The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Are Ontario's Property Tax Dollars Spent?

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Municipal budget season in Ontario is coming to a close, and if there's one major takeaway from all of these proposals and deliberations, it's that property taxes everywhere are going up in 2025. But the rate of the increase is much more steep in some places than in others. Why is that? And what, exactly, are these billions of dollars collected by cities and towns being spent on?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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a TVO original podcast. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Municipal budget season in Ontario is coming to an end. And if there's one major takeaway from all these proposals and deliberations, it's that property taxes everywhere are going up in 2025. But the rate of the increase is much steeper in some places than in others.

Why is that? And how exactly are these billions of dollars collected by cities and towns being spent? Here to help us understand better where your property tax dollars are going, we're joined by Lindsay Jones, Director of Policy at AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. Enid Slack, Director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the U of T School

of Cities. Rory Nisan, Deputy Mayor for the City of Burlington and Chair of the Ontario Caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. And Benjamin Dacus, Vice President of Research and Outreach for Clean Prosperity. He's a former Director of policy, budget, and fiscal planning in the office of the Premier of Ontario, and it's great to have you four around our table here for a very timely discussion.

Yeah, Lindsay, let's get you to start us off here. Property taxes are going up in 2025. Give us some of the reasons why that's happening. Absolutely. So, three reasons. We've got inflation, we've got growth and related infrastructure costs, and we've got the growing social challenges that municipalities are being asked to take on in a way that particularly in Ontario is not consistent with the

overall role of municipalities. Is that what it looks like in Burlington? Oh, absolutely, not just in Burlington, but really across the province and the country, we're seeing taxes go up. We're up 5.82% in Burlington, but it's going up every year. 30% is the increase in the cost of doing these infrastructure projects. Those are labor costs and those are capital costs just buying the material. 30% inflation is a lot and we were already stressed to start with. Enid, let me get you in here to talk about how you think the pandemic has hurt municipal balance sheets. Well, I think the pandemic when it was in full force meant particularly for larger municipalities their transit systems were you know ridership went down by 80 to 90 percent that meant their transit fare revenues went down by 80 to 90 percent and that was the biggest hit I think for the larger cities but there were also expenditures on public health and and on you know masking and and a whole lot of other things to do with the pandemic. But you know, I think that's less of an impact now.

So they've recovered from much, they've come back from much of that you think. I think so, but I think cities are facing other challenges. We've talked a bit about infrastructure, there's an infrastructure deficit, you know, we're seeing water pipes break. You know, we saw this in Montreal, we saw this in Calgary. There's billions of dollars needed to bring infrastructure into a state of good repair. We've got new things like cyber attacks.

So municipalities, we had the Toronto Library was hacked. The city of St. John and Hamilton, they were hacked. So cities have to prepare for preventing these attacks or responding to these attacks. Ben, cities and towns are always looking for other sources of revenue besides the property tax base. Like what? Where else can they get money from? So the property tax is really the revenue source of last resort for a lot of cities. They know that the headline for every budget is going to be what's the property tax increase in that year.

So they're going to first start with what do they have to spend their money on. That's what we should be focusing first. What are the cities spending their money on, whether it's on support for homelessness programs, growth related infrastructure. That's what we have to be really focused on. And then we can talk about what the right way of financing

that growth is or that those services are, be it property taxes, development charges, user fees, grants from other levels of government. Let's separate the conversation. Let's talk about what cities should be spending money on. Then we can talk about how to make sure that we're financing that in the most affordable and effective way. Steve, you know, cities, municipalities, they cover everything you do, right? When you get up in the morning, what's the first thing you do?

You plant your feet on the floor. Well, the municipality has enforced the building code to make sure you don't fall through the floor. Then you go to the bathroom, skip that part, but you flush the toilet, okay? That is the municipality. You flip the light on, you brush your teeth in clean water, all municipalities. Then you go to work, maybe you drive on a municipal road, maybe you take the public transit.

