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Last week, City Council approved various changes and additions to the council committee structure. Notably, and this is a good thing in my view, sub-committees were added for youth, children, and families and for seniors. These groups, as well as present city committees on race relations (now called diversity) and disability issues, will now be sub-committees of the Social Planning Council.
A really interesting debate was had around the terms of references for these sub-committees. Councillor Nancy Bepple felt that some important groups might feel left out in that their concerns or issues were not explicitly mentioned in the committee responsibilities. Other, like Mayor Pat Wallace, seemed to suggest that this was too much wordsmithing.
There seemed to be exasperation by some, most notably Radio NL reporter Angelo Iacobucci, that this debate was even happening. But, I felt talking about the wording was pretty important. There is a fine line between being too general and being too specific. It just seems like a good thing to spend some time to determine where that line should be. At the end of the discussion, it was re-affirmed that the Social Planning Council is still open for presentations and discussions on the whole range of issues, and Councillor Denis Walsh made a motion to tweak the Diversity sub committee's terms of reference that was unanimously supported by the rest of Council.
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