Rising costs, funding challenges mean no parade on Canada Day in Montreal & More News Here

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Canada Day celebrations are making a return after two years of scaled-down festivities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however some Canadians hoping to catch a conventional parade could also be out of luck.

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Several cities say the rising price of safety and insurance coverage, in addition to troubles securing funding, is forcing them to rethink their celebrations.

In Montreal, there will likely be no Canada Day parade for the third 12 months operating, and this time COVID-19 is just partly guilty.

Organizer Nicholas Cowen says that whereas the novel coronavirus is a serious concern, the federal Heritage Department provided much less funding in a 12 months when inflation is at its highest stage in many years.

“The parade receives a grant so it is very much like receiving a cheque for the same amount every year,” he wrote in an electronic mail. “This year the funding was to go back to 2015 levels at 2022 prices.”

The parade’s government director, Caroline Polcsak, defined in an interview that the worth of insurance coverage has elevated together with nearly every thing else — right down to the elements of the massive, conventional cake that’s served to the general public. She stated company sponsors are onerous to get as a result of parades can not provide tax receipts.

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“For the parade, this means less money, higher prices,” Cowen wrote.

Instead, Canada Day celebrations in Montreal will happen on the Old Port, the place occasions will embrace face portray, video games, cake and a live performance.

Heritage Canada didn’t reply to a request for remark on Tuesday.

Montreal isn’t the one metropolis the place Canada Day organizers are blaming the rising price of insurance coverage and safety for cancelled parades.

In Strathcona County, Alta., the Sherwood Park and District Chamber of Commerce introduced in May that the Canada Day parade wouldn’t happen.

“Unfortunately, our success coupled with the many recent incidents at other parades in Canada and the United States has significantly increased the risks associated with parades and the onus on the event organizers,” government director Todd Banks wrote in a message.

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Banks stated: “The costs of physical infrastructure, insurance and security obligations have now grown beyond our capabilities when considering all the monetary and volunteer requirements.”

Last 12 months, six folks had been killed and dozens injured after a person is alleged to have intentionally pushed his SUV right into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis. And in Toronto in 2019, 4 folks had been injured after pictures rang out at a parade celebrating the Raptors’ NBA championship win.

The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, which cancelled that metropolis’s Canada Day parade in 2018 over rising costs, introduced this 12 months it will neither host a parade nor current a fireworks show, citing “rising costs for safety and security, and across the events industry,” including that it will as an alternative focus on different occasions.

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Banff, Alta., made the choice to interchange its parade with a day of actions and performances.

On its web site, town talked about a number of components for changing its parade: a need for much less crowding in the course of the pandemic; the benefit of having the ability to provide performers staggered time slots; a discount in using fossil fuel-powered autos; and staffing challenges which have “affected the town’s ability to move all barriers and planters for a one-hour event.”

Last 12 months, many cities opted to cancel Canada Day occasions after the invention of unmarked graves at websites of former residential colleges. While most occasions are resuming this 12 months, some cities, resembling Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, have chosen to watch Canada Day with cultural programming quite than celebratory occasions resembling parades and fireworks.

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The cancellation of Montreal’s parade got here months after the demise of Roopnarine Singh, a Trinidad-born physician who organized town’s first Canada Day parade in 1978 with solely a handful of autos after being dismayed there was no celebration to mark his adopted nation’s birthday.

In an interview in 2017, Singh recalled years of combating to safe funding for the occasion, sometimes changing into a thorn in the aspect of political leaders who didn’t wish to anger the province’s separatist faction in the years surrounding the 2 referendums.

Cowen stated Singh, who died in March, had hoped to be in Montreal this summer season for the parade. Polcsak stated he undoubtedly would have been “upset” to see the occasion he fought for thus onerous cancelled.

Both organizers say they’re working onerous to safe the funding they should carry again the parade subsequent 12 months.