red flag. I wouldn't
[22:36] want to come here, but like John Hoteitle, but like I think so,
[22:42] I think again, so housing's more complicated I think than others, Like
[22:48] you know, the work that ekdeb does on you know already pre existing industrial
[22:52] or community lands are different than you know, in theory a city sale of
[22:56] whatever too. But I do think that this will have potential ripple effects like
[23:02] if I'm a Toronto developer, do I want to come down here and buy
[23:06] up some land from the city and build? Maybe not? Yeah, Like,
[23:10] and there's those four other expressions of interest we talked about last week,
[23:12] that or three others after the roseland one that are still due to come out.
[23:17] So thinking about applying for those, you saw what this immediate story now
[23:21] breaks. You know, are you ready to jump head forward first into unless
[23:26] unless you're a local guy who knows all the ins and outs and where the
[23:30] bodies are buried and has that relationship that can smooth over that process. Well,
[23:33] yeah, that makes that makes local knowledge so much more important, right
[23:37] And and like, I don't know about you guys, but when I do
[23:40] business, the jerk factor is very high in my calculations. If I have
[23:44] a choice between two equivalent opportunities and one of them is working with a jerk
[23:48] and one isn't I know which one I'm picking, you know, it's just
[23:56] it's another example here. We'll find out enough if this was you know,
[24:00] politically motivated or not. And put it this way, does counsel get the
[24:07] benefit of the doubt? No, isn't that And that's the problem, Like
[24:14] for something like this, like we're like the ships hit the fan, were
[24:19] the subject of a loss. Every taxpayer is on the hook here in one
[24:23] way or another, regardless at some point unless somehow we end up as the
[24:29] winner. But do we know if was it a unanimous decision and the Fairmount
[24:33] deal? Did I ever get out? I don't remember, I keep talking
[24:37] a look, yeah, I don't know, but like I would, it
[24:40] would be interesting to know because if it wasn't, because again it happening camera,
[24:44] but they would have had there have to be I'd have to go back
[24:47] and look through the meeting minutes or whatever, which you know I kind of
[24:49] do for fun anyways. But I know, but like I think, if
[24:55] it was unanimous, I think that's a very indifferent conversation than if it was
[24:59] like at one of those you know, it was a unanimous one, Okay,
[25:02] So so that changes the dynamic a little bit because then the theory of
[25:06] the progressive block was on side with that. And you know, to his
[25:10] credit, you know, counselor Becastante is a lawyer, so you know he
[25:12] would have probably I would, I would give him the benefit of the doubt,
[25:15] probably as my counselor that he probably asked some hard questions in that room
[25:19] to the city solicitor and you know, said like, are are we going
[25:22] to get sued? If we do get sued, are we going to stand
[25:26] on those grounds? Whereas you know, if it was a split decision,
[25:29] I think that's a very different dynamic coming out of that. It's a really
[25:32] point of that sort of process. Yeah, I think unanimity does lend a
[25:37] bit of a bit of luster to the city's claims in that You're right,
[25:41] I like, if there was an opportunity for dissent, then maybe there would
[25:45] be. But but matters like this are I don't think that counselors look at
[25:52] these as much through an ideological lens as they do through risk management in their
[25:57] role as a word of the corporation. So you know, I think I
[26:04] think that with with eleven votes all going the same way, I think you
[26:11] can there's conclusions you can draw, like there's there's unanimity that it is in
[26:15] Windsor's best interest to cancel the deal. Yeah, I agree, Right,
[26:19] that doesn't necessarily mean that Fairmount's wrong, No, I agree, And like
[26:25] then the question becomes, well, what's going there next? Right, Like,
[26:29] well, we're going to be issuing a new expression of interest soon enough,
[26:33] So well soon soon, okay, And like they I don't think they'll
[26:37] be able to until those issues done, right, Like because Fairmont wants the
[26:41] project to be put back on track. That's what they're suing for. Yeah,
[26:45] so yeah, everything is so can't it's a black box. So it's
[26:48] in other words, the gray site is probably going to be locked in its
[26:52] current status quo if it goes to court at least three to five years.
