The Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry (MNDMF) have announced a cut in funding for the Provincial Roads Funding Program which currently offers $76 million in funding for the share of the costs of building and maintaining forest access roads on Crown forests that serve multi-resource uses.

Due to the large provincial deficit, Minister of MNDMF, Michael Gravelle says the government had no choice but to find a way to cut their funding and the Provincial Roads Funding was one place they could do that.

“To provide some assistance to the sector was vital, so we made a commitment to provide $75 million a year to the Forestry Road Access Funding. Since that time we have invested $400 million in the program. This year, we came up against a very challenging circumstance, which is the provincial deficit was up to about $18 billion and all Ministries were expected to provide some way of helping reduce that debt.”

Jamie Lim, President and CEO of the Ontario Forest Industries Association (OFIA) said, “This is very disturbing. The reduction in funding will have significant, negative impacts not only on the foresty sector, it will impact all residents of Northern and rural Ontario who have benefited from this program. This is a total shock, a terrible blow to the companies that have stayed open and kept people working through this recession. We have tried to work constructively with the government over the past month to restore the lost funding, however to no avail.”

Gravelle, says he is very disappointed that the OFIA decided to come out and “… attack our government for the temporary reduction in the Forestry Access Road Funding this year.”

Gravelle says although it was a decision that is very much regrettable, the province still wanted to provide a significant level of funding for this program. The new funding calculation will be $47.8 million.

Gravelle says if the government is able to find more dollars that isn’t used this year, it will be put back into the program.

By Ally Dunham