By Mallory Clarkson

With the provincial election fast approaching, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) shared its wish list with Ontario’s reigning government and election hopefuls.

Although the list was mailed out last month to all municipalities across Ontario, AMO President Peter Hume disclosed the list of “top 12 asks” with the hundreds of representatives attending the association’s annual conference on Monday (Aug. 22) at the London Convention Centre.

“It proposes policies and changes that would strengthen municipal authority to help us invest in communities and improve people’s lives,” Hume told the room full of delegates. “Our ‘12 asks’ only scratch the surface of the work we do. At any given time, AMO works on more than 50 policy files.”

One of the main items of discussion from the list, was the province meeting the promised upload of $1.5 billion in social services and court security costs by 2018.

“Municipalities need to know that the 2008 agreement to upload these costs will be honoured, year after year, as scheduled,” Hume said. “Countless municipal plans and investments depend on this upload schedule.”

He added the province’s uploading program is 65 per cent complete. For London, this would mean an additional $34 million freed up annually.

Hume noted that not downloading more services onto municipalities and creating a permanent fund for infrastructure are also important items on the list.
For the full list of “asks,” visit AMO’s website at www.amo.on.ca.

All four provincial party leaders took a turn responding to AMO’s requests.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGunity said that, if elected, he agrees or is open to conversations surrounding 10 out of AMO’s 12 “asks,” including meeting the uploading promise.

“I’ve been thinking about the relationship between our government and all of our communities and how we not only continued to work together, but in fact, intensified our efforts during the recession,” McGuinty said.

“We will work with you to create a new permanent fund for municipal roads and bridges.”

Both NDP leader Andrea Horwath and Green Party leader Mike Schreiner said, if elected, they would keep up with the current uploading schedule.

“One of our priorities is balancing the budget, so if we did meet our fiscal targets sooner, we’d be open to considering accelerating that, but at this point, we’d stick with the existing timeline,” Schreiner told London Community News. He didn’t present to municipalities at the AMO conference.

Horwath added property taxes already take a big chunk out of the average household budget. She said that money shouldn’t go towards covering court security or social assistance costs.

“It makes no sense at all to force municipalities to pay for the programs that they don’t administer and can’t control,” she said.
“That’s why we are committed to continuing with the uploading of Ontario Works and of court costs at the same rate as you’ve requested.”

Horwath added no additional costs will be downloaded.

PC leader Tim Hudak said downloading programs from the provincial to the municipal level isn’t part of the Conservative’s plan. Although he didn’t comment specifically on the issue of uploading court and social assistance costs, he said programs that have already been put under the provincial banner will stay.

“The billion dollars that’s been taken up to the provincial level to date, we’ll honour that — we’ll keep that at the provincial level,” he said, adding the uploading of other programs will be looked at during the PC party’s review process.