York Region leaders demand infrastructure funding commitment
Yorkregion.com
Oct. 7, 2015
By Lisa Queen
Saying Ottawa has failed to properly bankroll communities’ infrastructure needs in the past, municipal leaders from the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area are using the federal election to pressure federal party leaders to commit to long-term funding.
With less than two weeks to go until the Oct. 19 vote, mayors and chairpersons have sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, Green Leader Elizabeth May and Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe.
“Over the past years, we have separately and collectively expressed our profound concern over the infrastructure deficit in our region and our need for a fiscal partnership with the federal government to help eliminate this deficit,” the Oct. 6 letter said.
“With a federal election approaching, we feel it’s appropriate and necessary to put our collective position on this matter forward and to seek a clear, unequivocal commitment from yourself and your party.”
The fact all the GTHA mayors and chairs in the room unanimously agreed to the firmly worded letter is significant, Aurora Mayor Geoff Dawe said.
“We do feel very strongly about it,” he said.
“Most of us are very much of the opinion that we need to be looking at alternative sources of revenue. The property tax system simply can’t afford what we’re doing to it.”
The infrastructure deficit has been on municipalities’ radars for a number of years, Newmarket Mayor Tony Van Bynen said.
“We felt it was important to put the issue forward (as an election issue),” he said.
Local leaders across Canada have been pushing federal leaders to hold a debate on municipal concerns and, since that didn’t happen, GTHA mayors and chairs decided a letter was needed, Van Bynen said.
Municipal leaders are also hoping voters will challenge candidates to respond to communities’ infrastructure needs, he said.
While municipalities have benefitted from a slice of the federal gas tax, it is not enough to deal with their ongoing needs to provide roads, bridges, water and sewer pipes and other infrastructure, the mayors and chairs said.
“Any MP worth his salt or worth her salt would come back and say a lot of work has been done around the gas tax, which is absolutely true. That’s now been indexed so that has been a substantial improvement on what we’ve been doing,” Dawe said.
“We need to ramp it up, quite frankly ... The gas tax indicates they understand (the infrastructure pressures facing municipalities). We just need to keep pushing that rock up the hill.”
Of every tax dollar collected, municipal governments get 10 cents, but are responsible for about 70 per cent of the cost of infrastructure, Dawe said.
In Aurora alone, the cost to replace its water and wastewater infrastructure is almost $1 billion, he said.
Newmarket received $2.3 billion from the gas tax in 2014, which will rise to $2.5 billion in 2018, Van Bynen said.
“But that in itself is not going to resolve our concerns,” he said.
Towns and cities are forced to apply for occasional infrastructure grant programs that do not provide long-term and sustainable funding and, in some cases, don’t match municipalities’ infrastructure priorities, mayors and chairs said.
“In all cases, a process based upon project-by-project applications is the enemy of good fiscal planning to achieve efficiencies for the taxpayers,” the letter said.
Investing in infrastructure is good for Canadian communities, supports the economy and boosts employment, the mayors and chairs said.
“The most significant contribution that local government can make is to ensure our towns and cities have advanced and well-maintained infrastructure that can efficiently move people, goods and information,” the letter said.
“Strong infrastructure is a magnet for international investment that, in today’s world, can and will go almost anywhere.”
The economy that can move its information, goods, services and people efficiently to market is the economy that can best meet the economic growth needs of its people. If we want the Canadian economy to grow significantly, we need to significantly increase our infrastructure’s capacity to move goods, services and people.”
The federal government has also failed to properly fund social housing, which represents not only a compelling social concern but an economic one as well, the mayors and chairs said.
“To put it simply, investing in social housing is a true engine of growth,” the letter said.
Municipalities need a reliable government in Ottawa they can count on, they said.
“We need long-term, sustainable, predictable and reliable federal funding that flows year in and year out and will allow us to eliminate our infrastructure deficit within a generation,” the letter said.