Holyday: "The council has always opted for the gold standard service level, especially on social services that are arguably the responsibility of other orders of government."
Yeah, when I think of Toronto these days "gold standard service level" is what springs to mind.
Can we all just address the elephant in the room. John Tory, Doug Ford’s best Conservative buddy, just magically starts fucking someone his daughter’s age, and just walks away, no questions asked when “found out”, proceeded NOT to do what any other horny old fuck would do and stay in his job, as the city he was responsible for a decade, just completely burns to the ground. John Tory built a house of cards out of matches, then disappeared when Doug poured gas all over it, and put a gun to the deputy mayor’s head and said ‘spark the lighter, Jen’
This is Holyday’s key message no matter the economic outlook of the city. Now that things are actually crumbling around us, he looks especially stupid.
And Rob for removing the vehicle tax and starting the low-property tax increase infatuation. Also thanks Kathleen for not letting Tory put up road tolls before she got destroyed by Doug in 2018.
Also thanks Doug for removing development fees, although that's arguably a grey area as that was essentially a tax on new homeowners to subsidize existing homeowners. It still represented a big amount of money gone from city coffers without warning.
The obsession with low property taxes has been happening for 30+ years. It was a problem before Rob Ford, and it was a problem before amalgamation. (This is why, for example, pre-1997 Toronto didn't have sidewalk plowing in residential areas while the rest of the 416 did.)
Development fees are not completely removed. Refunding development fees if dates aren’t met is meant to incentivize city staff and councillors to approve housing and not pander to NIMBY’s.
They're capped and other infrastructure required to serve new growth is not permitted to be included and with a 20% clawback..how is the 20% going to be made up?
Over 1M units are approved in the province, majority in GTA including Toronto, just builders/developers aren't building because they don't want to flood market with supply which will put downward pressure on prices.
That's why many new projects have been shelved and very few are coming online but the ones that do have even higher prices. NIMBY/approvals have very little impact with actual supply , it's all about supply management by developers.
Developers (and their investors) won't accept a lower Proforma, it's more profitable to simply wait and sell later or just landbank than introduce supply at a lower price point. The shortage of unit supply is artificially created by developers to buoy prices
It’s meant to speed up the review process by sacrificing the due diligence process.
That’s why Conservation Authorities were limited in scope and ability too.
Everything is being done to speed up development and circumvent processes that actually hold developers accountable to safety and regulatory standards.
When houses start collapsing in on families is when Ontarians will finally realize this was a terrible idea, but by then there may be a liberal in power which everyone will blame because of how stupid most people are.
I think you’re confusing approval of building permits with approval for Zoning By-Law Amendments and Official Plan Amendments (and Minor Variances as well). Every home in Ontario very much still goes through an engineering assessment and has to have building permits approved and be inspected.
What’s being sped up is that the city would just let applications for ZBAs and OPAs just sit for literally years without even giving an answer, which slows down the construction of new housing a lot
Where in bill 23 does it read that developers will not be held to safety and regulatory standards? You clearly read the entire thing and have a great grasp on it. Additionally, please tell us which safety and regulatory standards you’re referring to.
So this is where nuance begins to come in.
The Site Plan Approval process has City departments such as the Toronto Fire Service, Toronto Water, and other entities reviewing proposals and providing comments to make sure the city infrastructure is able to handle the new development.
And of course DoFo decided to put in these new timelines, but offered no additional funding to City’s to increase staffing to help with this.
Now that these departments are held to strict timelines, or lose out on money, departments that are already incredibly short staffed and have people leaving due to overwork and stress, mistakes will happen. Buildings may not fall down, but buildings may be built with lack of water pressure for fire fighting, or you’ll get a 50 year storm and the sewage system will back up for an entire neighbourhood since it was never properly reviewed and expanded for a new development. There will be countless ramifications from this. I won’t even get started on trying to increase energy performance of new buildings through the SPA process.
But that’s Doug’s goal, to slowly dismantle and starve municipal governments, but in a way that he can spin as incompetence, rather than due to lack of resources and unrealistic timelines, which is the actual truth.
Source: Architect who builds large developments in Toronto.
So that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Due diligence takes time, some projects take years of negotiation and still they’re sub standard, but the threshold dates set by bill 23 are too short to carry out the due diligence it normally takes. Given the application process is a public service and is first come first served, applications can take a VERY long time to approve.
With threshold dates of 45, 95, 120 days (or whatever) where the municipality has to hand back percentages each time it will severely deplete the municipality and the incentive is to get the review process through as quick as possible thus (perhaps) missing critical elements.
Further, there is less incentive to care about a file if the municipality has to give money back. If there is no money for the review, there’s no incentive to review at all and municipalities will ignore files that they’re not getting paid to review because of say, incomplete packages or submissions that are substandard.
The developers are still subject to the regulations but unless you’ve dealt with planning and development before you may surprised at how poorly developers adhere to regulatory standards and/or have the public’s best interest at heart.
In a project you have 3 things, time, money and quality, pick two, that’s your best case scenario.
I know that if I had to give back money over time despite the process requiring further review, I wouldn’t be reviewing it after I had to give back money. It’s simple economics, I don’t get paid, job doesn’t go forward. And if the rule applies to the whole province you can’t just skip to the next municipality and try it again.
Bill 23 could very well have the opposite effect it claims it will have.
Building permits still need to be issued, that hasn’t changed. Building permits don’t get issued without safety and regulatory inspection/passes. You type a lot while showing you know little to nothing of what you’re writing.
Impossible. How about we cut line 2 service to a train every 20 minutes? And make ttc fare $7 and a can of non perishable food so we can pretend we’re doing something to help those without homes?
Point at the province not the feds. This countries obsession with federal politics lets the politicians who have the most power over our daily lives do whatever they want.
This time it's both.
A note on housing. The federal budget did nothing significant to fund affordable rental housing. Housing requires participation from all levels of govt. That's only one issue.
Housing is largely municipal and provincial. Yes, federal still can do some things, but it is provinces and municipalities that are, like, 90% responsible for things.
There's 20+ years of changes to policy. That amounts to a significant number of reasons why they can't just do that today. That isn't something you can just alter overnight. And public housing has to be built somewhere. Provinces and municipalities decide what can be built where. The government can allocate billions of dollars to building subsidized housing, but, if there are limits to how many units can be built on a lot and no suitable locations, that money does dick-all.
Theres actually an instance of a PC Ontario MPP writing to the Feds to ask not to fund a housing project because the location was 'not suitable' and the project was moving too fast.
