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By: Thomas Barakat, Manager, Public Policy & Government Relations, Good Roads
Late this November, the Good Roads team will be returning to Queen’s Park for our Annual Advocacy Day. This year, we will be speaking with Ministers and MPPs about two new issues: we will be asking the provincial government to amend the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) in light of the recent Supreme Court case R v. Greater Sudbury, and we also be urging them to consider uploading municipal infrastructure assets in light of the recent agreements with the province and the cities of Toronto and Ottawa.
The first ask is a direct response to last year’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the case of R v. Greater Sudbury, which results in owners (i.e., municipalities) being held responsible for a workplace death when they have contractually delegated responsibility for safety to a project contractor. Good Roads members should be very familiar with this decision, as it has significant implications for municipalities – they are now exposed to broader responsibilities that owners, constructors, and employers have historically had under the OHSA.
Prior to the ruling, municipalities were able to delegate health and safety responsibilities to a general contractor, who would assume primary accountability for these obligations. As a result of this ruling, municipalities effectively assume the same OHSA obligations as owners, constructors, and employers on capital projects, whether they have delegated safety responsibilities or not.
This ruling increases a municipality’s risk exposure, which will also increase the cost and time needed for construction projects. Good Roads will be asking the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development to amend the OHSA to clarify the definition of ‘employer’ to exclude owners that hire contractors. Not only will this protect municipalities, but it will be vital in helping the province meet its goals of building infrastructure quicker and cutting red tape.
Good Roads hopes that this ask will make a lot of sense to the Ministry and the government as a whole as this decision runs counterintuitive to official plans for municipalities to build much-needed infrastructure projects, such as those related to new housing.
The second issue we will be discussing goes back to the 1990s, when the Mike Harris government downloaded a significant amount of infrastructure and service responsibilities to municipalities in order to balance the provincial budget. As we are all aware, they did not provide the necessary funding or fiscal tools to accompany such responsibilities, and this has been eroding municipal budgets ever since. It is estimated that this process involved shifting approximately $3 billion in costs to local governments. In 2003, the fiscal gap was $3.2 billion and by 2005, it had grown to $3.9 billion, and it has continued growing ever since.
The provincial government transferred responsibility for many secondary highways to municipalities, which included both the maintenance and capital costs associated with these roads. Some estimates suggest that the cost could be around $500 million to $600 million per year. This accounts for about 16-20% of the total downloading impact.
Without the revenue tools to keep up with the maintenance costs, this has contributed to Ontario’s mounting infrastructure deficit, and is pushing many municipalities to a budgetary crisis. Subsequent governments since the 90s have re-uploaded certain elements of the costs that were initially placed on the backs of local taxpayers, such as those related to public health, Ontario drug benefits, the Ontario Disability Support program, as well as land ambulance costs. These items were reconsidered as provincial responsibilities, but the enormous costs of infrastructure and its maintenance have remained with municipalities.
The Ford government has shown an openness to uploading infrastructure assets from the municipal sector. As part of a broader deal, the province uploaded the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway from the City of Toronto. They also agreed to upload Highway 174 from the City of Ottawa as well as provide support for the repair and upgrade of the city’s major connecting routes and rural roads.
Premier Ford has thus far resisted calls to undertake a wider upload policy. Earlier this year, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) put forward their Social and Economic Prosperity Review, which called for a broader revamp of the municipal-provincial fiscal arrangement. Good Roads proposes a more infrastructure-specific approach and will call on the province to begin re-uploading all road and bridge assets that were downloaded from the province during the Harris government’s tenure.
Good Roads is excited to broach this prospect with the provincial government as part of the ongoing discussions with municipalities surrounding available financial tools and the sustainability of municipal budgets. Our board and staff will be haunting the hallowed halls of the Pink Palace November 27th, 2024, and will again be hosting an evening reception to continue the conversations started during the day.
