Tbaytel to help disaster relief fund grow

With slightly more than two months to go before the fundraising deadline, Tbaytel is lending its corporate support to flood relief victims.

On Thursday the publicly owned utility announced a trio of ways it plans to help between now and the New Year.

Outgoing president and CEO Don Campbell said the company is just trying to make a difference in the community it does business in.

“We made an internal decision here to try to just raise the profile and the awareness of the plight of some of the people that were affected back in May of this year,” Campbell said. “We were part of the initiative early in the game, the first couple of days following the flood.”

On May 28 the city was hit with an unprecedented flood, which also overwhelmed the city’s sewage treatment plant and led to sewage back-ups in homes, especially in the East End and Northwood sections of Thunder Bay.

The Thunder Bay and Area Disaster Relief Fund is trying to raise $5 million by the end of January 2013, a slow-moving process which at last report had yet to hit $1.2 million.

Campbell said employees will be encouraged to make a one-time payroll deduction to the cause, which Tbaytel will then match before turning it over to the disaster relief fund. The provincial government, though the Ontario Disaster Relief Assistance Program, will match those contributions on a two-for-one basis.

For the next two weeks they will also be setting up donation boxes at their retail outlets and the company will also contribute $25 from every digital TV sale made between now and the end of December to the cause.

The need is too great to ignore, Campbell said.

“They’re never going to get enough and people really need this and that’s what we’re trying to do.”