A big catch 22

By Howard Hampton
MPP Kenora-RR

If you’ve ever read the book “Catch 22” by Joseph Heller, you’ll appreciate the predicament that unincorporated Local Roads & Services Boards have found themselves in over the last couple years. While the federal government announced that the gas tax rebate would also go to assist road maintenance and construction in unincorporated territories, jurisdictional disputes with the provincial government have prevented money from flowing.
In June of 2005, I was approached by the District of Kenora Unincorporated Ratepayers Association (DOKURA), who argued that it was utterly unfair that the federal government was directing federal gas tax revenue only to people who live in municipalities while ignoring those people who live in unorganized territories. I wrote the Prime Minister to urge that gas tax rebates also go to repair roads in unorganized territory.
Responding to politicians and people right across northern Ontario, the federal government did the right thing and agreed that gas tax revenues should also go to road construction and maintenance in unincorporated areas. You’d think that would be the end of it. Money would flow and roads would get fixed. Well the money didn’t flow and my head still spins thinking about it.
From the start, the McGuinty government said they wouldn’t be involved in any way, shape or form distributing this funding. Even though the provincial Ministry of Transportation is the agency that works very closely with roads boards, overseeing funding and scheduling repairs, often using the same road construction crews that are in the vicinity doing repairs to provincial highways.
To DOKURA’s credit, they quickly realized that there was no agency available to flow the funding to unincorporated boards. So they asked for a province-wide contact list of Local Roads Boards, Local Services Boards and 50/50 boards and volunteered to disburse the funding.
They couldn’t get that information, even after I helped them with a freedom of information request. Rather than get involved, get this information out and make sure that this money flowed, Dalton McGuinty was unwilling to do anything to make sure that these roads boards got the money they needed.
Back in March, while Dalton McGuinty and Greg Sorbara were preparing the provincial budget, you couldn’t go five minutes without seeing them on the news telling the federal government that Ontario was being shortchanged. That we didn’t have enough money for child care, for health care or for rural infrastructure. It was in this context that I wrote to McGuinty’s Ministers of Transportation and Municipal affairs, arguing that, in the case of unincorporated areas, there is federal funding sitting in a bank account waiting to be spent. All it needs is intervention from the McGuinty Liberals.
It seemed hypocritical that while Ontario was calling for more money from the Federal government, Federal money for unincorporated roads was sitting gathering dust because of a catch-22 jurisdictional dispute.
I’m very pleased that the Ontario government has finally come to its senses because of my intervention and the intervention of other Northerners and is now involved in distributing this funding. I want to thank Bill Blower, and Jack McKenzie of DOKURA for their perseverance and I want to thank the many unincorporated ratepayers who wrote and participated in this fight for fairness.

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