WINDSOR, Ont. - This Association of Municipalities of Ontario's 2016 annual conference will be Gary McNamara's last as president. On Wednesday, McNamara noted, the torch will be passed to Lynn Dollin, deputy mayor of Innisfil. But McNamara, the mayor of Tecumseh, still had a few things on his mind before departing as president, including the rising cost to municipalities of interest arbitration with their emergency services workers, joint and several liability, and AMO's new initiative, "What’s Next Ontario," a consultation on the finances of the province's cities and towns.

In speaking about the increase in municipal insurance premiums, McNamara dusted off a quote from Buddha: "There are three things you cannot hide for long: the sun, the moon and the truth."

"Sooner or later, people connect the dots – and change often follows," added the AMO president.

Outgoing AMO president Gary McNamara speaks with reporters at the association's 2016 annual conference. (Geoff Zochodne/QP Briefing)

Outgoing AMO president Gary McNamara speaks with reporters at the association's 2016 annual conference. (Geoff Zochodne/QP Briefing)

McNamara spoke with reporters Monday. The following has been condensed and edited.

Question: What do you think your legacy is going to be, and what challenges still remain now that you’re leaving office?

Gary McNamara – There’s still some key points. You know that infrastructure is a major concern for all the municipalities.

You’ve seen the charts, and what we’re going to be facing for the next 10 years. There’s going to have to be a real strong discussion with obviously our provincial and federal counterparts to help meet those challenges, for one.

The interest arbitration piece is still front and centre for us. We’re not going to go away. This is something that’s been on the books for a long, long time. For us, at AMO, what we’re looking is not necessarily to reinvent the wheel, but we need that fine clear balance on how interest arbitration is administered in the province of Ontario.

Joint and several liability issues, you’ve heard that once again. That is an extremely important piece that really is no cost to the province. But the cost of insuring our municipalities today it’s well over $200 million per year. That’s not chump change.

Q - What was missing from Kathleen Wynne’s speech for you on Monday?

GM - Joint and several liability. Interest arbitration. I’ll say those two. It was certainly encouraging to hear the Premier talk about the intakes that are going to be sometime in September. That’s not too far away. It gives us a bit of a breather when we leave our convention here today, and then dust off a lot of those projects that have been sitting on the shelf for certainly the last couple years, and then have them introduced in probably a three to four-week range. I think that’s very encouraging.

Q - Do you think AMO has been too gun-shy or unwilling to make its views explicit?

GM - I don’t think we’re gun-shy. But reality has to come. We’re not here to lobby or to campaign on behalf of political parties. We represent the municipal sector, which is much broader.

You’ve heard from many, many, many of our citizens through editorials, through letters to the editors, about the whole sustainability of emergency services in our community. It’s created a tremendous dialogue. Obviously, we’ve seen advancements on the Police Services Act. We’re seeing papers have been developed on police modernization looking at waste to cut cost and so forth.

Q - Does it bother you that there doesn’t seem to be any political capital for the premier or the opposition parties to address [liability and interest arbitration, etc.]?

GM - It is frustrating, there’s no doubt. But I think they’re missing the boat. It’s our residents that are paying and footing the bill. I think I made a comment in my speech, satirical a little bit, that talked about a quote from Buddha, where you can’t hide the sun and the moon and truth forever. And a lot of these particular subjects have been deep into the plumbing. Well, it’s starting to resonate with our residents. And if we look at other issues that didn’t resonate for many years, on policing for example, when the residents start taking that out of the plumbing, so to speak, the government took notice and they had to do something. OPP billing, that new model that came out, it took years for us to get that to the forefront. I firmly believe that AMO, with our staff, our board, we’re going to continue to bring that forward.

...

GM - It’s been a pleasure being the president of what I think is a great association. When you look at Ontario, it’s so diverse. Whether you’re a community of 800,000 or 900,000 or you’re a community of 1,000 people, when you finally realize that the only difference between us the amount of zeroes that we have on the budget line, that’s it. The demands are still there. AMO is their voice and we advocate on their behalf. And what we’re hearing from them is that we need to deal with the joint and several liability. We need to address the arbitration piece. We need to have a fair, equitable, predictable, sustainable funding for the improvement of our infrastructure. And we have made some tremendous gains, but we still have a long way to go.

The biggest piece moving forward now obviously is to see how, in September, this uptake is going to evolve. And the big one is What’s Next Ontario. So I say stay tuned. You’ve seen what municipalities are going to be faced with in the next 10 years. And we need to put a plan together to make sure that every community, big, small, north, east, west, south, doesn’t matter, that we have a plan in place that we’re all going to be able to benefit and be sustainable moving forward.

To contact the reporter on this story:
gzochodne@qpbriefing.com
905-926-8026
Twitter: @geoffzochodne

AMO 2016: Q&A with outgoing AMO president Gary McNamara

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