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New meeting dates related to the cost-sharing agreement haven’t been set but will be posted to the city’s website in the future, according to the city clerk’s office.
The draft cost-sharing agreement — a document that will outline what infrastructure is needed for the factory and who will pay for it — was supposed to be discussed by local politicians in mid-November, but they voted to defer the matter after receiving a significant amount of backlash during a public participation meeting that took place less than 24 hours earlier.
Stratford’s economic development corporation, investStratford, publicly announced Xinyi’s interest in a chunk of recently-annexed farmland near Wright Business Park at the end of October.
The land was rezoned specifically for float glass manufacturing without public input using a tool in the province’s Planning Act called the Minister’s Zoning Order. The MZO was first requested by the city in 2018, not long after a proposal by Xinyi to build a similar factory in Guelph-Eramosa was turned down.
Opponents of the project in Stratford raising red flags about how much of the its development has happened behind closed doors over the past two years, among other concerns, have since organized.
A fourth public rally in opposition of the factory took place on Monday.
The demonstration at Market Square was organized by Wise Communities Stratford, founded by local resident and musician Loreena McKennitt. It featured David Crombie, a former Toronto mayor and Conservative cabinet minister who has raised concerns about the government’s use of MZOs and recently resigned from the provincial Greenbelt Council over proposed legislation that would weaken the powers of Ontario’s 36 conversation authorities.
