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What Toronto really needs is a mayor and councillors who unlike Dunsel, do not waste their time on studies and reports that discover the obvious

Shocker: Toronto councillor learns people don’t want to pay more taxes



It was a revelation that surprised long-term city councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong but hardly anyone else. People in Toronto feel they are overtaxed and do not want to pay anymore in property or other taxes.
Denzil should really be called Dunsel. Dunsel is a Starfleet Academy word from the old Star Trek series that midshipmen used to describe someone or something that has no useful function. It describes Minnan-Wong to a tee. According to Minnan-Wong, a member of the public works committee and an executive committee member, council in the past had received deputations suggesting taxes should be raised to pay for all the frilly things city council wants to do. As they say, talk is cheap. Beginning in 2012, the city began a program allowing property taxpayers to pay over and above what their property was assessed at. Last year, 768,000 tax bills were sent out and out of the over three-quarter of a million assessments, only 218 residents opted to pay more. The total take from this venture was just under $20,000. To put that money in perspective, the kiddie kouncillors could spend that amount on a week’s worth of snacks. Why they needed a formal program is another indication of just how bad Minnan-Wong and his colleagues operate. Just as with federal income tax, the amount a taxpayer is required to pay is simply a minimum amount. Taxpayers can always pay more and the government will always accept it. No one has yet gone to jail, had their income garnisheed, or their property seized because they dared to pay too much in taxes.

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Unlike income taxes, property taxes have no relation to income or the ability to pay. Based on the assessed value of the home, it doesn’t matter if the owner has a multi-million dollar income or is a retired person living on a fixed income. Yet this member of the executive committee obviously thought enough people would pay more if only they were told they could do it. Dunsel and his buddies on council would have taken in more money if they all stood on Yonge Street with empty Tim Hortons cups and begged for money. What is truly sad is that the Dunsel needed a report to tell him the obvious; Toronto residents feel they are overtaxed and do not want to pay more. And many people think Mayor Rob Ford is a joke because he smoked crack while being in a drunken stupor. It is simply common sense that people do not want to pay more. Those who advocate for tax increases have always had the option to pay more themselves but seldom ever do. This is no different than climate change. People are always willing to pay more money to save the planet, until they are actually required to pay a carbon tax or an amount directly tied to global warming. Then they object. In a condescending article in the Toronto Star, Edward Keenan criticized Minnan-Wong writing if the councillor ever had opened a textbook he would have learned what is in the best interests of the “collective” is not in the best interests of the individual. Taxation is the solution to problems of the collective and more taxes are needed to provide everything the collective wants. Everyone pays and everyone benefits. Well, not really. Necessary services such as policing or fixing potholes are things that individuals cannot provide and must be paid for by the state and can only be financed through taxes. Even the unwashed masses, dumber than Dunsel if possible, can understand this. What people are fed up with and why they don’t want to pay more taxes is that a lot of the money doesn’t benefit the so-called collective such as constructing residences for starving artists. It benefits the councillors who can feel good about themselves and it benefits the special interest group of starving artists who can now sit around and dream rather than go out and get a real job. Hardworking taxpayers get nothing back and therefore do not want to pay. Councillors like Minnan-Wong have a bad habit of wasting too much time on ridiculous idiotic matters such as putting in a program to get people to voluntarily pay more. Last week Councillor Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, who was appointed to council after Adam Vaughan quit to run federally for the Liberals, decided to spend the last city council meeting arguing the words “all thy sons command” in the national anthem be changed to “all of us command” so it would not be sexist. Ramkhalawansingh either doesn’t know or doesn’t care, the words to O Canada is not a municipal issue. And then there was mayoral candidate Olivia Chow who advocates a citywide ban on firearms. Without going into the ridiculous argument that a municipal ban would somehow force criminals to disarm lest they breach a city bylaw, firearms fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. This is one reason Chow, once a frontrunner in the race, is now in third behind John Tory and Ford. What Toronto really needs is a mayor and councillors who unlike Dunsel, do not waste their time on studies and reports that discover the obvious. Minnnan-Wong would have known very few people would be interested in voluntarily paying more in taxes if only he had deigned to speak to the people he governs.


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Arthur Weinreb -- Bio and Archives

Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. Arthur’s latest book, Ford Nation: Why hundreds of thousands of Torontonians supported their conservative crack-smoking mayor is available at Amazon. Racism and the Death of Trayvon Martin is also available at Smashwords. His work has appeared on Newsmax.com,  Drudge Report, Foxnews.com.

Older articles (2007) by Arthur Weinreb


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