Downloading Costs to Municipalities Won’t Support Cities

Like previous weeks’ responses for this course, I can’t help but notice how a major contradiction seems to underscore urban policy in regards to how provincial and federal government support their municipal counterparts. In the case of Ontario, it seems that the contradiction stems from decisions made in the 1990s as the report provided by the “Who Does What” panel was put into action (or not). This week has made it more clear that the dichotomy between cities’ importance to Canada’s place in the global economy and the support the provincial and federal governments offer municipal governments has been far too large for too long.

For example, health and social services the Panel recommended by funded by the province of Ontario were instead downloaded to municipalities that are not as able to fund such services. Other high expense programs and services that were largely foisted onto municipalities as their responsibilities were transit, roads, and property assessment. These are all very high cost programs that municipalities have limited ability to afford with less flexible options to increase revenues beyond property taxes changes. Governments at both levels reacted to the contradiction in these decisions in the early 2000s, as they reached an agreement for the Province to increase its share of public health funding. However, the Ford government intends to return to the trend of downloading costs onto municipalities, with a goal reducing its proportion of Toronto’s public health costs from 60% to 50%, for example. Here we see the persistence of the trend to increase the percentage of costs and scope of services that municipalities are responsible for.

Cities have become more and more important to Canada’s domestic economy and how Canada relates to the economies based out of cities around the world. Instead of responding to the increased importance of cities by downloaded responsibilities and costs onto municipalities, Canada’s provincial and federal governments must instead continue, or even expand the level of support they provide to municipalities in order to help them maximize their potentials for economic growth and development.