Our twenty-first council meeting of the year was held on Tuesday, 18 November 2025.
The full meeting agenda, reports and video recording are linked below, as are the draft Minutes.
Halifax Regional Council – November 18, 2025
November 18, 2025 Regional Council Draft Minutes | Halifax.ca
This meeting was quite budget focused, as was our last meeting. Items 15.1.5 “HRM Corporate User Fee Policy and Strategy” and item 15.1.6 “Service Review Framework” that both passed unanimously will inform the 2026/27 budget and subsequent budget years, if council follows through with staff recommendations that we will see coming forward in the staff reports these motions lead to.
Later in the week we held our first budget meeting on 19 & 21 November where we passed additional motions and made decisions on two service reductions items (one was cut, one will be maintained in the 2026/27 proposed budget) and 9 service/finance enhancements. (One will not be funded, 6 will be included as part of the 2026/27 proposed budget and 3 will be considered on the Budget Adjustment List with additional information. One enhancement was split into two items.)
Here are the District 7 and beyond highlights from Tuesday’s meeting:
Motion:
“That Halifax Regional Council approve the request to include 1158 South Park Street, Halifax, in the Registry of Heritage Property for the Halifax Regional Municipality, as shown on Map 1 of the staff report dated August 14, 2025, as a municipal heritage property under the Heritage Property Act.”
This motion passed unanimously. This registration may lead to a future Heritage Development Agreement to be considered by community council, which I find to be a fantastic tool used by HRM to preserve heritage assets and add much needed housing stock.
Motion:
“That Halifax Regional Council direct the Chief Administrative Officer to:
1. Initiate a process to consider amendments to the Regional Centre Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy and Regional Centre Land Use By-law to reduce side and rear high-rise setback requirements for high-rise buildings in the Downtown Halifax Zone when the abutting property cannot achieve a high-rise building because of the Citadel Ramparts Sight Lines, as outlined in the staff report dated October 26, 2025 for MPSA-2025-01528.
2. Initiate a process to consider amendments to the Regional Centre Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy and Regional Centre Land Use By-Law to:
a. Change the urban structure designation from Established Residential to Higher-Order Residential;
b. Rezone from the Established Residential-3 Zone to the Higher-Order Residential-1 Zone;
c. Increase the maximum permitted height from 11 metres to 5 storeys; and
d. Reduce the minimum front yard setback from 4.0 metres to 1.5 metres for the lands located at 63 Jackson Road (PID 00056218) in Dartmouth as outlined in the staff report dated October 26, 2025 for MPSA-2025-01629.
3. Initiate a process to consider amendments to the Regional Centre Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy and Regional Centre Land Use By-Law to enable a site-specific development agreement option for a light industrial use on lands located at 4 Fernhill Drive (PID 41079807) and 386 Windmill Road (PID 41079799) in Dartmouth as outlined in the staff report dated October 26, 2025 for MPSA-2025-01929.
4. Initiate a process to consider amendments to the Regional Centre Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy and Regional Centre Land Use By-Law to reduce the minimum side setback above the streetwall from 4.5 metres to 0.0 metres for the lands located between Queen Street and Birmingham Street (PID 00077313) in Halifax as outlined in the staff report dated October 26, 2025 for MPSA-2025-02020.
5. Follow Administrative Order 2023-002-ADM Respecting Public Participation for Planning Documents, Certain Planning Applications, and Engagement with Abutting Municipalities for the required public participation program and as outlined in the staff report dated October 26, 2025.”
This motion will tweak the Centre Plan and upzone two developments at Sackville & Gottingen and Queen & Birmingham (in D7). This motion passed on the consent agenda.
Motion:
“That Halifax Regional Council direct the Chief Administrative Officer to:
1. Initiate a process to consider amendments to the Regional Centre Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy and the Regional Centre Land Use By-Law to:
a) review urban design requirements for missing middle housing;
b) review built form requirements for mass-timber construction and identify opportunities to further support the construction of manufactured housing; and
c) undertake administrative changes to improve the administration of the Regional Centre Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy and Land Use By-Law.
2. Follow the public participation program as set out in the Community Engagement section of the staff report dated October 9, 2025.”
This motion is a big deal for D7. Staff will be looking at ways to ensure that future infill projects better reflect the scale of our existing residential neighbourhoods. For example, when a 4 to 8 unit as-of-right (since the HAF changes in May 2024) permit is issued now, the builder can use the existing non-conforming foundation footprint of a house to build a new building on, which ends up being quite a bulky structure when combined with the additional height permitted. I would have preferred that these changes some of us have been waiting to see could be implemented now, but staff have extra work to do to make sure we complete the process well, including public engagement. The good news is that there may be more we can do internally than I thought, rather than having to ask the province for charter changes.
This motion passed on the consent agenda.
15.2.1 2025 Road Safety Annual Report
“That Halifax Regional Council receive the 2025 Road Safety Annual Report for information and presentation.”
This motion was referred by the Transportation Standing Committee to council because with four years of data in front of us, our trend is going in the wrong direction. There have already been over 20 fatalities on HRM roads in 2025, the most we’ve ever had. See items 15.4.1 (on communications) and 15.4.3 (on engineering) for motions prepared (partially) in response to this data. Council members would also like to improve police enforcement, but we will need to go through the Board of Police Commissioners for such a motion if one is required.
As councillors we need to decide if we should give the 2024 Road Safety Strategy more time to show positive results or change course. We do this by talking to staff and advocates about options for improvement. For example, although the overall serious injuries and deaths are increasing, we are seeing positive trends regarding vulnerable road users, which is a major concern of mine and many D7 residents.
Work on this issue will continue to be a focus of mine. This motion passed unanimously.
15.4.1 Councillor White – Road Safety Communications
“That Halifax Regional Council direct the Chief Administrative Officer to provide a staff report to develop a positive HRM road safety messaging campaign evolving from the lessons learned during the Heads Up Halifax campaign and taking inspiration from leading vison zero municipalities across North America. The campaign shall use images of local real-world examples depicting all road users that will encourage changing behaviors that have the most impact on road safety outcomes. The campaign shall address road safety in ways that build community and promote a culture of respect among residents.”
This motion lead to a thought-provoking debate about the type of communications we should be producing. My initial work on this motion resulted from a disappointment in the bland and sometimes unclear messaging I felt that HRM was producing on road safety, when compared with the messaging I see coming out of other Canadian municipalities. I am open to whatever sort of campaign is proved to make an impact on road safety, and look forward to what staff and external consultants recommend.
This motion passed unanimously.
“That Halifax Regional Council direct the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to provide a staff report on options for Council to accelerate implementation of HRM’s Road Safety program as it relates to road design. The report, and/or a separate budget briefing note, should:
1. Provide short-term options for the 2026/2027 budget as a potential over budget item and
2. Provide options to increase program implementation over the longer-term, similar to what has been previously done to scale up sidewalk construction and traffic calming.”
I am keen to see what staff can come up with for effective solutions we can implement sooner rather than later by allocating more resources to the problem. For example, last year we allocated $450k of extra capital expenditures to buy more RRFB lights and install more zebra pattern crosswalks (if I recall the budget line item correctly). I would like to see more tactical urbanism installations, or perhaps work that leads to faster implementation of our 10 priority intersections.
This motion passed 11 – 5. I voted Yes.