00:01:53.380I don't want to put any fuel on that fire.
00:01:54.980But really, it just seems to me that if it's municipal, that means that anything that you buy or purchase that you make inside of the GTA would cost you more than, for example, just going to Vaughan Mills north of Toronto and taking part in the same purchase.
00:02:22.340When it ends, it just kind of ends and becomes a farmer's field.
00:02:25.060Here in Toronto, we have this place called Steeles Avenue, where it's a very busy street, and there's lots of stuff on the north side, lots of stuff on the south.
00:02:32.580The south side of the street is Toronto, and the north is a couple different GTA cities, you know, Markham or Vaughan, depending on where you are.
00:02:39.180And of course, we can go in other directions, Mississauga to what...
00:02:43.740And then to your point, I think the businesses on the south side of the street would not be doing too well because you know on the north side, you're going to be able to get them for whatever the sales tax is, 7% or 8%.
00:02:54.220You're going to be able to automatically get stuff that much cheaper just on the other side of the street.
00:02:58.680You've just made me envision Steeles Avenue between Toronto and the northern areas just beyond.
00:03:06.100And that line there being the craziest shopping competitive area, it'd be like cross-border shopping.
00:03:33.800And this is a regressive tax, meaning it hits the low-income people the most because you have limited means and so forth.
00:03:43.360It's not a progressive tax like how we have higher tax brackets for higher earners.
00:03:46.060You might just be stuck in that neighborhood too without the means to get north of Steeles on a regular basis to get your groceries or pharmaceuticals or anything that you might need that's taxable.
00:03:55.540So, before we get to normalizing it, which I do hate the idea of, that we just do this, we ring a bell that we feel we can't unring, and I don't understand that often.
00:05:01.720I mean, compared to other things that, to be honest with you, I don't really get a lot of questionnaires from the city that I recall.
00:05:07.220But if I got one that said, do you agree with the sales tax and no other, you know, sort of suggestions that I was being pulled on, I would take that very seriously.
00:05:17.560Well, and it's an interesting point you bring up because they don't necessarily send these surveys out super wide to people who they want to get an answer that they don't like from.
00:05:26.200You know, they know the different newsletter groups and so forth to send these out from.
00:05:29.700And the questions are really interestingly worded.
00:05:32.260They don't even say, do you want a municipal sales tax or not?
00:05:35.260The questions are, which level of government do you think should be helping us introduce the sales tax, provincial or federal?
00:05:41.540And you're like, hold on, I even said I like this.
00:05:43.660So, of course, I went to the other box and just said, no sales tax, right out of the gate.
00:05:47.860I like the way that they say, okay, so we're going to do this.
00:06:01.740You'd think they would not be asking what I'm about to say, but they ask you, if you are interested in supporting these ideas, what sort of activism would you do with us to help bring this about?
00:06:32.540This would just be one more thing I think Torontonians would be upset about, certainly concerned about.
00:06:38.820I mean, the real estate rulings recently in the city, you know, development, the way that it has stagnated, you know, things breaking down in the city.
00:06:47.780I mean, we see the mayor opening washrooms, for goodness sake, in press conferences.
00:06:51.920It seems to me like Toronto has a lot of concerns and maybe they're financial, but I think that it seems like that's a focus that we don't see on many of the other problems.
00:07:04.440I mean, where's your mindset at and what are the issues that you're most focused on?
00:07:09.180And I think one of the frustrating things is that a municipal sales tax is not being floated as an absolute last resort.
00:07:16.640It's almost like a very easy answer instead of doing the hard work to go out and both do a line-by-line review of your expenses, which has not been done at the city of Toronto.
00:07:27.400We haven't done zero-based budgeting where you have to go back and account for every dollar.
00:07:31.460You say, okay, let's go back to basics.
00:07:47.560That's not being done, which is very frustrating.
00:07:49.800And then the other way to bring in new revenue is not to create new taxes or new categories, but to create a vibrant ecosystem, a vibrant city, an economy where investment comes, people are doing more jobs, doing more business, and that's helping bring opportunities for everyone.
00:08:07.300Olivia Chow also wants to talk with other levels of government about what they should and shouldn't be funding and so forth.
00:08:11.920And I think those are reasonable conversations to have.
00:08:14.080I do have some words of encouragement in terms of how they approach things, but a new sales tax, no, no dice.
00:08:21.860That leads to kind of my next question, which is, is this Olivia Chow hearing from the province, go find out what you can do before you come to us for any more money?
00:08:30.000And her saying, okay, well, I'll ask for a tax and everybody's going to say no, and I'm back to you at the province to subsidize us.
00:08:37.140Right, and great point, and one thing I haven't clarified that I want to is that Olivia Chow can't just bring in a municipal sales tax.
00:08:44.620She has to be granted approval by the province to do it.
00:08:47.820So all cities, you know, have that situation where they don't have taxation powers, but they can seek them from the province.
00:08:54.080So it's up to Doug Ford whether or not he gives thumbs up or down.
00:08:56.980When this was last floated, he just said no comment on it, and the Ford government didn't say anything.
00:09:02.300So you make an interesting point here.
00:09:04.120I think they would like to, what they're doing right now with these surveys, they're not so much saying, hey, look, we're going to bring this in next month.
00:09:12.880They're trying to normalize the idea to get public opinion on board with it, get more people saying it should happen, so then they can go to Doug Ford and say, oh, don't worry, it's a popular idea.
00:09:22.920You won't be thrown out of office for allowing it, and we'll be fine with it, so let us do it.
00:09:26.880So I think they are trying to shape public opinion first before pushing in this policy.
00:09:32.220I hope that this has something to do with them not pursuing this episode, but what do you think are some of the major fallout things that happen if she puts this tax in?
00:09:44.360I mean, what does this do to the city?
00:09:47.520Well, I mean, so every year the Fraser Institute comes up with something called Tax Freedom Day, where they calculate what day of the year you're free of paying taxes.
00:09:58.600So if you say that you're paying $40,000 a year in taxes, how many days in the calendar year does it take you until you've made $40,000?
00:10:09.000So Tax Freedom Day for the average Canadian typically has been falling on a later date every single year over the past number of decades.
00:10:17.520So the main thing this does is it just adds to the tax burden, and we already pay a lot of taxes.
00:10:23.160It adds to the tax burden even for low-income people, which is very frustrating.
00:10:26.980So the main things that happen are you can't pay the bills as much as you used to.
00:10:31.180You can't pay for your groceries and healthy food for your kids as much as you used to.
00:10:35.660And then to your point, it makes Toronto a less competitive place to do business and invest, both because another tax is not a good thing and because you'd be the only jurisdiction who has it.
00:10:45.800I'm going to encourage people to have a look for your article in the National Post on this very topic.
00:10:49.740I appreciate you talking to me about it.
00:10:53.000This is a big deal, I think, for Toronto, and I think it actually is – it really positions Olivia Chow in a real light because this is the solution she's looking for.