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The feds are providing $2 billion in funding with very few strings attached — the provinces just have to show they spent the money on education and not on already-announced plans.
“We’ve made this funding flexible, so provinces, and ultimately schools, can use it for what they need most — from hand sanitizer to remote learning,” Trudeau said.
Publicly, provincial governments are saying thank you for the funding even if it does irk them.
“We’re grateful for that and I want to thank the prime minister for that,” Ford said of the federal funding.
Privately, representatives of several provincial governments have told me they aren’t happy with how this all came about.
As Trudeau himself noted, he has had 17 conference calls with premiers on the national response to COVID-19 but never raised this issue in any serious way until Tuesday.
Several provinces griped privately that if the feds wanted to help they should have mentioned it on one of those calls that helped develop the $19 billion safe restart announcement.
Last Friday, when they met for a joint announcement, Trudeau mentioned to Ontario Premier Doug Ford that the feds would like to help in some way but offered no details or dollar figure.
One provincial source said some provinces got vague mentions in calls from Trudeau’s newly-appointed Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Domenic Leblanc, but that not all provinces were given a heads up before Tuesday’s call.
