300,000 New Jobs Over The Next 25 Years

If this is an accurate figure I would ask where do these workers and their families live? Where will the housing for 300,000 families be built?
Is the plan for Comrade Miller to annex property in Mississauga or property in Vaughan or any of the municipalities outside of Toronto? We get the jobs and the business taxes but who gets the property taxes and revenue from shopping, entertainment, etc.

Saving Toronto's essential job zones
May 14, 2007

A healthy city supplies more than just a place to live, shop and play. It must also provide places to work. But securing space for jobs is a growing challenge in Canada's largest city, where there are few remaining "green fields" for businesses to develop and where existing employment zones are under heavy pressure for conversion to residential use.

If Toronto is to continue providing locations for wealth-creating companies to flourish, generating high-quality jobs, it must take aggressive steps to protect its employment-rich areas.

The city's official plan anticipates creation of about 300,000 more jobs over the next 25 years. Toronto must find a place to put them, and that won't be easy. Currently, about 30 per cent of jobs are downtown while another 30 per cent are concentrated in designated "employment districts." The remaining 40 per cent are spread throughout the city.

Toronto's 16 employment districts include Rexdale, the Highway 401 corridor through Scarborough, and a strip along Highway 404. Such districts house a variety of commercial, retail, office and industrial firms, but they are now almost full.

Of a total stock of 7,730 hectares, only 550 hectares remain vacant.

A report to the city's economic development committee by Hemson Consulting Ltd. warns that the entire supply of this special land must be preserved for jobs. Beyond that, significant new work spaces will have to be added through intensification to meet the city's employment needs.

Mayor David Miller, council and city officials are alert to the challenge. Toronto provides financial incentives encouraging job creation in its employment zones. But more must be done.

Developers continue to nibble away at industrial land, converting it to residential use. That erosion must stop. Job-rich land must be preserved. And existing activity in employment districts must be intensified.

Hemson Consulting has identified some promising approaches. The city could offer new businesses broader exemptions from the burden of building and planning fees.

It could impose a "windfall tax" on anyone converting employment land to other uses, and use the cash to buy up new tracts to replace lost land.

The city could provide expanded incentives to encourage green, environment-friendly businesses.

And Toronto should press Queen's Park to reduce the business education tax rate, or create a new tax class to help boost local investment.

City staff studying the issue have been instructed to report in the fall on the best ways to preserve and expand activity in employment zones. That done, council should act quickly to secure local job space. The city's future rides on it.