[26:56] Probably. So this is interesting too because you want under about the brinksmanship and
[27:00] the negotiations leading up to the breakdown in the relationship. Did you know fair
[27:07] Amount probably knew that a city starved of housing new housing starts where they were
[27:15] in a position to lock up this thing for three to five years. That's
[27:19] leverage, you know, And maybe they tried to give that leverage. Again,
[27:22] I don't know. I just from what I know of the court process,
[27:26] Like even just getting a court date takes months, right, even for
[27:30] that initial you know, hearing, right and right, And I want to
[27:33] underline that we're just speculating here, We're just speculating from the facts that are
[27:38] available to the public. But it wouldn't surprise me that a US based developer
[27:45] decided to play hardball and threaten the possibility of litigation that might slow down housing
[27:52] development even more than they're dragging their feet, like that's a that's a scenario
[27:56] that I can completely see from the facts, or completely different scenarios. We
[28:03] just don't have that much information. To your earlier point that Discovery would be
[28:06] amazing, Yes, of course Discovery, Come on Discovery. Okay, well,
[28:12] let's keep moving this show along. Then speaking about, you know,
[28:17] Discovery, we can look towards that as transparency. Five months after the breach,
[28:22] Transforms board chair and CEO still refuse to do media interviews. That's called
[28:26] a segue, folks. Transform also refuses to open board meetings to the public.
[28:30] Last week, Transform also said we're not going to go giving the Windsor
[28:34] Star an interview. An update about this, Well, they didn't say that
[28:37] publicly. They told that to the Windsor Star, but the Windsor Star published
[28:40] that, so we know that Windsor West NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky is questioning why
[28:47] there's no transparency, Why don't they want to have public at board meetings?
[28:49] Why is it that the public is being completely frozen out and that there's no
[28:52] transparency. They are in charge of managing very personal information about people. They're
[28:56] asking people to trust them to do that. I think that trans parancy and
[29:00] openness is key to building that public confidence, public confidence that has been lost
[29:03] over the data breach. Of course, Transform provides it supply chain and accounts
[29:10] payable services for Bluewater Health, Chatham Kent Health Alliance, Eerie Shores Healthcare,
[29:15] Hotel, Do Grace Healthcare and Windsor Regional Hospital. And this is of course
[29:18] relating to that cyber attack on October twenty third of last year by the Dykes
[29:23] and Team Dykes and Team Dykes and Team I don't know how to say it.
[29:27] We're trying shutdown systems at all five hospitals. It forced the delay of
[29:33] procedures, resulted in some patients having to leave their hometowns for treatment. Sensitive
[29:37] information was stolen. Bluewater was hit the hardest, with the theft of data
[29:41] pertaining at five point six million hospital visits from about two hundred and seventy thousand
[29:45] unique patients going back something like twenty five years. Information was posted to the
[29:51] dark web and later claimed to be sold initially. That was initially the breach
[29:56] happened at Bluewater Health. They've been using the same health based system for the
[29:59] pawer thirty years and then from there it went through their common it provider,
[30:03] Transform Shared Service Organization WINS. Your Star has some quotes here from Windsord to
[30:08] come see PCMPP Government MPP Andrew Dowie. He says, I am confident that
[30:14] Transform SSO has taken and continues to take appropriate steps in response to managing the
[30:18] cyber security incident. Dowie did not address criticisms about the lack of transparency,
[30:25] but did say that the province provides funding the hospitals, but the hospitals are
[30:30] responsible for their own purchasing and service contracts. Now Transform runs entirely on public
[30:36] money. They've avoided or refused public comment on a range of issues since the
[30:38] ransoms where was discovered. They got a twenty five million dollar operating budget and
[30:45] they spend seven hundred and fifty million dollars of taxpayer money buying medicine and supplies
[30:49] for the five area hospitals, but that's not considered part of their budget now.
