By Pepper Parr

July 8^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Kimberly Calderbank delegated at City Hall on the decision made to award swimming pool allocation to the Golden Horse Aquatic Club, during which she set out how she understands this decision came about.

Good morning, Mayor Meed Ward, and members of Council.

My name is Kimberly Calderbank, and I have the privilege of serving as President of the Burlington Aquatic Devilrays. I am not only a volunteer president, but a Burlington parent. My son, who is 14, and my daughter, who is 10, both swim with BAD. Through this club they have learned what it means to work hard, to show up for others, to be resilient, and to believe in themselves.

We know how deeply each of you cares about Burlington families. And we are grateful for your time, your service, and your commitment to a strong, inclusive city.

You’ve already heard from two powerful voices today:

First, from Katie, a Burlington parent and professor whose story reflects the kind of legacy our club

represents—and the broader system-level implications of this decision.

And second, from one of our young athletes—who showed incredible courage by coming here this morning. His story reminds us of what’s really at stake: the well-being of the kids at the heart of it all.

I want to speak on behalf of our board, our leadership team, and the 400 families we serve—and I want to begin with a point of clarification around residency.

The City’s RFP was clear: this contract should prioritize Burlington families. It asked applicants to demonstrate how they would deliver high-quality programming for Burlington youth.

Our club is already doing exactly that. We serve more than 320 Burlington swimmers across our competitive and pre-competitive programs. These are not projections. These are kids who live here, go to school here, and have built a community here.

In contrast, the club awarded the contract is not Burlington-based. According to Ontario’s Not-for- Profit registry and Swim Ontario, they are listed as a Dundas club, operating in the Hamilton region. To our knowledge, they have not followed Swim Ontario’s standard process for regional expansion— one that requires input from local clubs like ours.

And this is not an isolated case. GHAC has been expanding into multiple municipalities across the region—reflecting a shift toward a regional, market-based model that prioritizes growth and scalability. That model may suit some programming contexts, but it raises real concerns when City- owned public infrastructure is allocated without fully considering community roots, local access, or long-term partnership history.

Their bid appears to have been evaluated as if they already operate a Burlington-based program— despite lacking local governance recognition or an established base here. Even if they were to absorb our entire club tomorrow, they still wouldn’t serve as many Burlington families as we already do today.

This isn’t just about numbers. It’s about transparency, process, and purpose. The RFP was designed to prioritize Burlington kids. But the outcome, however unintended, doesn’t reflect that goal.

 That’s why we appreciated the opportunity to meet with City staff last week. It was a productive and respectful conversation, and we’re grateful to have had the chance to engage directly and clarify some of these points.

As you know, we’ve asked for 40 hours of pool time to keep our club operational this fall. That number reflects the minimum required hours to prevent further damage to our programming, our coaching, and most importantly, our athletes.

These are not empty hours. They’re carefully structured training blocks that allow us to serve a full range of swimmers from pre-competitive swimmers just learning the ropes, to senior athletes training for provincial and national goals.

With less than 40 hours, we would be forced to cut full training groups, turn away families, and potentially lose coaches who rely on consistent scheduling to sustain their livelihoods. This threatens the viability of our club.

BAD is more than a swim team. It is a community. It is where families run the Terry Fox Run together, gather donations for the local food bank, and collect warm socks for neighbours in need.

We’re not just a swim club—we’re a development pathway. For 40 years, BAD has nurtured swimmers from their very first strokes to national and international success.

This year, Swim Ontario formally recognized the Burlington Aquatic Devilrays as a key contributor to Canada’s success on the world stage—specifically highlighting our role in supporting Katie Cosgriffe on her path to the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.

That recognition matters. It shows that what begins in community pools—volunteer-led, team-first, grassroots programs—can lead all the way to the podium. This is the kind of development system we should be protecting, not displacing.

More than 2,000 residents have signed our petition. Support continues to pour in from alumni, fellow clubs, and Burlington families who want to see this club protected.

Every day that goes by without clarity, we lose more swimmers. Coaches can’t plan. Families can’t register. Athletes lose momentum and stability.

While we are deeply disappointed in how this process unfolded, we are not here today to rehash legal arguments. As you’ve heard, we’ve paused our judicial review in good faith—because we believe a shared solution is still possible.

