GUELPH POLITICAST #487 – Inside the Mind of a CAO (feat. Stacy Hushion)

StrategyCorp puts out a report every year called the Ontario Municipal Chief Administrative Officer Survey. The CAOs profiled have some strong feelings about Strong Mayor Powers, intergovernmental relations, housing, growth, financing, and and more, but what’s interesting is not what the CAOs had to say, it's the fact that they said it. What are CAOs thinking when they're given the cloak of anonymity?

A retired Brock University professor David Siegel once wrote, “CAOs can make a mayor and council look exceptionally good (or bad). They can be a source of great pride and motivation among the staff of the municipality (or not).” In that context, it’s no wonder that people would want to hear a CAO's unvarnished takes on something like Strong Mayor Powers, which was the one part of this year's CAO Survey that made the most noise.

But municipal life is bigger than Strong Mayors, and it’s just one of 14 chapters in the 2025 survey. When you read the report, which features contributions from 32 unnamed CAOs from around Ontario on issues like housing, finances, community safety and wellbeing, the impacts of climate change, and the impacts of the Trump administration's trade war. Stacy Hushion is one of the people responsible for putting this together every year, and today she will share some of the things that surprised her.

On this week’s podcast, Hushion will tell us how this report comes together, and how honest the CAOs get when they’re providing their input to the survey. She will also talk about the ways Strong Mayor Powers put CAOs in a jam, why CAOs are mixed about how proactive the Ontario government has been, the issues keeping CAOs up at night, their concerns about who might get elected next year, and the ways they’re trying to break the political and jurisdictional logjams. 

So let's get into the mind of a CAO on this week's Guelph Politicast! 

You can read more about the work of StrategyCorp on their website. Obviously, that includes all 109 pages of this year’s Ontario Municipal Chief Administrative Officer Survey, or you can follow this direct link. Guelph City Council will be back in session for Committee of the Whole on Tuesday October 7 at 2 pm.

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