The Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario has released a report this week on reducing gridlock in and around the province’s major centres. The report, written by Trent University Professor Harry Kitchen, recommends that tolls be imposed on the 400 series of highways, major expressways and just about any other road that Dalton’s little heart desires.
The reasons for imposing such tolls other than to reduce gridlock is to take in revenue for the crumbling infrastructure and the trendy current reason for dinging taxpayers; to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report also recommends a Greater Toronto Area fuel tax. According to Professor Kitchen, a six cent a litre municipal tax (which will, of course be in addition to the provincial tax, federal tax and GST) would bring in up to $420 million a year.
Wow, if Professor Kitchen came up with these ideas all by himself; that if you increase taxes on necessaries like gasoline will cause revenues to go up he deserves the Order of Ontario. Much like the provincial government, the simple answer is always to increase taxes.
Of course if road tolls are implemented, there will never be any guarantee that the money raised from these taxes will find their way to fixing roads and easing congestion. In socialist Canada, a government can always tell the lemmings that the money went to health care and there will be few if any complaints.
We are, of course living in a highly technological age and so if road tolls are implemented they will be collected automatically in the same way that money is currently collected on the now infamous Highway 407. That will be a good thing because some people will end up contributing to the cause whether they actually drove on the particular road or not.
So far, the province has not appeared to have much interest in implementing Professor Kitchen’s recommendations. Greg Sorbara, the former Finance Minister (pop quiz; who is the current Finance Minister; and does anyone care?) indicated that Ontarians pay enough taxes and the federal government should be contributing more money to reduce gridlock.
But how long can the tax and spend McGuinty government avoid making a tax grab, especially when it will help the environment? Now that we have fixed election dates, if tolls on major highways are imposed in the relatively near future, Ontarians will be so used to it by 2011 that it won’t be any big deal. And it helps that when it comes to having to fight another election, the McGuinty Liberals have virtually no opposition.
These recommendations will be a hard sell. Even the converts to the global warming religion don’t particularly want to pay out of their own pockets to clean up the environment. But the reality is that gridlock in the province has been getting worse and worse and no government, provincial or local, is going to pay to remedy the situation out of existing funds. Despite the huge surpluses that are raked in by the federal government, we can’t realistically expect Ottawa to write a cheque and make everything okay.
Imposing tolls on roads and any new tax on a litre of gasoline will increase costs to businesses using the province’s highways that will result in job layoffs and higher consumer prices. But these taxes are just too tempting for a government that loves to tax to pass up.
The city of Toronto would be a much better place in which to live if Mayor David Miller was right more than occasionally. But he’s right about the toll roads. Placing tolls on the Don Valley Expressway and the Gardiner will just result in more congestion on adjacent residential areas. These neighbourhoods will be ruined and there will be more idling vehicles.
The government may not seem too eager to embrace this easy tax grab. But it’s the only way that we will ever reduce, let alone solve, the ever increasing problem of gridlock.