And we believe that in youth sport, “do no harm” should be the baseline. We are not asking the Council to choose sides.

We are not asking for exclusivity.

We are asking for a fair and functional solution—one that reflects Burlington’s values and allows our 40-year legacy to continue.

 We believe we can coexist with other user groups. We’ve always worked collaboratively and we remain open to shared solutions, so long as they allow our families to participate meaningfully and sustainably.

So our ask is simple:

First, that the City allocate 40 hours of pool time to the Burlington Aquatic Devilrays this fall, concentrated in core training blocks that support effective training. These hours are essential not only for practices—but also for our ability to host swim meets, which provide critical revenue to keep our programs affordable and accessible. Swim meets are a tradition—they’re also a financial lifeline. They sustain our programming, strengthen our volunteer base, and bring families from across Ontario into Burlington. Removing our ability to host them threatens our long-term viability.

Second, that Council call for a formal review of how RFP’s are used in allocating youth sport resources—so future decisions better reflect the values of equity, community, and public good. And so that no club, no coach, no family, and no child has to go through something like this again. We wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone.

We’ve done our best to remain constructive, collaborative, and solutions-oriented. We’ve shown that we are willing to adapt, to share, and to meet the City halfway.

Now we ask that our City do the same.

Because the stakes are high—not just for our swimmers, but for what Burlington chooses to stand for.

Please don’t let our legacy end here. Help us ensure no swimmer is left behind, and that Burlington remains a place where community sport can thrive for generations to come.

Thank you again for your time, your leadership, and your dedication to Burlington.

It was now time for Council members to ask questions of Calderbank

Chair Lisa Kearns: Thank you very much for your delegation. We’re going to go to our list of speakers now.

Bentivegna:  For our purposes. Swim, Ontario is a governing laws, and they create, obviously, rules and regulations for the whole province. Do they work on registration and residency by municipality or by name? How does that? Can you expand on how that gets so

Calderbank:  Swim, Ontario is our regulatory body. So our insurance, all of our registration, everything happens through swim Ontario. So that’s sort of them than us. When you register a swimmer, you pay a fee to swim Ontario to register them. It’s certain laws, like a concussion law, all of those things, all the papers, legalities, are done through swim Ontario. So a fee goes to swim Ontario when our children register. Our registration fees are kept around 250 ish dollars. Some of that goes to swim Ontario. Some goes to help our club with the registration, Administrator, administration costs other local clubs, oak, for instance, can be upwards of $1,200 for registration. So it’s very different depending on what the club decides to do, but effectively, it’s paying a fee towards swim Ontario. When you register a swimmer, the family fills out where they live, address, contact information, all of that good stuff. So they are looking at the city with which that swimmer lives in for registration to Swim Ontario.

Bentivegna: Follow up on that. Kearns interjects: No, it’ll be a second question. You have a big list here, so it’ll be a second question. You are are using your second question now. Bentivegna: I can’t use a follow up for that?  Kearns: No, because your first question was like six questions.

Bentivena:  I guess my second question will be, how many swim organizations are there in Burlington, operate out of Burlington.

Calderbank: Currently the Burlington aquatic Devil Rays operates out of pool space. Here in Burlington, there are also private swim organizations that operate out of Cedar Springs. I believe goldfish has a club as well. So in private organizations, we also have a synchro team here in Burlington that I believe solely operates out of Angela, sorry, Aldershot, a very well known, popular, award winning Synchro club. And we also have a dive team here in Burlington, but from a swim club competitive perspective, that is the one that’s currently operating out of city facilities. Thank you.

Councillor Stolte:  You mentioned about the request for 40 hours a week. How many hours a week were you accustomed to operating under?

Calderbank: The RFP itself was based on 2000 hours. So in the RFP, we had to show how we would use all 2000 hours. We actually had to cut back our program programming to be able to use the 50 hours that the RFP was looking at. So when we met with city staff last week, the conversation was, what do you need? And we sort of shifted it from what do you want to what do you need? Because we need the 40 hours to not have to cut we don’t want to do harm.

