By Canadian Press

$19 billion agreement

Feds, provinces reach deal on funding for reopening from COVID-19

Jul 16, 2020 | 1:47 PM

OTTAWA — The federal, provincial and territorial governments have reached a deal on billions of dollars in transfers to continue reopening economies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday.

He said the federal government will contribute $19 billion under the “Safe Restart Agreement.”

The money is to help the lower-tier governments with needs such as funding child care, bailing out cities whose expenses have soared and revenues plunged, increasing contact-tracing capacity, and buying personal protective equipment.

Trudeau had promised $14 billion in early June, but several premiers resisted some of the conditions the federal Liberals wanted to put on the money and said it wasn’t enough.

Ontario’s Doug Ford was one who didn’t like a federal demand that some of it fund up to 10 days of paid sick leave to discourage workers with precarious employment from going into work ill. Quebec’s Francois Legault wanted the money to be transferred without conditions so provinces could use it on whatever they considered most important.

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Trudeau said the agreement outlines seven priority areas, with some flexibility for the provinces to apply the money to their particular needs over the next six to eight months.

“The provinces agreed to invest in the targeted sectors,” Trudeau said. “There are areas like support for vulnerable people where we will expect the provinces to declare publicly what they will do.”

At his side, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland added the agreement includes standards in certain areas, such as COVID-19 testing, in exchange for the federal money.

The pandemic is a health crisis, but Trudeau said it has a deep economic dimension that the funding is intended to address.

He said workers can’t work if their children don’t have safe care, and many can’t get to their jobs if they don’t have access to safe transit systems.

That means funding public services better so they don’t have to rely on crowding many people into small spaces for their finances to make sense.

Municipal governments, which deliver many of those services, have been warning for months that their finances are careening toward brick walls and have been begging for aid.

Canada’s largest city, Toronto, has reported that it’s facing a $1.35-billion deficit this year. Montreal says it has a $500-million shortfall. Halifax expects to be short $85.4 million.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2020.

The Canadian Press