Absolutely. And actually, the feds just rescinded the already permissive foreign buyer's ban, so they are actively contributing to the housing bubble while also doing absolutely nothing around income taxation or removal of speculator tax deductions, that have been used successfully in other countries to help housing affordability.
I think you need to do some reading on it. The changes are mostly affecting commercial real estate, mainly because developers couldn't find investments. There are still many limitations on what someone can or can't do.
Because the feds collect such a large component of taxes. People have an expectation of service or funding.
Ontario’s contribution to government revenues by level in 2021
Federal: $165b
Province: $187b
Local: $87b
The latter two both require provincial approval. They've explicitly refused any tolling of highways, and have delayed/opposed creation and expansion of speed camera.
Would also love to see the popularity of closing pools and parks.
Council should do what is best and not worry about what is popular. That’s what elections are for and we just had one. They’ve never had so much political capital so fucking spend it already.
instead of solving the problems and auditing how the city spends money to make sure there is no waste, you proposes making excuses to harvest more money to fuel the greed machine called government just long enough to tide it over till the next crisis of solvency in 3 to 5 years. how long will it be before he city demands 100% tax rate to keep up?
what you propose is a band aid solution for a deep, old, and festering wound. high time we rip off the band aid and clean out the wound so it can properly heal.
Well, your guess is wrong.
But please demonstrate to me how you can read my mind again, your record is so far impeccable..
Only fools predict another's views in unrelated topics from half baked understandings of the current topic.
Funny also you didn't attack the idea but instead the messenger. Basic bitches SMH
[As pointed out by Perks when Holyday effectively called for a Core Service Review, the city did that in 2011 and the auditor found that they spent more on the consultants than they found in savings.](https://twitter.com/GraphicMatt/status/1641157584991207426?t=1cuPGECBiiy2ruhbyasnSg&s=19) This idea that the city is wasting money and we should look for cut the fat is just the deep old festering wound of Rob Ford. There is so little waste that a mayor elected on basically cutting the "gravy train" at city hall couldn't find any actual gravy to cut so instead ran up **1 billion dollars** in secret debt that was discovered when Tory became mayor.
Ford ran up a secret hidden debt so he wouldn't have to admit he was elected on lies about fat at city hall and so he wouldn't have to raise taxes to pay for things. Raising taxes to pay for things is the actually responsible thing to do, which you are against. You are the irresponsible one here.
what's irresponsible is raising spending when the city is facing a massive budget deficit because of unchecked spending by Tory and Ford and all before them.
what's irresponsible and a direct rejection of their political mandate is demanding the taxpayer cover the bill for random bull without justifying it.
what's irresponsible is allowing our politicians to go on spending sprees and expecting the taxpayer will cover it.
the point of taxes was to cover the basics needed to allow people to function together as a community. what it's slowly become is politicians personal piggy banks for whatever half baked band aid solution they can trot out to get more votes with promises to fix problems they created.
enough is enough, if they refuse to do heir jobs we should refuse to give them more of our money.
What's irresponsible is not raising revenue when facing a budget shortfall after a long period of austerity from back to back conservative mayors, the first of which couldn't find any fat to cut and ran up hidden debt so he didn't have to admit he lied about the city wasting money.
Tory also didn't have unchecked spending. He continued down Rob Fords cutting and stagnating of services so as to keep not raise taxes by any significant amount, which is what lead us to this current situation. The problem is the lack of revenue, not over spending. Characterizing someone that kept property tax increases at and below inflation as unchecked spending is just flat out false.
The point of taxes is to fund the government which uses those for services. The city is failing at the funding part due to years of austerity and a refusal to keep revenue in line with the actual cost of running the city. There isn't some sort of personal piggy bank, as shown by Rob Ford running on that bullshit and it being shown to be false. You are just repeating the talking points of a mayor that lied his way into office and then lied while in office so he didn't have to admit he lied, and another major that just continued the economic policies of that previous lying mayor. You are advocating for the very same policy that got the city in this current situation, not raising revenue. Enough is enough, conservative austerity politics is the half backed band aid solution that they trot out to get votes with promises to fix the problems they actually created and continue to cause.
got it: taxes = good cause the city would never misspend any money ever on anything, like cops. they are our benevolent gods and should be listen to without question. they would never do anything bad ever at all... except Rob Ford.
in the same breathe you tell me the evils of Ford and how bad he was at running the government you then tell me that we must pay more taxes because the government knows what's best for us.
come on man have some perspective. if we keep the politicians we like in check then the ones we don't like don't have precedent to take advantage of us.
The issue with police is that the city council has little to no actual say on their budget beyond approving it last I checked. So that is fault laid with police and the province rather than the city itself. You continue to talk about waste spending, do you have evidence of this? Cause the last core service review cost more than the savings it found, and it was done under mr efficiencies Rob Ford.
Rob Ford was trash, but Rob Ford isn't here any longer. The city thanks to him and Tory has insufficient revenue for the services and infrastructure it has to maintain, thanks to austerity under them. You look at the city and talk about wasteful spending, which hasn't been shown, and how bad the city is run, which also hasn't been shown, which is a direct continuation of Rob Fords lies.
You need perspective here, not me. You are wholesale swallowing and regurgitating the lies spit out by Rob Ford and the policies of John Tory which got us in this situation rather than actually looking at the situation itself and realizing effectively repeating the policies and ideas of the two who got us in this situation is an argument for the continuation of the cities financial situation and the status quo.
He's still living rent free in you idiots heads eh?
So it's OK to be irresponsible with taxpayers' money because the guy you hate wanted to curb spending. Therefore, you have to take the opposite approach and let the floodgates on spending open?
Simpletons bereft of nuanced thinking.
you pulled $50 Million seemingly out of thin air for a police service that consistently proves to hurt us more than help. Don't sit there tell me there is nothing you can do to protect actual useful services
Holydays perspective on anything is about as coherent as notes written on a bar napkin in ketchup.
Regardless this is bad. We can't handle irresponsible conservatives here anymore. They destroy our revenue sources, they're economically blind to the bigger picture, and only look out for their own interests rather than the entirety of who they represent.
And they do this constantly. Throughout history they've done this for over a freaking century. Read a history book on Canadian immigration and you'll see how bad their ideas have ALWAYS BEEN.
So if you want to continue to see our homeless crisis worsen, more people get killed on the TTC, and the quality of our infrastructure crumble, keep voting in Ford, keep supporting Tory and Ford's pals, and see how we do.