We want to keep the club as a whole, as was previously mentioned, we are losing swimmers day to day at this point because people are registering for other clubs. The fear is that piers also, sort of alluded to tryouts for other clubs have happened, right? Teams are built by this time in the past, when this RFP process happened in 2020 it was in the new year. It was earlier on in the season. So planning could go if you had given us 20 hours at that time, we had time to figure out what that looked like. At this point, I need to register swimmers, or I won’t have anybody left to register 50 would be the pie in the sky. The other thing that the contract and the RFP included was the Meet time, as I mentioned, those meets are our lifeline and how we exist that outdoor meet that Katie referenced we just had a couple weekends ago in June. We used to have clubs from Mexico come and join us. It’s a huge tourism piece. All of these families are staying. We had over 14 clubs and 1500 swimmers at that meet. So it’s a pretty impressive meet that we host at Nelson. That we’ve been doing year after year. Newfoundland was here again for the fourth year in a row. Their head coach loves it. He’s already emailed me. When can we come back? Those hours really matter to us to be able to continue along.

Stolte:  Second question, so the 50 hours, in an ideal world that includes the Meet time, or meet times, the meat is part of sorry, the meat was part of the contract and the RFP, so it was the 50 hours, the 2000 plus, these are the meats that you would receive for part of the RFP,.

Councillor Sharman:  Thank you very much for being here this morning. Kimberly,  I looked at the two websites, and I see you have three pools in Burlington on your website. But I also know that notice that GHAC has five pools in Burlington, but they’re also in five other Muse powers. You’re not in other Muse powers, correct?

Calderbank: We don’t have space anywhere else. So, based on the last RFP, previously, we also had access to Tansley woods, and we also had access to Aldershot. At one point, we’ve had access to other pools, as we’ve ebbed and flowed through the city, per the RFP last time, there were only certain pools that were allocated to that RFP, which is the same this time. So we’re bidding on access to Centennial Angela Coughlin and Nelson, essentially as part of the RFP process, which was part of the conversation with city staff last week was, can we access those other pools? I mentioned that we have Synchro and Aldershot. We have a dive club at Angela Coughlin. Are there ways to share the Pool time with them as well? But yes, my understanding is the website has since been updated since they received the RFP, and I do believe some of those Burlington pools have been on their website the entire time, even though they weren’t servicing out of them.

Sharman: That was was going to be my second question with respect to the five pools, and I’ll check it with the next delegation as well. That’s just been increased as a result of the result of the RP. Okay, so I’ll ask for more details. Thank you very much.

Councillor Galbraith attending virtually:  Similar to Councillor  Stolte, question around the 40 hours with the RFP being awarded to GHAC. What does that currently leave you with?

Calderbank:  None, zero. So the call that I had on June 5 with the procurement team was, we’ll follow up with the sustain, substantially reduced. I’m using air quotes. I don’t know if Calvin can see me or not, but substantially reduced. Okay, substantially reduced Pool time. I did not receive that call from the procurement team or the staff that day. It was promised by the end of the week. I did not hear by the end of that week, we did follow up and had a meeting last week with Emily Renee and a gentleman as well from facilities, and had that discussion. I’m quite hopeful that it will be more than the sustain substantially reduced time that I heard about on June 5.

Galbraith:  Thanks for that. And then second question, so when you’re talking 2000 hours and 40 hours, if you were awarded 40, what is that total? I assume the 2000 is the year correct total. So what does what does 40? Are you 40 per month? And that’s the work.

Calderbank:  Yeah, we’re 480 as opposed to 2000 annually

Galbraith:  So the ideal numbers, it’s hard to tell if he’s no, go ahead. I’m sorry. You’re frozen. Calvin, so it’s very difficult to tell if you’re speaking or not. I apologize for cutting you off. The 50 would be the ideal. Again, that helps us not have to secure private pool time. What we’ve been doing behind the scenes, trying to keep our members and keep pieces together is securing private pool time. So should we have to amplify or build in any extra time to be able to keep our club viable? We’re looking at ways to sort of beef that up. So again, when I met with city staff, it was a what you want, then turned into a what you need to really make it happen. And there are not a lot of private pools here in Burlington, right? There’s not pool infrastructure in Burlington, as I’m sure you’re all aware there, it’s there’s not a lot, there’s a lot of white papers going on around right now about how important Pool time and pool structure is. There is not a lot of accessible Pool time for us. So we went right down to looking at condos and apartments like we’re desperate to pull this together. It just doesn’t exist here in the city of Burlington.

