Olivia Chow inherited a financial hot mess when she became mayor of North America’s fourth-largest city last year. So what’s her plan?
It’s been a whirlwind start to Olivia Chow ’s first year as mayor—a tax hike, megadollar deals with the provincial and federal governments. And yet the surface of Toronto ’s problems has barely been scratched.
By my calculation, the recent property-tax hike puts Toronto’s tax rate at about 0.72%. It’s lower than some smaller cities, but higher than Montreal and Calgary, much higher than Vancouver.Are there any downsides to a rate that high? Let’s talk about the TTC. You’ve already mentioned the dysfunction. When you look at the TTC, what do you see?
Let’s move to housing. Affordability issues are pushing people to the outskirts, which is putting pressure on all our services. Is density the solution? Yes, we’re doing it. We’ve identified at least 70 pieces of city land, empty lots, parking lots, you name it, and we’re saying we’re going to build. We’re looking at 65,000 units of housing, and a good percentage of them we want to be affordable. But that requires infrastructure money. You can’t just build buildings. You need to have support services. Who is gonna fund that? So, in the past 10, 20 years, you can see the development charges, lot levies, inching up.
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