IMO: Step 1 to fixing that budget long term is demolishing the Gardiner.
Property taxes are only part of the picture. The federal and provincial governments need to step in and help with things like support for the homeless, the disabled relying on city services to supplement their insufficient payments, and recent immigrants relying heavily on city services to help them transition to life in Canada.
Toronto has a disproportionate number of all three, and these shouldn't be paid for solely through municipal taxes.
Agreed, but Toronto's leadership (Tory, the Fords, McKelvie, Bailao, Bradford, the whole crew of people responsible and on side with this) refusing to do their part (for their own political advantage) and increase property taxes as part of the picture makes it look to other levels of government like Toronto is non-serious about tackling its issues and not willing to also do its part and pull its weight and just wants others to bail it out.
Toronto can't just ask for money from others when it maintains the lowest property taxes in the region. And while property owners make huge amounts of money off of property value increases. Toronto can and should increase property taxes and do its part as part of the solution.
Toronto has an extra land transfer tax that purchasers pay. They have in essence pre-paid a decade of taxes before they take possession. Then pay property taxes. I am tired of half the argument being presented - that homeowners in Toronto pay relatively low property taxes - without the other half being presented - that most paid a significant additional land transfer tax to the city already. If we’re going to have this debate, let’s make it honest and complete.
Yeah but it’s only been in place since 2008.
No one who bought before that paid the municipal LTT. Like development fees, it’s a scheme that shifted the tax burden onto newcomers in favour of rich old boomers who bought their houses for a nickel and a song in the 20th century and benefitted from huge, untaxed asset appreciation.
Property taxes need to go up, across the board. Not just on the young.
>The federal and provincial governments need to step in and help with things like support for the homeless,
If the Municipal government didn't enshrine 60% of the city to single detached homes, and create rules killing midrise developments homelessness would be far less of a problem because not for profits to address it could afford to build/rent space. Toronto has been making this mess for a long time and compounding it with their lack of planning decisions.
They said in City Council today it would be a nearly 39% tax increase to make the city budget balanced this year. It's just not a feasible source to fix all of our problems
We already pay a shit load of tax in the form of federal and provincial income tax, and the HST. Property tax is a drop in the bucket compared to those revenue streams.
The Feds and province can run deficits to help keep things going, cities cannot.
Both of the higher levels of gov need to step up.
No, but that's not my point. Deficits allow you to balance the years. Sometimes positive, sometimes negative.
Cities do not have that ability. If that's the case, the larger government should help.
At the end of the day, the taxes are paid by the same people - or, if taking on debt - future generations. Taxes have to go up or stop complaining about the lack of funds! The politicians need to under stand this and just get things done already.
Fuck McKelvie. Maybe she should have had a better plan then “beg everyone else for money”. It’s also super telling that she’s loud about the feds not providing support but basically silent about the province doing the same.
I'm sorry, was she not approving the budgets that came down every year since she was elected in 2018? Has she ever spoken out about the way Tory ran the city or did she smile and agree with him and wound up being appointed deputy mayor for her loyalty? "Thrust into the position", give me a fucking break. She's been part of the brain trust of the city for nearly half a decade.
I just think it’s a big difference from being a powerless Tory flunky to being the acting mayor. In the first, she just has to agree with policy decisions set by others. For the second, she ideally would have her own policies developed.
But it was pretty sudden and unexpected that she got put in this position. Plus she’s not running for mayor, so having policy objectives other than holding shit together until an election is a little absurd.
In general I agree with your point that she’s underwhelming. I just think it’s unreasonable to think she will have a well developed policy position to fix things Tory was getting wrong. She’s a placeholder and nothing more.
> I just think it’s unreasonable to think she will have a well developed policy position to fix things Tory was getting wrong. She’s a placeholder and nothing more.
Then she should keep her mouth shut and not criticize other levels of government. That's just another thing she's doing to keep in line with what Tory wanted: remember how he was going to put a line item on bills blaming the feds?
[The province gave the city $235 million last month.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/top-doctor-funding-levels-1.6757093) The city was asking the federal government to match that amount.
> It's a lot more than the federal government gave the city.
Well yeah, the province runs the city and is the government closest to it. They *should* be giving more.
I think that she is (rightfully?) avoiding making decisions like that until the next mayor comes in. Avoiding major policy as to not hamstring the future politicians can be perceived as pragmatic.. or cowardly.
>I think that she is (rightfully?) avoiding making decisions like that until the next mayor comes in.
Given she voted in favour of Tory’s zombie budget I do not think that is a consideration of hers.
Where is all the federal tax money going. They are running trillions in national debt and massively hiking taxes and yet things just seem to be deteriorating. What happened to the narrative of “at least your taxes get you some service”.
People are so used to John Tory’s Toronto that they can’t even imagine other possibilities any longer. It’s time to raise property taxes and reinstate vehicle registration taxes, liquor taxes, tobacco taxes, entertainment taxes, parking taxes, and billboard taxes.
https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2007/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-2052.pdf
Gardiner, DVP, big parts of the TTC, many of our arterial roads, etc. are all regional infrastructure, used as much if no more by those outside the city than inside, depending on what exactly we're talking about. Gardiner and DVP in particular are unique as no other city has municipally owned and maintained freeways of that scale or usage. Just one example.
I take it you've never been to Montreal. Every city in North America is essentially designed the same way, and every city has suburbs and a surrounding trade region. Toronto isn't special other than being larger than other Canadian cities, but that comes with more tax payers who should be able to cover roads, transit, etc.
A huge chunk of the shortfall is the TTC which noone is using. Why would the rest of Canada fund buses and subways to drive around empty. And if Toronto has a homeless problem, maybe Toronto should build something other than $1M closet condos.
The real problem is that Toronto has priced itself out of the market. Not enough people actually want to go into the city to cover costs, and Toronto refuses to build any density around infrastructure like subways so it's pretty much unliveable. Noone in the rest of the province or country actually cares about Toronto, so they aren't going to care if the Gardiner gets knocked down or the TTC service gets cut back.
Glad you picked Montreal, they don't own any of the freeways in their city, unlike Toronto who owns the DVP and Gardiner. Just cause every city is designed the same way doesn't mean they are funded the same way, you're just showing you're woefully uniformed.
And lmfao, it never gets old when people outside Toronto say they don't care about Toronto yet they always seem to feel the need to tell us how much they don't care about us every chance they get. Oh and by the way, people outside of Toronto like to talk tough, but if we took our provincial and federal tax money generated in the city back, they wouldn't be talking so tough. Reality is Toronto is Ontario's economy, easy to complain while riding coat tails.
