Crumbling infrastructures show a need for tax reform

One thing most, if not all Canadian municipalities have in common is a growing need for improvements in their infrastructures. And nowhere is it more evident than in southern Ontario, where downloaded provincial services have left cities, towns and rural municipalities utterly incapable of maintaining, let alone improving, their roads, bridges, recreation centres, wastewater facilities, parks and civic buildings.

The simple fact of the matter is that the only significant source of the needed revenue is property taxation, which in virtually all municipalities has become enormously burdensome to all their residents, and in particular to those who are on fixed incomes.

Small wonder, then, that we're witnessing pleas from municipal politicians for help in the form of a share of tax revenues that tend to grow with the economy.

Just recently, the mayors who form the big-city caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities issued a unanimous call for cities to get a cash infusion that would be equal to one-sixth of the revenue generated by the 6% federal GST.

Although older cities like Toronto and Montreal face huge problems in the form of ancient, failing sewer systems and crumbling roads and bridges, newer cities like Calgary and bedroom centres like Caledon and Orangeville have just as serious a problem in providing the infrastructure needed to keep pace with population growth.

Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell acknowledged that the federal government had helped the cities, but said it's not enough. "The cities are looking for an updated fiscal arrangement that really will provide predictable and long-term and sustainable financing."

Toronto Mayor David Miller called for a national transit strategy for Queen's Park to start paying for programs it downloaded on municipalities, confirming that Toronto will do its part by imposing a range of new taxes allowed by recent provincial legislation.

In the Commons, Lawrence Cannon, federal Transport, Infrastructure and Communities minister, said the Harper Conservatives will soon announce "the new design for the Building Canada Fund, which Canadians will be able to use to their best benefit."

It will be interesting, indeed, to see how far the senior government will go, and how flexible the new design will be.

As we see it, there's not a shadow of a doubt action is needed, and that it should be in the form of something other than politicized one-time grants of the sort we have seen in recent years.

Nowhere has this been more obvious than in Ontario, where the Harris Conservatives downloaded so many provincial highways and services at the same time it scrapped the traditional system of provincial grants. Under that traditional system, municipalities automatically qualified for provincial grants toward things such as new bridges and road paving projects.

How much that has changed has been graphically demonstrated in this part of the province, particularly when it comes to dealing with the challenges posed by too much through traffic trying to traverse the downtown areas of urban centres like Bolton, Orangeville and Shelburne.

Historically, it was assumed that once the need for a downtown bypass had been demonstrated, it would be built and paid for by the province. That was certainly the case with the Toronto Bypass and all Ontario's 400-series highways, including Highway 410 through Brampton. It was also the case when Highway 10 was diverted from downtown Orangeville, and was once to have been the case for Highway 9.

Instead, Orangeville's south bypass had to be built by Dufferin County, with most of the cost being borne by property taxpayers and the only help from the province coming in the form of a one-time grant arranged by Ernie Eves when he was premier and local MPP. Similarly, a Bolton bypass for downloaded Highway 50 will in all likelihood wind up as a charge against local property levies.

Our transportation infrastructure woes should be addressed by having Queen's Park "upload" roads that clearly should be part of a provincial network and giving all municipalities a share of the provincial gasoline tax.

If such tax reforms leave the province short of cash, the answer surely should be to get more revenue from personal and corporate income taxes.