Ontario municipalities complain about incremental downloading, plead for provincial cash

Thestar.com
Aug. 17, 2015
By Richard J. Brennan

Queen’s Park is nickel-and-diming municipalities that can ill afford to carry more financial burden, the head of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario says.

“Financially, there is a little bite here and a little bite there,” AMO president Gary McNamara told the association’s annual conference Monday, which is being held in Niagara Falls this year.

McNamara said the government is always talking about working with the municipalities, but “the words don’t resonate as well as they did a year or two ago.

“In [the] absence of progress, the message becomes grating,” he said.

Premier Kathleen Wynne is speaking to municipal leaders Tuesday.

McNamara told the gathering the province still hasn’t lived up to its promise to upload costs that are traditionally provincial, including social housing.

“We believe that municipal property taxes are a terrible way to fund income-redistribution programs,” he said.

The provincial government attitude seems to be: “What’s $50,000 here? What’s another $50,000 there?” McNamara said.

Kathleen Wynne Liberal government doesn’t seem to appreciate that the municipal cupboard is bare, he added.

“Almost half of Ontario’s municipalities have to hike property taxes by at least one full per cent to raise $50,000. Policy-makers at Queen’s Park need to understand (it all adds) up to one serious problem faster than they can imagine.”

In the mid 1990s, the former Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government downloaded public housing stock, leaving municipalities to pick up the costs of operating and maintaining aging buildings.

Earlier this year, a report on Toronto Community Housing painted a grim picture of what will happen if the agency doesn’t make a $7.5-billion investment in repairs over the next 30 years.

McNamara said it’s ironic that the province complains when Ottawa solves its financial difficulties at the province’s expense.

“We know what that feels like, too. We know that feeling well. It’s not a solution that anyone can take pride in,” he said.

McNamara said many wonder why the provincial and federal governments receive four or five times more revenue than municipalities, which, he noted, only get about nine cents on every household dollar.

“There is a strong case for municipal government to be better funded than it is, not just in Ontario, but in other jurisdictions across Canada.

“AMO is fighting hard to simply hold the line on what we have,” he said. “Eroding our tax base, bit by bit, and having laws that dictate how we deliver our services is a poor recipe for success.

“We are concerned that the province’s support for mature, respected and unshackled municipal government is slipping.”

Tory Leader Patrick Brown and New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath were both expected to speak Monday to the AMO conference.