John Tory Willing to Take the Road Less Travelled

December 5, 2019

On December 4, 2019, Mayor of Toronto John Tory took a bold stand for a politician these days in supporting a plan to extend and increase a property tax levy called the city building fund, which would go towards public transit repairs and more affordable housing.

In a CBC Metro Morning interview with Matt Galloway on December 5, 2019, Tory defended this bold move, saying that Toronto could not afford to NOT find funding for these integral parts of the city’s infrastructure. Fix Our Schools believes the same could be said about pubicly funded schools and education. Ontario cannot afford to NOT find proper funding for this integral part of our society and for the crumbling buildings where Ontario children spend their days trying to learn.

 

A property tax levy, such as the one being proposed by Toronto City Council, is one of the few revenue tools available to municipal governments. However, our provincial and federal governments have a much larger toolbox for adding revenue to public coffers, and must start looking at how corporate taxes ought to contribute more in tax dollars to the society from which they benefit. It is time to acknowledge that the public goods we say we want require proper government funding and simply cannot be sustained through “finding efficiencies”.

Tax is not a four-letter word. Really. It’s not. Thank you to John Tory for taking the road less travelled and acknowledging that all levels of governments must dig into their tool boxes to find the appropriate funding sources to ensure that critical public goods like our publicly funded education system continue to be strong. Recent research shows that 90% of Ontarians support investing in school infrastructure and that Ontarians are twice as likely to say spending money on public education is more important than eliminating the deficit.