SEPTEMBER 2025 According to Reeba Arif, Senior Development Manager with Graham, the MAP model was conceived as a result of Graham identifying a “gap in the market.” “Larger municipalities can typically access loans and grants to support major infrastructure projects,” she explains. “But smaller municipalities often face challenges due to their limited debt capacity and the finite availability of grant funding.” That struggle tends to put smaller municipalities in a bind, because they are being pressured to help meet local and provincial housing targets – Ontario is focused on building 1.5 million new homes by 2031 – but these communities can’t expand without first upgrading their infrastructure. Manny Baron, CAO with Mapleton, concurs that “Ontario is driving forward with ambitious housing targets. Small rural municipalities are willing to support these efforts but are challenged by a lack of budget or adequate financing tools. That’s exactly the gap that Grahan’s MAP model was designed to address.” What MAP does is establish a Municipal Services Corporation (MSC), enabling an offbalance sheet financing structure that preserves municipal borrowing capacity while still allowing municipalities to keep full ownership and control of their water and wastewater utilities, and utilize a project financing arrangement to deliver the necessary capital projects. In this case, Northern Maple Utilities Inc. was officially established as an MSC in the spring of 2025, and will be responsible for the ongoing operations, maintenance, asset renewal, and delivery of water and wastewater services to the Township of Mapleton.
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