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PORTSIDE ARTISTS EXHIBITION PAGE
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PAGE ST. MARYS TRACK AND Thursday, FIELDMay 29, 2025
St. Marys Independent
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St. Marys Independent 36 Water St. S., St. Marys ON | 519.284.0041 | info@stmarysindependent.com | www.stmarysindy.com
Issue #1264
Thursday, May 29, 2025
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St. Marys councillors consider actions to combat U.S. tariffs, maintain status quo for now
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A TRAGEDY IN THORNDALE
(NANCY ABRA PHOTO)
A memorial placed at the scene of a Friday afternoon collision at Cobble Hills Road and Thorndale Road near Thorndale that killed five people — a teacher and four students from Walkerton District Community School who had been competing in a softball tournament in Dorchester. For the full story, see page 8.
Government advocacy needed to solve the housing crisis in St. Marys GALEN SIMMONS Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
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At a local level, the Town of St. Marys can only do so much to increase and diversify the town’s housing stock to deal with the housing crisis on a local level. That was the message Stephen Giustizia, the town’s affordable development housing consultant, delivered to St. Marys council at its special priorities committee meting May 20 during a review of the town’s Opening Doors - An Attainable Housing Action Plan, first approved by council in February 2023.
“For as much as St. Marys can have integrated plans and policies and programs related to incentives for developers and builders, the reality is that new development and the focus of St. Marys and the work that you can do is really in working with the private developers on incentivizing additional units,” Giustizia said. “In other words, your best work is still based on the interests and the timing of projects that are going to be advanced by developers and by builders.” The Opening Doors Plan was created to expand municipal practices within existing
As it turns out, there’s not much the Town of St. Marys can do on a local level to mitigate the impacts of U.S. tariffs on municipal procurement or local industry and businesses. At the May 20 strategic priorities committee meeting, St. Marys council heard from town director of corporate services André Morin about how the American tariffs put on Canadians goods, as well as Canada’s response in the form of retaliatory tariffs – both of which have been temporarily paused – are impacting the Town of St. Marys. “This is an area that is obviously quite complicated,” Morin said. “We’re all a little more educated on tariffs and international trade than we ever have been. Having said that, it’s still very much a very complicated system and, especially when it’s Canada and the U.S., very integrated and has evolved over the last number of years. What we’ve been hearing and seeing, and certainly what we heard at our (local) industry meeting last week; it’s going to continue to evolve and change over the next number of years as we kind of move forward and start to shift away, maybe, from U.S. suppliers globally.” For now, however, Morin assured councillors that the vast majority of goods and services procured by the town, and by towns across the province – 98 per cent according to a survey conducted by the Association of
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