As you are aware, PDAP provides financial assistance for local authoirities and individuals where substantial losses or damages to essential, uninsurable property are caused by a natural disaster.  PDAP mirrors the regulations and guidelines of the federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements (DFAA) as closely as possible.

PDAP uses two provincial rental rate guides as the base cost to calculate and update eligible expenses for municipal equipment rates.  PDAP rates are updated annually when the new guides are available.  The provincial rates from these guides include costs for insurance and repairs, overhead, profit, fuel, oil and lubrication.

However, DFAA only accepts costs for fuel, oil and lubrication when applied to municipal equipment.  This rationale stems from the fact that a municipality does not have to rent the equipment, and the rest of the costs are largely already picked up by the municipality if it owns the equipment.  The reimbursement rate for muicipalities that own and use their equipment in recovery efforts is to compensate for extra costs associated with fuel, oil and lubrication only.

The same principal applies to operator costs.  Muncipal employees already receive a salary from their municipalities, so only their extraordinary personnel costs and overtime costs may be submitted for operating the equipment while completing the repairs.  Their normal work hours, which are paid by the municipality, are considered a normal expense and do not fall under PDAP.  If the municipality chooses to have a contractor complete the repairs, PDAP would reimburse the actual expense incurred by the municipality, less their portion for the deductible, which it is not considered a normal expense.

Corrections, Public Safety and Policing (CPSP) staff are aware tof the concerns raised by municipal governments regarding the equipment rates used by PDAP, and raised the issue during the annual DFAA meeting in fall 2007.  A presentation was given, followed by a group discussion with other provinces, territories, and Public Safety Canada (PSC).  Following that meeting, a working group was formed to discuss the issue, gather documentation and make a recommendation to PSC to change equipment rates.  PSC was very supportive of this issue and agreed that it needs to  be looked into further.