Additional Safe Restart Funding & Solutions to Increase Attainable Housing Options Among Burlington's 2022-23 Provincial Pre-Budget Asks

Last week, I sent a letter to the Hon. Peter Bethlenfalvy, Minister of Finance, with the City of Burlington's pre-budget recommendations for the 2022-23 Provincial Budget.Click here to read the full letter: 2022 City of Burlington Provincial Pre-Budget Final Recommendations.MY TAKE:The continued impact this global pandemic has had on our residents, businesses and services has been significant. The City of Burlington is extremely grateful for the financial support and ongoing leadership provided by the Province of Ontario throughout the past 24 months. While we have all witnessed the tremendous loss and hardship as result of this global virus, we have also seen the tremendous strength and resilience of our communities. As we approach, what is hopefully the end, we can be proud of what our governments have done together to protect the wellbeing of all Canadians.The Safe-Restart Agreement (SRA) negotiated between the Provinces and the Federal government provided essential financial relief to municipalities across the country, including Burlington. This vital funding enabled the City of Burlington to deliver critical services, meet our responsibility to balance our budgets while maintaining the health and safety of our community and staff. Unfortunately, the financial impacts of COVID-19 on municipal operations are far from over. Municipalities will continue to need emergency financial supports from senior governments.Throughout the pandemic the City of Burlington decision-making was guided by these principles:

• Safety of the community and staff
• Continuation in the delivery of essential and emergency public services
• Agile response to the needs of the community as the pandemic evolves
• Fiscal responsibility and appropriate use of taxpayer funding.

These principles enabled us to not only manage the impacts of COVID-19, but also continue to provide our community with essential services.As we look to the future we must continue to work together to build stronger communities, a more resilient environment and support our local economies. As the Province of Ontario prepares its 2022-2023 budget, I submit the recommendations for your consideration on behalf of the City of Burlington.Burlington’s RecommendationsBuilding Stronger Communities Together

1. Additional Safe Restart Agreement Funding
2. Predictable, Stable, Long-term Funding for Infrastructure Renewal, Transit and Active Transportation
3. Conduct province-wide property assessments in the 2024 taxation year based on a valuation base year of January 1, 2023, to be phased-in over a four-year period of 2024 to 2027
4. Provincial Gas Tax is Maintained at the Pre-Pandemic Levels
5. Work together on innovative solutions and partnerships to increase attainable housing options forresidents at every stage of life.
6. Additional Judicial Resources to Respond to the Backlog in Provincial Offences Courts
7. Support Broadband and High-Speed Internet Services
8. Increase the “Heads and Beds” Levy
9. Increasing Funding for Health Care and Hospitals Beds

Building a More Resilient Environment

1. Community tax incentives/grants for deep home energy retrofit programs
2. Funding to support alternative fueling infrastructure for municipal fleets (EV/Hydrogen)
3. Community tax incentives/grants to support EV vehicle purchase and charging infrastructure

Supporting Local Economies

1. Expand access to Rapid Antigen tests and PCR testing, with priority given to Ontarians unable to workfrom home, both to limit unnecessary isolation time and allow workers to demonstrate eligibility for paidsick days and other supports.
2. Work with financial institutions and the Federal government to forgive loans for businesses most severelyimpacted by public health restrictions.
3. Alternative rebate program to the optional small business subclass. This legislative change would providean option to lower tier municipalities in a two-tier system to consider a program where the upper tierdoes not implement the optional small business subclass.
4. Continue targeted support for sectors hardest hit by the pandemic including the tourism and hospitalitysector, small local retail businesses and recreation
5. Expand and renew programs targeting small business digitization such as Digital Main Street (DMS)
6. Childcare agreement with the Federal Government