When you're in trouble, when you need help, you need fire, you need paramedics, you need police, it's all municipal. But when we talk about, Lindsay, what you spend money on, I don't know what it's like at City Hall, but at Queen's Park, 75 to 80% of it is on salaries of employees of people who work for the province. Is it that way at City Hall as well?

It's you know the two main drivers when we look at inflation in terms of the increases and the pressure on the property tax is both the cost of infrastructure, so Rory's talked about that already, but also wages. So when you think about police officers or the nurses who are working in long-term care homes or bylaw officers, firefighters, these are all folks who are funded at the municipal level. And what we're seeing right now of course is is a wave of bargaining agreements that that is now reflecting the historic inflation that took place in 2022. Gotcha. How about, can you make a comparison between what we sort of pay in property taxes

in the province of Ontario relative to other provinces as well? Well, you know, the property tax is the main source of revenue for local governments across Canada. It's maybe 40% of municipal revenues in Ontario, maybe 40, 45%. We got a chart later, almost half. Okay, almost half. It's a higher percentage in some provinces, it's a lower percentage in other provinces. It really depends on what sources of revenues municipalities are depending on more heavily. So there's user fees. So in British Columbia municipalities depend more on user fees

than they do in Ontario. So there's differences across the country. But the property tax is the main source of revenue. That goes back to the, if you like history, it goes back to the Baldwin Act of 1849, right? That set up the municipal finance system in this country when municipalities were doing roads and water. And they had property taxes, user fees, and transfers.

And we kind of have the same revenue sources today, there's a few more, but you heard Rory talk about all the different expenditures that municipalities are making. And the question has been raised, should that all be on the property tax? I knew we were going to get into the weeds today, but I confess I did not expect the Baldwin Act of 1849 to come up. My question is were bicycles even invented at that point? No. Maybe not.

Maybe not. We've got a chart we want to show here, because of course, depending on where you are, your property taxes are going to be either higher or lower than some. OK, Sheldon, you want to bring this graphic up here? We've been so accustomed to seeing property taxes held with the rate of inflation.

And when inflation is running at 2%, 3%, you know, that's not too bad. These are bigger numbers here. Let's bring this graphic up here. Property taxes rising faster in some places. This is for 2025. Cawartha Lakes is up there at 6.2% increase for the year. Waterloo, 6.34%.

London, 7.4%. Oshawa, 7.87%, Milton, almost 10%. We just learned today that the City of Toronto has come out with a 6.9% proposed property tax increase. 6.9%, that is a larger number than we are accustomed to seeing. Okay, well Rory, let's start with you. As you look at these numbers, how do they strike you? Well, certainly it's concerning for myself as a homeowner and a taxpayer. There's great affordability challenges right now.

People are going to food banks more than ever, including in Burlington. But it really speaks to the need for new ways to fund municipalities. That's exactly what the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is calling for, a new municipal growth framework. Because you'll see the province, and Lindsay can speak to that, but the federal government as well, they have increased revenues because GDP is actually going up. And we don't see that. So the population grows, and we think that our financing should grow with it, as with the GDP.

So that's the solution that FCM has come up with, and I think it's a smart one. We'll talk about that more in a little bit, but okay, Lindsay, I want to find out from you. Again, after years of looking at 2s and 3s and 2s and 3s, and now suddenly we're at 6s and 7s and 8s and 9s, got a sticker shock going on out there? Absolutely. And I think what we're seeing is municipalities really bearing the brunt of investments that, in fact, should be made at the provincial level.

In Ontario in particular, municipalities are responsible for a variety of health and social costs that everywhere else in the country are the responsibility of provincial governments. Like what? So, social housing is a big one, but also public health, land ambulance, long-term care, social services, so all of these services that are really critical to Ontarians quality of life, but that really don't belong on the property tax base.