[30:53] Their CEO, Nora Lynn Balliott, refused to do any interviews despite multiple
[31:00] requests from The Windsor Star over several months, and there's been varying arguments as
[31:04] to why they won't do interviews. They range from right after the cyber attack
[31:10] saying we got no time, we're dealing with the breach. Makes sense now
[31:14] ongoing investigation into the incident. When that was happening, they weren't able to
[31:18] provide an update to the Windsor Star because they said, you know, it's
[31:23] still ongoing. But at that time the CEOs of the five hospitals did hold
[31:27] a media conference to provide an update about the issue, but again the CEO
[31:30] did not take part in it. Then most recently they say we can't do
[31:36] any media interviews because of a pending lawsuit. So we've just seen a shifting
[31:40] of why they can't talk publicly. Now that class action lawsuit was launched by
[31:44] a patient from Blue Water. It's at four hundred and eighty million dollars against
[31:47] Transform and the five hospitals. Now, the board chair Helga Rydell said that
[31:53] she couldn't do any interviews either. Transform has later told the Windsor Star provincial
[31:59] rules don't require hire them to have any open meetings whatsoever, which the agency
[32:02] hasn't done since the five member hospitals created it in twenty thirteen. So listen,
[32:14] they're a private company. I don't blame them for necessarily, you know,
[32:16] not speaking publicly. Not the best public relations strategy. But quite frankly,
[32:21] they don't need to be involved with the public right now. They've got
[32:22] themselves five nice contracts, they've got a pretty good system going. They don't
[32:28] need to engage again. I put this one on the government. Drag them
[32:31] in to committee, pull the information out of them if they're not willing to
[32:37] talk publicly, if we're not able to get it out of our healthcare providers
[32:39] to come forward and say, look, something bad happened. Here's what's going
[32:43] on. It's the black box that's over all of this that creates the situation
[32:49] where we're talking about it again, Doug. So I don't go ahead,
[32:53] Fraser, come on discovery. Oh yes, pretty much where I'm at.
[33:01] Yeah, I mean that would be delightful. So I hear you, John.
[33:08] You know about the governments, like the provincial governments in action here,
[33:15] and I think I guess the best thing that I can say about that is
[33:20] that spending years currying favor with the government as an institution does seem to pay
[33:24] off. I don't know if that's the best look for the government, but
[33:29] I don't totally blame them, or at least not as much as the people
[33:35] that I really single out here are the people who sit on the board of
[33:38] directors of both Transform and Windsor Regional Hospital. The You know, the performance
[33:45] that was given at the Windsor Regional Hospital board meeting in which nobody had a
[33:52] question, nobody had a single question that they wanted to ask at an open
[33:55] meeting of the CEO of the hospital that had experienced the worst cyber attack and
[34:02] data reach in Windsor Essex history. There is no question in terms of privacy
[34:07] impact that nothing else has ever compared to what has been done and the damage
[34:12] that has been inflicted on the residents of this community. And I think that
[34:16] there, Like, even as an outsider with no inside information, you look
[34:22] at things like how long it took that institution to resume email service? Basic
[34:29] email service took months? It took months. Okay, this is a sign
[34:35] of a technical organization under serious strain. I want to know why it was
[34:42] understrain. I want to know about the risk management decisions, and I want
[34:45] to know about the funding decisions that were made. I want to know what
[34:50] the staff at Transform asked for. I want to know what they thought,
[34:55] as professionals was needed to do their jobs effectively, and what they were told.
[35:00] Those are all the things that I want to know. And the community
[35:04] people, the residents of our community who represent us and sit on the boards
[35:08] of those institutions, and the people who sit on the board at Transform,
[35:13] And I hear what you're saying, but like, let's be real here.
