Special Council meeting revealed nothing - except for the pipe dream the Mayor introduced

By Pepper Parr

July 10^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The Special Council meeting came to order promptly at 9:00 am. The first thing we noticed was that the Mayor was not wearing her Chain of Office.  Is it an Official meeting without the bling?

There is one registered delegate for today’s meeting, Cody Bradt the Golden Horseshoe Aquatic Club, regarding the confidential verbal update on potential litigation for aquatics procurement, which is our only item on today’s special council agenda.

Bradt got a chance to add to what City Council knew about GHAC – not sure what that had to do with the purpose of the meeting which was to look at the option related to potential lawsuits.

Good morning. My name is Cody Bradt, and I’m the Chief Operating Officer and Associate Head Coach of the Golden Horse Show Aquatic Club. First, I’d like to thank you for your time and for listening to this important matter. I also want to extend my appreciation to city staff for their continued professionalism throughout this process. Today, I want to take a moment to provide some clarity regarding the letters presented before you today from swim Ontario and swim in Canada. These letters are not endorsements in response to the current public conversation. They were not written as lobbying tools, nor were they drafted to apply political pressure.

Rather, they are letters of record submitted in April 2025, as part of our formal bid document. They were included to provide facts about our organization, that the Golden Horseshoe Aquatic Club is a member in good standing with both swim Ontario and swimming Canada, that we are actively engaged in the betterment of our sport at the local, provincial and national levels, and that inclusivity and athlete centered programming are long standing principles at the heart of GHAC.

These letters speak to our values, our track record and our commitment to creating safe, welcoming and high performance environments for all swimmers, and that’s what they’re intended to do, and that’s exactly how they should be read. I’d like to take a moment to speak about the strength of our coaching staff, because when it comes to athlete development and a quality experience here in Burlington, coaching matters at the Golden Horseshoe Aquatic Club.  We are proud to have some of the most qualified and respected coaches in the province. A few highlights of this past year alone, two of our coaches received world class performance coaching awards for coaching an athlete ranked in the top five globally, and we’re proud to have the OUA women’s coach of the year on staff leading one of Canada’s most successful university programs when it comes to certification, we have three fully certified level three coaches, the highest level of coaching certification in Canada, leading Para program.

We also have a growing team of level two and level one coaches who are certified, trained or actively working through that process. But these aren’t just titles. They represent our deep commitment to safe sport, athlete well-being and a culture of excellence that supports every swimmer from their first stroke to the national and international stage, that commitment to excellence shines through in our athletes as well. G hack is proud to be home to four members of Team Ontario, three swimmers and one coach who have been selected to represent the province the Canada Summer Games later this year in St John’s. That is the most from any club or any program in the entire province, and all four of those members have benefited from training and coaching within city limits, and over the years, more than 200 GX swimmers have gone on to compete at colleges and universities across North America, a testament to the pathways we create and the legacy we continue to build.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the broader issue that brings us here today, the critical shortage of aquatic infrastructure in Burlington, Canada’s most livable city. Quite simply, this community needs more aquatic infrastructure and space. A 50 meter pool is not a luxury. It is a necessity for recreation, for learn, to swim programs, for accessibility and for a healthy, active future, let alone the sport tourism impacts that competitive swim brings to this community. I want to share that the aquatic Sport Council of Ontario has produced a white paper titled building more aquatic centers in Ontario, a practical and forward looking document that supports government and industry stakeholders for planning the province’s aquatic infrastructure needs. Burlington deserves to be part of that future. I will share that publication with your offices, for you to review that needs to be part of this bigger conversation on behalf of our coaches, our athletes and our families. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak today, we remain committed to working collaboratively with the city to ensure that competitive youth swimming is inclusive, high quality, and firmly focused on what’s best for our young people. Thank you.

Mayor Meed Ward: You do have a couple of questions coming to you.

Councillor Stolte:  I wanted to ask you a question about that lack of aquatic space, and what your thoughts are for the club that you are such an integral part of, is that you spoke of being very resourceful, and I admire that, that over the last five years, you were able to find space at the YMCA and goldfish, I think you mentioned, yeah, another private facility here in Burlington. Is it your intention to maintain those contracts as well as utilize the city pools, or would you be moving your swim program into the city pools, and would free up that other aquatic space?

