MP confident EODC funding will be in federal budget
By VALERIE MACDONALD, NORTHUMBERLAND TODAY
Posted 11 months ago
NORTHUMBERLAND -- Although local MP Rick Norlock says he has not seen the federal budget which comes down Tuesday, he is confident it will contain funding for Eastern Ontario Development programming, he said in rebuttal to Liberal candidate Kim Rudd's assertion the funding is being terminated.
During budget consultations in Northumberland-Quinte West and in other Eastern Ontario ridings "folks said we should maintain the program," Norlock said after Rudd issued a media release last week stating she had found a document tabled about a week ago by Treasury Board president Stockwell Day which indicated the government was "quietly planning to terminate the Eastern Ontario Development Program (EODP)."
(The EODP, in turn, funds Northumberland Community Futures Development Corp. which assists business and creates jobs in this county.)
Norlock said a priority message from area riding budget consultations about retaining the funding went through to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and was given a positive reception.
Norlock admitted, however, that the current round of funding ends March 31, "unless there is new budget funding.... Cabinet will make a decision whether to carry it on."
Norlock suggested that Rudd, having acknowledged in
her media release former Liberal riding MP Paul Macklin's involvement in creating the program, should have understood that the Day document (2011/12 Main Estimates, Part II Industry Explanations of Changes, starting on Page 216 which can be accessed at www.t b s -s c t . g c . c a / e s t -p r e / 2 0 1 1 2 0 1 2 / m e -bpd/docs/me-bpd-eng. pdf ) was only a summary of previous budget funding commitments.
"The Eastern Ontario Development Program never had, and never has had, a permanent funding base," Norlock stressed.
He also said the document was not "secret" and that anyone can read it.
"All we have to do is wait (for budget day)," Norlock said.
Rudd should have waited, too, before sounding the "death knell" in the EODP, he said.
"She may not be correct, and I suspect she is not correct," Norlock said.
Rudd countered Norlock's comments by saying, "This is not about the budget. This is about what the Harper government is planning to do. I, for one, am not going to sit idly by."
Rudd says she is working with other Liberals on a plan to keep the pressure on the government to reverse its plan.
She maintains that the program would have been quietly "sunsetted" because no one saw it buried on Page 216.
As to Norlock's criticism of her understanding of government estimates documents, Rudd said, "I am very clear how estimates work and as a businesswoman and past-president of the chamber of commerce, I have been reading them for years to see what direction the government is going and the ramifications for (the riding of ) Northumberland-Quinte West.
" I think it is Mr. Norlock who needs to read his own government documents," she said.
If funding is dropped, Rudd said, the loss of economic development funding for this county would be $1.2 million and double that for the entire riding.
Initially she suggested $186,000 in new business loans funding would be provided to the Northumberland CFDC and the other 14 Eastern Ontario CFDCs but now has new information she believes may reduce that to only $45,900.
Northumberland CFDC executive director Wendy Curtis is out of the office until next week and Northumberland economic development director Dan Borowec could not be reached for comment by press time.
Stockwell Day's office said he was unavailable to respond to this newspaper's inquiries concerning the EODP. vmacdonald@northumberlandtoday.com