Councillor Carr has presented a motion for a roundtable meeting with local MPs and MPPs at Belleville Council in January 2026, seconded by Councillor Brown.
These include Bay of Quinte MPP Tyler Allsopp, Hastings-Lennox & Addington MPP Ric Bresee, Bay of Quinte MP Chris Malette, and Hastings-Lennox & Addington MP Shelby Kramp-Neuman.
The items he wishes to discuss, along with other members of Council, include more consultation and engagement with the City on legislation related to planning, development, and other matters impacting the City, legislative changes in government programs surrounding housing and homelessness, funding and government expectations for homelessness, mental health, and health care initatives including primary care, funding responsibility being downloaded either directly or indirectly to the City, communication with their offices regarding matters that are outside juristictional responsibility of Council, and previous resolutions that were passed by Council or correspondents set with no responses to date from their offices.
Councillor Carr said the idea was inspired by the City of Windsor who recently conducted a roundtable with their MPs and MPPs.
“Here’s an opportunity where the many unaddressed correspondents can be addressed, we’ve passed dozens of resolutions calling on both levels of government, many of the items are not our responsibility, but being close to the people, we hear them day in and day out,” Councillor Carr said.
“It’s time to have a very frank discussion as community leaders to wrestle some of these issues to the ground, to get clarification on where funding is, on where results are, and at the end of the day, to just get a response from the things that we have asked for.”
Councillor Kelly supported the motion, saying the matter is going around in circles.
“I could stand here for 25 minutes and talk about discrepancies and how we don’t hear back, it’s frustrating,” he said.
“There’s so many struggles and it comes back to the municipality, and then you send letters to MPPs and you don’t hear back. It’s not a personal attack on them, it’s an attack on why don’t we get a response? I’m sure if we added it up, we’d have quite a few letters that we’ve sent to the MPPs in our area. It’s a simple ask, it’s either yes or no. I find it extremely frustrating when we don’t get a response, we don’t get the support.”
Seconder Councillor Brown also spoke to the matter.
“It wasn’t that long ago here that I called out the MPP for the Bay of Quinte and the following day he went on the radio and called me out and offered that I never picked up the phone and called. I think it’s fair to say that this motion would be we’re picking up that phone and calling because we all have frustrations here,” she said.
“Similarly, I think that what’s been happening over the course with Bill 33, Bill 60, Bill 68, and others where there’s no consultation and they’re being rushed through, I think it’s incumbent on us as people who are closest to the residents, the taxpayers, of being their voice and being able to stand up for some of these. If they’re not going to do public consultations, then we need to be expressing what our outcomes are and what we can do to best protect the taxpayers.”
Councillor Carr expressed that the intent behind this motion is not to be a gripe session with local MPs and MPPs, rather an opportunity to express concerns.
“The community looks to us to solve issues. It’s interesting in the last community survey that went out for the capital budget, one of the largest themes in there was we weren’t investing enough in homelessness. That is not in our portfolio. And yet, we’re tasked with that,” he said.
“We need to have a very frank discussion as community leaders with our counterparts as MPs and MPPs to work collectively as community leaders to come up with solutions. Otherwise, we’re just going to have to stop writing and passing resolutions and just simply post a phone number where residents should call. At the end of the day, we are invested either directly or indirectly, but it’s costing the taxpayers money, and therefore I think it’s important that we have the conversation.”
In a recorded vote, Council voted 8-0 in favour of the motion.
