Toronto Star Premier delays key rulings
Aug. 16, 2006. 01:00 AM First, property tax assessments. Now, downloading of health and social service costs onto cities. Faced with two of the most intractable problems that have bedevilled Ontario for decades, Premier Dalton McGuinty has jumped into the pool — with one foot. It's a hurry-up and go-slow approach. For the issues are so complex and befuddling that they form a political cesspool waiting to engulf the Liberals. So, instead of confronting them with fixes too controversial to contemplate in the year leading up to a provincial election, McGuinty is promising to do something later rather than sooner. The strategy might work — for the Liberals. It may be good politics. But those seeking a real and lasting solution are wise to remain skeptical. For example, on property tax assessments, only a broad rejection of assessments based on the market value of a property will satisfy the most ardent and vocal critics of the assessment system. No amount of computer fixes and improvements to the quality of the annual assessments will change this fact: market value assessment is volatile and property owners whose properties experience a spike in value will scream bloody murder when their taxes go up. If the government gets the assessors to perfect the quality of the estimates of one's property values, the annual losers, those whose values objectively increase, will still be furious and little would have been gained by the review. And if McGuinty scraps the market value of one's property as the key factor in determining property taxes — replacing it with something else — Ontario would be travelling down a road not taken by many and one that will lead to as many furious property owners as the current system delivers. More than one civil servant at Queen's Park were seen running away and screaming in anguish when the Liberals announced this review in answer to scathing criticism from the province's ombudsman Andre Marin. The reaction Monday was less dramatic when McGuinty told the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) he would review the fiscal imbalance between Ontario and its cities and towns. Everyone knows the score on this. It has to do with money, nothing else. Municipalities have little money and many services to provide — services dumped on them by the province over the decades. We've been down this road before. David Crombie headed the Who Does What exercise in trying to disentangle services jointly provided by the province and municipalities. Anne Golden of the United Way did the same. Few of their recommendations would change today, if they revisited the issue. Universally, analysts say it is the province — with its access to income and sales taxes — that should pay for social services and housing and health. Municipalities get their money from property taxes only and should pay for hard services like roads and sewers. McGuinty has all but admitted he believes this to be just. It is the Mike Harris government (and others before him) that created the current mess, he says. He is just trying to fix it. But why 18 months of study before action? What will 18 months of study uncover that decades of study and review have not unearthed? Nothing, really. Except, it gives McGuinty time to get past the provincial elections. His advisers say he needs the time because his hands are even more constrained than previous governments. Harris so skewed the funding arrangements between the two orders of government that reversing it will be more difficult than ever. AMO puts the imbalance at $3 billion, if Ontario is to fall in line with the provincial-municipal relationships that exist in other Canadian provinces. Critics are justified in slamming the government for choosing the politically expedient path. Opposition leader John Tory, one day after McGuinty's announcement, speaking to AMO, said: "We can talk all we want about how the imbalance was created but one fact is clear...Mr. McGuinty has owned it, free and clear, for three years. He has a majority government which could have fixed it... I am committed to acting with dispatch where he has not." For municipalities, 2008 can't come too soon. Click here to READ RESPONSE by Dave Barnett, Corporate Secretary, Canadian National Taxpayers Coalition (CNTC) |