A delegation of Fort Frances town council is meeting with some members of the Ford government while attending the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa.
Meetings were arranged with the Solicitor General, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
Mayor Andrew Hallikas says the need for more resources to combat homelessness is among the issues to be raised.
“The federal and the provincial government, they’re just not stepping up when it comes to small, rural northern communities,” says Hallikas.
“We’ve got really expert people in place. They’ve got plans. They know what they want to do to help end homelessness or help aid the homeless people. And yet we’re not getting the funding.”
The town of Fort Frances is also continuing to push for more taxes from railways.
Hallikas says the funding received is not enough to offset the cost or risk of having trains travel through municipal boundaries.
“There’s been derailments in the Fort Francis yard and so forth. And with more trains and longer trains going through. And that Ranier crossing is the busiest train crossing in North America.”
“All of that increases the risk of the municipality. We spend time and money training, primarily for train derailments or train catastrophes. And we think that the CN should be footing that risk.”
Fort Frances has long advocated for railway taxes based on tonnage as done in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
In Ontario, railways are taxed by the acre of land occupied.
“We get $110 per acre for every acre that CN owns in Fort Frances, which amounts to a measly $13,000 a year. So for $13,000 a year, we’re incurring all kinds of risk, and the risk is increasing, and that’s just not right,” says Hallikas.
Policing costs are also being raised at the AMO meeting.
Fort Frances pays one of the highest costs per capita in the province.
