Olivia Chow, Doug Ford agree to new-deal working group at meeting

Premier Doug Ford and Mayor Olivia Chow have agreed to a new-deal working group with a mandate to achieve long-term stability and sustainability of Toronto’s finances.

Toronto’s massive budget shortfall was one of the topics discussed as Chow and Ford met Monday for the first time since Chow took office.

The new-deal working group’s aim is to help deal with the city’s ballooning budget shortfall, which is expected to top $1.5 billion over the next year.

“The people of Toronto deserve an affordable city that can provide the services and build the infrastructure they rely on every day. To resolve Toronto’s deep financial challenges, we’ll need a partnership with all orders of government,” said Chow in a statement.

City staff say at least $1 billion of the city’s annual budget is related to services downloaded to Toronto from other levels of government, including emergency shelters, housing, and other social services.

“My priority is to make sure the residents of Toronto have a good quality of life … to make life more affordable, so for me, the priority one is building affordable housing and making sure we have a good transit system, and the streets safer,” Chow explained on Breakfast Television on Monday.

“I inherited a $1.5-billion-dollar deficit … so it makes it hard to increase the TTC service … but that money, operating the TTC, used to be paid by the Province of Ontario — that got downloaded [to Toronto].”

Responsibilities of the new-deal working group include respecting and supporting the efficient delivery of local governance and city programs, protecting frontline services and frontline municipal workers, avoiding new taxes and fees on residents of the city and supporting the delivery of shared priorities, including building affordable and attainable homes, public transit and city-enabling infrastructure.

Council recently voted to have different revenue tools installed, including increases to the municipal land-transfer tax on luxury homes worth $3 million or more and asking the province to bring in a Toronto-specific municipal sales tax.

The City has previously suggested that a municipal sales tax for Toronto would be a good way to raise funds, which would require the approval of the provincial government. In the past, Ford has suggested that is not something he is willing to do.

However, Chow told Breakfast Television she prefers “we don’t start new taxes” but instead, if the provincial government can allot a portion of the existing sales tax to Toronto or upload some of the services they pushed onto the city.

“The City of Toronto is delivering all types of service … which is great, but we don’t have the financial means to pay for it, we only have the property tax but [that] doesn’t grow the economy, it’s also not progressive.”

The province’s plans to revitalize Ontario Place is also of interest, as some of the land owned by the City is involved in the project, and Chow has expressed concern over the plan in the past.

One of the announcements Ford made during the meeting was that the province is adding $42 million in funding to a portable housing benefit, with more than half going to the city of Toronto, to accommodate a rise in refugee and asylum claimants.

The premier says the money through the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit will help about 4,000 new households, going toward moving more people into housing and freeing up shelter space.

City officials in Toronto say the number of asylum seekers in Toronto’s shelter system grew by 500 per cent in 20 months.

The federal government in the summer announced $97 million for Toronto to help deal with the issue, but Ford and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow have said it falls short of the $157 million the city needed.

Chow and Ford have vowed to set aside their political differences after the two traded barbs before she won Toronto’s mayoral byelection in June.

Ford previously said her mayoralty would be an “unmitigated disaster,” while Chow cast Ontario’s “strong mayor” policies as undemocratic interference in city politics.

With files from The Canadian Press