Background:
On October 28, 2020, Ontario announced a combined federal-provincial Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) - COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream. This stream has 3 intake programs: $700M for Education related projects; $250M for Local Government (LG) and $100M for Long-Term Care (LTC). It should be noted that funding for all of the ICIP - COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream Intakes is not new funding but rather a reduction to the funding available under the previous Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) streams; Public Transit; Green Stream; Community, Culture and Recreation and; Rural and Northern. The specific reductions and impacts to the previous programs in order to fund the ICIP COVID 19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream is not clear at this time.
Both the Local Government (LG) and Long-Term Care (LTC) intakes require projects to be started no later than September 30, 2021 and to be substantially complete no later than December 31, 2021. Non capital projects (planning projects and studies) are ineligible for funding, as are projects that have already started construction and/or awarded tenders and/or have received ICIP funding already. Both programs will first be reviewed provincially and if approved then submitted for federal review. Applications for LTC are due December 18, 2020 and application to LG for one project are due December 18, 2020 and applications with more than one project submission due January 7, 2021, noting submissions will be reviewed on a first come first serve basis. The province has indicated their review to be completed Winter/Spring 2021. There is no estimated notification date provided for federal funding review solely that they are committed to shorter timelines. Failure to submit an application on time or to submit projects that don’t meet the criteria outlined in the guidelines will result i n losing allocated funding.
Discussion:
The Federal government announced the ICIP-COVID-19 program in Summer 2020 with high-level outline of the program. This resulted in Administration starting to compile a list of projects which met the high-level objectives then noted for the program. The Ontario government announced the programs October 28 th and opened the LG grant program for application submission, guidelines and details on November 17 th and LTC on November 23 rd .
ICIP COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure – Local Government Intake (LG)
The $250M in funding for Local Government (LG) intake is an allocation based funding program in Ontario. The funds are to be distributed to local governments across Ontario for quick-start, short-term projects that might not otherwise be eligible under the other existing funding streams. On November 6, 2020 the City’s CAO was notified that the City’s funding allocation under LG is $3,204,307. Unlike the other ICIP streams the COVID-19 LG intake does not require City matching funding. The only requirement for City funding will be towards any ineligible expenses and or eligible expenses which exceed the allocated $3,204,307. The process used to allocate the funding is a minimum of $100,000 per 444 municipalities, with a top up to some municipalities based