CCPA acknowledges P.E.I. plans to spend more on COVID than was reported

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says its report concluding P.E.I. had left millions in federal COVID-19 relief funding unspent was based on "the most recent publicly available information."

However, after speaking with officials from the P.E.I. Department of Finance Thursday morning, the report's author, economist David Macdonald, said it appears the province does indeed have plans to spend all available funding.

Macdonald said P.E.I.'s current budget includes $65 million in COVID-19 contingency funds sprinkled among 14 different departments, with the province so far providing little public information as to how — or whether — that money would be spent.

He said that represents "quite a large unallocated fund," and those unallocated dollars weren't included in his calculations "because it's not clear if governments are actually going to spend them… or whether they intend to let them lapse and therefore just reduce their deficit at the end of the year."

The provincial budget doesn't stipulate what specific programs the contingency money will be applied to, and government spending announcements have so far accounted for only $5 million.

Compton points to contingency fund

On Wednesday, Finance Minister Darlene Compton told CBC News that despite the fact P.E.I. has seen relatively few cases of COVID-19, with no deaths and no hospitalizations so far, the province intends to spend $60 million of the $65 million in contingency funds.

We did not have the cases the other provinces did, but we have spent a lot of money ensuring Islanders remain safe.- Darlene Compton

"We did not have the cases the other provinces did, but we have spent a lot of money ensuring Islanders remain safe," Compton said.

As examples of where the money has gone, Compton cited "everything from fisheries to back to school, operation isolation… extension of staff supports for childcare, operating subsidies for transit, funding for broadband access — all of the issues that have come forward during COVID that we know are important to Islanders."

Compton promised there will be a public accounting of where the money has been spent. The premier has asked the auditor general to scrutinize all the province's COVID-19 spending.

No matching funds for municipalities

The CCPA report does correctly state that P.E.I. was one of four provinces to have passed along federal Safe Restart funding for municipalities without providing any additional funding of its own.

According to the agreement between the province and Ottawa, P.E.I.'s allocation of Safe Restart funding for transit and municipalities was $8.4 million, funding that was to be matched 50-50 by the province before flowing to municipalities.

But in P.E.I.'s case, the federal government apparently agreed to recognize P.E.I.'s existing $29-million budget for municipal affairs — largely unchanged from the year before — without requiring the province to kick in more money.

The report also said there was $2 million from the federal Rapid Housing Initiative P.E.I. was entitled to but hadn't accessed. Officials said applications were submitted by Ottawa's deadline of Dec. 31, and the province expects to hear back on those applications shortly.

Compton thanked the federal government "for being there for us" and for "all the programs that they've initiated for Islanders."

Overall, the CCPA report states that $1.4 billion has been earmarked so far in COVID-19-related government spending on P.E.I., with 95 per cent of that money flowing from federal government coffers.

That money covers everything from CERB payments to individuals, to federal wage and rent subsidies, to the $4.7 million the P.E.I. government provided to the P.E.I. Potato Board in the first weeks of the pandemic.

While the province has calculated a lower overall figure, Macdonald said that's because his numbers include in-kind contributions from the federal government — including vaccine doses allocated to P.E.I. — and the province's figures do not.

Author urges transparency

Macdonald said one of the points of his report was "to show that the provinces can and should access these federal funds," and so he said he's happy P.E.I. "is committed to spending these unallocated funds, or has spent these unallocated funds."

Macdonald did suggest P.E.I. could be more transparent about its spending.

I think that'll be a positive move in terms of budget transparency … for Islanders to hear where the government spent this $65 million.- David Macdonal

P.E.I.'s budget transparency "wasn't the worst but it certainly wasn't the best, either, in terms of really detailing, line by line" how much the province planned to spend on personal protective equipment, long-term care and other items in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Macdonald said he hopes the spring budget provides a detailed accounting of where all the contingency money was spent. 

"I think that'll be a positive move in terms of budget transparency … for Islanders to hear where the government spent this $65 million, which is a fair amount of money for a province like P.E.I."

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