First, thank you to everyone who sent emails or left phone messages of encouragement for our meeting with the Minister.  They were appreciated.

Mr Paul Snider, CAO and I met with Robert Chiarelli, Minister of Infrastructure for 45 minutes yesterday afternoon at Queen’s Park.  Mr Steve Clarke, our MPP, joined us as well as senior staff from the Minister’s office and one from Minister Leal’s (OMAFRA) office.

The meeting with Minister Chiarelli was very positive.  He was well briefed and his own memory went back to the time when Snowfluent was installed.  He even recalled the design engineer’s name.  He listened and quickly discerned the significance of our situation with regard to the criticality of the project and the impact funding it without provincial government help will have on our Village.

The Minister has made the commitment to find a solution “sooner than later”.  We left the meeting feeling that progress had been made and are moderately optimistic.  Paul and the Minister’s staff will be communicating further over the next few weeks.

We also had the opportunity to encourage the OMAFRA staff to fulfill its commitment to a spring launch date of OCIF4.

We owe our gratitude to MPP Steve Clarke, who continued to work on our behalf with the Ministers, and was the key to arranging this meeting.  Thank you, Steve.