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Feature Article April 29

Feature article November 18, 2004

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Rural plan disappointing

Last week the government of Ontario presented something they are calling Ontarios Rural Plan, a 20-page document from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing that starts off by saying Your government has a plan that will deliver real results. Forgive me if I seem sceptical.

The Rural Plan reads like a public relations document. It is split into three sections; Strong People/Strong Economy; Better Health; and Success for Students. Each section lists a variety of strategies for achieving its stated goals.

For example under the heading Strong People, Strong Economy, the plan says Rural Ontario will enjoy more prosperity and a better quality of life when local economies achieve their full potential. True enough, a stronger rural economy would lead to more prosperity. The plan then identifies strategies for accomplishing this. These include supporting community revitalization, promoting local leadership, encouraging diverse economies, and investing in skills development. The plan also outlines whats been done by the province, and then lists more categories of goals and provides for more strategies, such as maximizing the potential for tourism as an economic driver for communities.

All of this talk about goals and strategies and partnership and stakeholders sounds nice, but there is something missing: acknowledgement of the effect that provincial government activities over the past 10 years have had on rural Ontario through the burdens that have been placed on small, rural municipalities and the ratepayers who fund them.

Its been ten years since the province started downloading responsibility, and cost, to municipalities.

Between downloaded roads, services such as ambulance, social housing, and others, and the cost of provincial initiatives like salt containment and safe drinking water, municipalities have been left reeling. This continual pressure has made it impossible for municipalities to do much more than try and manage their budgets, keep the roads from deteriorating completely, and strive to get themselves into compliance with an increasing number of provincial regulations.

There is a new federal/provincial funding program, which is heavily mentioned in the Rural Plan, the COMRIF program. COMRIF was formally announced this Monday, after being talked about for several years.

The program is based on a reasonable model. Each level of government: federal, provincial, and municipal will pay 1/3 of the cost of designated projects, and it can be used to pay for some of the costs that have overwhelmed municipalities ever since downloading began 10 years ago. It will bring up to $600 million in funding to rural Ontario, which is a lot of money. However, rural Ontario is quite broadly defined. It includes any municipality which has a population under 250,000, so smaller urban centres like Kingston, Barrie, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Guelph and Peterborough are included. They will certainly receive a large share of the money. Will any money be left for the hyper-rural places, the ones without public transit or industrial property assessment, like Addington Highlands and Central Frontenac?

What we need out here in the hyper-rurality is a new acronym, SUTMN, which stands for Send Us The Money Now. Thats the one that the province should get onto right away.

If the province wants to help, as they claim to want to in the Rural Plan, they can start putting back some of the money theyve taken away over the past ten years.

Until then, spare us all the talk about plans, partnerships, stakeholder groups, strategies, and community revitalisation. Weve had about all the fancy wordage we can take, thank you very much. JG

With the participation of the Government of Canada