OBIAA Member Update: The BCMC Vibrant Downtowns Initiative | June 2026
What Happened
This month, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Big City Mayors’ Caucus (BCMC) – representing 23 of Canada’s largest cities – released the Vibrant Downtowns initiative, calling on all orders of government to act on three priorities that will sound familiar to anyone managing a Main Street in Ontario:
- Ensure everyone has a place to call home: $3.5B annually to reduce chronic homelessness by 50% by 2030; Housing First programs; intergovernmental coordination on mental health and addictions
- Tackle organized crime and extortion: enhanced Building Safer Communities Fund; federal-municipal table on Public Safety, Immigration, and Justice
- Keep downtowns moving: restore the Canada Public Transit Fund to $30B; double the Community Stream of the Building Communities Strong Fund
- News Release
- Briefing Notes
What OBIAA Has Done
OBIAA formally endorsed the initiative and wrote letters of support to seven ministers and elected officials, including the federal Ministers of Housing and Small Business, Ontario’s Ministers of Housing and Small Business, local MP Dean Allison, and MPP Sam Oosterhoff – urging action in Budget 2026 and at Queen’s Park. We also submitted our Turning the Lights On whitepaper on upper-floor housing as supporting evidence.
What You Can Do
The most powerful advocacy is local. A letter from your BIA – grounded in what your businesses are experiencing on your Main Street – carries weight no provincial letter can replicate. OBIAA has prepared three fill-in templates for you:
- To your Mayor and Municipal Council: ask your municipality to formally endorse the BCMC’s priorities and advocate to federal and provincial partners
- To your Member of Parliament (MP): ask them to champion the BCMC’s federal spending commitments ahead of Budget 2026
- To your Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP): ask them to advocate within caucus for a provincial response on housing, organized crime, upper-floor housing barriers, and transit
Fill in your BIA name, address, member count, and recipient — and add 1–2 sentences of local context in the optional section. Then sign, send, and CC [email protected]