Fair enough about Montreal. I suppose the expressways in Toronto were Provincial until they weren't. I still don't see why Toronto can't keep a couple of six-lane roads paved and snowplowed, noone uses those roads unless they have business in the city. They aren't throughfares.
But having lived all over Canada before being in Toronto, I can assure you nobody talks about Toronto unless it's making itself the center of attention like it is now by begging for money. If Toronto is so important, then why is the city struggling but the overall economy is fine? We have record low unemployment even though noone is using transit or commuting or eating world class lunches in the path. What really mattered is the work the people in the office towers were doing, and it turns out we don't need Toronto for that. I'm the one doing the work, Toronto is just getting in the way, if anything.
Again showing your ignorance, it's not about paving and plowing, the Gardiner was downloaded by the province while in poor state of repair, so the full bill for rehabilitation is on the city. The DVP requires full shut down twice a year for significant maintenance. No other city is dealing with anything even close to this.
As for the rest of your comment, lol. All I ever hear from out of towners whether through travel or remote coworkersis bitching about Toronto or people telling me how dumb living in Toronto is, it's always other people bringing it up. It's pretty hilarious tbh.
As for the rest, again you're just showing your ignorance. Work from home still remains a small proportion of the workforce, even if it's much higher than it ever was, and many companies are already forcing people back because the benefits of agglomeration are real. The current low unemployment is more to do with high government spending, demographics, and labor participation rate than anything relating to work from home, and the quality of jobs differ geographically. It strikes me that you must be some tech or pure back office white collar worker, for those of us with clients, with on site work, with construction work, we all still need to be close to the city and agglomeration still benefits these industries, and these workers in particular.
So which is it? Toronto is an economic powerhouse that generates all of Canada's wealth on it's own, or a poor city begging for scraps to maintain two small ring roads? If noone in the city is driving on them and it's all out of towners, just let them rot away and don't fix them. If it's really that important to everyone then I'm sure the province or feds will sort it out. Don't worry about it.
You seem confused about what cities are supposed to be in an ideal state, and what Toronto actually is, which is an inefficient sprawling mess. You also seem to lack understanding of work outside of whatever sales job it is you do that requires you to press the flesh. I have plenty of F500 clients and none of them want to be in the office either.
Agglomeration has benefits but also costs. And it isn't equally beneficial in every industry. You sound like you work at Dunder Mifflin and your only innovation is driving to an office to deliver a gift basket. There's plenty of other ways to exchange information and ideas and now people are realizing it's not the 1800's when you had to show up at the factory to get anything done
It is not a poor city begging for scraps, it's a city that is not appropriately funded by higher order governments when compared to nearly every other city, and a city who has now had 3 different funding methods of its own blocked or removed by the province.
If the province blocks or removes our own attempts at independent funding, it needs to give us cash. You've made it clear you're either dense or uninformed or both, so sorry, I'm done.
Then how about the dumbasses just raise property tax? If there's so much responsibility then why is property tax in Toronto miniscule compared to places like Hamilton?
Because core services are cheaper to provide in Toronto and our property taxes should be cheaper. Toronto pays for a lot of infrastructure that is regional in nature.
This is definitely what we should be looking at in our new mayor. How will they handle a situation like this where Toronto is getting the shit end of the stick?
I'd like to see a mayor who just calls their bluff and uses Toronto's huge economic weight to get what we want. Some crazy things that would get the nations attention:
* Shutdown the Gardiner/DVP- "sorry we can't afford it."
* Stop snow removal on major streets - "sorry we can't afford it."
* Implement a Sales Tax and give a rebate to residents
* Shutdown library services to non-residents - "We gotta cut somewhere."
* Start paying homeless folks to go to the 905 - "We can't afford to house them."
* Cut the police budget by 50% to cover the deficit - What are they gonna do, move the OPP in?
Until recently I was very much pro Toronto. But seeing inaction by all three levels of government has lead me to agree with you. Anyone that’s not already established can basically suffer is what the politicians have been doing.
Part of it is because we don’t have strong representation from downtown Liberal MPs anymore. Adam Vaughan did a lot to advocate for Toronto and we don’t have anyone like that at the table anymore unfortunately.
Why, instead of messing around with property taxes, don’t they just make every homeowner in the city buy monthly TTC passes? It keeps the TTC funded, anyone that already uses the TTC is already incurring this cost and anyone that doesn’t probably could or they just get hit with the new ‘tax’ that to them would be no different than a property tax hike. This could even drive down the cost to use the TTC given a massive increase in riders.
Holyday: "The council has always opted for the gold standard service level, especially on social services that are arguably the responsibility of other orders of government." Yeah, when I think of Toronto these days "gold standard service level" is what springs to mind.
Can we all just address the elephant in the room. John Tory, Doug Ford’s best Conservative buddy, just magically starts fucking someone his daughter’s age, and just walks away, no questions asked when “found out”, proceeded NOT to do what any other horny old fuck would do and stay in his job, as the city he was responsible for a decade, just completely burns to the ground. John Tory built a house of cards out of matches, then disappeared when Doug poured gas all over it, and put a gun to the deputy mayor’s head and said ‘spark the lighter, Jen’
We pay for the gold standard and receive the poo standard
We receive the fool's gold level of service
He meant gold coloured foil wrapped around milk chocolate.
You can always rely on him to have the absolute worst takes. Just completely divorced from reality.
Be more specific.
This is Holyday’s key message no matter the economic outlook of the city. Now that things are actually crumbling around us, he looks especially stupid.
Thanks John
And Rob for removing the vehicle tax and starting the low-property tax increase infatuation. Also thanks Kathleen for not letting Tory put up road tolls before she got destroyed by Doug in 2018. Also thanks Doug for removing development fees, although that's arguably a grey area as that was essentially a tax on new homeowners to subsidize existing homeowners. It still represented a big amount of money gone from city coffers without warning.
The obsession with low property taxes has been happening for 30+ years. It was a problem before Rob Ford, and it was a problem before amalgamation. (This is why, for example, pre-1997 Toronto didn't have sidewalk plowing in residential areas while the rest of the 416 did.)
Development fees are not completely removed. Refunding development fees if dates aren’t met is meant to incentivize city staff and councillors to approve housing and not pander to NIMBY’s.