Cody Bradt: : I can’t speak to that particularly based on what we don’t know what Pool time we have available from the city. So what those hours are, depending on what’s available to us and how it best suits the interest of Burlington residents will depend on whether or not we continue to use private facilities and the manner in which we’ve been doing okay.

 

Councillor Kearns: My apologies. I’m joining you from Joe Brant Fracture Clinic with my 14 year old.  I want to ask if you feel that there is a possible path to the delegate to allow both organizations to operate in the city of Burlington. Yes or No,

Cody Bradt: I think that if the city prepares in writing a process forward, it would be something that certainly we will take back to our team and our legal counsel as a path forward.

 

FIX  Councilor Bentivegna:  I appreciate everything you do for the community. I want to follow up on the question Councillor Kearns raised about other organizations in the city have in the same situation that you’re in, facilities are always an issue. We never have enough. I’m familiar, and I’ve been part of in the past, working with the city and other organizations in that sport to build facilities. Are you familiar with this sort of a discussion or potentially a debenture to build a new pool, for example, with the organizations in the swimming   fix?

 

Cody Bradt: Absolutely, while we talk about other resources and the scarcity of it, nothing is more scarce than aquatics, right? Aquatics are used by the greatest range of population, of constituents of the City of Burlington, compared to our baseball diamonds, our soccer fields and other city amenities. GHAC would be proud to be a part of that conversation moving forward. And it is a not only a municipal issue, but a provincial issue and a national issue, FIX It’s created more effective use of space, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re able to get that many more people that we would with the new facilities. So absolutely, and the white paper done by the Aquatic Council of Ontario, and I know swim Ontario and swim Canada is certainly willing to be part of that conversation with the municipality

Bentivegna: Would you be willing to sit down with other members in this sport to sort of say, let’s all get together and think about what how we can do this and then approach the city?

CodyBradt:  Absolutely, we would be willing to work together with that. I think that there are a lot of user groups within the city that would benefit from new aquatic infrastructure, ranging from other competitive youth swimming providers, masters programs, diving Synchro. And I think that a collaborative approach to Council and the importance of aquatic infrastructure would be certainly beneficial.

Councillor  Sharman:  You raise an extremely important point, which, of course, is the lack capacity. I don’t know the numbers. Presumably you don’t know in terms of how many pools, how many? I don’t know what you wouldn’t measure it by square feet or square meters or cubic meters, but if you were to think about in terms of what we have versus what we need now and what we might need in the future, in terms of basically number of pools, do we need 50% more or 100% more. What are we talking

Cody Bradt:  Speaker   I think that the first part that needs to be looked at is an indoor, long course, 50 meter pool; that is the Olympic distance that we currently don’t have in the city of Burlington. And if you look around the region, there’s nothing but aging facilities that provide that service to our members, but that is raced up at the international level and provincially and nationally, and I think that it has to be part of a greater picture of what Council and its constituents within their wards want for this city and the sport tourism impact that can be brought because that makes a big part of “Hey, we’re going to build a 10 Lane, 50 meter pool that is a flat bottom depth that we saw, or we see at some pools across the nation. But that doesn’t necessarily allow you to have learn to swim programs at a flat bottom depth.

That means provincial and national and world regulatory specifications. So it needs to be looked at what it needs to be used for, and does it have a movable bottom? Look at what the city of Windsor did, and they have a beautiful facility down on the waterfront that has a movable bottom that they’re able to utilize for different user groups, depending on what is required, and that’s just one piece. But it’s also looking at how many stands need to be. What does the city want to host? Do they want to host a provincial championship that currently has 1500 participants plus in Toronto, that keeps getting pushed back to Scarborough or Windsor outside of our community because we don’t have the infrastructure for it, because I can speak to an event we hosted this year that had hundreds of people participating, but not only as swimmers, as family members, buying and spending money, buying goods and spending money in those cities, And the more heads and beds we can get in this city, and in correlation with competitive swimming, I think, will really help Burlington grow as a community.

