NDP the ones to save Toronto and actually make us Prosper!?!?!?

[b13]

It looks like the NDP actually care about cities especially Toronto because not only are they going to upload the downloaded services they are also going to freeze transit fares and pay for transit city!!

NDP's city relief just pie in sky


Aug 17, 2007 04:30 AM
Royson James

Those among you who want a great city without paying an extra dime in taxes should run out, secure an NDP party membership and get ready to vote New Democrat in the October provincial election.

The NDP this week announced its plan to rescue municipalities from fiscal ruin. The proposal – costing some $3.6 billion – is the kind of total victory for cities and towns that urbanists have been salivating over for more than two decades since the province put municipalities on a shoestring budget.

The plan, to be staged between 2008 and 2015, exceeds every mayor's wildest dream. And you know what they say about anything that sounds too good to be true.

But let's dream. Should Howard Hampton become premier, Christmas would come early every year till 2015; then gift-receiving season would become a daily fixture.

For starters, a two-year freeze on transit fares, effective 2008.

Next, he'd pick up half the operating cost of running the TTC, some $110 million next year, his researchers say. (Caution. The TTC wants to spend an extra $100 million in 2008 on new service, so the NDP may want to plan for an extra $50 million in provincial costs.)

Mad at the devilish practice of forcing municipalities to assume provincial services without the money to pay for them? Hampton would end that. And where the province now pays only a portion of the costs, Hampton will pay his full share. This would end the sniping over court security costs, child care per diems and other arcane relationships that have spawned distrust and political spats between the two governments.

By 2011, Hampton would take back the costs of the Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Drug Benefit, two outrageous costs downloaded to cities – worth $175 million to Toronto alone.

Then, phased in to 2015, assuming he survives the first term without bankrupting the treasury, Hampton would do the mother of all fiscal recalibration – assume the full costs of social housing, welfare payments, public health, ambulance and child care. Cost? $2.2 billion across the province and nearly $500 million for Toronto.

That's a total of about $900 million to Toronto out of the $3.6 billion province-wide. In essence, after begrudging Toronto a bailout and saying the city was whining, Ontario municipalities would benefit from Toronto's advocacy.

But that's not all. The billions of dollars the province gave and promised cities for transit will stay. This includes gas-tax revenues, operating transit budget relief, and the fanciful Transit City vision.

Now, the cherry on top.

While everyone talks about how the province downloaded costs onto the cities, few remember Ontario relieved Toronto of $500 million of education costs. Or that subsequent fixes made the 1998 swap in services almost revenue neutral.

So, will the NDP send those education costs back to the city?

There is no plan to "repeal" those uploads, NDP researcher Ethan Phillips said yesterday.

"We would be able to manage," said Toronto city manager Shirley Hoy, yesterday, in a masterful understatement.

But could the province afford such a largesse? "Absolutely," said Phillips. "We'll release the details."

Meanwhile, Premier Dalton McGuinty will likely unveil a much more modest proposal Monday in Ottawa. Ontarians will have no problem affording McGuinty's plan because it won't go far enough in fixing the fiscal mess.

Over to you John Tory and the Conservatives. The anticipation is killing us.

 

[allabootmatt]

Er...the Liberals are paying for Transity City too.

 

[YoungPauper]

I have a fair degree of skepticism that the New Democrats are going to be any more of a panacea for the ills of Toronto than the Liberals. As Royson correctly suggests if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. After all, where have we heard grandiose visions short on actual details before? You've heard it in just about every election platform released in this country in recent memory. Can I get a little 'Red Book' anyone?

I suppose there are parties who are arguably better or worse for Toronto from a financial perspective; however, none of them are going to "save" this city as your title suggests. There will be no knights in shining armor.

 

[gibsonm]

Yes, and pigs will grow wings...

Yeah, the NDP will save the city for about six months, before the province's credit rating collapses and the debt balloons. Then, suddenly all new projects will be on hold or cancelled, and the NDP will be seeing what can still be rescued of the services that existed before they took power. Remember Rae Days?