[35:15] This is a quasi private company that it's quasi public and it serves it serves
[35:22] the public interest, and whatever the piece of paper that is the legal basis
[35:29] that they're relying on, there's no question that they have a moral obligation to
[35:32] this community. They are funded completely with public dollars. And if you sit
[35:38] on the board of directors of that organization, you are there as a community
[35:44] member. Your job is to be a steward of the organization in the best
[35:49] interests of the community. And I think that what we have here is a
[35:52] case where people on the board of directors of both of those organizations, for
[36:00] some reason, think that their duty to the organization is higher than their duty
[36:04] to the community. And you know, I just don't agree. I just
[36:08] don't agree, and I think it's disgraceful. To be perfectly honest with you,
[36:13] this is a situation where I cannot believe the level of stonewalling and obfuscation
[36:21] that we have seen from from everybody, everybody involved. Nobody has given us
[36:27] a straight answer, nobody. Nobody has taken a goddamn bit of accountability to
[36:32] the public. Who has stood up in public and said, you know,
[36:36] this happened and we regret it, we regret it, and we could have
[36:39] done more. Nobody. And I know they're getting sued. And whatever institutions
[36:45] get sued all the time, institutions also have a lot of money and a
[36:47] lot of legal expertise. If you get sued and lose, there's a reason
[36:52] for that. And if you're worried that you're going to lose in court or
[36:57] have a tougher time in court because of ant because you are answering basic questions
[37:01] that the public has a right to know, then maybe you already screwed up
[37:08] this thing. Has you know, I have tried not to be like to
[37:14] rant about this because obviously I have a history with Windsor Regional Hospital. I
[37:17] have a history with people at Windsor Regional Hospital and senior positions, and you
[37:25] know, I don't want to be the guy who is constantly beating on somebody,
[37:30] right, So I've kind of tried to leave this alone a little bit.
[37:35] But it's awful. It's absolutely awful. It's unconscionable, and all of
[37:38] this could have been prevented. All of this could have been prevented if there
[37:45] was if there was proper investment, and in my opinion, do consideration to
[37:52] the gravity of the data that those institutions are responsible for, and to see
[38:00] that those institutions are responsible for. I think that that I think that this
[38:05] is just a microcosm of the Windsor problem, the Windsor problem where accountability is
[38:12] for little people and institutions don't get held accountable and leaders of institutions don't get
[38:16] held accountable. Like, this is total garbage and it's got to change.
[38:23] Do you think it will? No, I'm that bright. No, Discovery,
[38:30] let's hope for discovery. Com on Discovery. No, but I agree
[38:34] with most of what you said. I think, you know, the challenge
[38:37] is this is the exact reason why Transform was created too. You know,
[38:42] when those five hospitals came together, it was to farm out this portion of
[38:46] what was their their sort of mandate and service, right, it was just
[38:51] sort of so Transform spends hundreds of millions of dollars to buy medicine well normally,
[38:55] you know, and there's a broader conversation happening in the country around government
[38:59] capacity and like what's being outsourced to consultants and what's being outsourced to things like
[39:04] that across you know, all levels of government. Well, this is just
[39:07] an example of like, you know, hospitals used to buy their own medicine
[39:10] back in the day, and now they've paid some technology provider to give them
[39:15] a software to then automate that process and they just throw the flow the money
[39:21] through them to whomever purchases who you know, Pfizer or whatever drug company they're
[39:24] then going and buying from. And so, you know, I'd be interested
[39:29] to know if Transform is just a windsor Essex Chatham Kent starring a lamped in
[39:34] creature or is there something equivalent in the sort of the London Thames Valley region
[39:38] and is there something you know, in the Hamilton Halton region, and is
[39:40] there something equivalent in those other places, because if this is just a local
[39:45] sort of creation, then that puts a different lens on some of these things.
[39:50] And I'm sure there's shared service provision up and I know there's shared service
[39:52] provision up in some of those other regions, but like what parts of that
[39:55] is actually being done? And you know this was created in the time when
[40:00] the LINN was in place, So what did the LINN used to have some
[40:02] sort of oversight or maybe a set at that board table that you know,
[40:06] now that the lins have been dissolved and you know, turned into these Ontario
[40:08] Health teams and powers devolved to hospitals, you know, has that you know
[40:14] oversight gone away? I have no idea, and so I think, you
[40:16] know, there's as as Doug said, there are a lot of questions unanswered
[40:21] and there's a lot of I don't even know who's on the board to transform.
