Letter to the Editor
Editor,
Re : Report by Stephen Vance March 10, 2016 on “Massive Municipal Service Delivery Review”.
I have not been a Meaford resident long enough to comment on the local services. However, whenever I see a proposal such as this, be it federal, provincial, or municipal, I feel an attack on my financial resources is imminent.
Case in point. When Mike Harris became Premier of Ontario in the 1990s, he initiated a similar review, called “Who Pays for What?” It was going to be an exercise to make taxation more fair and it was to be, above all, REVENUE NEUTRAL.
We all know what happened to that concept. Many provincial highways were downloaded to municipalities for upkeep. For greater economy and taxpayer savings, municipalities were amalgamated, and so on. However, I am grateful that they did not try to sell us London Bridge.
Reading the comments announcing the review by CAO Denyse Morrissey, it becomes obvious that the review results will bring loss of some services and increased cost for others. The need for a review is obvious when one looks at the elephant in the room: ever rising costs.
Operating and capital. All Ontario municipalities are faced with this reality. Why is that so?
Back to basics. Municipalities are creations of the province. They are governed by the Municipal Act and its regulations as well as other provincial policies. These are the mandatory services the CAO speaks of.
The only source of revenue municipalities have are PROPERTY taxes.
To put a cushion between provincial politicians and irate taxpayers, Premier Harris in 2000 created a Crown Corporation from the old Property Assessment Department in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation. MPAC for short. Think your assessment is too high? Don’t call your MPP, got nothing to do with him. You have to deal with the kind and compassionate folks at the corporation. They determine the value of your property. Municipalities then set their property taxes based on the value of your assessment. I would like to look at only one of the mandatory services, namely policing.
We all must agree, that police are an essential service. Not only in our municipality, but nation wide. Police keep the peace and enforce laws.
The feds have the exclusive responsibility under the Canadian Constitution to make criminal law.
Provinces are responsible for enforcing criminal law and to pass their own Provincial Statutes. Both criminal laws and provincial statutes carry the power of arrest.
Municipalities pass BY-LAWS under the provisions of the Municipal Act. They do NOT have the power of arrest. Most municipalities have their own By-Law enforcement officers.
This raises a question in my simple mind: if police enforce federal and provincial laws, why are municipalities responsible for the cost of policing?
The senior governments have all the financial tools, income taxes, consumption taxes , while municipalities have none of them.
Furthermore, federal and provincial policies and decisions impact directly on the administrative costs municipalities are faced with.
To mention just a few, immigration, environmental and a myriad of others, too many to mention here. Yes, even NAFTA has depleted the manufacturing sector in small town Ontario (Canada?), where municipal governments are faced with huge tax losses caused by empty factories and storefronts.
From my vantage point, what is needed, is a Federal/Provincial Services Delivery Review that makes municipalities equal partners when the taxation pie is cut up.
But then, I have been called an opinionated b@$*#rd before.
Sincerely,
Karl Braeker, Meaford
