Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson indicated Monday he’s pleased to see the federal and provincial governments teaming up to provide $4 billion in coronavirus relief to Ontario municipalities.
Watson has lobbied Ontario Premier Doug Ford as well as federal ministers for help in covering Ottawa’s projected $192-million budget deficit stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Ford announced the relief funding Monday afternoon, with the province contributing $1.22 billion and the federal government providing $777 million.
Up to $2 billion in transit funding will be split equally between the provincial and federal governments.
There’s no word yet on how big a slice of the funding pie each municipality will receive, but Watson tweeted Monday afternoon that he was grateful for the governments’ “historic investment.”
The City of Ottawa’s financial teams estimate the nation’s capital will see $241 million in revenue shortfalls tied to the pandemic’s impact on the local economy. Roughly half of that would stem from lower public transit revenues.
Taken together with any savings accrued from Ottawa’s pandemic shutdown, the city is projecting a $192-million deficit for 2020.
But under provincial legislation, municipalities are not permitted to run budget deficits by the end of the year.
City staff therefore came up with a plan last month that would see Ottawa dip into its tax reserves and cancel a number of planned capital projects to make up the difference.
Watson cautioned at the time that these measures were “very much temporary, one-time solutions,” and that if the federal and provincial governments did not step in with additional emergency funds, the city would be forced to cut municipal services or raise taxes to unrealistic degrees.
Ottawa’s mayor worked with his counterparts at the Large Urban Mayors Caucus of Ontario (LUMCO) and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) to lobby the premier and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for additional funding.
AMO echoed Watson’s Twitter sentiments in a statement, with the association’s president, Jamie McGarvey, calling for a formula-based model for allocating funding.
“Today’s announcement reflects support for a broad array of costs, and it may call for multiple approaches to allocating the funding,” he said.
— With files from Canadian Press
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