And it’s important to note that when this conversation happened five years ago in the 2020, RFP process, the Centennial pool  had different rules and regulations surrounding the number of spectators and the participants on the deck level. That has since changed, which inhibits the max number of participation, bringing less tourism dollars to the city and less participation by youth, and that’s nothing beyond like that’s all beyond our control, because it’s fire regulations, etc, but that’s just a piece that we’ve lost. Well, we haven’t lost the lane space. We’ve lost the infrastructure space to support the sport tourism that once existed in this great city.

Sharman: I appreciate the answer, and I it’s clear what you’re saying is, just like many things in the city, we need more and more and more and more. The big, big question, though, and you’ve already said that you think there needs to be a collaborative relationship to serve the members of the community that we have a shortage, and somehow we have to fight figure out how to make that work. Is that your point?

Cody Bradt: Absolutely. We have to figure out how to make it work. And the youth of Burlington and making an inclusive, accessible sport available to our young people is at the heart of what we did in this city, owned facilities, 2009 to 2020 and what we’ve done outside of that 2020, through 2025, and I think that that need is not any like that was pressing in 2020 when we lost out and had 1000s of opportunities missed for people to understand and get to participate in what makes our organization great. And I think it’s an important conversation that we need to have to continue moving forward, but the framework that we currently have set out is a formal RFP process that has a signed contract and that will be on the city to come back in writing what they’re proposing needs to be done.

Mayor Meed Ward: Not seeing any other hands, so I’ll jump in with a couple of questions. I was very interested to read about the Para swimmer program in your letter mention the 13 para swimmers. Are those all the Burlington residents?

Cody Bradt:  They’re not all in that program, because we are the one of the only programs in the province that we are the only program in the province that has that many swimmers at that level. So we have people driving all the way from North York and Vaughn to be a part of our program. And you can see that later in the letters. So a number of those people listed in Para  swimmers are Burlington residents, but they haven’t had the opportunity to be part of accessible programming for competitive youth swimming for children with visual, intellectual or physical disabilities in the past five years.

So the number isn’t a direct reflection of our organization, but the lack of opportunity we had within city of Burlington owned facilities to offer our program, which we did offer, pre 2020, and actually a national champion, a the swimmer that was mentioned in my presentation, that was ranked top five globally last year, grew up learning how to swim in City of Burlington, pools down in Aldershot, and I can remember him being this big, and this week he’ll present. He will raise provincials, and five of the members grew up swimming in our programs here in Burlington, within city limits. And then there are a number of young people that have since reached out and joined us at other facilities, because it didn’t exist with other organizations within city limits.

Mayor Meed Ward: I am interested in this notion of the need for a 50 meter pool, which has recently come on my radar. Iyou may be aware that Mississauga Council, somebody notified me that their council did a resolution very recently, probably as a result of the Aquatic Council of Ontario white paper saying that there needs to be indoor 50 meter and asking for provincial and federal assistance. We do have two 50 meter pools, or outdoor Nelson and mountainside, and I know they’re used for meats in season, so I don’t know if sticking a dome on there would help make it all season, but, but we do have the two, at least during the summer. I’m very interested to get the paper. Do you think that that would be something that this council should explore is what, what Mississauga and others are doing to advocate to for assistance in adding more aquatic facilities?

The following was not part of the CHAC delegation.  We added the information so that readers could have an idea of what the Mayor was talking about when she asked about a bigger swimming pool

The Windsor International Aquatic and Training Centre (WIATC) in Windsor, Ontario, features a 50-meter competition pool. This state-of-the-art facility, located at the Family Aquatic Complex, also includes a diving well and a leisure waterpark area. The 50-meter pool is part of a larger 71-meter by 25-meter pool with 10 lanes, and it can be reconfigured using movable bulkheads and a movable floor.

CodyBradt: Absolutely. I think that that needs to be a broader conversation. I know that a formal RFP process brought it, brought us here, and has opened that conversation to move forward. And I think it’s a great gateway, and I think that we need it in our city. I would note that the pool at Mountainside is not suitable to competitive swimming, in the sense that you’re not able to host competitions because it’s only three lanes and it’s in a small section, whereas Nelson was able to have that great outdoor meet and have that great community impact.

