First ever political panel provides their analysis of last week's State of the City Address. Featuring London leaders: Mojdeh Azad, Steve Cordes, Carol Dyck and Paul Hubert

The Panel: Mojdeh Azad (formerly Mojdeh Cox) is the Founder and Consultant at Cox & Co. With Mojdeh’s name change, she tells us you can watch for a new brand reveal of her consulting company soon. Mojdeh is also a longstanding activist and prominent voice on equity here in London and right across Canada. Steve Cordes, is the recently retired long time CEO for Youth Opportunities Unlimited. He is now the host of a video blog you can find on YouTube called, “Community Matters”. Carol Dyck, is a Doctoral student in the faculty of law at Western University, Carol is also a previous - 5 time - Green Party of Ontario and Green Party of Canada Candidate for London North Centre. Paul Hubert, is the Executive Director of Pathways. Paul served three terms on London city council as the councillor for Ward 8 from 2006 - 2018 and as deputy mayor for his final term. Paul is also the lead Consultant for Delta Consulting. The Topic: State of the City Address, 2026 The State of the City Address has a long history here in London. It’s been said to be the largest of its kind across Canada. It is a London Chamber of Commerce event and it regularly sells out, with attendance coming in around 1200 tickets sold every year. Community leaders and businesses, for profit and not for profit, purchase seats or tables for this breakfast event. So do many of the city funded boards, commissions, city funded agencies and departments from the corporation of the City of London itself. The mayor’s office usually works on the presentation for months - different mayors have used it to highlight different things, but you can usually count on hearing about the issues of the day, both the challenges and the opportunities, being experienced or anticipated ahead. You’ll likely hear about council successes, promises and plans, maybe a big idea or two and, if at all possible, an announcement about new jobs coming to London. The event provides a great opportunity for the mayor of the day to highlight the work council has underway - and here is a fun fact - it is also a huge fundraising event for the host, the London Chamber of Commerce. For any mayor, these addresses can be a high risk / high reward opportunity and especially so during an election year. It can even be seen by some as the unofficial kick off to the campaign season ahead. This year’s address was held on Wednesday January 28th, one week ago from the day this episode was recorded. Today, we’re lucky to be joined by four London leaders who have seen more than their fair share of these State of the City Addresses over many years. The panelists have all watched the speech at least a couple of times and have likely read the transcript too. They are prepared to share their thoughts about some of the key issues highlighted within the speech, provide some analysis and maybe even make a prediction or two about the weeks and months to come. Thanks for listening!