Sitting on a volcano

Tax freeze politics come back to haunt Toronto and other Canadian cities

Commentary from Larry Solway

  Surprise! I wasn't always such a nice guy. In the palmier days of radio when I helped pioneer the "Talk" format, I would deal abruptly even unkindly with callers whose complaint began with: "I don't want to see my hard-earned taxes going to..." My abrasive response was something like: "Listen buddy, I probably earn three times as much as you do. So why should I pay taxes through the nose to make up for what guys like you don't have to pay." Stunning good sense I thought. Insulting? To a fault.
  No one likes to pay taxes, so they vote for tax-cutting politicians, like Toronto mayor Mel Lastman. After four years of a tax freeze Toronto is more than 300 million in the hole. Should the Province be helping out of general revenues? Of course it should. Does the big city pay a disproportionate amount of tax into the provincial coffers? Yes again. This may not interest others across the country, but the movie is coming to your local screens. Watch for it. Cities cost money. They are the engines of today. They are financed by the ultimate in unfair taxation: a levy against capital. That's because the only true capital asset most people have is the home they live in, the home they have saved and scrimped and denied themselves to own. Talk about a penalty for achievement.
 

Toronto (insert your own city name here) sits in a $300 million swamp of debt

  For those who believe income tax is a disincentive to work hard and be ambitious, I say phooey! If you are ambitious it is because you choose to work hard. The job, the work, the time, the commitment are all part a personal imperative that goers beyond the paycheque. Enough philosophy.
  Toronto (and watch for it for Ottawa for Hamilton, Edmonton, Halifax - any place where people live in cities) is sitting on top of a volcano. The man who was the first megacity mayor won the election on the me-first mantra of "tax freeze." He made a promise he knew he could not keep. His promise was instrumental in defeating left-leaning Barbara Hall. Barbara said she could not and would not predict the future and promise a tax freeze. She lost. He won.
  So Toronto (insert your own city name here) sits in a swamp of debt. Blame provincial downloading, but also blame the affluent who for four years thrived on with a tax freeze. To deal with that deficit the sad-faced mayor fulminates that the Province is to blame, his budget chief says we will have to privatize, the chief financial officer predicts a tax increase of more than one third, and citizens are adamant that they are being robbed by tax vultures.
 

Talk about a penalty for achievement, the only true capital asset most people have is the home they have saved and scrimped and denied themselves to own

  It is ironic that in Canada's richest city (do NOT insert you own city here) tax-deniers see the things they don't need (as in those people who are sucking up my tax dollars) paid for by user fees. Down goes community responsibility. Day Care, already strapped, will go private. Garbage, where CUPE members have fought and earned a decent wage, will be contracted out to a private company which will cut salaries, and may or may not deliver service, and if financially challenged, will go out of business.
  If you want to remember how we build a wall around ourselves and shut out community needs - remember when, as mayor of North York and a member of Metro council, Toronto's now mayor said "Why should people pay for something they don't use?" He was speaking of the budget cuts to public libraries, which, like education and health care, have been the victims of the me-first tax avoiders.
  Once again, government has to be our best friend not our committed enemy. Government cannot allow the affluent to build a fence around themselves, or to dig a moat to keep out the riffraff. It must never be the function of a government to download responsibility. The Federal Liberals dumped their fair share of medicare, got entirely out of Social Housing, and turned their back on children. They downloaded it to the Provinces. The Provinces downloaded to the municipalities. The municipalities continue the process by downloading their responsibilities to the ordinary citizen in the form of user fees. We got the tax cuts didn't we? Now we have to pay for services that should have been provided out of general revenues.
  I cannot argue that property tax is a good way to pay for services. I cannot argue that a municipality should collect income tax. I can only argue that government must be at the center of fair tax collection and fair distribution of the benefits. Toronto represents only a microcosm of the failure to collect appropriate tax and spend it on the community. Help from Queen's Park or Ottawa is not a "bailout," it is democracy and it is justice.
  While we on the Left continue to debate the future of the NDP, we look for forums and studies and the mugg's game of trying to unite every fractious pressure group from unions to the disabled to aboriginals to environmentalists. We are looking in the wrong direction.

What's the impact of municipal tax cut politics where you live? What do you think?

And don't forget to take the Straight Goods poll.

Posted: February 05, 2001

[ Front Page ]