 

[alklay]

They are not going to win the next election so if they are good for anything, they are good for simply pushing the other two parties to kiss some T.O. ass was well.

 

[Mongo]

Yeah, the NDP will save the city for about six months, before the province's credit rating collapses and the debt balloons. Then, suddenly all new projects will be on hold or cancelled, and the NDP will be seeing what can still be rescued of the services that existed before they took power. Remember Rae Days?

To be fair, the North American economy during Bob Rae's premiership experienced its worst recession of the past quarter-century. From the wikipedia article on Bob Rae:

Ontario's economic forecast was bleak when Rae took office in October 1990. The Liberal government had forecast a small surplus earlier in the year, but a worsening North American economy led to a $700 million deficit before Rae took office. In October, the NDP projected a $2.5 billion deficit for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 1991. Some economists projected soaring deficits for the upcoming years, even if the Rae government implemented austerity measures. Rae himself was critical of the federal government's high interest rate policy, arguing that it would lead to increased unemployment throughout the country. He also criticized the 1991 federal budget, arguing the Finance Minister Michael Wilson was shifting the federal debt to the provinces.

The Rae government's first budget, introduced in 1991, increased social spending to mitigate the economic slowdown and projected a record deficit of $9.1 billion. Finance Minister Floyd Laughren argued that Ontario made a decision to target the recession rather than the deficit, and said that the budget would create or protect 70,000 jobs. It targeted more money to social assistance, social housing and child benefits, and raised taxes for high-income earners while lowering rates for 700,000 low-income Ontarians.

Reflecting on the budget a few years later, journalist Thomas Walkom described it as following a Keynesian orthodoxy, spending money in the public sector to stimulate employment and productivity. Unfortunately, it did not achieve its stated purpose due to the unforeseen severity of the recession. Walkom described the budget as "the worst of both worlds", angering the business community but not doing enough to provide for public relief.

That accords with my own impression of the economy of the time -- that the Rae budgets would have been great for the Ontario economy under more normal conditions, but unfortunately the severe North American recession would have ruined any budget of the time.

I personally think that if Bob Rae had come into power a decade later, he would be considered a financial genius, and one of the great Ontario premiers. Timing is everything.

Bill

 

[Hydrogen]

James' article seems to miss something:

If the costs of picking up downloading is so financially horrible to the province, just imagine what it is like to the city - to all cities in the province.

 

[spaced]

Is the NDP ever going to shake this 'Rae Days' curse off they're back? Tell me if I'm wrong but wasn't Rae Days a creative solution to a bad situation. I believe the problem was that Ontario was in finical trouble. It couldn't afford all its employees so either there was going to be mass layoffs/firing or somehow reduce they're pay. Rae Days essentially was a reduction in government workers pay which for some reason, people who often complain about government workers getting paid too well, all of a sudden think they don't get paid enough. The pay cut really pissed off the unions, the NDP's biggest ally at the time which became a big problem come election time. The problem with Bob Rae wasn't that he introduced 'Rae Days', it was that he didn't play the game of politics well enough.
I'm not convinced that Hampton will be a good premier but come on, if I hear the catch phrase 'Rae Days' one more time my head is going to implode.

 

[Blixtein]

Sorbara just announced that Ontario is running a $2.3 billion surplus. Looks like everyone has money except the city.

 

[ShonTron]

While James praises the NDP's platform plank, he calls it "pie in the sky". What a pointless column. The NDP really doesn't have a great chance (but stranger things have happened!) but kudos for raising the bar. Couldn't James at least acknowledge that?

Given his constant criticism of all things Miller, could he just be a simple Dipper-hater?

As for Bob Rae, his politics went really strange. In the 1980s, he was the typical NDP activist. In the 1990s, he was a more Lorne Nystrom-like centrist with social bent pragmatic Dipper. Then he took a right turn on Red, and became a Liberal. I had a grudging respect for him as premier, but since the Rae Review (post-secondary education reform and tuition fee deregulation/Income-contingent loans), had a much lower impression. With the Rae Review, he became a tool.