[40:23] I got right here, let's go through it might as well. Helga
[40:27] Rydell is the Chair of the Board twenty twenty two to president as a Class
[40:32] C independent director. Joined in September of eighteen, appointed to the Governance and
[40:37] Nominating Committee after serving three years as Vice Chair is now the chair. Helga
[40:42] brings thirty five years of management and governments knowledge to the Transform Board, having
[40:45] held the roles of President and CEO of n WIN Utilities and the n WIN
[40:50] Group of Companies, as well as the role of CEO for the City of
[40:52] Windsor, along with other executive roles throughout her career. Next up is Lindsay
[41:00] Boyd. Joined the Transform Board as a Class C director in February of nineteen
[41:05] and appointed to the Finance and Audit Committee. Lindsay retired from Enbridge formerly Union
[41:09] Gas as the Director of Indigenous and Municipal Affairs. Graduate of U Windsor Business
[41:15] School, has worked with numerous community groups in Windsor, Essex, Chatham Kent
[41:19] and is a past campaign chair of the Chatham Kent United Way, winner of
[41:22] the Robinson Citizenship Award from Duke Energy. Let's move on to the next.
[41:28] Jacqueline Peterson was an assurance partner in the southwestern Ontario region for Price Waterhouse Coopers.
[41:35] Brings twenty years of valuable experience having provided accounting, assurance and internal audit
[41:39] services to corporations both in public and private. There is also Tony Hadad who
[41:47] was the Let's see Tony. The Transport Board can see the benefit of for
[41:52] Tony's public sector experience and finance administration, strategic planning and budgeting in both corporate
[41:59] and operations. Man having served as the CEO of the town Tacumsi for twelve
[42:02] years. Since retiring from CEO, he's now a senior advisor at Strategy Corp
[42:08] Consulting. Recently served as the interim CEO for the Town of Amersburg and then
[42:14] the Municipality of Chatham, Kent. There is also Melissa Gothier, the Chief
[42:21] financial Officer and Vice president Corporate and Laboratory Services for Windsor Regional Hospital, brings
[42:28] nineteen years of financial and operational leadership experience to Windsor Regional Hospital, including budgeting,
[42:32] forecasting, financial analysis, cost containment, board governance reporting, and day
[42:38] to day administrative and operational management. Prior to relocating to Windsor, spent ten
[42:45] years with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. And there is also Kristin Kennedy,
[42:51] chief executive officer for Erie Shore's Health Care, started twenty five year career on
[42:58] the front lines as a red nurse, as well as holding leadership positions in
[43:02] the medical sector, including Operations Manager, neuro Surgery, Stroke, Director of
[43:07] Critical Care and Cardiology and VP of Patient Services and Chief Nursing Executive at Windsor
[43:12] Regional Hospital. Also serves as co chair of the Windsor Essex Ontario Health Team
[43:16] Steering Committee, where she works with other partners to support under service communities through
[43:22] the High Priority Communities Strategy. There's Lorie Marshall, Chatham Kent Health Alliance President
[43:30] and CEO brings twenty years of experience in Ontario's acute and community care sectors as
[43:35] well into It. Served as CEO for Nippigun District Memorial Hospital and Erie Saint
[43:39] Clair Community Care Access Center. Also served as VP at Oshawa General Hospital and
[43:45] thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Center. Pauline rheum Zimmer holds a unique leadership role
[43:52] as integrated Vice President for Mental Health and Addictions at Bluewater Health and the Canadian
[43:55] Mental Health Association, Lampton Kent, CEO of Lampton Elda Really Outreach and incoming
[44:00] President and CEO of blue Water Health effective January twenty twenty three. Transform You
[44:07] Got to Update Your bios. Sherry lab Remoise Busy is a chartered professional accountant
[44:14] and the CFO at Hotel do Grace Healthcare with twenty two years experience in those
[44:20] sectors as well. Okay, so that was a bit longer than I want
[44:23] to do. Sorry, that's okay. I'm really glad you did. So.
