Comments On City's New Taxing Powers

We are quick to blame the province and the feds but little is being said about the complete absence of fiscal controls and efficiencies which your left wing council and mayor will not deal with....you want to know who is to blame? Look in the mirror..you elected these clowns.

T.O. mulls menu of eight new taxes
March 17.

The most prosperous city in Canada is nearly broke despite 12 years of uninterrupted economic growth. How can this be? In desperation, Toronto prepares to tax itself in new ways, using powers granted by a powerless provincial government. Meanwhile, the federal government wallows in an embarrassment of wealth, much of it derived from the Toronto region, yet it fails to see the irreparable harm of whipping the economic workhorse of Canada into the ground. How can this be?

It is incomprehensible that city council is proposing new taxes to pay for services for which we have already paid. The federal-to-provincial and provincial-to-municipal downloading of services during the 1990s was a scam. Ten years later, the fiscal imbalance grows larger every year due to Toronto's booming economy, but the wealth being transferred out of the region is being conveniently hoarded by the federal government, despite the overwhelming inequity. One would think that a looming election would be the ideal time to re-examine the farce of downloading.

The senior governments should not have been allowed to abdicate their responsibilities to provide the infrastructure and social services necessary to make Canada a strong world competitor. But history proves otherwise. Successive Liberal governments have grossly under-provided for Toronto, despite winning a vast majority of local seats.

The Conservatives are less subtle. For the last 15 months, they've ignored Toronto as punishment for failure to elect a single member. And while one would think they'd be relentlessly wooing us to win Toronto seats that are essential to form a majority government, they appear satisfied to take the always-rewarding tact of throwing money at Quebec and other parts of Canada.

In federal and provincial politics, anti-Toronto is safe, pro-Toronto is risky. And now that Torontonians are resigned to tax themselves to pay for the very infrastructure and services that are the responsibility of senior governments, the messy decision to funnel funds to the region can be avoided.

Wake up, Toronto, before we get complacent with self-imposed taxes that weaken our ability to compete with other cities. By self-taxing, we are telling the senior governments that we irrevocably accept their unfair treatment. Instead, we need to demand – in every all-candidates forum, in the media and at our front doors – that each candidate state their position on the fiscal imbalance. And we need to demand that city council not take the easy road by adding new taxes rather than continue its fight for a fair share of our own money.

Ken Ferguson, Toronto

With Toronto already experiencing very minimal population growth over the last five years, it looks like Mayor David Miller is ready to kill any further growth – and potentially drive people out of Toronto – with a proposed city-imposed land-transfer tax ranging from 0.1 per cent to 1.5 per cent on the purchase of a home. Although on first impressions this figure might appear very low, an additional 1 per cent tax on the purchase of a home valued at $300,000 will result in a more than 100 per cent increase in the tax already payable by a buyer under Ontario's Land Transfer Tax Act.

Miller has obviously learned nothing in his previous three years as mayor. Staggering commercial tax rates in the city have already resulted in businesses relocating to the 905 regions and in Toronto losing 100,000 jobs over the past 15 years. How much more tax does Miller think that the people will pay before they get fed up and seek more friendly tax environments elsewhere?

On the bright side, by proposing to slap a new city-based land-transfer tax on the purchase of every home in Toronto, the mayor won't have to worry about putting more money into the road-repair budget because by the next election in 2010, fewer people will be using the roads.

Stephen Thiele, The Toronto Party, Toronto