I guess the key, Ben, is if some of those services were uploaded to the provincial or federal levels of government, would these kinds of increases not necessarily be happening at the municipal level? I wouldn't jump to uploading, because what that does is we skip that first step. We've skipped the first step of what are we spending our money on? And where does it make the most sense to spend that money?

Let's really understand how we got to the world of twos and threes and the percentage increases of property taxes. One of the ways that cities did that was by taking some of the growth-related infrastructure costs and obviously focusing on affordability for property taxes which makes perfect sense as a counselor. Those are your existing voters but what they've been doing over the last couple years is creating or being one of the largest causes of another affordability crisis for homeowners, for home buyers. When it comes to these really dramatic

increases in development charges, upfront charges on home buyers when it comes to these really dramatic increases in development charges, upfront charges on home buyers that have been a key cause of the housing affordability crisis. That's what we should be focused on. Rory, how much as a municipal politician do you think about or worry about raising the property tax rates too high to the point where some people may think I got to sell my house because I can't afford to pay these property taxes people may think, I've got to sell my house because I can't afford to pay these property taxes anymore. Sure. I mean, that's when you need to have programs

to help those people in need. So in Halton Region, a senior, a low-income senior, can defer their property taxes for as long as they're living in that home. So we do have measures that we take to support those most in need. And it's a valid point. But at the same time,

the municipality delivers so much affordability for our community by having libraries available to them, by having public transit. And we have free public transit in Burlington for seniors and low income people. That we're between a rock and a hard place here. There's no doubt. And Steve, I just wanted to jump in as well.

I think that the reality with the property tax base is that it is not, it's not a progressive tax. So, it really doesn't take into consideration the ability of people like seniors on fixed income or struggling small businesses to actually pay for the services that in Ontario can be largely really about income redistribution, like social housing. Can I do a little follow up on that? Only in as much as I've heard this argument before.

But richer people tend to live in bigger houses that pay more property taxes than lower income people. So in that respect, it is kind of progressive, isn't it? It's spend more, like spend more than the more that you pay in your property tax. But the income tax is more progressive in that the rate that you pay goes up depending on how much income you make, right? Your rate goes up as you make more. That doesn't happen with property taxes.

So we can have people in very large homes that maybe pay two, three times what the average person pays, but that's not like their income tax, that's for sure. Right, the mill rate does go up the same for everybody regardless of income. You got it. But I think you're generally right, richer people live in more expensive houses. There are exceptions, like Rory's mentioned, seniors on fixed incomes who bought their houses a long time ago, they've gone way up in value. The property tax has gone up but there are programs for people for people

in that situation. But I think the property tax isn't as regressive as some people think but even so the income tax is more progressive. It is. So if we're talking about social services that's more appropriate. Ben how much of these numbers here that we're seeing the six the seventy eight the nine percent almost ten percent increase in Milton how much of these numbers here that we're seeing, the 6%, the 7%, the 8%, the 9%, almost 10% increase in Milton, how much of that is, do you think, because these municipalities are trying to catch up from prior commitments

that they've made in past years, and the chickens are coming home to roost? Yeah. I think it's a question to ask them, for local residents, to ask their counselors to be able to understand their budgets. And budgets are a tricky thing for a regular citizen to understand. Every city is different and I wish them luck to be able to unpack what their budget is

and what the even bottom line number is. It's always been something that's tricky to figure out. So Milton is one of the fastest growing municipalities in all of Canada. And they have some of the highest tax increases, the highest on your chart. Why is that? It's because the DCs are not covering the growth. Development charges. The development charges are simply not covering the growth. DCs are a really interesting topic from sort of a theoretical point of view, but the money

does have to come from somewhere. Right now it's coming from the property taxes. That's why a new growth framework is so important, Steve. I want to ask our director Sheldon Osmond to bring up this next quote here. This is from the mayor of Oshawa, Dan Carter, who has been quite front and center lately on a range of issues, got a lot of attention for his municipality. This is from a press release that accompanied the approval of Oshawa's budget, including the property tax

increase, and here's what he had to say. The mayor of Oshawa says, without a doubt this was one of the hardest budget processes I've encountered in the last 10 years. Oshawa, like other municipalities, is feeling the impact of downloading from other levels of government while facing historic economic challenges such as aging infrastructure, record high inflation, supply chain disruptions, and more.

