With you-know-who heading back to the White House in January, we’re already seeing how news about American politics casts a big shadow over more local concerns. Last weekend, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried cowboy diplomacy at the president-elect’s tacky Florida beach club, his likely successor was calling out the real villains: municipal councils.
“Municipal governments, don’t ever let them bullshit you, are bursting with cash, and they’re wasting it all,” Pierre Poilievre told our sister site AuroraToday while he was in town making a campaign-style stop. “Trudeau will give more and more to incompetent, greedy, money-hungry municipal politicians. I will cut the bureaucracy, and axe the tax.”
Cool.
It should come as no surprise to you, reader, that I’m skeptical about what Poilievre can do for Canada. His policy, such as it is, seems to begin and end with the elimination of the current government’s price on pollution, which, I should note, was once pushed by the philosophical godfather of the current version of the Conservative Party, Preston Manning.
But to Poilievre, there is no problem that ending the carbon tax can’t solve…
How do you bring housing prices down? Axe the tax.
How do you bring costs down? Axe the tax.
How do you increase pay for workers across Canada? Axe the tax.
How do you solve a problem like Maria? Axe the tax.
It’s easy to say that the cause of all our problems is one thing and once it’s gone the problem will be solved, but that’s what Poilievre is selling in the nonstop dirge of TV ads I see. The Conservative leader confidentially says he’ll “axe the tax” and jobs will become plentiful, costs will be low, profits will be high, housing will be attainable, crime will be gone, and so will homelessness, mental health issues and something called “woke nonsense."
This is what cognitive theorists call magical thinking, “the belief that one's ideas, thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can influence the course of events in the material world,” according to the textbook definition in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Blaming the carbon tax is to ignore the myriad of factors that painted us into this crisis corner, not the least of which being inflation caused by a once-in-a-generation economic disruption due to a one-in-a-century pandemic.
That inflation, plus the mental and emotional turmoil of COVID-19, exacerbated and accelerated decades of underfunding in social housing, resistance to properly funding social service rates, the failure to adequately prepare people for the rapid pace of technological change, and fiscal policy that prioritizes short-term gains in lieu of long-term planning. Yes, high immigration numbers played a part too, but they mostly added strain to problems that we’re already there.
If solving just one of these things was easy, someone would have accidently tripped over a solution by now, or they might have noticed that the upper levels of government are not carrying their weight. According to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, local governments carry a $4 billion burden helping to cover the costs for services that are meant to be the province’s to pay.
There was a lot of attention this week on the Ontario Auditor General’s report, but there was another report that pointed out the provincial government’s startling negligence in taking real action on poverty in this province. According to Feed Ontario, three out of every five food bank users are recipients of either Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).
Many of Feed Ontario’s recommendations have to do with fixing the way we supply financial assistance through those two programs, but they also including building social housing and implementing rent control. In other words, things that the Ontario government could do today if only they had the willingness to act with the same haste and authority they regulated future bike lane construction with.
Of course, the ultimate systemic failure is the way cities are funded. The 2024 Ontario budget observed that while annual corporate tax revenues grew by $12.5 billion between 2019 and 2022, and while personal income tax revenue rose by $15 billion in that same time, property tax revenue grew by only $3.5 billion from 2017 to 2021.
"Municipalities' ability to raise revenue is frozen in time, while the costs that have been thrust upon them continue to escalate and get more complex," said Sunil Johal, a professor in public policy and society at the University of Toronto, in an interview with the CBC at the time.
And yet, according to Poilievre, it’s the cities that are greedy and obstructionist and incapable of sound fiscal management. That’s not to say that there aren’t issues, but let’s not pretend that cities aren’t playing with one broken and decrepit arm while the other one is tied behind their back, and reviewing their own propensity for red tape is part of any and all fiscal assistance cities are presently getting from both the province and the feds for housing.
As for Poilievre, he’s got a playbook to encourage housing development in Canadian cities too. As PM he would tie federal funding to housing starts by setting a target of 15 per cent more homes every year and then claw back funding for every percentage a city misses. He will fine municipalities if residents(!) are too NIMBY, and hand out bonuses when municipalities exceed their targets. But nowhere is there any acknowledgement that for the most part, cities don’t build houses.
In other words, it’s Bill 23 but national and worse.
And along those lines, when was the last time you heard the premier or anyone in the Ontario government talk about building 1.5 million homes by 2031. What’s the status of “making municipalities whole” from development fee cuts? What happens next year when no one meets their yearly new housing goals due to a number of outside factors that have nothing to do with government obstruction?
I’m not saying local governments are perfect, but it’s been the attitude of politicians at other levels of government that city councils are to blame for the housing and affordability crises despite their limited powers, and even more limited revenue tools. It’s just math, but I understand the confusion because math is hardly the domain a man who believes in magic so hard he puts his incantation on a t-shirt.
