Region, local governments ask for COVID-19 bailout
Call for provincial funding comes as regional case count falls
All of Niagara’s municipal governments, including Niagara Region, have jointly asked the province of Ontario for a bailout to cover pandemic-related losses.
In a Tuesday morning press release, the Region said COVID-19 related costs — which include protective equipment for staff, cleaning, overtime and lost revenue — will be in excess of $50 million by the end of June. To offset some of this expense, the Region says it has laid off staff, reduced noncritical repair work, deferred some projects and reduced the budgets of museums and other departments. But the losses are mounting nonetheless, and the full scope of the financial impact of the pandemic won’t be known for some time.
The municipalities are asking the province for emergency operating funds, long-term grants to ensure the continuation of key service levels and a reduction to the municipal proportion of provincial infrastructure funding to 20 per cent, down from the usual one-third.
They are also asking the province to “restore the provincial proportion of public health care costs to 100 per cent and postpone reconsideration of any reforms to the costs until at least 2021,” along with one-time, 100 per cent funding for pandemic-related costs.
However, the Region said the group of 13 Niagara governments is discouraging the province from making changes to the Municipal Act to allow cities and towns to run deficits.
The request comes as Niagara’s COVID-19 case growth has slowed to a trickle. Only one new case was confirmed Friday and of the historic total of 636 cases, only 36 remain active.