OTTAWA—Canadian cities straining under the weight of greater demand for improved public services without adequate support from senior levels of government should be given another option: local income taxes, says a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
Click here to read the full report online.
Municipalities and urban development
Click here to read the full report online.
Cities lack sufficient revenue to meet increasing service demands due to downloaded costs from higher government levels over the past three decades. Additionally, ownership and responsibility for physical infrastructure have shifted towards municipalities in the last half century.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Unceded Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam territories — Burnaby, BC) Within the next decade, British Columbia’s local transit systems could be united into an upgraded province-wide public transit network, offering safe, reliable, affordable service for riders travelling within and between communities throughout the province.
After years of neglect and privatization, today’s transit system in BC is plagued with overcrowding, delays and big gaps in service. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. In collaboration with the BC Federation of Labour, we published Connecting BC: a 10-year vision for public transit throughout BC. This report is a 10-year transit investment plan that outlines a path to make transit affordable, accessible, inclusive, carbon-zero and a great experience for users across the province.
What’s in the plan?
Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press October 4, 2022
The condition ofWinnipeg’s infrastructure is a seemingly endless source
The City of Winnipeg is experiencing difficulty retaining and recruiting employees to deliver key public services due to low wages in select positions. City service wages have not kept pace with the cost of living over time and the recent steep rise in the cost of living means workers’ real incomes have fallen substantially. Widespread job vacancies compromise the City’s ability to deliver services citizens rely on.
This spring, Global Affairs Canada sought advice on the development of a reciprocal procurement policy that would “reduce access to Canadian federal procurement opportunities for foreign suppliers, goods, and services from countries that do not provide a comparable level of access to Canadian suppliers.” The department frames the policy as a means of ensuring fairness and mutual benefit in Canada’s international trade relationships.
The clamour around the future of Portage Place has quieted down to a chirp, for the moment, closer to the timbre of the sparrows that live in the mall than to the bluster of Bay Street billionaires. The stage is now set for a more modest yet in many ways profoundly more ambitious vision for the neighbourhood mall than the one formerly proposed by Toronto mega-developer Starlight Acquisitions.
In the two years since Canada’s pandemic experience began, transit ridership across the country has plummeted. Or perhaps, more accurately, riders who had the ability to work remotely or the ability to find alternate transportation to work did so. Early in the pandemic, ridership in Toronto, for example, declined as much as 85% resulting in a $21 million per week revenue loss for the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). In turn, the TTC laid off 450 employees and reduced service.