Ontario’s largest municipalities are asking the federal and provincial governments to provide an immediate funding boost for infrastructure projects, saying cities need the help to stimulate economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mayors representing the province’s largest cities say the global health crisis has created revenue shortfalls that will prevent municipalities from doing state-of-good-repair work on key pieces of infrastructure.

Cam Guthrie, the mayor of Guelph, Ont., and chair of Ontario’s Big City Mayors organization, said that funding support can’t come fast enough.

“Municipalities are ready to go,” said Guthrie. “Help us out by putting shovels in the ground and putting people back to work.”

Ontario’s Big City Mayors raised the issue with the federal and provincial infrastructure ministers at a meeting on Oct. 15 and urged both to fund municipal infrastructure immediately. 

The group also passed a motion stating that funding programs should address critical needs to build growth-related infrastructure and replace aging assets, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and strengthen economic competitiveness.

Guthrie said he was encouraged by the meeting.

“They do recognize the importance of municipalities and the role that we’re going to play,” said Guthrie. “The only thing that we’re stressing with them is that they really remove the hurdles and the barriers to get the money to flow down to the municipalities as quickly as possible.”

Toronto Mayor John Tory echoed Guthrie’s comments on Monday. 

“These are crucial dollars to make sure we can come out of the pandemic-induced recession with more jobs,” Tory said during a news conference. “I’m confident we’re going to get the support we need but we need to have more certainty sooner from both governments.”

Pandemic restrictions effectively shortened the construction season in Ontario, said Guthrie. He also noted that expenses have gone up since budgets for this year were drafted in 2019, before COVID-19 arrived.

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