What is your position on data centre development in Mississauga? How will you weigh potential economic benefits against electricity and water consumption, environmental impacts and the needs of surrounding communities?
CROMBIE: So, let’s talk about the good and the bad.
The company is suggesting that this is pro-economic development. Not really. Because when you have a property the size of four football fields, you expect more high quality long-term jobs. The jobs in building the data centre are really in construction, because let’s be honest, there might be a handful of people that will work there because it’s a data centre, right? Maybe a dozen at best versus other uses. So, I worry that it’s not the best and highest use for the land for economic development reasons either.
Now, we’re not anti- AI data centres. We have nine or 10 of them right now. It’s just the scale of this one and the proximity to the residents.
There are also significant downsides that we’ve learned about from the experience in the US: it’s tax on the electrical grid — do we even have the capacity? Then, they would certainly have to pay their fair share. And then there’s the use of water. We are now moving into putting wastewater into a public utility run by an outside board according to the premier. Will they have the ability to evaluate the needs of this thing and be able to service the water needs? And then, there’s the question of noise. It’s a different kind of noise than traffic congestion or the buzz of the 401. It’s a higher pitch. Could it be irritating? Could there be environmental damage? Could there be environmental spills? There are all these downsides that we just don’t know enough about it.
And then the last one, I’ll alert you to, what if it’s a US data company? Do we want a US company holding our data? I think they did the right thing by putting the interim control bylaw, but the more I think about it, frankly, it shouldn’t move forward.
The province at some point has to step in and say, look, it’s not appropriate to put those things [that are] hyperscaled. Not every municipality should have to deal with this each and every time and debate it.
So too many questions, too many unknowns, too many unresolved issues. But I think certainly the province should come in.
PARRISH: Yeah, we have nine and people aren’t even aware of them. They couldn’t tell you on a map where they are.
We did stop a big prologus project that was going on, because there was a big cry. If I can be really honest with you, I think it was a pre-election thing. Everybody was running in little circles and trying to find issues.
I went to a company last week, toured it. It builds the components for data centres. It was fascinating and the gentleman there said to me data centres are the brain of a country, do you want our data centres in the United States? Of course, your first reaction is no way.
My husband thought he was having a heart attack a couple weeks ago. I was out on the road somewhere. My daughter took him to Emerge and they did a whole bunch of tests and he got the results on his phone before the doctor came in to talk to him. That’s what you have data centres for. It’s a valuable tool. It’s something that we need to have control over here in our own city, in our own country.
We asked our staff to do a full study, talk to the experts, talk to the people who are concerned about hydro, talk about coolants, talk about all this stuff and come back with a really thorough report and a recommendation: should we allow them or should we not allow them? If we do allow them, should they have certain restrictions on them? They were working along quite nicely. It was supposed to be coming out in January, but now of course the temperature’s gone up — literally — and everybody’s very worried about it.
If they come back and say, “Nope, these are the parameters. These are the regulations. You no longer just had to get a building permit. You have to get interior permits and you have to have regulations,” I would support it, because it is the brain of our city and of our country and we want to have our data here.
I would be very pleased, because right now we’re in limbo. We lost one big contract — as soon as that interim control bylaw was passed, they moved up to Brampton. It’s a huge loss to us, because it was a pharmaceutical company that was experimenting on new drugs and they wanted half the premises to be data just for them speeding their stuff through.
It’s so funny because I didn’t go to the public meeting that turned into a brawl, but my chief of staff was there and everybody in the room was taking pictures with their cell phones and he said he wanted to get up and say, “Where do you think that data is going and how do you think that’s being processed?” But it was just unfortunate. But I think we may come up with a better system now that we’ve done a thorough investigation, which we were doing anyway.
What is your vision for Ridgeway Plaza, and how will you balance public safety and the concerns of nearby residents with its cultural significance and the needs of small businesses?
CROMBIE: I was there today. I was at Jabal. I had shawarma, too. I’ve been at Ridgeway a couple times this week, actually. I love the plaza. I love the concept. I love that people love to gather there and it’s very cultural, so you can eat your way across every restaurant. They have everything.
The problem was that the mall wasn’t really designed for that and and the flaw is that as services closed — like the local hair salon and doctor’s office — restaurants went in, and there really is not sufficient parking for the number of restaurants that exist. And listen, I’m not going to bring the city into the parking lot business because it’s not inexpensive. It’s very costly. But there are companies that do that in parks: precise parking. I think a portion of that mall could be a walking mall. But we need to open up more parking. That’s really the bottom line.
I know that the council has put a sort of an interim control bylaw on there being any more new restaurants. And there are lots of ideas on how to protect them all because first of all, these are job creators. These are entrepreneurs who have opened businesses. They’re working very hard and they’re employing our youth by the way, right? I asked them, they have a loose business council or loose business association now. I said, “I want you to count up the number of businesses and I want you to count the number of people you employ. I want to give a rough number of the taxes that you contribute to the city from Ridgeway Plaza, because I want to have some statistics on the good that this plaza does for the community.”
Not to forget to mention that it’s kind of a tourist destination now, because everybody knows Ridgeway Plaza. If you’re in the UK or in the US, everybody knows Ridgeway. They’re even copying it in the US.
But it does have a dark side. Okay, let’s be honest. There have been some incidents late at night.
There’s street racing and drag racing. There has been an increase in break and enters in the area, increased criminal activity, so it’s not all good.
Some of the restaurants are open 24 hours and it’s very cultural and people do gather there. It’s an opportunity for those communities to come together to celebrate and that’s good, but there have been clashes too.
