At an October 6th general committee meeting of Peterborough City Council, councillors recommended a notice of motion requesting financial assistance through the Ontario government’s Municipal Ice Storm Assistance (MISA) program for approval at a City council meeting next week.

The notice of motion, posted by Northcrest Ward Councillor Dave Haacke, seeks financial support for the damages incurred by the city during the March 2025 ice storm, which shut down Peterborough for multiple days, leaving the city in a state of emergency for nearly a month.

Councillor Haacke’s notice of motion also defers “authority to verify and attest to the accuracy of the Municipal Ice Storm Assistance program application package” to Commissioner of Finance and Corporate Support Services and City Treasurer Richard Freymond.

Speaking on the notice on October 6th, Freymond revealed new details about the lasting impact of the ice storm.

First, he noted that “a fulsome report is being prepared that would provide details on the city's response to the ice storm.” The report is set to be completed and released to the public “before the end of the year.”

“We believe that the costs incurred today are approximately about $11 million,” Freymond told city council.

Of the MISA funding application, Freymond said it is “in the works right now.”

“The official deadline is the end of October. We're hoping by the week of October 20. We're kind of finalizing that,” he explained.

He went on to answer “the key question:” Are all costs incurred by the City during the March ice storm eligible for reimbursement by the Province?

“Unfortunately, I don't think it's all going to be so,” he told the horseshoe.

“We have to look at every piece of equipment we used in our response and the rules of the application will determine how much we're able to recover for that piece of equipment. The rate that the province allows us to recover may be different than the rate we charge to operate that piece of equipment,” Freymond explained.

Freymond stressed to council that City staff “intend to apply for every eligible penny that we can.” Nevertheless, he predicts the claim would be insufficient to refund the full costs of the ice storm.

“I'm thinking that the application, the claim is probably in the order of magnitude of around $8 million.”

Town Ward Councillor Alex Bierk expressed his support for the notice of motion, before inquiring with Freymond about previous claims regarding the refunding of ice storm-related costs.

“I guess my question would be to Mr. Freymond, please, is what has changed?” Bierk asked.

“When we were living through the ice storm as councillors without power,” Bierk said to Freymond, “meeting with the Emergency Response Team, and then also in the subsequent weeks and months…the messaging I got as a councillor was that, ‘No, don’t worry, we’re going to be covered on this.’ And now it seems to be like that is not the case.”

“In the early days of the response,” answered Freymond, “we were concerned that we may or may not meet the thresholds that were in place. We far exceeded that, as it turns out.”

Freymond further explained to Bierk that, at the time, City staff believed financial support for cities afflicted by the ice storm would come from the “disaster assistance program”—likely referring to the federal government’s Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program—because the MISA program did not yet exist. The switch from one program to another created new funding criteria for City staff to parse through.

When Bierk asked him about whether the City would be able to cover the remaining costs through insurance or other grants, Freymond appeared reluctant to even entertain the idea.

“l’ll bring forward all of the available funding sources for council’s review, and I will commit to doing that within the existing budget that council has already approved…hopefully, Councillor, there’s areas in the budget that perhaps we didn’t incur all the anticipated costs because of the ice storm. And maybe I can use some of the surpluses, residual surpluses, to help fund the over to some other areas,” Freymond told Bierk.

Still, Mayor Jeff Leal thought it important to commend City staff’s work during the March ice storm on developing the existing MISA program.

“The senior leadership team here are being very humble this evening in the response on this one, because I know that as we moved through the various stages of the ice storm, our staff were making suggestions to the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and indeed the Minister [Rob] Flack, that clearly identified sort of the shortfalls and idiosyncrasies of the current provincial support in place,” said the Mayor.

For Otonabee Ward Councillor Kevin Duguay, yet another option remains.

“I believe a door that might be still open to us as elected officials is to go to Queen’s Park,” he told his fellow councillors.

“If there is a significant shortfall, that remains an option that we may have to pursue arising from this report. Just food for thought.”

With that, Peterborough City Council unanimously recommended Councillor Haacke’s notice of motion. The recommended motion will come before the horseshoe for ratification at the next City Council meeting on October 14th.