North Perth Council passed a motion last month voicing its support for the Stop the Crisis campaign.
The campaign was initiated by Ontario's Big City Mayors with a call to the provincial and federal governments to do more to help cities and municipalities deal with issues like homelessness, mental health and addictions, and more.
North Perth Mayor Todd Kasenberg says municipalities need more support from upper levels of government, because the main funding stream locally is property taxes. Kasenberg says it is unfair to further burden ratepayers with solving massive issues.
"It's less than ideal, I think, for most of us, to have to sock-it to the taxpayer with big hikes on property taxes for the sake of taking care of issues which, largely, by constitutional mandate, are in the jurisdiction of the province," Kasenberg stated.
Kasenberg says another big problem in smaller rural areas like his is lack of public transit infrastructure to help those who need to access services.
"They can't get to those services where they're located, right? So transportation is a big issue in terms of services generally for smaller and rural communities, as we are," Kasenberg said. "It becomes even more challenging and more important for those who are living with homelessness or mental health compromises, they need that service to get somewhere, to get help and be supported by the system."
Going forward, Kasenberg says municipalities either need more direct support from upper levels of government to solve these issues or for the upper levels to take charge.
"We're living in a time where our hospitals and emergency rooms are strained. We're living in a time where primary care is compromised and there are thousands of people without physicians. We're living in a time where people are living in tents and all of those things are concerning," Kasenberg added. "So part of what should happen is the province needs to come forward with pools of funds or grants if they want municipalities to be involved. They need to transfer that money to us. But if they don't want us to be involved, if this wasn't sort of a download to us, which many of us have suspected it's been, then they need to pull up their boots and get to work right? We need solutions so that people are NOT living in tents."
For further details about the “Solve the Crisis” campaign, visit www.solvethecrisis.ca.