Watch the video above: Gas tax is a tough sell to Toronto politicians. Jackson Proskow reports.
TORONTO – City councillors are split on whether the province should hike the tax on gasoline and increase corporate income taxes in order to build public transit in the region, or find spending cuts.
A committee appointed by the Ontario Liberal government suggested in a report Thursday gas taxes in the province be hiked between three and 10 cents a litre, which, the report estimates, would generate up to $800 million annually.
But councillor Doug Ford said the Kathleen Wynne government should look to efficiencies, not higher taxes, in order to fund public transit.
“Out of a 128 billion dollar budget they can’t find 2.5 per cent?” he said on CP24. He didn’t say however how he would pay for it.
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He also suggested the increased gas tax would force the cost of everything to rise due to increase shipping costs.
“This is going to affect every industry in the city, it’s going to affect every household, it’s going to affect every single person that gets behind the wheel; we can’t afford it,” he said. “Five cents a litre will kill our economy.”
Read More: Panel recommends gas tax hike to fund public transit
Anne Golden, chair of the committee which drafted the report, said doing nothing about congestion could cost the average driver an extra $700 each year. The report estimated the gas tax increase would cost the average household $80 in the first year and approximately $260 after eight years.
TTC chair Karen Stintz however wouldn’t say she supports a tax hike but did say, via Twitter, she supports dedicated funding.
The Toronto Region Board of Trade President and CEO Carol Wilding said whatever the revenue tool used to pay for transit, “we need to get on with it and get to action and to stop staring at the problem.”
Mayor Rob Ford has yet to comment on the newly released transit report but in April displayed his displeasure with revenue tools in general by pretending to vomit. At the time, he said a casino in Toronto could pay for transit.
Watch the video below (Apr. 2): Rob Ford pretends to vomit when asked about revenue tools.
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Since April however, the mayor voted to increase property taxes and development charges in order to pay for an extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway line into Scarborough.
Norm Kelly, the city’s de facto mayor, told reporters following a speech at the Toronto Region Board of Trade that how to pay for transit was always an “elephant in the room” when he sat on the Metrolinx board but added that governments will have to come up with the money somehow.
“If you’re going to build out a repaid transit system throughout the gta over the next 25 years… then you have to finance it,” he said. “You have to pay for its construction and its operation and it’s going to be very, very expensive.”
He said he wouldn’t want to rely on savings and efficiencies as was suggested by the Ford brothers.
But he added that if new revenue tools are implemented, they should have as wide a revenue base as possible. One way to accomplish that, he said, is to petition the federal government for money.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable, as I said in my remarks here today, to approach the other orders of government, particularly the national government and get them involved; we are there premier city,” he said.
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TTC CEO Andy Byford also said that governments need to be committed to paying for transit expansion. The TTC, he said, is badly underfunded.
“Over the next ten years, the TTC needs an additional $9 billion, that’s big money, and at the moment about $2.6 billion of that capital expenditure ask if unfunded,” he said. “These are not nice-to-have items, these are critical items.”
While the Big Move isn’t limited to Toronto it does include the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and the so-called downtown relief line. Byford maintains the relief line is the city’s foremost priority.
“Quite simply, if we do nothing by 2031, the Yonge line will be saturated,” he told reporters Thursday. “So I maintain that the downtown relief line, call it what you will, still remains the number one priority for me, and I will continue to make that case.”
Byford plans to create a task force that will lobby the provincial and federal government for stable funding for public transit.
Despite increased ridership, the TTC’s subsidy from the city has been frozen for the last two years.
“If you’re customer numbers are rising and you’re subsidy remains the same, the subsidy which was already the lowest in north America, that makes that job more difficult,” he said. “Enough is enough, with a predicted 2.3 per cent rise in customer numbers over the next year; we have to drive up that subsidy.”
– With files from Jackson Proskow and The Canadian Press
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