Mayor Andrea Horwath took questions from City Hall media for 45 minutes on Monday on various topics and issues facing Hamiltonians.
Returning from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative’s annual Great Lakes Day in Washington D.C., Horwath spoke about her efforts to support local businesses impacted by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Tariffs
The City of Hamilton, as a municipal government, has limited tools available to respond.
Last week, City Council unanimously passed measures to stop purchasing from American companies whenever possible.
The City’s finance staff are researching options to assist local businesses, including temporary relief from development charges. Finance staff will provide a report to Council no later than June.
The Mayor is facilitating discussions between local businesses and other levels of government.
Horwath says the Roundtable on Trade and Tariffs, brings “together some of Hamilton’s key manufacturers, the Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority, the Hamilton International Airport, City of Hamilton leadership, local economic development officials, and all three Hamilton-area Chambers of Commerce – Hamilton, Stoney Creek, and Flamborough – to discuss strategies to support and protect local jobs and industries.”
On the Great Lakes Mayors Meeting in Washington
Mayor Horwath said the meetings with other Great Lakes and St. Lawrence mayors were productive, and that American mayors took the Canadian messages about the negative impacts of tariffs to both sides of the border into a meeting with Trump administration officials at the White House.
She plans to continue the relationships built during the meetings.
Team Hamilton Post-Provincial Election
Mayor Horwath was asked about Mark Carney winning the leadership race of the Liberal Party of Canada and becoming Prime Minister designate. She stated she looks forward to working with him, especially in assisting local businesses responding to tariffs.
The follow-up question asked her to comment on the provincial election results and that the Ontario Conservatives now hold three of Hamilton’s five provincial seats.
Mayor Horwath says work is underway to organize a “Team Hamilton” meeting to bring together all of Hamilton’s MPs and MPPs for a joint meeting to ensure a “united front for Hamiltonians.”
Hamilton’s Poor Measurement in National Survey of Housing Approval Timelines
The City of Hamilton is Canada’s worst municipality for planning application processing times, according to the latest semi-annual benchmarking study published by the Canadian Home Builders’ Association.
In Hamilton, getting a planning application approved takes an average of 31 months. This is nearly triple the average of 11.2 months across comparator municipalities and six months worse than Toronto, the second-worst municipality.
The study covers the years 2023 and 2024. The City of Hamilton did not provide data, the CHBA used publicly available data.
“Certainly, we have been very aware that there needs to be some changes internally to how we deal with development approvals,” Mayor Horwath stated. “We have two pilot projects about to be launched, that aim exactly at that target.”
The Mayor says the new processes will ensure it is clear who is responsible for processing applications, that department comments are completed in a timely manner, and that there is accountability for achieving improvements.
Downtown Safety
The Mayor responded to questions regarding downtown safety and was asked to comment on a new Chamber of Commerce report.
Horwath expressed optimism for the downtown, citing the arena redevelopment and the recent sale of the historic Coppley building.
On safety, she said more needs to be done. Hamilton Police have increased patrols downtown.
Vacant Unit Tax Botched Roll-Out
Asked about the problems with the City’s vacant unit tax roll-out, specifically the online declaration user-interface errors [the City mailed out confusing passwords with typeface that displays ‘1’ and ‘l’ and the ‘0’ and ‘o’ the same], the Mayor praised city staff for responding to the high number of phone calls and the line-ups at municipal service centres which have resulted.
The City will not be charging VUT late charges this year.
The Mayor then spoke about the process improvement efforts the City is undertaking through the Bloomberg City’s Initiative.
General Manager of Finance and Corporate Services Mike Zagarac said approximately 40 percent of Hamilton’s residential property accounts have filed a declaration thus far.
Encampments
Mayor Horwath brought the City’s managers responsible for encampments and housing to the press conference. There were no media questions on the topic. [The beginning of enforcement was already covered in news stories last week. Follow-up stories on enforcement will occur next week.]
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Published: March 12, 2025
Last updated: March 12, 2025
Author: Joey Coleman
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