Friday, November 09, 2007
Harper's Walking on Thin Ice
Harper's attitude towards the municipalities of this country is deplorable. They are in a major fix and the federal government refuses to help. Now Harper finds himself at war not only with Ontario's recently re-elected premier but with its most popular mayor, Hazel McCallion. Harper needs the suburbs of Toronto if he wants his majority and pissing off Hazel is not a good way to win votes there. This isn't the wacky socialist mayor of Toronto, this is the no nonsense mayor of Mississauga. There's a big difference and Harper may learn it at the polls.
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8 comments:
When that bridge fell down last year, wasn't it a priority to ensure municipalities had enough money for infrastructure? What is Harper doing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCheV4JP2Cw
Since when are cities under federal jurisdiction? If Toronto or Mississauga need money, maybe they should ask your Liberal premiere for the cash. He likes taxing anything that moves, right?
Um, municipalities are are provincial responsibility under the Constitution. You know, the foundational law of our country? So if Ontario cities need more money it should be Dalton's problem. And look, Harper just freed up a bunch of tax room for him...
I understand the constitution. I also understand Harper's respect for federal/provincial jurisdiction. I also disagree with it. The feds have the power to transfer money to the provinces. It's called equalization. Equalization is designed to ensure that the same quality of services are given no matter what part of the country you live in. Now, if municipalities in Ontario are not receiving comparable service to those elsewhere in the country, it is well within the right of the federal government to transfer some of its money to the provinces to transfer to cities. It's been done before. The Liberals recognized the importance of this issue and transfered one cent of the gas tax to cities. Our cities however need more. The feds (unlike the province) have the money to fix this problem. Tories in Ontario who support Harper on this would be up in arms if Dalton decided to raise the PST in order to fund this crisis.
Harper campaigned on fixing the fiscal imbalance. Our constitution was not written with metropolises like modern day Toronto in mind. The largest fiscal imbalance today is the horrible lack of funding for our cities.
And what is Harper going to do about the long line ups at the
Tim Horton's take out windows...dammit!
You know whats funny? you people should be blaming the people you elected that mishandled all the money givin to them for this purpose, Im angry about the infrastructure issues in my home town in Alberta, is that Harpers fault? hell no it's the city planners who made poor decisions when it came to build new portions of the city. So what we did was vote the morons in charge out. Now progress is being made without begging the feds for more and more money. Just to give you an idea the town was only 16K people 5 years ago, now it's 38K.
"The feds have the power to transfer money to the provinces. It's called equalization."
Ontario is not a equalization recieving province we do get a lot of $ in social transfers which were increased in the last budget.
Why doesn't Ontario spend some money on Defense so our soldiers won't die in crappy equipment?
Why isn't Ontario leading the way in arctic sovereignty?
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