Peel giving $850K to Metamorphosis Network for advocacy to bridge huge gap in provincial funding 

Regional councillors have approved an $850,000 funding envelope for the Peel Metamorphosis Network over two years, in a bid to help the local organization pressure Queen’s Park for fair-share funding. 

But while taxpayer dollars will hopefully help raise awareness of the glaring provincial funding gap for a range of critical services across Peel, it will do little to close it in the short term. 

Social services agencies, including the 100 non-profit organizations that are part of the Metamorphosis Network, receive $258 per capita less in grant funding from upper levels of government, compared to other big cities. 

The enormous growth of Peel over the last five decades, which has been almost entirely mandated by the Province, has not been matched by proportional tax dollars that should be returned to the residents who provide the funding. While Ottawa has been guilty of short-changing the region, the biggest part of the gap is due to Queen’s Park failure to deliver fair-share funding for social services, public health, education and a wide range of other funding areas. Statistics show, for example, that Peel’s public school system students only get about 90 cents on the dollar compared to Toronto, and much less compared to children in other parts of the province. It’s even worse for healthcare funding—Brampton has less than half the hospital beds per capita compared to the provincial figure. 

Critics have long pointed to population-based funding formulas that use outdated figures, while Peel has lacked the type of representation inside senior levels of government that helps ensure constituents of powerful ministers and other key legislators are well looked after.

In 1971, Peel had 260,000 residents; it has almost 1.6 million now, a more than 500 percent increase in less than five-and-a-half decades. With a projected population of around 2 million residents in another 15 years (the region has been mandated by the Doug Ford PC government to add almost 250,000 new homes in just seven years) the dangerous funding gap could get even worse.

Many of Peel’s residents, who pay their share of taxes, are growing frustrated with the lack of services, as they effectively subsidize funding to other parts of the province, particularly areas that have seen little to no growth over the last few decades. 

Earlier this year, a report presented to Regional councillors showed Peel is being shortchanged $868 million annually in community service funding as Queen’s Park continues to neglect the hyper-growth region. The Metamorphosis Network reported an annual gap of $578 for every person in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, compared to the rest of the province. Despite this revelation the repeated requests to the Province for a fair share of funding for its social services have continued to fall on deaf ears.

During a November 8 meeting, the Region of Peel approved a motion presented by Councillor Martin Reid to provide the Peel Metamorphosis Network more money to support the organization's advocacy efforts to push the Province to correct the funding disparities that exist within the region’s social services agencies. The Network will now receive $450,000 in 2025 and $400,000 in 2026, funded by the Region’s tax rate stabilization reserve, as part of a two-year initiative. The funding will be administered through Peel’s Community Investment Program.

Gurpreet Malhotra, CEO of Indus Community Services and member of the Metamorphosis Network Leadership Team, told The Pointer those funds, once received, will go to research and building evidence to support the Network’s position that the Region of Peel is being shortchanged, and has been for decades.                                                            

“You don't really want to put any misinformation out in the community and don't want to hurl, if you will, an unfounded claim against a government official that's just trying to do their job, but you do want to be able to say, ‘look, these are the facts as we know them, could you help? Is there a problem with our facts?’” he said. 

“They have not come back with anything that’s different so we're feeling more and more confident that we have the right numbers.”

A report released in May from Peel’s Metamorphosis Network revealed the extent of the shortfall in annual funding from Queen’s Park.

(Metamorphosis Network)

Malhotra told The Pointer the Network will now be looking to appoint someone to act as a neutral third party between the Network, the Region and its lower-tier municipalities to analyze data and funding as it comes in from the provincial and federal governments to see where the shortfalls lie. As new funding is announced, the individual hired would look at whether Peel received a proportional amount to address the demands facing the region. The goal is to have a “watchdog” and fact checker, while also providing recommendations on how Peel can close those gaps.

“What this money will do is give us the resources to be able to do that — analyze it, build a policy around that, and then engage with the community to raise the profile.” 

The current shortfall includes taxpayer-funded money for housing, childcare, educational programs and seniors care, as well as non-profit community services like mental health support and youth programs. But the full impact of the underfunding of social service delivery in Peel “has yet to be felt,” the Network previously warned and the Region will not be able to keep pace with its current level of service under the status quo. The chronic underfunding remains a consistent barrier for those in need to access essential community support services in the region.

As Peel’s population continues to grow and the increasing complexity of residents needs with it, added cost pressures are mounting from the increased demand for services. But funding has not kept paces with these changes, putting an unfair burden on the region’s taxpayers.

Peel’s 2024 pre-budget submission to the provincial government revealed the Region will need $50 billion over the next 10 years to eliminate core housing need; meanwhile housing subsidies saw a 20 percent drop in federal and provincial funding between 2017 and 2021, creating an immediate unfunded gap of $678 million. 

Funding for mental health services in Peel sits below the provincial average with service providers receiving 50 percent less funding compared to the rest of the province. For public health services, the current provincial-municipal cost-shared ratio of 70/30 for the majority of mandatory public health programs has not been a reality for Peel Public Health’s system which has instead been operating at a provincial-municipal ratio of 60/40. This resulted in a $9.5 million budgeted shortfall for 2023. A decade ago, a per capita review of all Public Health units across Ontario found Peel ranked last for provincial funding, receiving only $29.83 per capita, compared to jurisdictions at the top of the list which received more than $70 per capita. The median for all Public Health jurisdictions was about $45.

