Manitoba just made an announcement about a substantial amount of funding for all municipalities to deal with road conditions throughout the province. Association of Manitoba Municipalities president Kam Blight express his great appreciation for this news. 

"The Association of Manitoba Municipalities commends the province of Manitoba for investing $15 million to help support municipal infrastructure repairs," says Blight. "Specifically, I'd like to thank Premier Stefanson and Minister Clarke for hearing our AMM executives' concerns, taking the time to meet with us, and addressing them in this manner by bringing forward this large investment which benefits all municipalities. That is something that we're very pleased to see."

He explains it's not application-based and doesn't require matching funding by municipalities as many other forms of provincial funding usually do. 

"It's going to be spread out on a per-capita basis, and it's a benefit to each and every one of the municipalities across the province of Manitoba," continues Blight. "Municipalities across Manitoba and the AMM have called on the province of Manitoba to increase our operating basket funding and increase investments into municipalities, as we've been frozen since 2016. I think Premier Stefanson and Minister Clarke heard our concerns and brought these funds forward to assist municipalities in the road repairs -- the investments in reconstructing some of the roads due to the challenging winter and wet spring that we've encountered this past year."

Blight notes the announcement was extremely timely.

"Municipalities are facing a lot of financial challenges right now with losses due to the public health orders and the pandemic, and inflation," adds Blight. "And Budget 2022 still had our operating basket funding frozen. So we, as AMM, called on the province of Manitoba to find ways to increase funding to municipalities. I think that this announcement is in direct response to the conversations that we've had with the province of Manitoba, specifically the Premier and Minister Clarke."