Shelley Carroll, the city of Toronto’s budget chief told a meeting last week that the city needs a new tax to offset the growing deficit of the current council who, if proficient at anything, it is spending other peoples’ money. Carroll went so far as to say that Mayor David Miller was seriously considering a municipal tax before he announced that he would not seek a third term in office.
Carroll, as are most of the current crop of councillors, is considering running for the position of the city’s chief magistrate. She is obviously politically astute enough to realize that Toronto is one of the few places in the world where a politician can run on a platform of increasing taxes or bringing in new ones and win. After all, the “make the rich pay” policies will receive the support of the downtown starry-eyed socialist elites and the pampered union members, without whose votes these candidates could never be successful.
Tax the rich schemes
Carroll’s reasons are that other major North American cities have municipal taxes and therefore Toronto’s ruling politicians are just so hard done by. New York and Chicago were used as examples in order to justify what is just another cash grab. It never ceases to amaze how the American-hating left is quick to point to the United States as a shining example if it happens to suit their purpose. As for New York, Ms. Carroll might be wise to wait awhile before using the Big Apple as an example to emulate. The new “tax the rich” schemes are causing the moneyed classes to leave the city and the state of New York in droves. If the present trend continues there will be few people left to fork over enough money to keep the city going. As far as Chicago goes, it has always been held up as a beacon to follow in Toronto. Well, with a little hard work we can at least catch up to the Windy City’s murder rate.
If a city sales tax is imposed it will end up working about as well as the old city of Toronto smoking bylaw did. When the city prohibited smoking in restaurants and bars, people just went out to the ‘burbs where they could partake of tobacco after their meals or during the course of imbibing. Businesses that were located at or near the boundaries of Toronto suffered the most as their customers left to travel a few more blocks to enjoy more freedom. Depending upon what good and services will be taxed, those city residents who are mobile and who can afford it, will simply travel to 905 country to avoid the tax. This is another reason that despite the denied war on the car in Toronto and the billions being poured into public transit, Torontonians will never abandon their vehicles.
Carroll says that taxes must be raised because services cannot be cut to widows on fixed incomes and other vulnerable people in Toronto. The husband of the widow in the budget chief’s example may be dead but she isn’t. The widow surviving on a fixed income still has to buy things and will have to pay the tax that Carroll seems so proud of. Those on fixed incomes; the elderly and the poor will of course be the least able to escape the city to seek lower taxed goods. And of course Carroll makes no promises to cut other types of spending such as the preoccupation of the current council to save the entire planet from global warming. Presumably all this money is spent to help the vulnerable too.
There can be no city of Toronto sales tax without the approval of the provincial government and right now, Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson is saying that the province has no intention of authorizing such a tax. Not to worry. When the Kiddie Kouncillors formally approach Daddy Dalton (apparently he likes alliteration) we’ll have a brand new municipal tax. Whenever taxes are concerned when Dalton McGuinty Jr. says “no”, he really means “yes”.
Just electing a new mayor in 2010 is not enough. Incumbents like Carroll have to go too in order to prevent the total demise of Canada’s largest city.
