Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the town of Laurentian Hills in my riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke as a follow up to the question I raised with the government on February 25 of this year.
It is important for the government to hear directly from the municipality involved. With that thought in mind, I would like to share the letter that I received from Mayor Vance Gutzman of the town of Laurentian Hills seeking my help:
Dear Member of Parliament:
I am writing this letter seeking your assistance in a matter of grave financial importance to the Town of Laurentian Hills. What it comes down to, basically, is the Town of Laurentian Hills is owed money from upper-tier levels of government for work which the town was ordered to undertake by those same levels of upper-tier government.
In the wake of the Walkerton water fiasco, municipalities across Ontario were ordered to undertake extensive, and expensive, upgrades to their water treatment systems. We were one of the municipalities that complied with the provincial directives. Many others did not comply and still have not complied. We complied, even though the lowest bidder we could find for the job came in at over two million dollars.
That's a lot of money for a small rural municipality, as you can well imagine, but we complied, based on promises that the federal and provincial governments would each contribute one-third of the funding for the project. That hasn't happened yet. That's not good enough.
The upgrades to our water treatment plant in the Village of Chalk River have been completed for some time now.
We have a state of the art water treatment system, sure, but we have had to place the burden of the costs of those upgrades squarely on the shoulders of the people in that same village.
The situation is simply intolerable. Our ratepayers cannot be expected to bear the brunt of broken promises.
The Town of Laurentian Hills complied with the terms of a deal handed down by the federal and provincial governments. Sadly, those same two levels of government don't appear willing to honour the terms of that same deal.
Any assistance you can give us on this matter, as our member of Parliament, would be greatly appreciated. We complied. Now we expect others to do the same.