[URBAN NOTE] "Why the Ontario Government needs "Revenue Tools" for transit"

[rfmcdonald]

Livejournaler jsburbidge's post on the need for revenue tools of some kind to fund transit in the Greater Toronto Area is still a must-read, even after yesterday's disastrous debate in Toronto city council.

I'm seeing pushback on the issue of revenue tools for public transit in the GTA which seems to boil down to "2 billion a year is a small part of the provincial budget. Surely they can find it through efficiencies or reallocation?".

Well, they can't. Maybe in a world in which no Harris tax cuts had taken place, but not here and now.

Most of the Ontario budget is tied up with education (mostly schools, some universities -- 18.9%), health care(38.3%), Children's Services(11.2%) and interest on the debt (10.6%). Much of the rest is tied up in fixed costs and programs such as welfare (Ontario Works, in newspeak). Even the courts take 4.1 Billion (3.2%).

When I look at the news, I see signs of all these areas being under considerable financial stress. Hospitals are struggling to meet their budgets; the TDSB has just been fingered as diverting most of a flow of funds intended to help disadvantaged children into general revenues to make ends meet, and universities are strapped for funds; the courts have unacceptable backlogs. It has been big news that the most recent budget has made the first structural improvements to Ontario Works since the Harris years.

Plus, the Ontario economy is still faltering, relative to the strength it had for decades, so revenues are not as high as they might be.

There are, of course, always inefficiencies, though fewer than some people might think. Some "inefficiencies" provide needed redundancies to allow systems to be able to handle variations in need that can surge unpredictably. (How much do we have to provide in the way of space capacity in case H7N9 starts to spread? How much would it take to clean up after a tornado hits some not-too-sparsely populated area, as one does every few years?) And some are one-time items: it's all very well to point at ORNGE and E-Health, but (a) they're in the past and (b) they're over. (And E-Health was small change compared to the really big computerization / health care fiascos, like the one in the UK).

But even if a magic Revenue Fairy were to drop 2 billion dollars on the Ontario Government via "efficiencies", how much would go to transit? Is transit more important than all those other underfunded areas?