It’s budget season again in Toronto and the cracks are showing between the City’s revenue and the services that the City is expected to provide.
For decades, provincial and federal governments have downloaded responsibilities to the City including roads, shelters, courts, daycare, public health and more. Today, approximately 27% of Toronto’s property tax revenue is spent funding extensions of federal and provincial responsibilities. But even as Toronto is told to take on more, the province prescribes what revenue tools are available to the City, and has restricted them almost exclusively to taxes on property.
Toronto is one of Canada’s primary economic engines. The Toronto region generates 20% of the national GDP, 20% of Ontario’s jobs, and attracts more than 28 million annual visitors. This level of economic activity is enabled by the investments our city has made in social and civic infrastructure, including affordable housing, public health, roads and transit.
We host people from across the country and around the world at events like Taylor Swift concerts, the World Series, and the FIFA games, which generates tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue for the provincial and federal governments. Meanwhile, the City shoulders the costs of additional policing, emergency services, transit, and crowd management that make these events possible.
The math doesn’t work. Without any other source of revenue, municipalities have been forced to hike property taxes, cut vital services and delay critical infrastructure investments just to stay afloat.
If Toronto is expected to continue driving national prosperity, it must be granted access to revenue tools that are predictable, reflect our investments, and grow with the economy.
No more “new deals”. No more begging for one-time ad hoc program funding. It’s time for Toronto to have a fair share of the HST.