Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you to the members of the committee for inviting me to speak. This is an excellent opportunity to identify some of the work St. Albert has undertaken at a municipal level through the response phase to this pandemic and to discuss opportunities and challenges we foresee in the mid to long term as we prepare for recovery.
My name is Cathy Heron. It is my honour to serve as the mayor of the City of St. Albert. I also serve as the vice-president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association.
St. Albert is consistently recognized as one of the best communities in Canada in which to live and raise a family. Positioned within the Edmonton metropolitan region with over 66,000 residents, we encounter the same opportunities and challenges that big cities do yet maintain our small-town feel. St. Albert has been a leader on a number of fronts in recent years, including in gaining international recognition as a smart city, banning conversion therapy and being recognized as the healthiest community in Canada.
As of today, Alberta Health Services has reported that 27 of our residents in St. Albert have contracted COVID-19. Of these cases, three are still active and 24 have recovered. Thankfully, none of our residents has succumbed to the disease, and we hope this remains the case.
Our local RCMP and municipal enforcement services report that our residents are doing an excellent job in complying with the public health orders, avoiding large gatherings and maintaining physical distancing. Our businesses and residents have demonstrated their willingness to make the sacrifices required for our city to overcome this challenge and to create a new normal in our community. We are really grateful for the high level of compliance in St. Albert and have every reason to believe this co-operative attitude will continue. This is one of the reasons we have, to date, not felt the need to declare a local state of emergency.
When the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, we activated our emergency operations centre to centralize and coordinate our response to COVID-19. I believe that the steps taken in St. Albert to respond to the pandemic are similar to the actions of other municipalities across Canada. For example, we've taken actions to provide immediate tax and utility relief through deferrals, we have offered free transit, and we have undertaken cost-reduction measures such as temporarily laying off 30% of our workforce.
While we are still very much in the response phase to this pandemic, St. Albert city council has already struck a recovery task force to help guide us through the balance of 2020 and the year to follow. Ultimately, the successful future emergence will link back to our ability to access revenues today. What we're going to need from the federal government are assurances of improved access to federal support and its alignment with our provincial government.
Federal support to backstop municipalities is essential for three reasons. The federal government has the best and most affordable access to market liquidity. A federal program can be prolonged, which I expect is going to be necessary as we learn about the longer-lasting impacts of the pandemic over time. It's going to take time for municipalities to adjust their governance and business models to the new way of doing things, and a return to positive economic positions will lag based on that turnaround time. Finally, municipalities are where the economic recovery will happen. Encouraging cities to take on more debt or run a deficit only postpones recovery. Our outdated fiscal framework has brought us to a tipping point, and we have limited avenues to cash flow.
At this time of uncertainty, Canadians need support and leadership. No matter where it comes from, it needs to be dependable and aligned, and it needs to rise above partisan politics. As municipal leaders, we're going to be on the front line of helping to reimagine our communities in a post-COVID world, but we need the tools to do that. Ultimately, all three orders of government have a role to play to support Canadians through the pandemic response and recovery period. The City of St. Albert is committed to working with the provincial and federal governments to find solutions that support our residents and businesses in the coming months.
As I mentioned, federal support to backstop municipalities will provide a level of certainty and enable cities like ours to focus on providing essential front-line services to residents and businesses in our communities. Any support, whether it be operational injections or capital, will need to be fast and easy. Municipalities have always appreciated the gas tax and see it as the perfect tool to deliver support.
I do believe that this will be the very first time in recent history that our level of government has reached out asking for this type of help, and we do not make this request lightly.
Thank you, again, for the opportunity to address you today and to share St. Albert's story. I hope that was under five minutes.