Let's talk inflation here. Lindsay, how does that eat away at a municipality's budget? Well, so in two primary ways. In particular, the cost of construction has really ballooned over the past 10 years. It's increased by, I think it's around 70%. And in a situation where we're trying to grow, we're trying to build more houses, we're trying to replace the aging infrastructure that municipalities have had in place for a variety of years,

and we're trying to adapt to climate change, that's really significant. The second area, of course, is wages. We're seeing this a lot lot in particular as it relates to police services. There's significant wage growth there but really across the board as as wages catch up with the inflation that has been experienced over the past few years. Do you know what the settlement was for the last police contract in Halton? Oh it was quite significant and it drove an increase of over 12% for the police budget in Halton region so it was a big part of that and we chose in the end to make it even higher to have more police

on the ground to supporting our communities so there's no doubt the labor costs, police budget, firefighters, it all adds up. I see this all across the province whether you have your own police service, as you do in Halton Region, or whether you don't and have to use the Ontario Provincial Police, the settlements are significant and sometimes well above inflation. How are municipalities expected to pay those?

That's it. There's only one way, increase property taxes. And this is why, particularly in Ontario, you know, we look at police services or infrastructure as really core municipal responsibilities where the property tax base is supposed to pay. But we can't fulfill those responsibilities if in fact we are diverting, and at last count in Ontario, it's five billion dollars towards services like social housing or long-term care or public health that really belong more appropriately at the provincial level.

Even when they go to binding arbitration, Ben, I've seen this as well, municipalities have knocked on the door of the Premier of Ontario and said, look, we followed the process, the police, the OPP are going to get a significant salary increase, not saying whether they deserve it or don't, that's not the issue. The issue is the municipality has to pay it, and they don't know how. What's the solution there? We're kind of right now in the worst of both worlds scenario, where there is blurred accountability, where cities are going to constantly be saying, well, we have to pay a portion of these social services,

whether it's ambulances or social assistance. And people don't really know who's accountable. Is the premier and the province responsible for paying more? Are cities, there should be talking about cities, or local councillors, about getting spending under control. People know who to go to. And so the framework right now is the cities don't have the right tools to finance this.

So we have to have a proper conversation about that first question of who's doing what, what is the most appropriate place for control of spending, and then accountability, and then matching the revenues. That's what we have to start with, and then we can get to the conversation of well is a transfer the right approach. Should the province take these on? That's what we have to think through first. Four core municipal services. That's a separate

conversation than the infrastructure, the growth related costs that we've been talking about. You got a view on how that should work? Well I would underscore what Ben said. I've been saying it for a long time. The first question is, what should municipalities be doing? They are doing so many things. Should they be delivering and paying for social services? Should they be doing policing? Should they be doing parks and libraries?

And the answer is that some of those are really easy. Some of them are more difficult. But that's the starting point. What should municipalities be in the business of doing? Then you figure out how to pay for it. So if we think they should be doing social services, delivering social services, the property tax is not the way to do that. You would have to say something like an income tax, maybe a sales tax, or maybe the province should be doing these things. But the

first point is who should be doing it and I bring the federal government in there too. Who should be doing it and I bring the federal government in there too who should be doing immigration settlement for example should that be a municipal function provincial federal who should be doing what and then the question is what goes on the property tax what other taxes municipalities need tell me one thing Burlington or Halton is dealing with right now that you have to pay for that when you look at your budgets you say ain't no way we ought to be in charge of that. Sure. I mean, the region of Halton is covering an incredible amount

