Tolls are dead but Ontario cities’ bills piling up
"The system is broken," Mississauga's Bonnie Crombie said of cities trying to pay for huge projects with property taxes.

TheStar.com
Feb. 8, 2017
David Rider

Ontario’s premier blocking Toronto tolls won’t stop municipalities’ demands for new taxation powers to fund transit and more, even if those calls fall on deaf ears, a forum heard Wednesday.

Toronto Councillor Josh Colle, the TTC chair, and Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie agreed that Premier Kathleen Wynne, or whomever has her job after the 2018 provincial election, must help, rather than block, local governments struggling to fund massive projects primarily from property taxes.

“The system is broken,” Crombie told the Empire Club of Canada during a panel discussion. “You have to understand that cities’ budgets aren't designed to build large infrastructure, transit projects . . . Why is it that we can't control our own destiny and we can't raise the revenue we need to better run, better manage, and invest in our city?”

Crombie, a former Liberal MP elected mayor in 2014, said Wynne’s Liberal governments should be open to talking about local governments about tools including a slice of sales or income taxes.

She said her residents were unhappy about the prospect of paying Toronto tolls but she supported Toronto Mayor John Tory’s “right to ask for that right to implement that tax.” She wants the province to give Mississauga the same taxation options extended to Toronto in 2006.

Last fall, Wynne privately told Tory she would not block him if he proposed tolls on the city-owned, city-funded Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway to help bridge the huge gap between Toronto’s expansive needs and its limited means.

But, facing opposition from her own MPPs representing 905-belt residents who might have to pay the toll, Wynne opted to refuse to pass toll-enabling regulations and instead announced a doubling of gas taxes for municipalities.

Annually, that could mean up to an extra $170 million for Toronto and $30 million for Mississauga — if Wynne’s Liberal government is re-elected or the party that defeats the Liberals honours that pledge.

Colle said Wynne’s tolls U-turn called Toronto’s autonomy into question and, given that the provincial Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats urged her to block Toronto, killed hopes for more independence any time soon.

“I read this as they are saying not just ‘No’ to tolls, they are saying no to all municipalities’ (hopes) of other tools you might want to explore to look at funding, in our case, $35 billion of outstanding capital work,” said Colle, the son of longtime Eglinton-Lawrence Liberal MPP Mike Colle.

“In essence, politically, it's wiped (new taxes) all off the table. We tried to have an honest conversation and it was not well received.”

The extra gas revenue is welcome, Colle added, but because it is inherently unstable — “governments come and go” — Toronto can’t borrow against future revenues to build transit lines the way it could have with toll money.

Both Colle and Crombie agreed that, if the province blocks new revenue options, it should take ownership, and shoulder the costs, of regional roads including the Gardiner and DVP.