While backing away from deeper cuts announced last year, Ontario Premier Doug Ford told a gathering of municipal leaders Monday that the budget pain will begin after 2020.
However, funding for some key areas – land ambulances and the overall operating grant the province gives cities – won't be affected, Ford told members of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario in Ottawa.
“It's no secret that the province inherited a massive debt and deficit from the previous government,” Ford said. “We can't continue throwing money at the problem as our predecessors did...into top-down, big government schemes. That is neither compassionate or sustainable.”
Beginning next year, cities will have to pay 30 per cent of health unit budgets, up from 25 per cent. And cities will pay 20 per cent of the costs of new child care spaces that previously were fully funded by the province.
“So you can continue to deliver important services people rely on every day, including public health and child care,” Ford told the crowd Monday.
He described the moves as transitional, with more cuts expected in 2021 and 2022. Ford said 90 per cent of cities (including Greater Sudbury) had applied for funds to help with audits to look for savings as they plan for future funding changes.
A statement from the Large Urban Mayor's Caucus of Ontario, of which Greater Sudbury is a member, welcomed the transitional funding, but said longer-term cuts risks key services.
“We appreciate the transitional funding will soften the blow for 2020, but LUMCO mayors are concerned that we will face significant cuts to services like public health and child care in 2021,” Cam Guthrie, chair of LUMCO and mayor of Guelph, said in a statement.
And Ontario NDP Andrea Horwath said hope for a better relationship with a new government has failed to materialize.
“Many municipal governments hoped for a new, more positive relationship with the provincial government after years of being let down by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals,” Horwath said in a release. “Sadly, Doug Ford is taking things from bad to worse with callous cuts, piling on costs, and municipal meddling.
“Slashing public health and child care is slashing things that keep our families safe and healthy. The human cost of failing people when it comes to public health, ambulance services and child care is unthinkable, and so is the Ford Tax municipalities are now being forced to contemplate to fill the holes Mr. Ford is digging in your budgets.”
