The province is pulling millions of dollars in funding for a previously approved project to extend natural gas services to the North Shore and Peninsula roads area.

Coun. Tanya Vrebosch says word that the project funding – more than $8.6 million – has been cancelled reached the city Wednesday.

The move comes a day after Premier Doug Ford announced the province is introducing legislation to develop a new natural gas program aimed at expanding access throughout rural and Northern Ontario.

Vrebosch says the city has been provided few other details.

“We were blindsided with this today. We’ve been given no information and we’re left with all these questions,” says Vrebosch, who was busy making calls throughout the afternoon in an effort to get some answers.

She says the city has been working with Union Gas for more than a year on the project, intended to extend services to as many as 350 homes in the north shore area of Trout Lake.

“We’ve just given false hope to all those residents,” says Vrebosch, noting between 150 and 200 property owners had already signed up for the service, agreeing to pay an additional charge over the next 40 years to help cover the associated infrastructure costs.

“To me, they need to honour what was approved.”

The province announced in April that funding for the project under Ontario’s Natural Gas Grant program had been approved.

The grant application was made by Union Gas with the support of the city in the form of a financial contribution equal to a decade’s worth of property taxes on the new natural gas infrastructure – about $175,000.

Vrebosch says a lot of work went into the application and that both Union Gas and the city devoted resources to the project over the past year. She also notes that a lengthy process for project approval from the Ontario Energy Board was well underway.

“All that time and money is going to be lost if we have to start over,” she says, suggesting the province should have done a better job of communicating whatever changes it has in the works.

In her opinion, Vrebosch says pulling already approved funding earmarked for a project aimed at providing residents with a more affordable heating option is “not working for the people.”

Few details have been released so far about the province’s proposed new natural gas program. The Nugget did not receive a response from the Ministry of Infrastructure to a number of questions by press time Wednesday.

Vrebosch, however, says she was told by a staffer at Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli’s office that the new legislation will pave the way for gas companies to self-finance such expansion projects by allowing them to add a surcharge to customer bills.

She says that may not be a “bad thing” moving forward. But Vrebosch believes the province should be honouring the commitment made by the previous government.

She says the status to the North Bay project is unclear at this point.

The province has said the proposed new program would encourage more private gas distributors to partner with communities to develop projects aimed at expanding access to natural gas.

“We heard from people across Ontario that natural gas expansion is important in order to grow businesses, create jobs and compete,” said Ford,in a release Tuesday. “By cancelling the cap-and-trade carbon tax, we have already acted to bring natural gas prices down for Ontario families and businesses. Now we are taking the next step to ensure that the benefits of natural gas expansion are shared throughout the entire province.”

According to the release, restrictions under the previous government limited private sector companies from participating in natural gas expansion, portions of which were instead managed by a taxpayer-funded program.

The province says the proposed new program will deliver decades of benefits to potentially dozens of communities across Ontario at no additional costs to the taxpayers while keeping existing natural gas costs low.

Under the proposed program, communities would continue to partner with gas distributors to bring forward natural gas expansion applications to the Ontario Energy Board.

If the proposed legislation is passed, the government says it will work with the Ontario Energy Board to develop regulations to enable the program this fall. The province says more details about timing will become available as that work proceeds.

It also says exact details about the program, including which customers would be eligible to receive support, would be set out transparently in regulations, if the proposed legislation is passed and related approvals are received.