[44:28] One thing that jumps out at me and I want to this threatens another
[44:32] mini rant. I might have two rants in me on this topic. But
[44:36] like, there is not one person with one minute of IT experience on that
[44:40] board, not one minute of experience in it. I get why you need
[44:45] leaders from the institutions that you're serving in this kind of captive organization, this
[44:51] captive vendor, Like I get it right, But then when you go out
[44:54] to the community and you're looking for people to serve on the board, but
[45:00] is going to make long term decisions and strategic decisions for an organization who's only
[45:07] purpose is it? And there is not one person on that board who could
[45:15] replace a hard drive in a laptop or who has ever ever reset a password
[45:21] on a Windows computer. Like this is also something that is symptomatic of this
[45:28] town. There are areas of expertise that just don't get respected. Could you
[45:34] imagine could you imagine standing up a board of directors without an accountant. Can
[45:38] you imagine standing up a board of directors without saying, hey, it'd be
[45:42] really good if there was a lawyer on this board. It's what what is
[45:49] it going to take? What is it going to take for us to say,
[45:52] hey, you know, when we're going to do a thing, we
[45:53] should probably get somebody involved in governance who has some passing familiarity with the thing
[46:01] that we're gonna do. Yeah. I think the other thing that's interesting to
[46:07] me is the different classes of board members. Mm hmmm. So there's four
[46:10] independent board members and five hospital board members. So each of those captives each
[46:16] of the hospitals have this vote, and then you have four independent board members
[46:21] who in theory represent the broader right, community, public, et cetera interest
[46:27] of the organization as well as the organization. And I think it's interesting that
[46:31] just the board structure means, like the hospitals can overrule the community, the
[46:37] community in that in that case, well, yeah, and not not only
[46:40] that, Like it makes sense, right, it kind of makes sense that
[46:45] you're going to stand up a company that is going to sell only to you.
[46:49] Yeah, I would take a board seat on that company. Yeah,
[46:52] for sure. But but if if the hospitals and the healthcare sector in general,
[46:58] and windsor Essex and and Lampton, if they want to evade accountability by
[47:05] saying this is an independent organization, the makeup of the board kind of puts
[47:09] paid to that. Doesn't it like this organization is never going to do anything
[47:14] but what it's told by its customers. Well, if anyone's interested in Transform
[47:23] and you decide that you might have some skills that you want to bring,
[47:30] they have some openings right now. The jobs we're looking for. Multiple vacancies
[47:34] in application analysts, multiple vacancies in clinical informatics, multiple vacancies in clinical informatics
[47:42] pharmacy, multile vacancies in business analysts, multiple vacancies in project assistance. They
[47:50] have a contract vacancy in change management lead. Hey, Doug, you might
[47:53] be interested in this one. They have a contract vacancy as a technical lead,
[47:58] right and you'll be happy to know everyone most of us is available hybrid
[48:04] remote work as well. So they're hiring, they're going It sounds like the
[48:07] Transform is going on a big transform. It a big hiring s free.
[48:10] So to what extent are these net new positions? I wonder and to what
[48:15] extent does hiring a whole pile of net new positions right after a gigantic,
[48:21] disastrous cyber attack indicate that you were actually understaffed and how long have they been
[48:28] if so? If so? Yeah, good questions. Would be really cool
[48:34] if the community members who sat on either of those boards thought that we deserve
[48:37] to hear the answers to those questions and would take advantage of in the case
[48:42] of windsor regional hospital, take advantage of the public forum that they have standing
[48:46] to ask questions and to ask a goddamn question when the CEO is standing there.
