Thunder Bay wants help dealing with its complex issues. Here's the council committee who'll lobby for it

Thunder Bay's intergovernmental affairs committee will be hitting the ground running as it works to build relationships with the provincial and federal governments in hopes of getting support to help deal with issues facing the city.

The new iteration of the committee was appointed last week, and includes a mix of experienced and brand-new city councillors.

The members are Mayor Ken Boshcoff, at-large councillors Shelby Ch'ng and Kasey Etreni, Westfort Councillor Kristen Oliver, and Northwood Councillor Dominic Pasqualino; some members of city administration also sit on the committee as resources.

"The primary goal for this committee is to take council's wishes and direction and to lobby other orders of government," said Ch'ng, who was also part of the committee during the previous term. "It unifies the voice of council so that no one member of council can show up in Ottawa or Toronto saying 'this is the will of council.'"

Pasqualino, who's a first-term councillor, said his background as president of Unifor Local 1075, which represents the workers at Thunder Bay's Alstom plant, will help in his duties as a committee member.

"A lot of the progress that we're going to get in the city in the next four years is going to depend a lot on co-operation," he said. "If we can all work together, I can see where we'd be very productive for the city."

"I know some of the pitfalls that can happen, and I talked to a lot of different people at different levels from federal, provincial and other municipal governments as well," Pasqualino said. "I think that that's really important to be able to foster that spirit of cooperation and to work with them all and build a relationship."

Both Ch'ng and Pasqualino said they heard about various issues the municipality can't address on its own during the recent municipal election campaign.

For Ch'ng, it was gangs and gun-related issues, housing and homelessness.

"It's going to be a matter ot hitting the ground running with this committee," she said. "I think we have a lot of different angles covered ... We have a really good cross-section of representation, and I'm hoping we can work together."

Homelessness was also an issue Pasqualino heard about while campaigning, as was crime.

"Really those are at another level of government," he said. "Now we can co-operate with the province and with the federal government, not only just to get money from them and support, but also to have cooperation so that there's no duplication of services."

"I find that a lot of times the different levels of governments have different goals, and it's best if we can talk to all levels of government and agree on a common goal."

Another issue that the committee has been directed to work on is stop-arm cameras on school buses. The cameras capture images of motorists illegally passing school buses, but the provincial Joint Processing Centre — which handles footage from similar programs like red light cameras — isn't currently accepting stop-arm camera footage.

That led city administration to recommend against the city implementing a stop-arm camera program. At Monday's council meeting, Oliver tabled a motion to refer the matter to Intergovernmental Affairs, so it can lobby the province to accept the footage.

The committee will have its first chance to meet with government ministers in January, during the annual Rural Ontario Municipal Association meeting in Toronto.

"I'm very aware of the amount of responsibility the Intergovernmental Committee has, and it's really important that we work together," Pasqualino said. "Because we've got two different parties for the federal and the provincial government, it's easy to start ruffling feathers."

"We really need to work together, we need to keep party politics out of it, and we need to focus on what we can agree [on] together and work on a common solution that's agreeable by all."