The town of Mattawa has recently increased fees at the Pinehill Cemetery to help offset the increased cost of maintenance as established by the provincial government.
The Bereavement Authority of Ontario (BAO) rules and governs the cemetery industry within the province, and on January 1st, they informed the town that rates were on the rise.
The BAO is a not-for-profit organization with the authority to administer and enforce the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act of 2002. The BAO regulates and supports funeral homes, those who work there, and cemeteries and crematoriums. The organization is funded by licence fees, not from tax dollars.
The Ministry of Government and Consumer Services “maintains a strong oversight role in the sector,” the BAO explain on their website, and the ministry is “responsible for policy decisions” under the Funeral Act.
This is the ministry that raised the rates, BAO was simply the messenger, and the ministry will review rates at “least once every five years.”
Enter Ontario’s Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee (OPGT), perhaps best known as an agency that makes financial decisions for adults who are no longer able to do so, and “provide services to protect the financial, legal, and personal care of mentally incapable Ontarians,” the office explains on their site.
The office also looks after “estates when no one else is available to do so,” deal with the assets of dissolved corporations, and ensure that properties’ belonging to charities are not misused.
Cemeteries also fall under the OPGT’s file. The office explains that “cemetery owners in Ontario must have perpetual care funds for the ongoing care and maintenance of cemetery grounds and monuments,” and they are the ones who look after those funds.
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Mattawa has owned the Pinehill Cemetery since 2017, and as a cemetery owner, the town can “choose to have the OPGT act as trustee of your perpetual care funds,” and the office “will give you the net annual income earned on these funds for you to use towards any maintenance costs.”
The municipality has accepted this arrangement, and fees for interment and the installation of markers and monuments are sent to the OPGT’s care and maintenance fund. “Certain fees have increased” that are sent to that fund, the BAO explained, so the town has raised the rates accordingly.
What changes? The price of a cremation lot has raised $25, from $375 to $400 plus HST. A regular lot remains the same at $765 plus tax, $306 of which goes to the care and maintenance fund.
The price to bury a casket or place one in a mausoleum remains steady at $750 per adult, although “oversized” customers will have to add $100 to that.
Prices to install most markers and gravestones have gone up. If one chooses a flat marker less than 1,116 sq centimeters (173 square inches), there is no fee. However, if a flat marker exceeds that size, the price has raised to $100 from $50, not including tax.
Installing upright markers under 1.22 meters (four feet) now costs $200, a hundred-dollar increase. Taller gravestones are now $400, which is up from the $200 maintenance fee.
However, if a marker is replaced the cemetery operator does not have to charge the maintenance fee again. The municipality has provided a link on their website to access the BAO’s “Guide for Death Care in Ontario,” and inquiries regrading the cemetery can be made to the municipal office at 705-744-5611.
The new rates are now effect.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.