Jan 6 - Administration Committee Today

Some of my colleague will no doubt make plenty of press about the fact that some of us voted against Councillor Nunziata's motion to reduce our councillor expenses for meeting logistics and coffee services to donate to the Tsunami Relief efforts. I voted against the motions because I believe we should stick with the strategy of looking at the overall plan in a special Policy and Finance Meeting on January 13th.

In the end, this may well be where our City donation comes from but there was not sufficient support to refer this motion to Policy and Finance and so I voted against it. I hope that by January 13th, when Mayor and staff can report on everything already being done, councillors can come together and move the appropriate motion to fill in all of the gaps.

In the meantime, I continue to devote my staff's energy helping organize the remembrance ceremony in Nathan Phillips Square on Saturday at 4:30. We invite you all to join us. The event has been organized by the Canadian Tamil Congress. With logistical help from my office and especially from staff in the Mayor's office they have endeavoured to reach out to as many other communities feeling this loss and working on Relief efforts. In other words we hope to open the Square that afternoon to the Global Community mourning this tragedy.

Meanwhile, members of the community active in Aids Prevention Services were invited to gather to hear latest reports on Toronto statistics on increase in infections of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases. While there are some concerns regarding STDs, the numbers definitely show that with the investment in Aids Prevention Grants to community groups, we have begun to close the gap between the rate of incidence in Toronto vs. the rest of Canada.