for homelessness at this point, the millions of dollars, just to make sure that every homeless person in Halton region has a place to stay, which we actually do have. So we actually meet the threshold criteria of having somewhere for everyone. But it's very costly to our residents residents and it goes on their tax bill. In fact, Halton Region, this is why I'm not so worried about downloading versus uploading, Steve, or who does what. I mean, it's many pockets, same pair of jeans. And the key is that the money come from somewhere

and it comes from the appropriate place. So based on Ontario's own commitments, they're going to owe Halton Region over 35 million dollars in 2025. For all the commitments that they said that they would cover for us, things like social programming, housing, homelessness, paying for the cost of growth, all of that adds up to over 35 million dollars in 2025. up to over $35 million in 2025. Go ahead. And that's not unique to Halton in Ontario. Last week, AMO released a study looking

at homelessness in Ontario. And a part of that was also who's paying for it. And what we saw was that municipalities are really stepping in to do their part, and the provincial government is missing in action. Time for another chart. OK, Sheldon, here we go. Let's do the chart here atop of page, well, just above question 14. Where Ontario municipal revenue comes from?

And this circles back to what Enid was saying just a little while ago. Property taxes, look at that, almost $27 billion in property taxes are collected, which is half of where municipalities get their money, 50.9%. Go to the bottom left of that chart, user fees, conservation areas, that type of thing, $12.4 billion worth of revenues on that. That's about a quarter.

And then this whole thing other, almost 14 billion dollars or a quarter of the revenue stream as well, from other things. Lindsay, what does that mean? What's other? Well, other includes, well, it includes, yes, it includes both federal and provincial transfers, but also in there is DC's development charges.

Obviously a hot topic over the past couple of years. But when we look at the DC question, we did a calculation and for Ontario to make up the revenues in property taxes that we charged in DC's last year, the revenues from property taxes would have to increase by 20%. Well that's not on obviously. Well we don't think so.

Right. But there are other solutions. Go ahead. There are lots of other solutions. So these upfront charges that the municipalities and Ontario charge are way out of line compared to the rest of Canada. Let's just take one individual item. Water and wastewater services in Peel Region. That's a $55,000 upfront charge on a single detached home.

You've got Mayor Del Duca coming on the program today as well, talking about the charges that there are totaled between mostly municipal, lower tier, upper tier, and some provincial charges, upwards of nearly $200,000 for a single detached home. Now, we've seen a significant reduction in those from the mayor. But now we get to the question of, well,

if they can just cut these development charges at the stroke of a pen, how strong is the argument behind these amounts? That's a great point, Ben. And no development charges should be struck with a pen. In Burlington, we have over 100 page analysis of development charges. And we were able to bring down development charges should be struck with a pen. In Burlington, we have over 100 page analysis of development charges.

And we were able to bring down development charges in Burlington. But we did it because we realized we couldn't do a couple big projects, bridges over the QEW, because there wasn't upper level funding for them. So having recognized that and taken that into account over the next 10 years, we were able to reduce DCs. But I really don't support a superficial analysis

of development charges. If anyone wants to go into our Watson reports to tell us where they went wrong, then we're ready to move on that. What's a Watson report? Oh, wow. You don't know about Watson. It's a person.

Watson is an A-plus consultant that does our development charge reports. That's not the IBM computer you're talking about here. No, but they're like IBM in some respects. They're very hard to break through. Okay. Enid, if you wanted to be able to keep that property tax percentage where it is, and you wanted to increase other, what would you do?

If you're a municipality and you're trying to get more revenue from other streams as opposed to having to raise property taxes taxes where does the money come from? There aren't a lot of options. There aren't a lot of options because provincial legislation prohibits municipalities from levying income taxes or sales taxes or fuel taxes or any of those things. Hotel taxes? Well they can levy hotel taxes. They can do that.

