Long-Term Care
The Budget announced previous commitments made which included the increase of daily direct care for long-term residents to four hours a day over a four-year period. It also reiterated the Province’s commitment to the Accelerated Build Pilot Program made in July 2020.
These investments build on supports announced as part of the first phase of Ontario’s response to COVID-19, and the investments made to protect vulnerable seniors through the COVID-19 Fall Preparedness Plan .
Stormwater Investments
New investments in stormwater systems include:
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$15 million over two years in one-time funding to support municipalities to improve the management of Lake Ontario wastewater and stormwater discharges, to reduce combined sewer overflows and bypasses, lower phosphorus discharges.
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$10 million over 2 years to support wastewater monitoring and public reporting, to improve transparency around monitoring and public reporting of sewage overflows and bypasses from municipal systems in the Great Lakes.
Public Transit
The $4 billion Safe Restart Agreement provides $2 billion to Ontario’s transit systems to help support services during the pandemic and Ontario has provided municipal governments and transit operators with $15 million in provincial funding to support enhanced cleaning.
Conservation Authorities
Today’s announcement confirms anticipated changes to the Conservation Authorities Act and regulations. While additional clarity will be sought on a number of matters, we understand that the local service agreement MOU’s between Conservation Authorities and Municipal Governments are a local matter and the province is not intending to reduce this local control of MOUs through future regulation.