KITCHENER - Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark made it clear he has no plans to make its report on municipal reform public.

"We decided we were going to receive the recommendations as confidential advice to cabinet," said Clark, who was the keynote speaker at an event Tuesday at the Tannery sponsored by the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce. "It still remains confidential advice to cabinet, so we're not releasing the details."

The province launched the review in 2018 and appointed two special advisers - former Waterloo Region chair Ken Seiling and former Hamilton-Wentworth Region chief administrative officer Michael Fenn - to provide suggestions on how to improve local government in eight regional municipalities and Simcoe County. One of the regions under review was Waterloo Region.

But last fall, after receiving the advisers' report, the province shelved the idea of municipal reform and said it would not be releasing details of the report.

Clark acknowledged that Kitchener council unanimously passed a resolution in January, urging the province to reveal the contents of its special advisers' report on municipal reform.

"Some people might feel that that's a good idea," he said, prompting some applause. "I was clear then and I'll be clear today that we received advice that was confidential advice to cabinet."

Instead, he said, the province has announced almost $350 million in new funding to help municipalities become more efficient and improve services. "That's the path we've taken," he said.

Municipalities made it clear during the review they didn't want reforms imposed from Queen's Park, Clark said. "That was the one thing we heard over and over again, that communities didn't want the government to take a top-down approach. They wanted their own communities to have those dialogues."

Some councils are going ahead with their own reviews of their size and structure, he said. "Many of them have decided to take up that challenge because they want to make those decisions rather than having me make them for them."

The Record has filed a Freedom of Information request to have the report released.

cthompson@therecord.com

Twitter: @ThompsonRecord