Yes. Some municipalities in Ontario have hotel taxes. Yeah. Toronto does. I think Ottawa does they they also have the vacancy taxes vacant homes taxes but but again the vacant homes taxes aren't designed to bring in revenue they're designed to change people's behavior so that we don't have vacant homes so there aren't really a whole lot of things municipalities can do in terms of other revenue sources. So they can't, for example, levy income or sales taxes. What about municipalities just saying to their constituents,

we can't do this anymore. We want to hold the line on taxes. I know you want more services, you want more skating rinks, you want more community centres. We're just not going to do them anymore because we can't afford it. Well that's an option and you know part of these increases that you showed before reflect that there were not a lot of increases in prior times. You know when Toronto was amalgamated in 1998 there were 0% tax increases for three years. Not even the rate of inflation, zero. And then after that at or below the rate of inflation. So there is a bit of catch-up here. You know that probably

resulted in some deteriorating infrastructure, you know, and things we were paying the price for now. This guy's got a very distressed look on his face. What was that about? It makes me so sad to think that we would forego having community centers for our residents new and old that we would no longer have enough park space for them that our roads would deteriorate. You know I have a kid at home, a toddler, and I just want him to have the same

quality of life in Burlington that I did. And with revenues going up for the province and the federal government this is not beyond our reach. This is feasible. Tax increases, I mean, death in taxes, right? It's going to happen. Taxes do go up with inflation.

People feel it more because they see it and we're so transparent about it. But if your income goes up, Steve, you know, year over year, guess what? You're paying more provincial and federal taxes. You may not notice it the same way. But that money's there and we just, we need to be able to access it to deliver on that quality of life. I'm not on for the zero percents.

That's how we got to where we are today, where we have this major infrastructure gap. And that's what we're trying to catch up on. The alternative is not seeing the kind of Canada that I want to see. The other, I just wanted to add two points. What we hear a lot from our members about is where the provincial government either has a legislative requirement that requires municipalities to deliver services up to a certain standard, and then has a transfer that in fact does not enable municipalities to meet those kinds of...

Unfunded mandates. Exactly. So you see that a lot in long-term care, in particular. But even, you know, and in policing as well, you know, a lot of the new requirements, you know, cost money, and that's a legal obligation of municipalities. But then also looking at things like housing targets. So provincially there are mandated housing targets and that requires municipalities to make these kinds of investments in infrastructure that they can no longer make with the development charge regime the way that it is. Ben. Yeah, so what we want to have is we want to have

a balance of affordability writ large, as affordability on property taxes and affordability for new home buyers. But we also want to have the core municipal services. So let's take the core municipal services that we've got now, and we'll call them mostly water, roads, and other community services, libraries, that sort of thing. You can really split them into two categories.

One is things that are user fee supported. And the other one are things that really fundamentally have to be relied on in the property, paid for poor through property taxes. And so when it comes to the things that we support with user fees, that's mostly water and wastewater. And some, when there's municipally

owned electricity corporations, they'll have an upfront charge as well, in many cases, for new housing construction. There are ways in which we can balance affordability for these kinds of long-term assets that have a user fee base. And what we're doing right now is instead of what we're doing now of these big upfront charges, of the $100,000 or more, what we should be doing is thinking like any household would.

The way that a household balances the things in which they're going to have a long-term investment in, live in for many, many years, is a mortgage. Cities are effectively just passing debt from their books onto homebuyers through these development charges. And that's that link that we need to break. Now, cities can't, right? Unlike the provincial or federal governments, they can't run deficits, right, on the operating set.

That's only for operating. On the operating set, right. That's why we have to separate the operating conversation. That's like police salaries. That's where we have to finance it with property taxes, with the long-term infrastructure. When we talk about water, we talk about the electricity distribution assets that they own.

