Unifor Hall was packed with members of the community during Operation Sharing’s Oxford County Poverty Town Hall meeting.

The night featured a presentation about food insecurity from keynote speaker Dr. Lynn McIntyre from the University of Calgary.

A panel of experts also answered numerous questions and discussed hot topics surrounding poverty; including jobs, housing, transportation and the introduction of basic income. A big focal point of the night was the need to speak with your local dignitaries about your concerns so they can put your thoughts into action.

McIntyre believes that change is in the power of the municipality: “It was actually remarkable how many ideas came that were within the purview of the municipality. From housing, to planning, to stimulation of revenues, to dealing with vacant buildings, to dealing with businesses. I found that was actually a very positive way of starting. That’s the way that Oxford County actually leverages itself up, by already showing that it’s coming to do this job.”

Another week, another business lobby report that exaggerates the potential negative impact of Ontario’s plan to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2019.

Actually, we’ve seen this one before: the business lobby group that bills itself as the Keep Ontario Working coalition has re-released a report by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (CANCEA) that it funded and that first came out in August.

Economists from across the country were highly critical of that initial report’s numbers in August, in part because the authors of that report didn’t show all of their work.

Timmins is going to receive fresh data on the number of homeless people who reside here.

The most recent stats, which identified 1.7% of the city’s population as homeless, was collected in 2011.

The author of that research was Dr. Carol Kauppi, director of the Centre for Research in Social Justice and Policy at Laurentian University. Kauppi plans to conduct a followup to that research in 2018. At that time, she will also be collecting numbers and conducting surveys in the surrounding communities of Matheson, Iroquois Falls and Kapuskasing.

She just recently completed similar studies in Cochrane, Hearst and Moosonee.

A glitch in the city’s shelter system managed to temporarily close down a 24-hour, city-run referral centre for the homeless — a place that is often seen as a last-resort to escape harsh weather and find safety.

The Peter Street Referral Centre, a resource that helps people find shelter beds, shut its doors between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m., leaving many people with no where else to go on Sept. 19.