Delegates demand Hamilton’s 2022 budget focus on a ‘just recovery’

City politicians have received a range of advice as they prepare to debate and ultimately approve Hamilton’s 2022 operating budget in the month’s ahead.

Approximately three dozen residents outlined their priorities during a virtual public meeting on Monday.

Many of the delegates were members of the Just Recovery Hamilton Coalition, which envisions an inclusive city that leaves no one behind after the pandemic.

“The COVID-19 pandemic really revealed some deep faults in our society in the way we treat especially those among us who are not as equitably and economically fortunate,” said Coalition member Karl Andrus.

He said the coalition has put together a budget policy paper with 150 recommendations to build back better after the pandemic.

There are a number of themes within the recommendations, including the need for greater investment in child care, tackling systemic racism, housing as a human right, green infrastructure, and a recovery that comes with decent jobs with good pay.

Members of the coalition range include the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, YWCA Hamilton, and the Hamilton and District Labour Council.

YWCA’s Violetta Nikolskaya focused her message on a need for more investment in permanent and supportive housing.

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“We are desperate, out of options and the cold is setting in,” said Nikolskaya, referencing the dozens of people living within encampments in city parks.

“All solutions need to be considered through a gender lens, otherwise we will continue to find a growing number of women left in the cold” and “without a safe place to go,” she said.

Lynda Lukasik, executive director of Environment Hamilton, questioned how the climate lens, the equity, diversity, inclusion lens, and the goal to make Hamilton the best place to raise a child and to age successfully, are currently being used to guide the budget process.

“Right now, as a stakeholder sitting on the outside, it’s really not clear to me,” Lukasik said.

Anthony Marco of the Hamilton and District Labour Council was among several delegates advocating for a living wage for the city’s student employees.

“By agreeing to pay a living wage to most workers, this council has indicated that most city workers deserve not to be in poverty,” Marco said.

He added that because the wages of students haven’t been raised to that level, “the indication is that the city council believes that student workers, they’re OK to be living in poverty.”

Hamilton City Council has asked city departments to limit their requested budget increases to two per cent next year.

Andrus said he believes many of the coalition’s demands can be met through a “better distribution of the spending of our tax dollars.”