Is it time for Ontario municipalities to strike a new deal with the province on funding for social issues like homelessness, addiction, and mental health?
Cambridge Mayor Kathryn McGarry seems to suggest the answer is 'yes'.
"We're not going to achieve the goals we heard in the throne speech yesterday about thriving economics, which we all agree with, without being able to support the people and get people back to productive lives and their jobs," she said.
McGarry, speaking out a day after the throne speech and budget tabling that followed was seen to lay out the province's priorities over the coming years -- and ramping-up spending on social services was not among them.
Meantime, earlier that morning, the Region of Waterloo's Community Services Committee met to move forward with a list of options to help ease these issues locally, including expanding transitional housing, the emergency shelter program, home-based supports, and a potential for temporary region-run hybrid encampments.
"Here in Ontario, we're paying for these staggering costs to our community through our property taxes and our user fees and it's just not sustainable," said McGarry, who previously served as Cambridge's MPP from 2014 to 2018 under the Ontario Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne.
"We have backstopped, in this community, things the provincial government has dropped such as discretionary funds [and] childcare, and now homelessness, mental health, and addictions issues," she added.
But McGarry also said that cannot be allowed to continue.
"We need to step forward, and I was really proud of the work [the region's Community Services Commissioner Peter Sweeney] and the regional council did yesterday in putting together a homelessness Master Plan however, it has staggering costs."
"We are going to be speaking loudly about this," she said, referencing next week's annual Association of Municipalities of Ontario Conference and an upcoming meeting of Ontario's Big City Mayors. "And we're directing our staff in our offices, with the [stakeholder] organizations, to try and figure out the overall costs to implement a plan like this and to put forward solutions within our communities so we can go to the province with solutions, and here's-what-we-need-for-funding kind of conversations."
"So support needs to be the focus with short, medium, and long-term goals and it's clear that the cities and the region are a willing partner and we're seeking that commitment now from the province."