Mayor Mead Ward:   Thank you so much for being here, all of you for being here. So you’ve raised some concerns, as did the previous. Delegate, I around the RFP as a method for allocating scarce Pool time or really limited hours in any city facility. She said the the RFP was akin to a construction contract, so perhaps really good for potholes, not so good for people, so what? And I noted it on your your slide that that you want a different path. Can you do you have any ideas or suggestions for us around how the city might fairly allocate a scarce resource full time, recognizing that there are Burlington families that do swim with G hack currently and travel outside the city. So we’ve got, we’ve got two clubs right now that that are providing really valued service to our residents.

Calderbank:  I think what’s important first to acknowledge is the fact that G hack, as Paul mentioned, or councilor Sharman mentioned, has multiple facilities outside of Burlington. They’re already practicing in and that their club is already catching. They have not lost those facilities. To my knowledge, I’m sure they’ll speak to that we have without our facilities, we are no longer viable as a club with the Burlington pools. They just become a bigger a bigger club with more pools to practice in. There is a very vast difference between those two measures, right? One club ends because x and I understand that they have Burlington residents using those facilities. But again, if they were to take on all of our Burlington residents, they still don’t have the number that they need to be able to even stand close to what we’re servicing I mentioned for 50 hours and the wait list. We do have a wait list. We do have people that want to come and join us. Part of the RFP process in 2020 was starting our fundamentals and Learn to Swim program, which are now a splash and mini rate programs. So part of the request of the city was to add on Learn to Swim programs. So we were sort of filling that gap that the city has wait lists for themselves that takes up a significant amount of our pool users as well as our swimmers. But this is exactly how we’re growing people through our grassroots program. I would suggest that, as Katie had alluded to, a rental contract.

Mayor Meed Ward:    So what do you what do you need, not what you want, and how are you going to make that viable and work it out?

Calderbank: I know that with our 400 swimmers, we’re strapped for the hours that we have. I’m interested to hear how and where we can’t access the information. How G hack, with their 100 and something, Burlington swimmers are going to use all of those hours for just Burlington swimmers. The math doesn’t math. For me, we need every last hour to be able to make that happen, and I believe that a rental contract is the way to go. The urgency is that if this isn’t happening, I don’t I don’t have a club to put to register daily. We are receiving withdrawals because people are going to other clubs. My son is swimming at OSC, that’s one of the biggest meets. We have several swimmers that are going out to one of our key swimmers left and registered with another club so that they could swim with them like it’s heartbreaking, and that is happening every day. So I know you’re not speaking about it till July 15, but that’s devastation. That’s another week.

Mayor:  So would you advise our staff to sit down with swim providers to have this conversation and figure out a way forward? Is that the path that you’re asking us to do ?

Calderbank:  The way I would have done it, and again, I don’t want an annual contract, because I don’t want to be back here next year doing this again. I think we know the pools that we have. We know the infrastructure that we own in Burlington here. I think it’s a matter of sitting down and finding out what the city needs for their programs and then what’s remaining. And then if you have G hack and you have bad and you have the synchro team, I apologize. I don’t know their name, the dive club. Sit down. How many hours do you need to help the Burlington residents make that happen and fill in the blank and schedule back? That’s how I would do it. And then I would be signing. It was a 40 page RFP, and it was multiple documents that we had to provide a ton of volunteer time, a ton of taxpayer time, a ton of resources went into this, and I don’t believe that needed to be the case. Okay? Thank you very much.

Chair Kearns: Thank you. I’ll take my first time question, then I see a second time question from Councillor Bentivegna. You may have seen from the press releases that council isn’t allowed to engage in the RFP or procurement process under our procurement by law. However, I believe Council holds a role in governance, and governance covers such issues as risk, financial liabilities, litigation liabilities, again, reputational liabilities, et cetera. So do you believe any of those conditions? Decisions are currently in play right now, so I can speak to that.

Calderbank: There were several steps that you could take through the RFP process to rebut or refute the decision. So when we found out on June 5, we had a small window to be able to ask for a review. The city then created a committee, which is quite interesting, because I believe several of the folks on there were actually parks and roads people are engineers, so not necessarily sport or community oriented people. So it was three staff at the City of Burlington who then emailed us back on June 24 I believe it was to let us know that no the decision was being upheld. From there, we did seek legal advice. Our lawyer has told us that we can take a step further, which is a judicial review, which is going to litigation, and going to court, and having court review the decision that was made and whether it was fair and just those are the two words that I keep using when I’m speaking with folks, that our lawyer uses, that we used when we spoke with the city last week.