The piece that is interesting that you bring up about domain, which we’ve thrown around in our own conversations in the past, is that, well, a dome is its own entity in and of itself, and I want this council to evaluate the air quality and the importance of managing the chloramines, etc, within doming a facility. That ability to evaluate that air flow and structure is something that’s really important, and one of the reasons that existing long course facilities in this province have lost the opportunity to host provincial championships because the air quality doesn’t meet the needs of the sport or best supporting the health of our youth. So I know that the city has made a great deal of improvements in infrastructure within the city facilities and Victor and his team have worked very hard to update that system and go away from liquid chlorine and those elements, but I think that that broader conversation, we need a committed indoor, 50 meter pool that can be year used year round, that not only provides 10 lanes worth of space, but if you have 10 lanes worth of space in 50 meters, that’s 20 Lane short course which all of our other city facilities are. So that aquatic infrastructure is just that much greater. And you have seen it work in other municipalities such as the city of Markham that had the TORONTO Pan Am sports center built, where multiple user groups exist at the same time in competitive swimming to share Lane space within those 20 lanes. So it is being done around the province, and I believe that the aquatic community here in Burlington could work together to make that happen.

Councillor Kearns:  One piece I’m still not completely clear on is, you know, with the ability to access these additional hours and lanes and uses, who are the athletes that will be using the pools? Are they existing competitive swimmers in Burlington that will change teams? Or are you going to help the people who are swimming in Vaughan to come in?    I’m not sure what the scale up looks like, and I just wanted some additional clarity on that.

CodyBradt:  Absolutely. That’s a great Parr the piece of it that is important to note is that the contract that we have signed with the city requires 85% Burlington residents, and we are committed to remaining with that so 85% at minimum will be Burlington residents, where those 50 though that extra 15% comes from we see reach from Oakville, from Milton, from Hamilton, which exists in both organizations as provided by the statistics that you requested from some Ontario and were provided to Council and the public. So I think that G hack is committed to supporting both of the existing competitive swimmers that are in the city and youth that are going to be new to the sport, and going from city programming to the great sport of competitive swimming.

Councillor Kearns: Okay, so just if I could be really blunt and clear, so is the scale up intention to pretty much bring most of the BAD swimmers under the GHAC umbrella, or is there another cohort that we don’t have visibility to that are waiting to get into the GHAC program with this potential new opportunity?

Cody Bradt:  I can only speak to our program specifically that we have members that currently aren’t able to access our programs and want to be a part of G hack because we’re using outside facilities, as I mentioned the other day, that are not at ideal prime times for youth. So yes, there is a demand for our programs here in the city, and we prior to 2020 the incumbent organization had approximately, and I’m going to use approximate figures, we had 275 kind of on both sides swimming here in Burlington.

And so that’s 550 youth using competitive swimming as their sport in the city of Burlington. And at City of Burlington owned facilities, because we only had a handful of hours at a private facility here in Burlington, pre 2020, so those numbers have actually diminished the utilization rate of competitive swimming in the city within city owned facilities. And that number, those statistics, are provided every year by swim Ontario, as to how many people are registered within each organization, and that we go from 550 and now we’re talking about the number that has been publicly shared is in that realm of 400 within city of Burlington owned facilities. Well, that’s a far cry from the 550 approximately that used to exist.

Mayor Meed Ward:  I am not seeing any other questions, so thank you for coming again this morning, and we will now move to the discussion of the item: a confidential verbal update regarding potential litigation for aquatics.  We will be moving into close to discuss that. I have a motion from councilor Pennsylvania, seconded by councilor Galbraith that the special meeting of council proceed into close to receive confidential verbal verbal update regarding potential litigation for aquatics procurement in accordance with the following provisions under the municipal act, pursuant to section 239, 2e litigation, or potential litigation, including matters before administrative tribunals affecting the municipality or local board, and pursuant to section 239, 2f advice that is subject to solicitor client privilege, including communications necessary for that purpose regarding item 10.1, and I’ll turn it now to the clerk for the recorded vote. Unless there are any questions or comments from Council on that, okay, not seeing any, we will move into the vote.

That’s six in favour, and that does carry.  We are now moving into closed session.  Folks who shouldn’t be here kindly move into the lobby.

We will update, folks, as soon as we can, if there’s anything to update you on.