Before shuffling off one’s mortal coil one needs a burial permit to put that body to rest, and those permit fees are on the rise.
West Nipissing recently agreed to increase their burial permit fee to $30. The goal is to better align their fees with neighbouring municipalities. North Bay charges $30, and Greater Sudbury charges $34. West Nipissing has kept their fee at $20 since 2001.
During the February 15 council meeting, councillor Chris Fisher asked if the new rate was enough to cover the costs involved with issuing the permits. As the municipal clerk Melanie Ducharme explained, once prepared, a copy of the permit is sent to the funeral home, and “weekly and monthly reports” must be filled with the Registrar Generals Office for “each burial permit issued.”
All in, she estimated the amount of time is “about half an hour” per permit.
As per provincial law, all deaths much be registered with the local municipality, “usually in the municipality where the death occurred,” the Government of Ontario clarifies on their website.
Once registered, a burial permit can be issued, and these permits are required for all burials, as well as for cremations and alkaline hydrolysis—a process using water, alkaline chemicals and heat to accelerate decomposition which leaves only bone fragments behind.
Because West Nipissing’s fees were lower than the rest, in recent years the municipality “has been issuing an increased number of burial permits to out of town funeral homes,” Ducharme noted in her report, adding that “such organization should be requesting permits from their local municipal authorities.”
However, the increased number of requests “can be traced to the ownership of Simple Wishes of the North,” the clerk explained, which operates in Sudbury, and is owned by Theoret Bourgeois Funeral Home which has been operating in Sturgeon Falls for over 125 years.
Those Sudbury requests were submitted to West Nipissing, and “following discussions with the Funeral director who acknowledges the significant increase in requests,” the clerk explained, “he is agreeable to the proposed permit increase.”
In 2019, Simple Wishes of the North was issued eight burial permits from West Nipissing. In 2021, that number raised to 99.
The new fee is in now in effect, and “the fees we set are not to make a profit,” explained Mayor Joanne Savage, “but to recoup the expenses.”
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.
