Amalgamations, Service Realignment, and Property Taxes: Did the Harris Government Have a Plan for Ontario's Municipalities?

Abstract

Drastic change was contemplated by The Common Sense Revolution (CSR), the election manifesto that brought Mike Harris to power as premier of Ontario in 1995; the Harris government implemented drastic change; therefore the CSR explains what the Harris government has done. The fact that this syllogism is logically flawed should be obvious. The aim of this paper, however, is to go beyond formal logic and show that, with respect to the Harris-government's municipal policies, its substance is flawed as well. Although Harris has brought dramatic change to Ontario municipalities, such change was not the result of the CSR. On municipal issues, the CSR was too vague to account for of the policies subsequently implemented. The CSR promised only that any actions take will not result in increases to local property taxes; that and municipal levels of government should be rationalize[d] ... to avoid overlap and duplication that now exists; and that we will sit down with municipalities to discuss ways of reducing government entanglement and bureaucracy with an eye to eliminating waste and duplication as well as unfair downloading by the (Progressive Party of Ontario 1994). At great political cost, the government launched a massive campaign in late 1995 to promote municipal amalgamation outside Metropolitan Toronto and in 1997 to compel it within, all the while leaving politically unpopular regional governments untouched (until late 1999 at least). In 1997 it also realigned provincial and municipal taxation and service responsibilities in such a way as to make the system more confused and entangled than ever before. Finally, it adopted a new property-tax assessment system, effective in 1998, that will lead to dramatic tax increases for many of its strongest supporters. How did it arrive at this remarkable series of outcomes? Amalgamations Outside Toronto Speaking in Fergus, Ontario in the autumn of 1994, only a few months before the election that brought him to power, Mike Harris had this to say about municipal amalgamations: There is no cost to a municipality to maintain its name and identity. Why destroy our roots and pride? I disagree with restructuring because it believes that bigger is better. Services always cost more in larger communities. The issue is to find out how to distribute fairly and equally without duplicating services (Barber 1997a). Two months after becoming premier, Mr. Harris addressed the annual meeting of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO). He made no reference to the need for form of municipal restructuring (Ontario n.d.a). The new minister of municipal affairs and housing, Al Leach, addressed the same conference the day before. He made one reference to municipal amalgamation: There is no solution that's going to work everywhere. But there are a lot of measures that can make a difference: successful amalgamations, for example -- like the one that created the Town of New Tecumseth; there's annexations, sharing services, deciding what should be provided; there's the cost management approach used so well by Pittsburgh Township; and there's government restructuring. I want to say I am fully committed to getting the province off your back (Ontario n.d.b). The reference to New Tecumseth was not accidental. To coincide with the AMO meeting, Mr. Leach published a flashy pamphlet (complete with his own picture) reporting on the results of an internal ministry study that purported to demonstrate cost savings from the amalgamation. Prominently displayed in the pamphlet, under the heading Less Government was the statement that the total number of municipal councillors had been reduced from 22 to nine (Sancton 1996a). New Tecumseth is in south Simcoe County, northwest of Toronto. It resulted from legislation sponsored by the Peterson Liberals. Discussing similar legislation for north Simcoe sponsored by the Rae NDP government in 1993, the local conservative member, Jim Wilson, (one of Leach's cabinet colleagues at the time of the 1995 AMO meeting) had this to say: I've spent the last several months reviewing all the regional governments in Ontario, many of which were imposed by my party in the past, so believe me, I come to this with some experience, and the south Simcoe experience to date. …