 

[calimehtar]

It's a good time for Ontario politics - I think John Tory and Dalton McGuinty are both excellent candidates (far better IMO than any of the federal party leaders). The NDP lack a strong candidate, but this is sure to kickstart dialogue about urban issues in Ontario and may win the NDP enough support to scare the the Conservatives and Liberals.

 

[JasonParis]

Not sure why Hampton wouldn't repeal the education uploads, but otherwise the NDP plan basically takes us back 20 years (but in a good way). It really shouldn't be looked at as "radical" as it only represents a historic return to the fiscal arrangement that Ontario cities have been governed by.

Nonetheless, we all know the NDP's chances of forming a government in the coming election is probably somewhere around 5%. That shouldn't however stop us from supporting them. A strong NDP showing at Queen's Park in the coming election could only be good for T.O. and Ontario cities in general.

The NDP lack a strong candidate

I think Howard's more credible than he gets credit for, but regardless it'll almost certainly be his last election as NDP leader.

 

[dowlingm]

The point is not that the NDP have a chance, it's that politics dictates that the other parties respond - especially with Sorbara's 2 billion surplus. The excuse that Ontario has no money is bunk. Even the Dippers are only promising 50% in the first year. Healthier cities will repay PST, income and gas taxes - you can argue about how much but it's not dead money by any means.

Let's get something straight though - even if all provincial services are properly paid for, the City still needs ongoing step change in funding in the order of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars because uploading will only fill the existing fiscal gap. This does little if anything to solve the billions needed to repair infrastructure decades past its design life, it leaves no money to kickstart waterfront precinct development and solve issues like the fact that some of Toronto's worst slums by number of work orders are TCHC properties.

The question is how do we raise those millions in a fair manner by reasonable general taxation (sales, income taxes) and targeted fees for direct impacts on city life (development charges, garbage charges, parking tax/congestion charges) and spend them responsibly while gutting the Canadian Tax Federation's all-tax-is-evil stance by taking them on head-on.

 

[Hydrogen]

The excuse that Ontario has no money is bunk.

Absolutely right. Poor distribution of existing taxes plagues the province.

Let's get something straight though - even if all provincial services are properly paid for, the City still needs ongoing step change in funding in the order of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars because uploading will only fill the existing fiscal gap. This does little if anything to solve the billions needed to repair infrastructure decades past its design life, it leaves no money to kickstart waterfront precinct development and solve issues like the fact that some of Toronto's worst slums by number of work orders are TCHC properties.

The question is how do we raise those millions in a fair manner by reasonable general taxation (sales, income taxes) and targeted fees for direct impacts on city life (development charges, garbage charges, parking tax/congestion charges) and spend them responsibly while gutting the Canadian Tax Federation's all-tax-is-evil stance by taking them on head-on.

The price of dowloading has created legacy costs for the city. You are correct in pointing out that the area in which the city has suffered considerably is in maintaining and upgrading its infrastructure. I don't think this problem has sunk in - and it is a responsibility that must be born largely by the city. Addressing this problem will cost something, and will require an increase in taxes. As a result, it will be political, too.

Lost somewhere in this maddening debate is a point that you touch on: taxes. A propsperous city is a wealthy city, one in which taxes need not be viewed as a singular burden, but as a means of maintaining the good quality of life that can be found in a city. The tax system need not be structured so as to be a burden to any portion of the population, and can be split into portions that are income-based and user-based. It would be an interesting exercise to undertake - if it were not for the fact that all levels of government so fear examining the very source of their revenues.

 

[Lone Primate]

Yeah, the NDP will save the city for about six months, before the province's credit rating collapses and the debt balloons. Then, suddenly all new projects will be on hold or cancelled, and the NDP will be seeing what can still be rescued of the services that existed before they took power. Remember Rae Days?

Yeah, I remember Rae Days... they let people keep their jobs. Unlike Harris Years -- those being the ones you were unemployed after being laid off. I can understand "Rae Days" being a pejorative prior to Harris's vivisection of Ontario, but I can't understand how they could possibly be afterwards.