MORE INFORMATION:Building Stronger Communities TogetherAdditional Safe Restart Agreement FundingThe City of Burlington is extremely grateful to the Province of Ontario for their efforts in negotiating with the Federal Government for the Safe Restart Agreement funding program for municipalities. This vital funding enabled the City of Burlington to deliver critical services, meet our responsibility to balance our budgets while maintaining the health and safety of our community and staff. The City of Burlington continues to experience the financial impacts of this pandemic. We are forecasting significant revenue losses for 2022 (in excess of $5.8 million), prior to the most recent closures in January 2022 particularly for services such as transit, recreation facilities and programs and parking operations.We encourage the Province to continue to work with the Federal Government to secure additional Safe Restart Agreement funding, both operating and transit specific, so municipalities can immediately address pandemic related operating pressures.Predictable, Stable, Long-term Funding for Infrastructure Renewal, Transit and Active TransportationMunicipalities build and maintain 60 per cent of the public infrastructure that supports our economy and quality of life. Residents count on their local governments to provide roads in a state of good repair, efficient transit systems, quality recreational facilities, bike paths and trails and so much more. With limited revenue generating options, the burden of maintaining the municipal infrastructure funding gap is great. The City of Burlington has implemented an infrastructure renewal levy, but even with that in place we will not be able to eliminate our infrastructure gap for many years and are at risk for a continued long-term degradation of our vital infrastructure. Municipalities need continued, predictable funding support from higher orders of government to maintain our infrastructure in keeping with required municipal asset management plans.The City of Burlington has benefited from funding through the various streams of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure (ICIP). As we look to the future, we call on the Province to consider infrastructure funding programs that provides municipalities with the flexibility to choose projects that reflect municipal priorities, are informed by municipal asset management plans, and create a positive sense of place, inclusivity and community. We recommend a long-term, stable, allocation-based, infrastructure funding framework supported by both the Provincial and Federal governments, that provides municipalities with a steady flow of infrastructure dollars for municipally identified priority projects.Conduct province-wide property assessments in the 2024 taxation year based on a valuation base year of January 1, 2023, to be phased-in over a four-year period of 2024 to 2027The City of Burlington supports the recommendation by the Municipal Finance Officers’ Association of Ontario (MFOA) to conduct a province-wide reassessment with a post-pandemic lens. Ontario’s housing market in 2020 and 2021 was significantly unstable due to pressures of the pandemic, and this instability should not be reflected in future property assessments. As result, a valuation base year of January 1, 2023 will be a better reflection of a post-pandemic valuation base year and should be phased-in over a four-year period of 2024 to 2027.Provincial Gas Tax is Maintained at the Pre-Pandemic LevelsBurlington Transit relies on the Provincial Gas Tax funding to offset both capital and operating costs. Throughout the pandemic, we have maintained transit service levels to ensure essential workers are able to get to work, while experiencing significant revenue losses because of decreased ridership.The stability of the Ontario Gas Tax Fund has been greatly appreciated. We are continuing to forecast transit revenue losses in 2022. We encourage the Province to continue to maintain this funding at pre-pandemic levels.Work together on innovative solutions and partnerships to increase attainable housing options for residents at every stage of lifeOntario is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. This crisis will be best addressed with all levels of government working together. We were very encouraged by the recent Provincial Housing Summit and look forward to working together to identify barriers to increasing a supply of homes and find a solution that meets the needs of residents across the province.City staff are reviewing the recommendations from the Housing Task Force and will be providing additional comments at a later date. However, we do not support any reduction in permit fees - which pay for our staff to process applications - or in development charges - which pays for critical infrastructure to support growth, including roads, community amenities, transit and more. There is no guarantee these savings would be passed on to homebuyers and would evaporate on resale. Further, these costs would then be added to the property tax base posing a significant download of costs to residents.Halton Region has developed a 10-year housing plan to add assisted and affordable housing, investing millions in additional dollars to serve our growing community. Burlington is committed to delivering affordable housing in our community and is in the process of developing a Housing Strategy. Like other municipalities across the Province, we are looking at Inclusionary Zoning and we can implement it in a ‘made-in Burlington’ way that satisfies what we’re looking for and the needs of our community. We need policy tools and management tools, as well as all levels of government working together.Everyone deserves a safe and affordable place to call home. We look forward to working together with the Province of Ontario and the Federal Government on innovative solutions and partnerships to increase attainable housing options for residents at every stage of life.Additional Judicial Resources to Respond to the Backlog in Provincial Offences CourtsThe closures of POA courts by the Ontario Chief Justice has resulted in the adjournment of roughly 450,000 POA hearings across the province and drastically limits access to justice. In Halton, there is an estimated combined backlog of cases of over 20,000 charges including both Early Resolution and Trial matters. As a result of the extensive shortages in judicial resources, we are currently operating two courts daily instead of four with regular closures to one of the two operating courts.Without significant improvements and a system that promotes greater flexibility and innovation, municipalities are at a disadvantage to move forward. We call on the Attorney General to expediate the legislative changes to Section 21.1 of the Highway Traffic Act, which permits the creation of a future regulatory framework to permit municipalities to establish Administrative Monetary Penalty programs for automated enforcement. This change would reduce the burden on courts as it would free up municipalities' resources from the high volume of automated offences in the provincial system.Support Broadband and High-Speed Internet ServicesConnectivity is essential for any community’s economic, cultural and social development. Telecommunications carriers and the CRTC are gearing up for the deployment of Fibre to Home/Propety the first components of the fifth generation of wireless technology (or “5G”)—a necessity if Canada is to remain competitive on the world stage. We ask the Province continue to support the provision of broadband and high speed internet services, which is necessary to accelerate the deployment of this technolgy particularly in under serviced and rural area.Increase the “Heads and Beds” LevyThe City of Burlington supports the recommendations from AMO and MFOA to amend the current “Heads and Beds” rate of $75 to $158 beginning in 2022 and reset every 5 years with each review of the Municipal Act, 2001, reflecting inflation in the Ontario consumer price index.Adjusting the “Heads and Beds” rate to be indexed to inflation would provide municipalities with the funds needed to service these properties such as colleges and universities, public hospitals, provincial mental health facilities, correctional institutions, and residences for the developmentally disabled.Increasing Funding for Health Care and Hospitals BedsThe City of Burlington also supports increasing funding for health care and hospitals beds, so that if infections rise we have sufficient capacity and don’t need to close city recreational facilities, local businesses and other municipal services to keep infections low and protect scarce hospital resources. Results of a study conducted by the Fraser Institute in 2019, Comparing Performance of Universal Health Care Countries, shows that Canada has substantially fewer human and capital medical resources than many peer jurisdictions that spend comparable amounts of money on health care.We saw the devastating impact of this underfunding throughout COVID-19. To protect our healthcare system, governments were forced to close businesses, and shut down recreational activities. We cannot put our communities through this again. We support Canada’s Premiers request to the Federal government for an increase in the Canada Health Transfer.

