Strong ties with municipalities remain a priority for the Province

By MPP Toby Barrett

To The Haldimand Press

Ontario needs to put local communities back in the driver’s seat. That was the underlying sentiment at this year’s Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference in Ottawa.

Over the course of four days, provincial representatives held 900 meetings with municipal leaders. I was able to attend some of the meetings with Haldimand, Norfolk, and Six Nations.

The Ontario government’s relationship with municipalities and AMO is important and remains a priority. We need to help, not with top-down approaches directed by Queen’s Park but from the ground up.

Advertisement

 

It’s no secret the province inherited a massive debt and deficit from the previous government. Not only did we inherit massive fiscal problems, we also inherited broken systems like hallway health care, poor student outcomes, and social services on life support.

Within this context, municipalities are in a position to make every dollar count because they know where they are needed most. The solution is giving all transfer partners the tools they need to have more flexibility with their budgets to find savings, drive efficiencies, and modernize service delivery. We cannot continue throwing money at the problem as our predecessors did.

Ontario established the Audit and Accountability Fund earlier this year and 90% of municipalities have taken up the offer of funding for line-by-line reviews.

We offered this to school boards as well, but only two signed up.

These reviews are a $7 million investment to help school boards and large municipalities protect core public services for future generations.