What is it that Mayor Jeff Leal and councillors Gary Baldwin, Lesley Parnell, Kevin Duguay, Dave Haacke and Andrew Beamer don’t understand about a Canadian winter?

That it gets cold. They presumably realize that it is painful to be exposed to that cold if you have no roof over your head. And, if it gets too cold, you can freeze to death. As two people did in Peterborough last winter.

Councillors Keith Riel, Joy Lachica, Matt Crowley and Don Vassiliadis seem to have grasped this reality. They voted at the last general committee meeting to move ahead with a staff recommendation to provide temporary winter shelter space at the old Carnegie fire hall, while the aforementioned six voted to defer the whole issue until August, instructing staff to look at alternative locations.

A clearly frustrated Sheldon Laidman, commissioner of community services, came as near........

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