Thornhill byelection candidates disagree on transit funding

Global News
February 6, 2014
By James Armstrong  

When Thornhill voters head to the polls in a byelection next week, transit and how to pay for it will be a top priority.

All three candidates said transit was a top priority but only the Liberals are willing to raise taxes to pay for the funding. The opposition parties are adamant efficiencies can pay the multi-billion dollar bill.

Progressive Conservative candidate Gila Martow said in an interview Thursday that taxpayers are “already paying their fair share” and suggests the billions of dollars wasted in various scandals could have been used to expand transit.

“I think it’s the governments turn to do its fair share, not waste billions of dollars,” she said. “We’ve seen Ehealth, we’ve seen Ornge, we’ve seen gas plant cancellations. That money could have all been building subways up to Richmond Hill.”

To actually pay for transit? Martow suggested that by “getting the economy moving” a PC government could increase revenue and use that money to pay for transit.

The Liberal government is currently reviewing recommendations put forward by a panel on various ways – revenue tools – to pay for expanded transit.

Among the many recommendations made by the panel was a five cent increase to the provincial gas tax.

Liberal candidate and current Thornhill city councillor Sandra Yeung Racco wouldn’t outwardly support any one option for funding transit but said the gas tax, like all the other panel recommendations, will be “reviewed.”

“We are going to look at it. We’re going to look at the various recommendations and see which one is the best that we should be using,” she said Thursday.

She added that whatever type of funding tool is used, she wants it to be dedicated to transit.

“But I think that we’re all responsible, we all use the roads, we all use the transit and I think that as long as its dedicated to transit to try and fight the traffic gridlock then I think it’s a good thing,” she said.

NDP candidate Cindy Hackelberg however agrees with the conservatives when she says taxes don’t need to be raised in order to pay for transit. Instead, efficiencies and shuttering loopholes can raise billions, she said.

“The liberal government is actually looking at reducing corporate taxes to ten per cent, if they do that and if they also remove the high-earner tax, which the NDP implemented in the last budget, as well as a new corporate tax loophole where companies could write-off the HST on entertaining clients for instance, all of that comes to $3.1 billion that the government is looking at eliminating,” she said.

She travels from Langstaff Station to downtown Toronto each day on the GO Train she said and wants more transit options for residents north of Toronto.

“That is something that I’ve been hearing on the doorstep from a lot of people that they would like to see transit, the TTC, come up here.”

The byelection was triggered by the resignation of Peter Shurman who resigned in December after two spending scandals involving him charging mileage from his Niagara residence while he represented Thornhill.