Was this decision fair and just? And everything in my fiber says this decision was not fair and just. And I’m sure everybody could agree, if you really took a look at it, it was not fair and just. So that is our next step in good faith, because I believe in this council, and I believe in the city, I’m hopeful that we can get what we need to altogether. So that review is on pause. I have a note to the lawyer. He was going to reach out to your legal team as well and advise that, as we are in negotiations or conversations here, that we have paused that, but it is something very real, and our club is willing to fight for these kids.

It was at this point that Kimberly Calderbank began to lose it – some very deep breathing got her back to the point where she could continue.

Kearns: Thank you very much. My second question is in regards to the comment that you made about affordable and accessible as a club. So I heard you say it’s $250 to join the club or be a participant of the club registration. How was something like that evaluated or requested to be responded to in the RFP?

 

Calderbank:  Yeah, excellent. So part of the RFP was to show a lay of the land of the fee structures through other clubs. So what is an environmental scan of what other clubs offer? And our club is a accessible, fair amount based on who is around us again. We have Oakville, we have GHAC, we have G hack. There’s some private clubs I mentioned as well. So right in the RFP document, there is a full chart that shows all of those pricing structures. Unfortunately, I don’t have in front of me that being said, RFP. Our RFP was not opened by staff. We were told, because we were rejected due to the language for the certificate, it was never opened, so nobody ever saw where our club stands against others.

Chair Kearns: Okay, thank you very much for that answer. Back to you, Councillor Bentivegna.

I just want to follow up on the mayor’s questions. Prior to 2020, this procurement process, you personally have 400 members a year.  How many members would you had prior in 2020

Calderbank:  I’ve only been with the club since 2018 so I’m in a very new role. I couldn’t tell you specifically how many numbers our club continues to grow, though we see a continual growth a year to year. If we had more space, like I said, we would be, we would be using it. And it was a rental agreement in the past. To my understanding, it was not an RFP process. The first one was in 2020 both GHAC and BAD had applied to that RFP as well.

Betivegna: I’m more concerned about getting a number prior to rather than the growth side of it. Just to see, was it close to what you have now,

Calderbank:  We’ve grown so I would have assumed we’d probably be around the 300 mark. I can certainly provide that to you afterwards as well, but we’ve grown substantially so over the over the years, yes, I will  ask Jack and staff as well that question. So do you feel and I don’t can ask this question, or you’d be able to answer it. But do you feel that we may want to go back to that process prior to 2020?

Calderbank: I think it’s the only way to go back. Quite frankly, my understanding is a contract has been awarded. I think the only way to be fair to everybody and be just to everybody is to go back and start again. And that’s not an RFP process. I think that’s a sit down. What do you need? How can this work for you? How can we work together?

I understand that GHAC wants more pool space and wants time in Burlington, and I don’t want any child to be displaced.  I want to make that clear. We’re not us against them at all, but I need all of the time for my swimmers here in Burlington as well, and our club, and we know the numbers we need, they know the numbers they need, and I think it’s just a negotiating of the time. I want to reiterate how important it is to understand that they are a multi regional Club, so they have space. So, heaven forbid they don’t have Burlington club space. Those Burlington swimmers have another pool to go to. They can drive down the street to Hamilton. They can go somewhere else. My swimmers cannot.

Chair Kearns:   I think you have someone seeking your attention at the back. Oh no, oh no, oh no, no. It doesn’t work like that. No, no. Does not work like that. Nope you cannot do that. I thought you were trying to get the number to her, but if it’s not, you can whisper to each other for like one second.   Turn around. Do you know the number to the answer?

Calderbank: It’s regarding the pricing and the structure that was available in the RFP, I think it’s been covered.

Chair Kearns: Thank you very much. You have no further questions. Thank you for your delegation.

And that was it.  In a Council Chamber that was beyond standing room only Councillors heard a very sad story on how the administration chose to use the wrong procedure for what was a very simple problem:  how do we allocate the available swimming pool time to the two organizations that want to teach and train young people how to swim for pleasure and as competitors.