According to the Township’s 2026 budget, the Water and Sewer Reserve sits at about $2M, down from the original $7.25M the province provided in 2007.[1] Roughly $3M of that has been spent since the current Council took office in 2022.[2]
This begs a fair question: if that $7.25M had simply been invested the way municipal reserve funds are legally required to be invested — in safe instruments like Government of Canada bonds or GICs[3] — what would it be worth today?
Using actual historical Government of Canada bond yields (Bank of Canada data, 2007–2026, not a rough guess)[4], $7.25M invested conservatively and left to compound would be worth roughly $11.5–$12M today.
Instead, it’s at about $2M.
This isn’t a story about market losses — reserve funds aren’t exposed to that kind of risk. It’s the gap between standard, low-risk stewardship of public money and what’s actually happened. I believe it’s worth asking Council directly: what happened to the difference, and what’s the plan to rebuild it?
(Happy to share the yield data and math with anyone who wants to check it.)
References
- ^
Township of Lanark Highlands, Budget & Finances,
https://www.lanarkhighlands.ca/town-hall/budget-finances.
The original $7.25M provincial grant is independently corroborated by contemporaneous reporting: “Lanark Water,” Frontenac News,
frontenacnews.ca. - ^
Township of Lanark Highlands, Budget & Finances,
https://www.lanarkhighlands.ca/town-hall/budget-finances. - ^
Municipal Act, 2001, S.O. 2001, c. 25, s. 418; Ontario Regulation 438/97, “Eligible Investments, Related Financial Agreements and Prudent Investment,”
canlii.org. - ^
Bank of Canada, “Canadian Bond Yields: 10-Year Lookup,”
bankofcanada.ca;
“Selected Bond Yields,”
bankofcanada.ca.