Where Is Miller's Campaign Platform?

Is he waiting for the waterfront condo owners, island squatters, city unions, social in-activists and econuts to send it to him.

Mayoralty candidate release her financial plan for the city

SUSAN O'NEILL

Sep. 21, 2006

Cutting business taxes, providing incentives to employers to hire youths and recent immigrants and investing in transit and transportation are among the methods mayoralty candidate Jane Pitfield says she'll use to get the Toronto working again.

"We really do need to heal this city from the inside out," Pitfield told a group of about 40 people gathered for a breakfast meeting hosted by the Toronto Board of Trade Thursday.

"Toronto today is little changed in three years. In fact, if anything, the business and economic environment in this city has gone from bad to worse," Pitfield said, telling an audience in the gallery of First Canadian Place that residents and businesses are paying "far more in taxes and user fees to the city, but are receiving far less in services."

Pitfield reported that 1,000 businesses have left Toronto since 2001 and said that only 280 new jobs were created in the city last year.

"We've done a poor job in attracting new business," she said, noting that panhandling is hurting not only the tourism industry, but is causing businesses to think twice about locating here.

Pitfield's plan to change the city's course, she said, would include reductions in spending at city hall and aligning the city's business taxes, over a five-year period, with the rates paid by companies in the 905 regions.

Pitfield later told reporters that cuts to business taxes won't be passed on to residential taxpayers.

She estimates she'd need to find $290 million, per year, over a five-year period to reduce the business tax rate from four times the residential tax rate to two and a half times that rate.

If the province assumes responsibility for social housing, that would leave the city with as much as $250 million annually, she said, which would go a long way to addressing the disparity between Toronto and the 905.

Pitfield would not comment on possible cuts to the city budget.

"Today, it would not be right for me to just pull some department out," she said, noting she would bring in a team of external auditors to review the entire budget.

Pitfield also spoke of offering tax incentives to businesses to hire and train young people and recent immigrants; the need to create a new economic development agency to attract new jobs to Toronto; and the importance of having an efficient transit system.

The Ward 26, Don Valley West councillor will announce a plan in the coming weeks that would use the money from the repayment by Toronto Hydro - a $980 million promissory note to the city - to fund transit improvements, she said.

"We need a real transportation policy that embraces major upgrades to both our roads and the TTC," she said.