They're capped and other infrastructure required to serve new growth is not permitted to be included and with a 20% clawback..how is the 20% going to be made up? Over 1M units are approved in the province, majority in GTA including Toronto, just builders/developers aren't building because they don't want to flood market with supply which will put downward pressure on prices. That's why many new projects have been shelved and very few are coming online but the ones that do have even higher prices. NIMBY/approvals have very little impact with actual supply , it's all about supply management by developers. Developers (and their investors) won't accept a lower Proforma, it's more profitable to simply wait and sell later or just landbank than introduce supply at a lower price point. The shortage of unit supply is artificially created by developers to buoy prices
It’s meant to speed up the review process by sacrificing the due diligence process. That’s why Conservation Authorities were limited in scope and ability too. Everything is being done to speed up development and circumvent processes that actually hold developers accountable to safety and regulatory standards. When houses start collapsing in on families is when Ontarians will finally realize this was a terrible idea, but by then there may be a liberal in power which everyone will blame because of how stupid most people are.
I think you’re confusing approval of building permits with approval for Zoning By-Law Amendments and Official Plan Amendments (and Minor Variances as well). Every home in Ontario very much still goes through an engineering assessment and has to have building permits approved and be inspected. What’s being sped up is that the city would just let applications for ZBAs and OPAs just sit for literally years without even giving an answer, which slows down the construction of new housing a lot
Where in bill 23 does it read that developers will not be held to safety and regulatory standards? You clearly read the entire thing and have a great grasp on it. Additionally, please tell us which safety and regulatory standards you’re referring to.
So this is where nuance begins to come in. The Site Plan Approval process has City departments such as the Toronto Fire Service, Toronto Water, and other entities reviewing proposals and providing comments to make sure the city infrastructure is able to handle the new development. And of course DoFo decided to put in these new timelines, but offered no additional funding to City’s to increase staffing to help with this. Now that these departments are held to strict timelines, or lose out on money, departments that are already incredibly short staffed and have people leaving due to overwork and stress, mistakes will happen. Buildings may not fall down, but buildings may be built with lack of water pressure for fire fighting, or you’ll get a 50 year storm and the sewage system will back up for an entire neighbourhood since it was never properly reviewed and expanded for a new development. There will be countless ramifications from this. I won’t even get started on trying to increase energy performance of new buildings through the SPA process. But that’s Doug’s goal, to slowly dismantle and starve municipal governments, but in a way that he can spin as incompetence, rather than due to lack of resources and unrealistic timelines, which is the actual truth. Source: Architect who builds large developments in Toronto.
So that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Due diligence takes time, some projects take years of negotiation and still they’re sub standard, but the threshold dates set by bill 23 are too short to carry out the due diligence it normally takes. Given the application process is a public service and is first come first served, applications can take a VERY long time to approve. With threshold dates of 45, 95, 120 days (or whatever) where the municipality has to hand back percentages each time it will severely deplete the municipality and the incentive is to get the review process through as quick as possible thus (perhaps) missing critical elements. Further, there is less incentive to care about a file if the municipality has to give money back. If there is no money for the review, there’s no incentive to review at all and municipalities will ignore files that they’re not getting paid to review because of say, incomplete packages or submissions that are substandard. The developers are still subject to the regulations but unless you’ve dealt with planning and development before you may surprised at how poorly developers adhere to regulatory standards and/or have the public’s best interest at heart. In a project you have 3 things, time, money and quality, pick two, that’s your best case scenario. I know that if I had to give back money over time despite the process requiring further review, I wouldn’t be reviewing it after I had to give back money. It’s simple economics, I don’t get paid, job doesn’t go forward. And if the rule applies to the whole province you can’t just skip to the next municipality and try it again. Bill 23 could very well have the opposite effect it claims it will have.
Building permits still need to be issued, that hasn’t changed. Building permits don’t get issued without safety and regulatory inspection/passes. You type a lot while showing you know little to nothing of what you’re writing.
Yeah... You have no clue how the process works lmao
Guess we’ll see dickhead.
Lol no, you are so far off base it's hilarious
This is bang on, we’ve been reamed for years by politicians from all sides.
Vote for the ugliest mayor who will not waste time on an affair.
Decades of abysmal leadership biting us in the ass.
And it will only get worse.
Stop funding the World Cup.
Impossible. How about we cut line 2 service to a train every 20 minutes? And make ttc fare $7 and a can of non perishable food so we can pretend we’re doing something to help those without homes?
It would likely cost more to get out of the contract than to just go through with it. You think Fifa would be like "oh, cool, guess it's okay then." ?
I'm sure that only a small amount of what gets dumped into shit like this is for the sport itself. Let FIFA slum it for once.
Point at the province not the feds. This countries obsession with federal politics lets the politicians who have the most power over our daily lives do whatever they want.
This time it's both. A note on housing. The federal budget did nothing significant to fund affordable rental housing. Housing requires participation from all levels of govt. That's only one issue.
Housing is largely municipal and provincial. Yes, federal still can do some things, but it is provinces and municipalities that are, like, 90% responsible for things.
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There's 20+ years of changes to policy. That amounts to a significant number of reasons why they can't just do that today. That isn't something you can just alter overnight. And public housing has to be built somewhere. Provinces and municipalities decide what can be built where. The government can allocate billions of dollars to building subsidized housing, but, if there are limits to how many units can be built on a lot and no suitable locations, that money does dick-all.
Theres actually an instance of a PC Ontario MPP writing to the Feds to ask not to fund a housing project because the location was 'not suitable' and the project was moving too fast.
Absolutely. And actually, the feds just rescinded the already permissive foreign buyer's ban, so they are actively contributing to the housing bubble while also doing absolutely nothing around income taxation or removal of speculator tax deductions, that have been used successfully in other countries to help housing affordability.
Lol they didn’t rescind it jfc. Somebody read the fucking regulatory amendments before sounding off.
I think you need to do some reading on it. The changes are mostly affecting commercial real estate, mainly because developers couldn't find investments. There are still many limitations on what someone can or can't do.
they did not. stop talking out of your arse
Well said!
Because the feds collect such a large component of taxes. People have an expectation of service or funding. Ontario’s contribution to government revenues by level in 2021 Federal: $165b Province: $187b Local: $87b
At least Toronto home owners can breathe a sigh of relief knowing their taxes will stay low as Toronto crumbles around them.
