February 24, 2005

Ontario sets new rules to limit growth

Future development restricted ‘to areas where it can be supported by infrastructure’

TORONTO

The province is giving Ontario municipalities an extra $200 million in one-time transition funding this year as it changes the funding formula to make it more fair, Finance Minister Greg Sorbara announced Monday.

Greg Sorbara

Another $656 million will be set aside to fund the new model to replace the Community Reinvestment Fund, an increase of $38 million, or 6.1 per cent, over what local governments received in 2004, Sorbara said in a statement.

The Community Reinvestment Fund, Ontario’s largest transfer payment to municipalities, covering 90 per cent of towns and cities in the province, is “broken,” said Sorbara.

He promised “a new, more equitable model of investment in communities” including “a simple, straightforward transfer payment.”

Details won’t be announced until next month, but Sorbara said the new model will include “a response” to policing issues in small communities and to specific challenges faced by northern and rural municipalities.

The province also announced new rules to restrict future development in towns and cities across Ontario “to areas where it can be supported by infrastructure.”

The Provincial Policy Statement, which takes effect March 1, “sets out what communities all across Ontario should look like,” Municipal Affairs Minister John Gerretsen told the legislature.

The province is “setting clear ground rules for how Ontario communities will grow,” said Gerretsen.

“It emphasizes the maximum use of existing infrastructure and public service facilities, such as energy, public transit, schools and hospitals.”

But the NDP said it was a “gross error” for the plan not to restrict aggregate mining operations in areas that fall under its planned greenbelt zone in the Golden Horseshoe.

“It’s a dark day for your proposed greenbelt,” said NDP environment critic Marilyn Churley.

“Shame on you minister. I’m shocked that you didn’t fix this.”

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) complained that Sorbara’s announcement “raises as many questions as it answers” because it doesn’t spell out what years are covered by the so-called transition funding.

“Does the $200 million cover the cost of 2003 and ‘04, or not?” asked AMO president Roger Anderson, chair of Durham Region.

“My big concern is: will the province pay their bills in 2004?”

Anderson said towns and cities cannot balance their books because they’re on the hook for provincial health and social programs such as police, ambulance services and welfare, but aren’t getting the provincial funding they need to pay for them.

“The fact is they know the numbers . . . and they know that the formula they’re using today isn’t covering their share of the bill.”

Anderson said removing those provincial service costs from the backs of municipalities and their property taxpayers is “the only fair, equitable and sustainable solution” to a new funding formula for local governments.

The Opposition took issue with the province’s top-down approach.

“(The municipalities) are tired of this theme of Dalton Knows Best,” Conservative critic Tim Hudak told the legislature.

There has been “piece of legislation after piece of legislation where the central planning at Queen’s Park overrides the decisions by democratically elected municipal leaders,” he said.

The new agreement doesn’t cover the city of Toronto, which has its own funding arrangement with the province, and is complaining that a $45-million bailout announced last Friday is less than half of what it needed.

The province countered by pointing out that Toronto received a total of $217 million from the legislature for fiscal 2004, $80 million more than it got in 2003.

The Canadian Press

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