The Chatham-Kent Health Unit might be getting some good news from the provincial government, but officials will have to wait to find out for sure.
Last week, premier Doug Ford announced that he will be cancelling the retroactive public health, child care, and ground ambulance service funding cuts for municipalities and restore 2018 funding. The initial cuts left many municipalities that had already formalized budgets for 2019 scrambling to find a way to make up for the changes.
Locally, the decision is welcome news. But Dr. April Rietdyk, general manager of community human services at the Chatham-Kent Health Unit, said it has not been made official quite yet. She said the bulk of the information they have so far is only what was announced in the media.
"We're still awaiting confirmation from both the ministry and our ministry contact in terms of the specifics of what that means for Chatham-Kent and public health here in our community," she said.
In 2018, the public health unit budget was 79 per cent funded by the province and 21 per cent funded with municipal dollars. The government intended to change the cost-sharing arrangement starting in April 2019 to 70 per cent provincial and 30 per cent municipal. This would have left Chatham-Kent on the hook for $200,000, a cost the municipality doesn't have to worry about for this year now that Ford has decided to restore 2018 funding.
Rietdyk said the decision to reverse the funding changes came as a shock.
"We were surprised, certainly, by the turn of events from last week," Rietdyk explained. "We're still trying to navigate through what does that mean."
When Ford announced that he would be backtracking on the cuts, he said his government is one that listens and he wanted to give mayors and municipalities "more runway." As of now, Rietdyk said she is under the impression the proposed cost-sharing changes will go ahead as planned for next year.
"They are indicating that there will be a go forward for 2020. So again, we're trying to navigate what does that mean and when will that start and when are some of the timelines or changes going to happen. We just don't know," she explained. "We'll get through that. Right now we are continuing business as usual and we'll continue to deliver great programs and services until somebody tells us to change what we're doing."