Suddenly, you had opposing sides clashing and that got concerning and there were a few altercations and I know that this mayor, she banned activity on both India and Pakistan Independence Day at the mall. That was really devastating for the business owners, because they weren’t giving any warning. And let me be honest, on big days like that you’re going to stock up, you’re going to have fresh food that’s going to go bad, because you’re expecting lots of customers.
But look, I’m both proud of it and it scares me at the same time, because I know the feedback from the residents. It’s tough to live in that area now, because there’s so many people coming in and out, people circling looking for spaces late at night, street racing — we’re all very aware of this and the police are too.
But at the same time, I’m proud of them. I respect the business owners. They’re working so hard and they need to have a business association or BIA there too for pooling resources to help beautify the mall and maybe get a fountain in the middle and put some baskets up in gathering places.
PARRISH: Well, let’s start with cultural significance.
I’ve been to the Middle East five times. I’ve been all through and in the evenings, all you hear in the little villages is voices and people having coffee and sitting there and chatting and being outside. That’s the culture.
Also, if you fly around particularly Chicago and New York, you see ads for Ridgeway. So it’s an attraction. So we need to keep it as an attraction.
There was a lot of difficulty particularly with young drivers, teenage kids zooming around in cars and screeching around in tires and all the rest of it. And we’ve had quite a few accidents.
So they did put an interim control bylaw on it for a year to stop any new restaurants from opening. They’ve got 110 restaurants in there. So, if somebody decides they want to get out of that restaurant, you can put a restaurant in that space, but you can’t expand into the other stores until we get a little bit more control over it.
Now, they’ve got a full security company that does their security. They have speed bumps. They have gates that go down when the parking lots are full. But what we really need there is behind Ridgeway, between that and the new mosque that’s going in, there’s a big vacant field that’s owned by a hotel operator. We should expropriate that land and put paid city parking there, stacked like four stories to get the cars out of the Ridgeway. It would take a year. It’ll pay for itself in five years and we wouldn’t charge an arm and a leg for the parking, but something reasonable and a check in or check out like they do when you shop in Toronto.
Then, we can put more picnic tables and more seating and more outdoor stuff, because in the good weather, it’s a beautiful location and everybody knows the food there is incredible and you could probably eat your way through the whole place.
It’s something we should be cherishing, not giving them a hard time.
What is one measurable commitment you will deliver in your first year in office, and how will residents be able to hold you accountable?
CROMBIE: So, first of all, our tax rates have skyrocketed in Mississauga. It’s one of the reasons it drove me to run for re-election as mayor, because I was leader for a brief time and I had some interesting private sector opportunities.
But in speaking to community members — because I’m out often, whether I’m at the grocery store or Shoppers Drug Mart or even in a local pub listening to some music — people are just talking about the tax.
I opened my own tax bill and almost had a quarter, like 10% a year —it’s just unsustainable. And we had never had a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. I’ve delivered nine budgets at an average increase in the city at 1.7% and when you combine with the region at 3.4%, taxes last year increased at 10%.
This year increased at 10% as well. However, they took $33 million out of a reserve fund to pay down the tax bill, so that the increase was only 5.5%. Like that’s not sustainable to take money out of reserves or they won’t be there when you need them for whatever the reserve is for. It could be for paving roads or or storm water maintenance. Like it’s not there anymore. $33 million is gone. And people who are offering tax freezes, is that at 5.5%? No. You know, if they’re offering you a deferral on your tax increase. Okay, great. Are you giving seniors a deferral?
How are you going to make up that revenue? I’d like to know. Number one, these aren’t people with any financial skills who are offering these incentive programs, because it’s a bit of a senior scam. Then, the money goes into an account in the city and we put compounded interest on it every year. So, now you’re paying interest on top of interest every single year and before you know it, you’ve accumulated a little debt. And so when you go to sell your house or your estate goes to sell your house, you owe the city a lot of money and you had no idea.
You thought it was just the increase on your taxes and you had no idea it was going to be charged. Anyways, this is a very bad tax plan. And then, for the freeze, you can freeze for one year, but they pretty much did that this year and took money out of a reserve fund. You can’t do that every year.
So, we have to go line-by-line. We have to cut. It’ll probably be some staffing, unfortunately.
Maybe they’ll show you best practices from other cities. Like, I think it could be a very good thing, a useful tool, and I have nothing to hide. You know, everything I do is an open book. I have no idea why they would turn [having an auditor general] down, but they did. So, now it makes me extra curious to get in there and open up the books, so we would set a report card on what we wanted to accomplish, taxes at the rate of inflation.
I would have milestones of all my promises on affordable housing, on transit and a statement every year on where we are in achieving the goals we are. But number one is the taxes. Number two is policing, making people feel safe in their communities again, and number three is getting this community moving again, quite frankly.
PARRISH: They hold you accountable every four years, for sure. I do a lot of public meetings. I have a Muslim Advisory Council and I made it a mayor’s advisory council. I also have a senior’s advisory committee that’s a mayor’s advisory committee. I’ve got an arts advisory committee; one of the other councillors chairs it for me, because he’s a crazy guy about arts and really into it. So, I’m accountable that way.
I’m also accountable with public meetings on budget. We did something like 16 budget meetings this year. That accountability will be there.
My priority is to rebuild the city centre and there has to be a lot of consultation, particularly with the arts community. They’re very nervous that we’re just going to tear down the [Living Arts Centre] and not replace it — that’s not happening. So information is gold. You have to be able to hold enough public meetings and get serious input from people and not jump into it in a big hurry. But that’s my big objective is to get that city centre at least started.