STRATFORD – Centre Wellington and other municipalities in Wellington County got a boost from the provincial government Thursday for infrastructure projects.
Perth-Wellington MPP Matthew Rae announced $14.2 million in funding from the province for local infrastructure projects in 2025 in Stratford.
Stratford got the largest portion of that, seeing over $3.5 million coming their way. Other municipalities in the area benefiting from it are St. Marys ($539,940), North Perth ($1.025 million), Perth County (almost $600,000), West Perth (more than $1.13 million), Perth East and Perth South ($535,579 and $447,790 respectively). Wellington County (more than $2.35 million), Minto (more than $1.5 million), Wellington North (over $1.4 million), and Mapleton (over $1.3 million) also received money from the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund (OCIF).
“Our government is making important investments in our rural and small communities to build critical infrastructure such as roads, water and wastewater, and bridges,” Rae said. “We are supporting our municipal partners to help build necessary infrastructure, while reducing the impact on their budgets.”
Rae also said this funding is part of the Ford government’s $190 billion capital plan to build and expand more homes, highways, hospitals, transit, and high-speed internet across the province. In a prepared statement, he indicated that Ontario is set to allocate $400 million on OCIF funding to help 423 small, rural and northern communities with various projects.
Rae added that the government relies on municipalities to keep them informed of what their priorities are, whether it be roads and sewers or other work that generally falls to the local level of government to handle.
“We rely on them to really assess their needs locally – they have that ability,” he said. “I know Mapleton is looking purely at housing and enabling wastewater infrastructure, so each municipality can decide how to use it or if they want to bank it for a few years to use on a larger project they have coming up. That gives them that flexibility, which is why we rely really heavily on our municipal partners; someone in downtown Toronto is not really going to understand what Stratford is going to need in infrastructure”
The OCIF provides funding for local infrastructure projects in municipalities with populations under 100,000, rural and northern municipalities, as well as for local services boards that own water or wastewater systems. Funding allocations are based on a formula that accounts for the different needs and economic conditions of each community.
