From advocating for a HART hub for Fort Frances to the high costs and risks associated with the number of rail cars passing through Fort Frances, and more, Mayor Andrew Hallikas shared details about the AMO conference in Ottawa with the Fort Frances Times.
Overall, Hallikas said he is satisfied with the work he and others did there advocating for a HART Hub in Fort Frances, and was encouraged by the way the Minister of Transportation received his perspective.
“As you know, our CAO, Michaels, Councillor Firth and I attended the AMO conference in Ottawa. We had four delegations. Delegations are always one of the most important things that we do, because we have a chance to meet with the various ministers or their parliamentary assistants and talk directly to the ministry about the needs of Fort Frances,” said Hallikas.
“Our first delegation was with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. So at that delegation, we went in to discuss tenting and encampments and the pressing need for a HART hub in Fort Frances.”
As a board member and deputy chair of the District of Rainy River Services Board, Hallikas has a unique inside look at some of the issues surrounding issues like homelessness and encampments.
“We, [DRRSB,] had applied for a HART hub in the first round, when the government first said, ‘We’re going to create heart hubs!’ There was a round of applications. We were excited, because we have that building, the church that we remodelled, called the HOPE Transitional house. We had space for a heart hub on the renovated third floor. And not only that, we had already built up partnerships with First Nations and with CMHC, the Canadian Mental Health Association, and the government’s really big on partnerships,” said Hallikas. “We were excited. We thought, ‘We’ve got a really good chance here!’ But, unfortunately, it didn’t come to pass in the first round, although we were pleased to see that Kenora got one, and Thunder Bay also got a HART hub.
“Unfortunately, we were turned out. So while we’re happy for Kenora and Thunder Bay, we would like to still like to see one here. So in this AMO delegation, we made a very strong case with the ministry that Fort Frances should be awarded a HART hub in the next round. You know, we’re a service centre for our district, and, like all municipalities in the province, we have the problem of homelessness, or people with mental health issues, with addictions. Because we’re a service centre, we tend to get a concentration of those people. They tend to leave the other ten municipalities and ten First Nations in the Rainy River District and concentrate in Fort Frances, because that’s where the services are.”
Because of this, he said, Fort Frances needs a HART hub.
“It’s a community effort trying to get this HART hub,” said Hallikas.
“I actually met with the DSAB CEO at AMO just to let her know that we were doing this. And we’ve also decided we’re going to get together and talk about cooperatively looking for delegations in partnership with the DSAB of Fort Frances for the next big conference, which is ROMA in January.”
While nothing is guaranteed, it appears Fort Frances was well represented at the AMO conference on municipal issues like housing and homelessness. Although that wasn’t the only delegation that happened during the AMO conference.
“[Next,] the Ministry of Transportation, and I was pleased that they were quite well organized,” said Hallikas.
“Prior to going to AMO, they reached out to me, and they said they wanted to have a pre-delegation meeting. So we did a video conference, a video meeting, a few days before I left, just to talk about what was going to happen at the actual delegation. I really like that. That’s a good use of time, because in some cases, you can solve things right there, and there may not be a neutral delegation.
“We wanted to talk about two things with the Ministry of Transportation. We wanted to talk about reforming the rail compensation model, and then we wanted to talk about assistance, provincial assistance, with maintaining our airport infrastructure,” said Hallikas. “We used to have Bearskin flying in, and they no longer fly in. Dryden lost theirs, Kenora lost theirs. When you have a commercial carrier at your airport, then you’re eligible for a federal grant called an ACAP, [Airports Capital Assistance Program,] grant.
“We’re no longer eligible for that because we don’t have a carrier yet. Even though we don’t have a carrier that airport is a strategic asset, not just to Fort Frances, but to the entire Rainy River District, because Fort Frances is trying desperately to get additional medical practitioners here, our hospital is the Only 24/7 emergency room for a very, very large area, but because we don’t have the medical practitioners that we need, and especially the specialists, we often have to medevac, fly out patients to Thunder Bay or Winnipeg.”
While this currently wouldn’t provide ACAP funding, perhaps another avenue for funding could be created, or an existing one could be altered to protect and reinforce the economy, the airport, and the region.
“There are hundreds and hundreds of medevac flights going out of that airport, not just people in Fort Frances, but people from a very, very large area. Additionally, that airport is used by local businesses to find personnel to fly in materials. The government itself uses it sometimes to fight forest fires from there; government aircraft land there. The airport is used for many, many reasons, and so it’s a strategic asset,” said Hallikas.
“The whole district kind of depends on having an airport. We can’t really develop economically if we don’t have a functioning airport.
“The provincial government really needs to help out with small, rural, northern communities that depend on their airports, because our distances are so vast,” added Hallikas. “They need to help municipalities fund the infrastructure of airports, because that’s very, very expensive, and it’s not sustainable for a small municipality to bear on its own.”
Moreover, Hallikas suggested there is precedent for a measure like this to be implemented by the Ontario government.
“B.C., Alberta, and I think Saskatchewan, their provincial governments, do contribute to the upkeep of small airports. So, we made the case to our government that this is something that, maybe [they] could look into, maybe [they] could create a provincial airport capital fund for these small airports,” said Hallikas. “The other one was about the need to reform the rail compensation model.”
According to Hallikas, the current rail compensation model needs to be reformed for three main reasons. The first is that whenever a train comes through town, and they often do, there isn’t enough infrastructure in place for emergency vehicles to get past a train crossing because the only crossing that goes under the tracks is susceptible to flooding. The next one is fairly obvious: trains are loud and noisy. The last and arguably biggest factor is the risk associated with trains passing through the town.
“These trains carry many things, but some of the materials that they carry are hazardous substances, right? So the more trains go through, the greater the risk that the community undertakes,” said Hallikas. “I made the point in the delegation that it’s like when you buy insurance. If you drive a car, the more miles you put on a year, the higher your insurance rates and the higher the risk. If you’re a young driver or if you’re a driver who’s had an accident, your insurance goes up. It should be the same with this. The greater the risk, the greater the compensation, because the municipality bears that risk. In fact, I’m on our Emergency Management Committee, and the primary thing that our first responders train for is a train derailment.”