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Building a More Resilient EnvironmentIn 2019, Burlington City Council declared a climate emergency. Since then we developed a Climate Action Plan and have started development of a municipal Climate Adaptation Plan. This plan will develop a low carbon path forward for the City of Burlington to meet our target to become a net carbon neutral community. Municipalities are at the frontline for developing and delivering actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve community resilience by adapting to the current and future impacts of a changing climate.To help support EV adoption and the province’s objectives in the Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan and Driving Prosperity automotive sector strategy the City of Burlington recommends:

• Community tax incentives/grants for deep home energy retrofit programs
• Funding to support alternative fueling infrastructure for municipal fleets (EV/Hydrogen)
• Community tax incentives/grants to support EV vehicle purchase and charging infrastructure

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Supporting Local EconomiesSmall businesses are the backbone of our economy and will play a vital role in Ontario’s economic recovery. From traditional main street small businesses to local manufacturing, the economic health and viability of these establishments directly impact the overall well-being of the local economy. To help support local business, Burlington Economic Development, the Burlington Chamber of Commerce, Tourism Burlington, the Burlington Downtown Business Association and the Aldershot Village BIA came together as ‘Team Burlington’ early in the pandemic. To engage with local businesses and ensure that they were receiving the support they needed, Team Burlington established the Burlington Economic Recovery Network (BERN).From the beginning of the pandemic, BERN has recognized that both the impacts and recovery from the necessary health measures to address the pandemic would vary greatly by economic sector.Small business, including the Tourism and Hospitality sector, have suffered the greatest negative impacts due to COVID-19 and will face the most significant barriers to survive the pandemic. According to the latest COVID-19 business survey completed in December 2021, Burlington’s main street businesses were already struggling to survive with 1 in 4 Burlington small businesses experiencing a decline in revenue of more than 50 per cent in the last year. In addition, almost 80 per cent of Burlington’s main street businesses expected it would take more than a year for business to return to pre-pandemic levels without any further lockdowns.In addition, many of Burlington’s essential employers who support our critical supply chain infrastructure are struggling with how to create a safe work environment with a lack of access to both Rapid and PCR testing. These employers are not able to pivot their workforces to remote work as they produce the essential products that Ontarians need to survive.To support our local economy, we call the Province of Ontario to support the following recommendations:

• Expand access to Rapid Antigen tests and PCR testing, with priority given to Ontarians unable to work from home, both to limit unnecessary isolation time and allow workers to demonstrate eligibility for paid sick days and other supports.
• Work with financial institutions and the Federal government to forgive loans for businesses most severely impacted by public health restrictions.
• Alternative rebate program to the optional small business subclass. This legislative change would provide an option to lower tier municipalities in a two-tier system to consider a program where the upper tier does not implement the optional small business subclass.
• Continue targeted support for sectors hardest hit by the pandemic including the tourism and hospitality sector, small local retail businesses and recreation
• Expand and renew programs targeting small business digitization such as Digital Main Street (DMS)

Childcare agreement with the Federal GovernmentParticipation in the labour force by parents and guardians plays a critical role for economic stability and growth. But for some families it is simply unaffordable and/or inaccessible. Childcare spaces in Halton and across Ontario have decreased as a result of the pandemic.The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported that in 2020, the median annual cost for an infant in full day child care in the GTA suburbs was between $17,400 and $19,300. We urge the Province to continue negotiations with the Federal government to reach an equitable childcare agreement with the Federal Government that acknowledges the Provincial investment in full-day kindergarten and delivers affordable and accessible child care spaces for Ontario families.