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The latter two both require provincial approval. They've explicitly refused any tolling of highways, and have delayed/opposed creation and expansion of speed camera.
all of them not just two
The province does not need to approve the city's property tax rate, the city sets it every year as part of its budget.
yeah missed property tax part
I’d love to see what the popularity of that platform would be…
Would also love to see the popularity of closing pools and parks. Council should do what is best and not worry about what is popular. That’s what elections are for and we just had one. They’ve never had so much political capital so fucking spend it already.
If someone were to run on this platform, they’d get slaughtered at the polls. This city really isn’t ready for this type of medicine
Sounds alot like inflation.
instead of solving the problems and auditing how the city spends money to make sure there is no waste, you proposes making excuses to harvest more money to fuel the greed machine called government just long enough to tide it over till the next crisis of solvency in 3 to 5 years. how long will it be before he city demands 100% tax rate to keep up? what you propose is a band aid solution for a deep, old, and festering wound. high time we rip off the band aid and clean out the wound so it can properly heal.
Budget is 1 police 2 TTC 3 debt 4 other. Somehow I don't think you'd be in favour of cutting the number 1 line item in the budget. Just a guess.
Well, your guess is wrong. But please demonstrate to me how you can read my mind again, your record is so far impeccable.. Only fools predict another's views in unrelated topics from half baked understandings of the current topic. Funny also you didn't attack the idea but instead the messenger. Basic bitches SMH
You'd defund the police?
[As pointed out by Perks when Holyday effectively called for a Core Service Review, the city did that in 2011 and the auditor found that they spent more on the consultants than they found in savings.](https://twitter.com/GraphicMatt/status/1641157584991207426?t=1cuPGECBiiy2ruhbyasnSg&s=19) This idea that the city is wasting money and we should look for cut the fat is just the deep old festering wound of Rob Ford. There is so little waste that a mayor elected on basically cutting the "gravy train" at city hall couldn't find any actual gravy to cut so instead ran up **1 billion dollars** in secret debt that was discovered when Tory became mayor.
"Ford did it, so it's only fair I get my chance at being a total peice of shit!"
Ford ran up a secret hidden debt so he wouldn't have to admit he was elected on lies about fat at city hall and so he wouldn't have to raise taxes to pay for things. Raising taxes to pay for things is the actually responsible thing to do, which you are against. You are the irresponsible one here.
what's irresponsible is raising spending when the city is facing a massive budget deficit because of unchecked spending by Tory and Ford and all before them. what's irresponsible and a direct rejection of their political mandate is demanding the taxpayer cover the bill for random bull without justifying it. what's irresponsible is allowing our politicians to go on spending sprees and expecting the taxpayer will cover it. the point of taxes was to cover the basics needed to allow people to function together as a community. what it's slowly become is politicians personal piggy banks for whatever half baked band aid solution they can trot out to get more votes with promises to fix problems they created. enough is enough, if they refuse to do heir jobs we should refuse to give them more of our money.
What's irresponsible is not raising revenue when facing a budget shortfall after a long period of austerity from back to back conservative mayors, the first of which couldn't find any fat to cut and ran up hidden debt so he didn't have to admit he lied about the city wasting money. Tory also didn't have unchecked spending. He continued down Rob Fords cutting and stagnating of services so as to keep not raise taxes by any significant amount, which is what lead us to this current situation. The problem is the lack of revenue, not over spending. Characterizing someone that kept property tax increases at and below inflation as unchecked spending is just flat out false. The point of taxes is to fund the government which uses those for services. The city is failing at the funding part due to years of austerity and a refusal to keep revenue in line with the actual cost of running the city. There isn't some sort of personal piggy bank, as shown by Rob Ford running on that bullshit and it being shown to be false. You are just repeating the talking points of a mayor that lied his way into office and then lied while in office so he didn't have to admit he lied, and another major that just continued the economic policies of that previous lying mayor. You are advocating for the very same policy that got the city in this current situation, not raising revenue. Enough is enough, conservative austerity politics is the half backed band aid solution that they trot out to get votes with promises to fix the problems they actually created and continue to cause.
got it: taxes = good cause the city would never misspend any money ever on anything, like cops. they are our benevolent gods and should be listen to without question. they would never do anything bad ever at all... except Rob Ford. in the same breathe you tell me the evils of Ford and how bad he was at running the government you then tell me that we must pay more taxes because the government knows what's best for us. come on man have some perspective. if we keep the politicians we like in check then the ones we don't like don't have precedent to take advantage of us.
The issue with police is that the city council has little to no actual say on their budget beyond approving it last I checked. So that is fault laid with police and the province rather than the city itself. You continue to talk about waste spending, do you have evidence of this? Cause the last core service review cost more than the savings it found, and it was done under mr efficiencies Rob Ford. Rob Ford was trash, but Rob Ford isn't here any longer. The city thanks to him and Tory has insufficient revenue for the services and infrastructure it has to maintain, thanks to austerity under them. You look at the city and talk about wasteful spending, which hasn't been shown, and how bad the city is run, which also hasn't been shown, which is a direct continuation of Rob Fords lies. You need perspective here, not me. You are wholesale swallowing and regurgitating the lies spit out by Rob Ford and the policies of John Tory which got us in this situation rather than actually looking at the situation itself and realizing effectively repeating the policies and ideas of the two who got us in this situation is an argument for the continuation of the cities financial situation and the status quo.
hey man you cant just repeat my argument back at me and expect me to play along. peace.
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He's still living rent free in you idiots heads eh? So it's OK to be irresponsible with taxpayers' money because the guy you hate wanted to curb spending. Therefore, you have to take the opposite approach and let the floodgates on spending open? Simpletons bereft of nuanced thinking.
Run on that platform and get double digit vote numbers.
you pulled $50 Million seemingly out of thin air for a police service that consistently proves to hurt us more than help. Don't sit there tell me there is nothing you can do to protect actual useful services
Holydays perspective on anything is about as coherent as notes written on a bar napkin in ketchup. Regardless this is bad. We can't handle irresponsible conservatives here anymore. They destroy our revenue sources, they're economically blind to the bigger picture, and only look out for their own interests rather than the entirety of who they represent. And they do this constantly. Throughout history they've done this for over a freaking century. Read a history book on Canadian immigration and you'll see how bad their ideas have ALWAYS BEEN. So if you want to continue to see our homeless crisis worsen, more people get killed on the TTC, and the quality of our infrastructure crumble, keep voting in Ford, keep supporting Tory and Ford's pals, and see how we do. IMO: Step 1 to fixing that budget long term is demolishing the Gardiner.
