After attending the joint conference of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association and Ontario Good Roads Association from Sunday through Wednesday in Toronto, Coun. Tannis Drysdale said the town’s budget problems are similar to those being experienced elsewhere in the province.
“We’re all very much in the same boat. We were at the top of the scale, because we haven’t been preparing for it in the past,” noted Coun. Drysdale, who attended the conference with Mayor Dan Onichuk.
“But I didn’t meet anyone from a municipality that wasn’t in a serious financial situation,” she added.
Coun. Drysdale and Mayor Onichuk, along with the other elected officials in attendance, got to hear Prime Minister Paul Martin give a campaign-style speech Monday in which he pledged Canada’s smaller towns and villages won’t be left behind in a promised “new deal” for cities.
Speaking to about 1,400 civic leaders, Martin said the country’s prosperity depends on the wellbeing of all municipalities—not just the big ones.
“We will not be a great nation unless our smallest municipalities have the opportunity to offer their young every bit the opportunities that exist right across this country,” Martin told the delegates.
“We understand the financial needs that you face.”^The decision to exempt local governments from the GST was an “important down payment” on a new deal for the country’s local governments, Martin had said.
Coun. Drysdale said she felt Martin was sincere in his message.
“I have a great deal of confidence we’ll see changes for the better in the next three years,” she remarked.
A two-cent-per-litre gas tax rebate for municipalities to put back into roads is another benefit that should be coming down the pipeline in the future, she added.
“There was no magic box of money to be found [at the conference] and believe me, I was looking.
But we all came away with the conclusion municipalities are in a crisis, and there has to be a solution,” Coun. Drysdale said.
She noted Martin and other politicians, such as Ontario Municipal Affairs minister John Gerretsen, “seemed genuine” in their commitment to small communities.
During her time at the conference, Coun. Drysdale also got to attend several workshops dealing with various aspects of rural municipalities, such as rural economic development and downtown revitalization.
While some of the discussions were aimed specifically at rural communities in the literal sense (farming as a primary industry), issues often applied to a northern pulp and paper mill community such as Fort Frances.
—With notes from The Canadian Press
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
