In a Monday morning
news conference with Premier Kathleen Wynne, the mayor announced that he is asking Wynne to grant Toronto a special power to install traffic cameras and photo radar.
Mayor Tory explained his request for the power to monitor and ticket Toronto drivers using traffic cameras by citing “
police budgetary concerns” and public safety concerns.
Certainly there are police budgetary concerns in Toronto. Over half of Toronto Police employees are on the Sunshine List, earning over $100,000. Policing costs are the single biggest item in the city budget, this year making up more than
$1 billion of Toronto’s
$10.1 billion budget.
But instead of making changes to bring the police budget under control, the Toronto Police Services Board
buried a $200,000 KPMG report aimed at controlling ballooning costs, and then council approved a nearly
2.5 per cent increase in the police budget.
Where did the money for this bump in the police budget come from? The taxpayers of course. Rather than accepting the recommendations of the report they commissioned, or adopting Councillor Michael Thompson’s
motions for cuts to the police budget between $12 and $24 million, city council approved a
property tax hike.
Mayor Tory needs the political courage to actually tackle the issue of out of control policing costs, and the solution is not traffic cameras.
Traffic cameras are not about cost savings, they are about revenue generation.
When traffic cameras were introduced in Chicago in 2014, the city saw an
$8 million revenue bump as a result of all the additional tickets that would not have been possible without the cameras.
Nor are the cameras really about public safety.
Mayor Tory has suggested that the cameras would be deployed in school zones or areas with heavy pedestrian traffic. It’s hard to argue with public safety when the mayor conjures tragic images of injured schoolchildren, but the truth is that the safety value of these cameras is unclear, and when you give a politician an inch, they’ll take a mile.
Tory won’t be mayor forever, and it’s safe to bet if Toronto gets a special power to use traffic cameras, those cameras will inevitably make their way into the congested streets of the downtown core. You may find yourself automatically ticketed when trying to make a left through an amber light, or when another driver gets you stuck at the edge of the intersection when the light changes.
The cameras can also
change driving habits, and force rear end collisions as drivers are less likely to go through an amber light out of fear of a ticket.
Worse, in Chicago, the city
intentionally shortened the length of amber lights so that the traffic cameras would catch more drivers and tickets would generate more money for the city.
The Premier has not yet committed to creating a special rule allowing traffic cameras in Toronto, but she
said she is “open to working with the city of Toronto on the request,” and also cited the high cost of policing.
It’s a request that should be denied. If there is a concern about police budgets, those issues should be tackled head on. The mayor needs to stop falling back on the citizens of Toronto for more money.
Christine Van Geyn, CTF Ontario Director
