Inflation in Canada might be back down below 3%, but at Toronto City Hall, they haven’t gotten the memo. Mayor Olivia Chow and her hand-picked budget chief, Shelley Carroll, announced a combined tax hike for homeowners of 6.9%.
That’s 5.4% for the property tax increase, plus 1.5% for the city building fund.
“The 2025 budget will mean change in Torontonians’ lives,” Chow exclaimed while presenting the budget.
Yes, it will change how much money residents of Toronto are paying for a city that no longer works. As my colleague Jane Stevenson pointed out, this equates to an annual increase of just $268 for the average “dwelling” assessed at $692,000.
Of course, looking at real estate today in Toronto, you can’t buy much of a condo for that amount. If you have a single-family home, heaven forbid with a few bedrooms and a garage, expect to pay more.
The worst part is that this year’s 6.9% tax hike comes on top of last year’s 9.5% tax hike. Those tax hikes come on top of the 7% increase in 2023 and seemingly reasonable 2.9% tax hike in 2022.
Thanks to the wonders of compounding, that works out to a tax hike of 29.5% over the last four years. Councillor Brad Bradford was quick to point out that the quality of services are not increasing at the same rate as municipal taxes.
“Crime is up, congestion is up, it’s never been more expensive to live here, it’s harder to get around the city,” Bradford said. “Affordability is obviously not the priority of Mayor Chow and this administration.”
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Chow and Carroll were flanked by TTC workers, first responders and other city workers as they made their announcement on the budget. She promised the tax hike would mean more libraries open, a freeze on transit fares, more pools open in the summer, and better housing options.
It all sounds wonderful but consider me skeptical.
We’ve had a tax hike of 29.5% over the last four years and to compare that to inflation, we would need to go back to 2014. Yes, we are seeing tax hikes of 29.5% over four years, but according to the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator, prices have only risen 29% since 2014 when Rob Ford was still mayor.
Does anyone think the city is running better than a decade ago?
Toronto can’t get the basic services right. We can’t collect the garbage properly and keep the streets clean.
Over the last year or so I have visited Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Palm Springs, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and cities across Canada, and none are as filthy and disgusting as Toronto. Despite huge tax increases over the last several years, we can’t get the basics right in Toronto.
Toronto is dirty, it stinks of pot on far too many street corners, there are homeless encampments that can only be rivaled by Los Angeles. Nowhere stinks of pot quite like Toronto, even in areas where it is legal.
“Toronto is still recovering from over a decade of underinvestment, which left us vulnerable to face the challenges we face today,” Carroll said.
Really?
That’s the argument you are going with after a decade of tax increases over four years? It’s not like we didn’t have tax increases in the other years, they just weren’t as crazy as what we are seeing now.
Elections have consequences; the consequence of electing Olivia Chow is that tax hikes will always be above inflation, and they will come each year like clockwork.
Choose wisely when elections happen.