News Release
Big City Mayors Tackle Fiscal Imbalance
(HALIFAX, NS, Tuesday, September 19/06) – Canadian municipalities deliver the majority of front-line, basic services to the taxpayer, and yet they are denied access to the various levels of funding in Canada to more appropriately provide these services, Mayor Peter Kelly said today.
Mayor Kelly said Canada’s Big City Mayors Caucus will meet in Toronto tomorrow to issue a call to the federal government to correct this fiscal imbalance between itself and Canadian municipalities.
“Addressing the fiscal imbalance isn’t a cry for more money,” he said. “What it does mean is ensuring the necessary resources are allocated to the appropriate service deliverers for areas of vital concern to all Canadians, such as public safety, affordable housing and transit.”
Mayor Kelly said municipalities tend to the basic people needs of a community – police and fire protection, street maintenance and snow clearing, transit, recreation, water and sewer services – and yet they must rely on the property tax – the most regressive form of taxation – to finance the cost of providing these services.
“When your sewer backs up, your street isn’t plowed, there’s a fire down the block or a robbery next door, you don’t call the federal or provincial government – you call your municipal government,” he said. “We have the responsibility to provide all of these services, but we don’t have the financial tools or the fiscal authority to raise the necessary funds to do so. Just think of what the average Canadian pays in federal and provincial Income Tax and the services they receive, compared to the value they get for their municipal tax dollar?”
Mayor Kelly said Canadian municipalities must also have a seat and equal status at the decision-making table with the federal and provincial governments.
In June, the BCMC delivered a comprehensive report on the fiscal imbalance (Our Cities, Our Future). To move the report’s recommendations forward, the Caucus will create or re-establish advocacy working groups in the following areas: Public Safety, Affordable Housing, Environmental Protection, Immigration and Transit.
Mayor Kelly chairs the Public Safety Working Group, which has already made great strides, developing an emergency response management model for Canadian municipalities. It is now ready to move on to its second phase: policing. Mayor Kelly is also a member of the Working Group on Fiscal Imbalance.
Mayor Kelly is among 22 mayors of the largest Canadian cities that comprise the BCMC. Other topics to be discussed at tomorrow’s meeting include senate reform, biofuels, airport issues and ecodiversity.
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Mayor Peter Kelly
(902) 490-4010
(902) 222-9999