These are long-lived assets that are going to last decades. We should be relying more on debt at the municipal level or other sources of financing. But what cities have been doing instead is a perfectly sensible thing for them to do politically, which is the new homebuyers almost by definition don't live in there in that city yet. They don't vote for a counselor. The counselors are inherently reliant on votes from existing residents and so they're

focusing on getting costs down for those residents and focused less on the long-term housing affordability question. If you, I actually don't know how this works maybe you can help me out here. Sure. If Burlington wants to build a new community centre and it's going to cost, I don't know what, let's say four million bucks, I'll pull a number out of thin air. It's going to cost four million bucks to do it. Can you go to the bond markets and sell bonds to raise that money? Oh my gosh Steve, I don't know the answer to that, maybe Lindsay would know better than us.

Yeah Lindsay, okay. Well, you can, but only if you're operating at a scale where that, where it makes sense. A lot of the time as well, there's a relationship between, for example, development charges. That's a stream of revenue or income that a municipality will leverage to be able to borrow money. So if there is no DC revenue coming in, being able to finance some of those projects also becomes a challenge. But yes, there are many municipalities, particularly the larger ones, do go to the markets, and they do that really effectively.

The challenge is when you're looking at all of the other governments that are much smaller and that don't have the capacity to be able to do that, that's where things really become a challenge. Well, in some provinces though, like British Columbia, there's a municipal finance authority that borrows on behalf of the smaller municipalities, so they pool all the borrowing of the smaller places. Do we have one of those here? No, I don't think so. We don't have that in Ontario.

So that allows the smaller municipalities to take advantage of lower rates, but also lower admin costs to deal with it. But Ben is right. I mean, municipalities can borrow to pay for infrastructure. And it makes a lot of sense because if you're building a bridge that's going to be lasting for 40 years well then you're paying it off for 40 years we call that intergenerational equity you know those who are benefiting are paying over time and that makes a lot of sense there there are rules in Ontario and in other provinces for how much you can borrow you know

even for capital but most municipalities not all most are well below that limit do we have much of a municipal bond seen in this province? Not much, but we should be growing a lot. First of all, if you compare municipal bonds in Canada compared to that in the United States, it's many, many times the size of the United States, even well beyond the 10 to 1 rule of everything in the United States being bigger. Municipal bonds in the United States have, for example, tax support from the federal

government. When we think about the kind of new way which we think about a new financial model for municipalities, that's one place to start. Another place on the municipal bond side where we can do much more is, and this is a huge credit to AMO as well, they invited a couple of people to be part of an expert panel, I was one of them, on how to finance water and wastewater infrastructure, especially for rural municipalities that can't take out debt on their own. And one of the core recommendations of that panel is create a larger scale

operation that would be totally voluntary for cities to be part of, but allow them easier access to debt markets for long-term infrastructure that should be paid for on a longer scale. The large scale is going to help. And so this was something that cities and AMO is on top of, and credit to them for thinking about a solution here. Well, let me give the last word to AMO here, since we're down to our last minute.

Lindsay, this side of the table in our discussion has made plain the need for a new deal for municipalities. Who does what? Who pays for what? How much appetite at the provincial level has there been to entertain some new ideas on that? Well, AMO has been asking for the past 18 months for the Ontario government to sit down

with municipalities to have exactly this conversation. Who does what? How can we pay for it in the most sustainable way? Because as Enid points out, there's only one taxpayer. To date, while every single opposition party leader has committed to pursuing something like this, there's been a resounding silence from the Ontario government.

And let me speculate that you don't love that. No. AMO is going to continue to ask for this conversation. We've done this before. We've done it successfully back in 2015, where I think we ended up uploading around $2 billion annually in costs back to the province where they belong. And this is something that is going to continue to be the number one priority for Ontario

municipalities going forward. All 444 of them. All of them. Gotcha. Well, I know a lot more about this now, 34 minutes later than I did before, so thanks a lot everybody for coming in and helping us out with this. Laurie Nissen, Deputy Mayor for Burlington. Lindsay Jones from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

Enid Slack from the University of Toronto. Ben Dacus, Clean Prosperity. Great to have all of you at TVO tonight. Many thanks. Thank you.