Ontario budget cuts will end an addiction counselling program for Hamilton welfare recipients and likely yank millions of provincial dollars from local child care and public health services, city officials say.

The Progressive Conservative government is shifting more of shared costs for public health and child care budgets to municipal taxpayers — the kind of move local politicians have long condemned as "downloading."

The changes will be retroactive to April — meaning city council will likely have to choose between cutting services or forcing local taxpayers to cover extra costs, said Paul Johnson, general manager of healthy and safe communities.

Johnson said Wednesday he does not yet have enough information to predict exact budget shortfalls this year or possible changes to critical services like subsidized child care, for example.

"I have a level of frustration because I am unable to tell our councillors, our community, our residents what the next steps are or how their services may be affected," he said. "We have many questions and we are seeking answers."

The city will now be on the hook for a portion of $10-million in child care program costs previously fully covered by the province. Hamilton will also pay 30 per cent, rather than 25 per cent of public health program costs.

This year, local taxpayers put up $12.4 million for public health. If that number rises, council could look at program cuts, put off planned hires or dip into reserves to temporarily cover extra costs.

But Johnson said it's too soon to "do the math" on extra costs because the city is not even sure which services will remain in the public health budget — and it is always possible the province will provide transition funding. (Ontario is also working on a plan to review responsibilities and merge municipal boards of health.)

The city is also bracing for news on budgets for Ontario Works, land ambulance and long-term care.

The only specific program casualty of the provincial cuts so far is the Addiction Services Initiative, a long-running pilot program that gives addiction counselling to welfare recipients aiming to rejoin the workforce. The province has confirmed it will no longer fund the program as of July.

But any cuts to public health or child care hurt vulnerable citizens most, said Judith Bishop, a former school board chair and a vocal advocate for early childhood education and care.

"I am appalled. So many Hamilton (public health) programs support the vulnerable: young mothers, low birth weight babies, dental clinics," she said. "Hamilton needs more public health, not less."

The provincial budget is slowly revealing itself to be "worse and worse news" for poor residents in need of help, added Tom Cooper, who heads the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction. He said the planned changes echo the "calamity" of downloading by the previous Mike Harris PC government of the 1990s.

"We as a community are going to have to rally to try to protect our most critical services," he said.

Hamilton shared the trickle of new Ontario budget information with councillors Wednesday even as Toronto Mayor John Tory came out swinging against what he says is a planned provincial cut of $1 billion to that city's public health budget over a decade that "puts our city's health at risk."

The Spectator was unable to reach a ministry representative late Wednesday.

But Minister of Health Christine Elliott argued on Twitter Wednesday that Toronto politicians' dire warnings were overblown and tantamount to "fear mongering."

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Elliott said the PC government "will continue to meet our financial commitments as we slowly shift the cost-sharing funding model over the next three years."

Coun. Chad Collins slammed the PC government for a return to the "downloading" politics of the 1990s. "They're notorious for solving their fiscal problems on the backs of municipalities," he said.

Mayor Fred Eisenberger was more cautious than his Toronto counterpart in criticizing the impending budget cuts.

"I don't know many details yet so I'm going to hold fire until I know," he said. "But obviously I'm concerned about any download ... that would impact front-line services. We're going to try to do whatever we can to mitigate the impact on people."

mvandongen@thespec.com

905-526-3241 | @Mattatthespec

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