BARRIE, ONT. -- The Ontario and the federal government is offering up to $4 billion in urgently needed funds to help the province’s 444 municipalities.
Today, the Ford government announced municipalities would be given up to $1.6 billion as part of the first round of emergency funding under the Safe Restart Agreement.
CTV’s Sean Grech spoke with Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman to determine how much the city of Barrie would receive and how the money would be used.
Sean: What is your reaction to the province’s announcement about issuing $1.6 billion in the first round of funding to municipalities and its transit?
Jeff Lehman: As most people know, Canadian cities and Ontario cities have been asking for some time for support for our COVID-19 related costs and also significantly all of the money that is not coming in the door because of COVID.
Transit fares, recreation fees and many of our other city programs, so it’s not just extra costs, it’s that our revenues have really dropped. This $1.6 billion is very welcome news, and it took months to get a deal. They did get a deal, and the money is going to be flowing to municipalities that will help us make up for some of these costs that we have been trying close for months now associated with COVID.
Sean: So, how much of that funding is the city of Barrie going to receive for COVID-19 relief and for transit?
Jeff Lehman: The city has been advised that today, that we will receive $6.6 million to cover COVID-19 related expenses and $2.5 million to cover lost transit fare revenue and costs on the transit system, so a total of just over $9 million, which is excellent news.
Those were a portion based on households and transit ridership, so the province didn’t sort of pick and choose how much went to different municipalities – it was a formula, and Barrie is receiving their share and its excellent news.
Sean: Of course, this is just the first round of funding, so is that portion of money significant enough?
Jeff Lehman: We are going to have to look at the details to see whether it is going to be sufficient to cover the 2020 costs, and to be fully open about it we don’t fully know yet what the costs will be in 2020 partly because we’re still only in August.
Furthermore, we also offered a lot of people the opportunity to defer payments on things like property taxes and water bills. So the fiscal impact of all of that is still being calculated.
However, we do know the loss of transit fare revenue for four months, five months of free transit and the loss of rec fees revenue and program free revenue because of the shutdown of facilities and of course all of the additional costs for personal protective equipment for our first responders, the additional cleaning of all of our public facilities, and so forth all of that has been incurred and sure know what that costs.
This will cover many of those costs. Will it cover all of our 2020 shortfalls? That remains to be seen.
Sean: When you look at Ontario’s projected deficit of $38.5 billion, what do you make of that?
Jeff Lehman: On one level, you hear that, and it’s just sticker-shock. On another level, when you look at a federal deficit that’s $350, Ontario’s is only one-tenth of that, and after all, Ontario was more than a third of Canadians.
Relative to the federal deficit, that’s actually not so bad, but I think relative to what everyone was hoping for, which was the Ontario government was trying to move on a path back to balance obviously that has been shot to heck by COVID-19.