These are just some of the funding shortfalls that are impacting Peel residents’ ability to access adequate services when they need them, despite the reality that residents are sending their tax dollars to Queen’s Park at the same rate compared to those in other parts of the province. By contrast, many regions and municipalities across Ontario are receiving funding from hyper-growth places like Peel whose residents continue to subsidize those who live elsewhere in the province. 

The disparities due to a blatant lack of fair-share funding mean longer wait times and insufficient access to services for Peel residents whose tax dollars are redistributed to other municipalities to cover similar services instead of being returned to the community. To cover the funding gap, the lower-tier municipalities have had to reallocate $138 per person from property taxes each year to compensate for inadequate funding. 

“Current issues have been focusing on challenges of funding, the amount of funding that goes into violence against women supports, or into child welfare or into mental health for youth and when we do our comparisons across the province to other areas, we find ourselves, over and over again to be dead last on all these averages,” Malhotra said. 

“Accidentally, someone has to be last. But all the time, for all the different areas, there's got to be something else going on.”

The $868 million shortfall includes taxpayer-funded money for housing, childcare, educational programs and seniors care, as well as non-profit community services including mental health support and youth programs.

(Freepik)

While acknowledging that Peel’s chronic underfunding has been the result of governments of different political stripes over several decades, the Network has been calling on the Ford PC government to put in place a formula to correct past financial wrongs before going on to enhance new services in other better-funded areas.

“What this is an invitation to the current government to correct the wrongs of governments of every stripe across decades and commit to helping the people of Peel get caught up and helping the people of Peel get the services that they, in fact, have paid for.” 

When comparing Peel alongside other Ontario municipalities/Regions with populations over 500,000 —Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, York, Durham, Waterloo and Halton — the Metamorphosis’ report found financial support in Peel remained consistently low. The region finished last among other comparable municipalities for municipal social service funding, nonprofit community service funding, and Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) community health funding. Peel also ranked below average for public school board funding. 

Closing these gaps, the network argues, will help these social service agencies to meet the needs of Peel’s vulnerable populations. The underfunding, Gurpreet said, is unfairly harming a community that is nearly 70 percent racialized — a concern he has raised before.

“You look at all what's different about us, and what's different about us is that we're 70 percent racialized,” he said, adding “This is what it looks like. This is what it means. It means longer wait lists to get in. It means that where some areas have two or three hospitals, Brampton has one and many would make a case that, given its population size and projections for growth, it should be working on its third, not working on its second. So we're already behind.” 

Peel’s 2021 Census data shows 69 percent of the region’s residents identify as a visible minority, more than twice the level of Ontario as a whole (34 percent). Adding to the upper-tier municipality’s diverse makeup, 52 percent of Peel residents are immigrants to Canada, compared to 30 percent in the province as a whole. Peel’s racialized population has increased by 72 percent since 2006.

“When you've got three four gaps in your net people are going to fall through. And I'd say across the province, there are three four gaps in everybody's net, but when you've got 30, 40, 50 gaps in your net, way more people fall through,” Malhotra said. “Way more pain is taken into account, and more suffering and bad things happen to people because they don't have the support that others do have. We're again, not asking for something that others don't have, we’re asking for what we've paid for to have here in Peel.” 

But as the Province continues to sit on the sidelines, the Region has an opportunity now to help with some of that shortfall, if Peel’s elected officials choose to take the initiative. While regional officials are helping improve advocacy efforts to get more funding for these projects, they could increase the funding themselves should they choose to push back against an unprecedented, exorbitant budget increase request from the Peel Regional Police that will be presented in the next few weeks as deliberations over the Region’s financial blueprint for 2025 begin.

In their latest budget ask, Peel Regional Police are requesting a $131.7 million increase in operational funding, a 21.3 percent jump from last year when they were handed a 14 percent increase with hardly any questions asked. A large portion of the latest demand — $65.4 million — is to support the hiring of an additional 300 officers, 10 communicators, and 55 civilian positions. If approved, it would bring the total operating budget of the force to $749.4 million, an almost 40 percent increase in two years.

But regional officials could challenge that ask and instead approve fewer new hires. A portion of that funding could then be allocated toward a range of service providers to increase their delivery.  

Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish, who said fair share funding for her city and the region would be a priority, told the Network during the November 8 meeting, “We just passed a police services increase this year. Instead of paying the police to catch the criminals and put kids away, we should be paying you, or the Province should be paying you to prevent crime before it gets really ingrained into a young person's being.” Her comments contrasted remarks made during the recent Peel Police Services Board meeting, when she said, “I have no choice but to support this,” following the force's budget presentation asking for a staggering 21.3 percent increase for operations next year.

While Malhotra acknowledged the scale of the Region’s underfunding will not be remediated overnight, there should be a strategy in place across all levels of government that recognizes Peel has been shortchanged despite paying into the same tax model as residents in other municipalities. He stressed that although he recognizes funding allocations may not be exact all the time, they cannot be well below the average for decades: “that cannot stand.” 

“We remain hopeful ... that the Metamorphosis Network can actually watch a genuine metamorphosis that is a change from the current sluggish and somewhat painful experience that residents have to something that will reach the provincial average so that we can enjoy our community as much as every other Ontarians.”

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock

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