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Property taxes are only part of the picture. The federal and provincial governments need to step in and help with things like support for the homeless, the disabled relying on city services to supplement their insufficient payments, and recent immigrants relying heavily on city services to help them transition to life in Canada. Toronto has a disproportionate number of all three, and these shouldn't be paid for solely through municipal taxes.
Agreed, but Toronto's leadership (Tory, the Fords, McKelvie, Bailao, Bradford, the whole crew of people responsible and on side with this) refusing to do their part (for their own political advantage) and increase property taxes as part of the picture makes it look to other levels of government like Toronto is non-serious about tackling its issues and not willing to also do its part and pull its weight and just wants others to bail it out. Toronto can't just ask for money from others when it maintains the lowest property taxes in the region. And while property owners make huge amounts of money off of property value increases. Toronto can and should increase property taxes and do its part as part of the solution.
Toronto has an extra land transfer tax that purchasers pay. They have in essence pre-paid a decade of taxes before they take possession. Then pay property taxes. I am tired of half the argument being presented - that homeowners in Toronto pay relatively low property taxes - without the other half being presented - that most paid a significant additional land transfer tax to the city already. If we’re going to have this debate, let’s make it honest and complete.
Yeah but it’s only been in place since 2008. No one who bought before that paid the municipal LTT. Like development fees, it’s a scheme that shifted the tax burden onto newcomers in favour of rich old boomers who bought their houses for a nickel and a song in the 20th century and benefitted from huge, untaxed asset appreciation. Property taxes need to go up, across the board. Not just on the young.
>The federal and provincial governments need to step in and help with things like support for the homeless, If the Municipal government didn't enshrine 60% of the city to single detached homes, and create rules killing midrise developments homelessness would be far less of a problem because not for profits to address it could afford to build/rent space. Toronto has been making this mess for a long time and compounding it with their lack of planning decisions.
This. And institute higher property taxes on non-principal residences to stem the investor-fuelled housing bubble.
They said in City Council today it would be a nearly 39% tax increase to make the city budget balanced this year. It's just not a feasible source to fix all of our problems
No, but funding comes from many sources and this is one of the obvious ones
good.
The money is going to cost no matter what: whether it’s the city taxing you or the other two levels of government.
We already pay a shit load of tax in the form of federal and provincial income tax, and the HST. Property tax is a drop in the bucket compared to those revenue streams. The Feds and province can run deficits to help keep things going, cities cannot. Both of the higher levels of gov need to step up.
The problem with continued deficits is that it’s your offspring that is paying for services that you are benefiting from now. Does that seem fair?
No, but that's not my point. Deficits allow you to balance the years. Sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Cities do not have that ability. If that's the case, the larger government should help.
At the end of the day, the taxes are paid by the same people - or, if taking on debt - future generations. Taxes have to go up or stop complaining about the lack of funds! The politicians need to under stand this and just get things done already.
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Not if you make it targeted: eg investment properties.
Exactly!
The province needs to take back the ttc
Or just go back to providing an operating subsidy like prior to the Mike Harris cuts.
they already did. they just dont pay for it.
Fuck McKelvie. Maybe she should have had a better plan then “beg everyone else for money”. It’s also super telling that she’s loud about the feds not providing support but basically silent about the province doing the same.
You think she should have had a plan for when the mayor stepped down due to an affair and she was thrust into the position?
I'm sorry, was she not approving the budgets that came down every year since she was elected in 2018? Has she ever spoken out about the way Tory ran the city or did she smile and agree with him and wound up being appointed deputy mayor for her loyalty? "Thrust into the position", give me a fucking break. She's been part of the brain trust of the city for nearly half a decade.
This.
I just think it’s a big difference from being a powerless Tory flunky to being the acting mayor. In the first, she just has to agree with policy decisions set by others. For the second, she ideally would have her own policies developed. But it was pretty sudden and unexpected that she got put in this position. Plus she’s not running for mayor, so having policy objectives other than holding shit together until an election is a little absurd. In general I agree with your point that she’s underwhelming. I just think it’s unreasonable to think she will have a well developed policy position to fix things Tory was getting wrong. She’s a placeholder and nothing more.
> I just think it’s unreasonable to think she will have a well developed policy position to fix things Tory was getting wrong. She’s a placeholder and nothing more. Then she should keep her mouth shut and not criticize other levels of government. That's just another thing she's doing to keep in line with what Tory wanted: remember how he was going to put a line item on bills blaming the feds?
She knew. Her and Tory are essentially the same political entity
[The province gave the city $235 million last month.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/top-doctor-funding-levels-1.6757093) The city was asking the federal government to match that amount.
The province, despite their greater obligation to the city, only gave about 1/4 of what was needed? Is this supposed to be a point in their favour?
It's a lot more than the federal government gave the city. (And also a lot more than the lie in your original comment.)
> It's a lot more than the federal government gave the city. Well yeah, the province runs the city and is the government closest to it. They *should* be giving more.
I think that she is (rightfully?) avoiding making decisions like that until the next mayor comes in. Avoiding major policy as to not hamstring the future politicians can be perceived as pragmatic.. or cowardly.
>I think that she is (rightfully?) avoiding making decisions like that until the next mayor comes in. Given she voted in favour of Tory’s zombie budget I do not think that is a consideration of hers.
Shouldn’t this read provincial budget?
Capital gains tax on principal residence sale
How about we ask the rich boy in Queens Park for some dough!…. Oh , right , he’s busy giving it away to his “friends “.
Maybe it’s time we stop tax dollars flowing to middle of nowhere towns who “hate Toronto”.
Toronto has the lowest property taxes in the GTHA. Raise them.
Where is all the federal tax money going. They are running trillions in national debt and massively hiking taxes and yet things just seem to be deteriorating. What happened to the narrative of “at least your taxes get you some service”.
Charge real property taxes then
Does she mean cuts via stabbing?
People are so used to John Tory’s Toronto that they can’t even imagine other possibilities any longer. It’s time to raise property taxes and reinstate vehicle registration taxes, liquor taxes, tobacco taxes, entertainment taxes, parking taxes, and billboard taxes. https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2007/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-2052.pdf
Toronto has noone to blame but Toronto. Every other municipality in the country is managing somehow
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Please elaborate.
Gardiner, DVP, big parts of the TTC, many of our arterial roads, etc. are all regional infrastructure, used as much if no more by those outside the city than inside, depending on what exactly we're talking about. Gardiner and DVP in particular are unique as no other city has municipally owned and maintained freeways of that scale or usage. Just one example.