[48:52] Can we stick on this just for a second here, because I remember
[48:53] when that first board meeting did happen and you put yourself through watch the whole
[49:00] thing. Well, it only took seventeen minutes. All I remember when you
[49:05] came back and you you came back when you chatted with us about it in
[49:07] our chat that we have you like you could you could see how heated you
[49:13] were just through how quickly you were typing. For those who didn't watch like
[49:20] it with it being just a seventeen minute, it was just the presentation,
[49:23] right, yeap, No questions, not one question. It was a status
[49:30] report given by the CEO of the hospital and uh and then an amazing silence
[49:37] from the assembled board. If you're not willing to be the accountable person on
[49:45] a board, get off the board because it's listen, it's fun. You
[49:51] want to be at the table and you know, get to go for lunch
[49:53] afterwards and have the little title that you get to put on the resume that
[49:57] you're doing something. It's great. There's it's great. And for nine out
[50:00] of ten times, serving on a board is a do nothing job with all
[50:07] the upside and no downside. Most of the time, the less you do,
[50:09] the better off we all are. In this situation here you realize,
[50:14] or maybe you people haven't yet, or maybe you're acting under advice of independent
[50:20] counsel. I don't know, but the buck does inherently stop with you to
[50:23] a certain extent. You are legally liable in these situations. To a certain
[50:30] extent, you have decided to step up and take on these responsibilities. Nine
[50:36] out of ten times, you're going to the cool people parties. This is
[50:38] the one fucking time where if you haven't sought legal counsel, maybe you should.
[50:46] If you haven't sought I don't know, go to Navigator right now or
[50:52] like one of the PR firms and figure out how do I make sure that
[50:55] I walk away from this unscathed. And here's what my advice would be as
[51:00] someone who doesn't operate a PR firm but has been involved in this sphere for
[51:04] a while. Great opportunity to get ahead of this one by being the responsible
[51:08] one who just asks a probing question. Yeah, Like, I think this
[51:14] is one that has a chance to escape the windsor Essex reality distortion field.
[51:20] And I think you're right because I think I think that if you serve on
[51:22] one of these boards, you may not be correctly calibrated to the personal risk
[51:29] that you're facing because normally these things don't go anywhere. And that's where again
[51:36] come on Discovery. But I really want it. I really want to see
[51:40] the minutes of the budget meetings that transform But really want that. But like
[51:45] again, and I think you're right, it could get beyond windsor ES six
[51:47] because this is a regional organization and so is it. You know, even
[51:52] though there's sort of again and this show's talked about, you know, board
[51:55] challenges in this region and leadership challenges in this region for a long time.
[52:00] I don't know if those same challenges exist in Sarnia or or or Chatham can.
[52:07] Like I'm sure that there are local cultures and like local things there,
[52:09] but like certainly you know who's on those hospital boards, and I think the
[52:15] level of exposure and the level of risk is also very different in those other
[52:19] communities because you know, in chat Or in Sarnia was the larger location of
[52:23] the cyber attack, most damage was done there, and so like their exposure
[52:28] might is probably very different than what the exposure was of you know, windsor
[52:32] regional or eerie shores and things like that. And so I think that there
[52:36] is you know, in an ideal world, there may be some solidarity breakage
[52:42] between you know, around those tables, as you know, if this lawsuit
[52:45] moves forward, if they're all going to be exposed because of maybe one set
[52:52] of decisions or one partner within the within the system, you could see some
[52:55] fragmentation there. But that's just speculation. So who knows, But you know,
[53:00] I think we just have to call the show come on Discovery and go
[53:04] from that. Okay, he's lobbying for a title, and I was really
[53:07] partial to Raisin debtra just because whenever John gets a chance to speak French like
[53:14] he's never you can never more see the Walkerville Theater kid like bursting out.
[53:21] Yeah yeah, you were. For the rest of the keep rewind people,
[53:24] and for the whole rest of that blurb, you were just just that tiny
[53:28] bit more extra. I wasn't going to screw it up. Hey, thanks
[53:32] for listening to Roast City Politics everyone. March the ninth regular panel included Doug
[53:37] Startry, Fraser Fathers, and myself, John lydkey head to patreon dot com,
[53:40] slash Rose City Politics, read us in biz X magazine, like shared
[53:44] and subscribe, and Rosy Politics is able to broadcast live on tape thanks to
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