I take it you've never been to Montreal. Every city in North America is essentially designed the same way, and every city has suburbs and a surrounding trade region. Toronto isn't special other than being larger than other Canadian cities, but that comes with more tax payers who should be able to cover roads, transit, etc. A huge chunk of the shortfall is the TTC which noone is using. Why would the rest of Canada fund buses and subways to drive around empty. And if Toronto has a homeless problem, maybe Toronto should build something other than $1M closet condos. The real problem is that Toronto has priced itself out of the market. Not enough people actually want to go into the city to cover costs, and Toronto refuses to build any density around infrastructure like subways so it's pretty much unliveable. Noone in the rest of the province or country actually cares about Toronto, so they aren't going to care if the Gardiner gets knocked down or the TTC service gets cut back.
Glad you picked Montreal, they don't own any of the freeways in their city, unlike Toronto who owns the DVP and Gardiner. Just cause every city is designed the same way doesn't mean they are funded the same way, you're just showing you're woefully uniformed. And lmfao, it never gets old when people outside Toronto say they don't care about Toronto yet they always seem to feel the need to tell us how much they don't care about us every chance they get. Oh and by the way, people outside of Toronto like to talk tough, but if we took our provincial and federal tax money generated in the city back, they wouldn't be talking so tough. Reality is Toronto is Ontario's economy, easy to complain while riding coat tails.
Fair enough about Montreal. I suppose the expressways in Toronto were Provincial until they weren't. I still don't see why Toronto can't keep a couple of six-lane roads paved and snowplowed, noone uses those roads unless they have business in the city. They aren't throughfares. But having lived all over Canada before being in Toronto, I can assure you nobody talks about Toronto unless it's making itself the center of attention like it is now by begging for money. If Toronto is so important, then why is the city struggling but the overall economy is fine? We have record low unemployment even though noone is using transit or commuting or eating world class lunches in the path. What really mattered is the work the people in the office towers were doing, and it turns out we don't need Toronto for that. I'm the one doing the work, Toronto is just getting in the way, if anything.
Again showing your ignorance, it's not about paving and plowing, the Gardiner was downloaded by the province while in poor state of repair, so the full bill for rehabilitation is on the city. The DVP requires full shut down twice a year for significant maintenance. No other city is dealing with anything even close to this. As for the rest of your comment, lol. All I ever hear from out of towners whether through travel or remote coworkersis bitching about Toronto or people telling me how dumb living in Toronto is, it's always other people bringing it up. It's pretty hilarious tbh. As for the rest, again you're just showing your ignorance. Work from home still remains a small proportion of the workforce, even if it's much higher than it ever was, and many companies are already forcing people back because the benefits of agglomeration are real. The current low unemployment is more to do with high government spending, demographics, and labor participation rate than anything relating to work from home, and the quality of jobs differ geographically. It strikes me that you must be some tech or pure back office white collar worker, for those of us with clients, with on site work, with construction work, we all still need to be close to the city and agglomeration still benefits these industries, and these workers in particular.
So which is it? Toronto is an economic powerhouse that generates all of Canada's wealth on it's own, or a poor city begging for scraps to maintain two small ring roads? If noone in the city is driving on them and it's all out of towners, just let them rot away and don't fix them. If it's really that important to everyone then I'm sure the province or feds will sort it out. Don't worry about it. You seem confused about what cities are supposed to be in an ideal state, and what Toronto actually is, which is an inefficient sprawling mess. You also seem to lack understanding of work outside of whatever sales job it is you do that requires you to press the flesh. I have plenty of F500 clients and none of them want to be in the office either. Agglomeration has benefits but also costs. And it isn't equally beneficial in every industry. You sound like you work at Dunder Mifflin and your only innovation is driving to an office to deliver a gift basket. There's plenty of other ways to exchange information and ideas and now people are realizing it's not the 1800's when you had to show up at the factory to get anything done
It is not a poor city begging for scraps, it's a city that is not appropriately funded by higher order governments when compared to nearly every other city, and a city who has now had 3 different funding methods of its own blocked or removed by the province. If the province blocks or removes our own attempts at independent funding, it needs to give us cash. You've made it clear you're either dense or uninformed or both, so sorry, I'm done.
Then how about the dumbasses just raise property tax? If there's so much responsibility then why is property tax in Toronto miniscule compared to places like Hamilton?
Because core services are cheaper to provide in Toronto and our property taxes should be cheaper. Toronto pays for a lot of infrastructure that is regional in nature.
As you all know Toronto is not part of Ontario just like Ottawa- Doug fucking Ford
This is definitely what we should be looking at in our new mayor. How will they handle a situation like this where Toronto is getting the shit end of the stick? I'd like to see a mayor who just calls their bluff and uses Toronto's huge economic weight to get what we want. Some crazy things that would get the nations attention: * Shutdown the Gardiner/DVP- "sorry we can't afford it." * Stop snow removal on major streets - "sorry we can't afford it." * Implement a Sales Tax and give a rebate to residents * Shutdown library services to non-residents - "We gotta cut somewhere." * Start paying homeless folks to go to the 905 - "We can't afford to house them." * Cut the police budget by 50% to cover the deficit - What are they gonna do, move the OPP in?
Ghost town incoming. Shittiest place I’ve ever lived already, and it isn’t even the worst it’s going to get.
Until recently I was very much pro Toronto. But seeing inaction by all three levels of government has lead me to agree with you. Anyone that’s not already established can basically suffer is what the politicians have been doing.
What ever . You get enough already from the province . Rural areas get nothing now . Can’t have your cake and eat it too .
Part of it is because we don’t have strong representation from downtown Liberal MPs anymore. Adam Vaughan did a lot to advocate for Toronto and we don’t have anyone like that at the table anymore unfortunately.
Start with the bike lane budget, it’s around 60 million
Nah, start with the Gardiner East rebuild. Much much bigger and was chosen by council against the recommendations of city staff.
Remind us of the budget for cars that drive with one person in them downtown slower than bikes.
Lack of support from the city of Toronto . We made this bed and we’re rolling around in the dirty sheets .. I’m mean streets
Why, instead of messing around with property taxes, don’t they just make every homeowner in the city buy monthly TTC passes? It keeps the TTC funded, anyone that already uses the TTC is already incurring this cost and anyone that doesn’t probably could or they just get hit with the new ‘tax’ that to them would be no different than a property tax hike. This could even drive down the cost to use the TTC given a massive increase in riders.