True Patriot Love - November 06, 2025


Toronto’s Tax Shock： Anthony Furey Sounds the Alarm


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

200.66301

Word count

2,280

Sentence count

149

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Mayor Olivia Chow wants to introduce a municipal sales tax in Toronto, and we're here to talk about why it's not a good idea. We talk to Councillor Anthony Fury about why he thinks it's a bad idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.280 Earlier this week, Anthony Fury posted a column about municipal tax in Toronto and Olivia Chow's focus on it.
00:00:08.140 And we're going to talk to Anthony about that today.
00:00:15.880 Anthony, thanks so much for joining us to talk about this.
00:00:18.920 Hey, good to be here.
00:00:19.600 Is this an unusual thing to occur in Toronto for the mayor to say, okay, we need to apply a municipal tax in this manner?
00:00:30.760 Well, I certainly think it is.
00:00:32.700 And I think people should be alarmed.
00:00:34.140 Some people think it's normal.
00:00:35.300 And unfortunately, it's becoming a bit too normal.
00:00:37.200 Politicians talking about more and more taxes.
00:00:39.920 So what this is, is the proposal for a municipal sales tax.
00:00:44.000 So right now we have two sales taxes.
00:00:46.360 It's called the HST in Ontario, but it's really a provincial sales tax and a federal sales tax rolled into one.
00:00:52.260 That amalgamation happened of the GST and PST.
00:00:54.560 But that's two levels of government.
00:00:56.160 Now we're talking about an MST, the municipal sales tax.
00:01:00.000 Now this is something, as you know, I ran for mayor last time around against Olivia Chow.
00:01:04.280 And she was floating the idea more favorably about more taxes.
00:01:08.020 I campaigned against a municipal sales tax.
00:01:10.660 Now after she came into office, she did have staff explore introducing a municipal sales tax. 1.00
00:01:16.120 They ultimately didn't proceed with it.
00:01:18.460 And I thought that was great.
00:01:19.740 We're not talking about it anymore.
00:01:20.840 But this year, they have put out budget consultations where they ask people their thoughts on things they can do for the budget.
00:01:27.500 And like a bad idea that just won't go away, the municipal sales tax is coming back.
00:01:32.980 And they're talking about it in these questionnaires and surveys they're putting out to people.
00:01:36.720 So they're floating the idea again.
00:01:37.940 And they're trying to normalize it again.
00:01:40.120 But to your original question, it ain't normal.
00:01:43.020 It's not good.
00:01:43.880 No municipal sales tax, I say.
00:01:45.720 I don't even know how we can add one more tax to the pile.
00:01:48.800 I mean...
00:01:49.480 Don't challenge them.
00:01:50.360 They can do it.
00:01:51.020 They'll add a gazillion.
00:01:52.700 You're right.
00:01:53.380 I don't want to put any fuel on that fire.
00:01:54.980 But 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.
00:02:11.780 Yeah.
00:02:11.960 I mean, that's the interesting thing.
00:02:13.400 Here in the GTA, many cities, you know, Edmonton and Calgary are several hours drive away.
00:02:18.860 And when Calgary ends, it just kind of ends.
00:02:20.760 When Ottawa...
00:02:21.400 I've lived in Ottawa.
00:02:22.340 When it ends, it just kind of ends and becomes a farmer's field.
00:02:25.060 Here 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.
00:02:32.580 The 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.
00:02:39.180 And of course, we can go in other directions, Mississauga to what...
00:02:41.500 Absolutely.
00:02:41.900 A street that's just a boundary.
00:02:43.740 And 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%.
00:02:54.220 You're going to be able to automatically get stuff that much cheaper just on the other side of the street.
00:02:58.680 You've just made me envision Steeles Avenue between Toronto and the northern areas just beyond.
00:03:06.100 And that line there being the craziest shopping competitive area, it'd be like cross-border shopping.
00:03:12.560 The Berlin Wall.
00:03:12.900 Yes, cross-border shopping.
00:03:14.900 Yeah.
00:03:15.420 No, absolutely.
00:03:16.280 Which is one big example of why I think this is not a good idea.
00:03:21.200 It definitely puts Toronto at a disadvantage in those areas.
00:03:24.920 And also because, to your original point, can we bring on new taxes?
00:03:28.940 I mean, hardworking people are having enough time as it is.
00:03:32.100 Affordability is a major issue.
00:03:33.800 And this is a regressive tax, meaning it hits the low-income people the most because you have limited means and so forth.
00:03:43.360 It's not a progressive tax like how we have higher tax brackets for higher earners.
00:03:46.060 You 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.
00:03:55.540 So, 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.
00:04:07.060 However, let's talk about this first.
00:04:09.960 What's the justification for this?
00:04:12.580 Well, the justification is that Toronto is an expensive city to run and that we have revenue shortfalls.
00:04:19.860 So, Toronto relies a lot on development charges from developers.
00:04:23.080 We get many millions of dollars from them, but development is not happening right now.
00:04:27.420 Stagnant right now.
00:04:28.000 Yeah, so we're losing on that.
00:04:29.400 There are revenue sources that are declining.
00:04:31.760 Different prices are going up.
00:04:33.240 And maybe we just haven't been all that fiscally responsible either.
00:04:36.340 Maybe we're not looking after the books as responsibly as we should.
00:04:40.180 So, this is just one idea that's floated in these consultations, in these surveys.
00:04:43.940 To be clear, Olivia Chow has not said, I'm bringing in a municipal sales tax next year, but they're pushing it and staff is pushing it.
00:04:50.540 And they wouldn't be doing it without the mayor's blessing to do it.
00:04:53.180 So, this is sort of a part of their ecosystem of ideas.
00:04:57.140 They haven't let go of this very bad idea.
00:05:00.400 And they're testing it, actually.
00:05:01.720 I 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.
00:05:07.220 But 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.
00:05:17.560 Well, 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.
00:05:26.200 You know, they know the different newsletter groups and so forth to send these out from.
00:05:29.700 And the questions are really interestingly worded.
00:05:32.260 They don't even say, do you want a municipal sales tax or not?
00:05:35.260 The questions are, which level of government do you think should be helping us introduce the sales tax, provincial or federal?
00:05:41.540 And you're like, hold on, I even said I like this.
00:05:43.660 So, of course, I went to the other box and just said, no sales tax, right out of the gate.
00:05:47.860 I like the way that they say, okay, so we're going to do this.
00:05:50.260 Let's say we do this.
00:05:51.000 It's hypothetical.
00:05:51.980 Where do you want to hear the news from?
00:05:53.580 Yeah.
00:05:53.820 That's a pretty wild assumption.
00:05:57.580 No, exactly.
00:05:58.520 And there are other questions in here.
00:06:00.320 This is a budget survey.
00:06:01.740 You'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?
00:06:10.960 Would you lobby MPPs?
00:06:12.360 Would you go and corral a group of friends?
00:06:14.460 Do you need to join activist workshops to learn how to better do this?
00:06:17.920 I'm not kidding.
00:06:18.620 Wow.
00:06:19.020 So you think you're going in to be asked, you know, oh, should we cut taxes or not?
00:06:22.520 And instead they're asking you, hey, can we get you to sign up to be a pro-tax advocate and activist?
00:06:27.840 It's quite something, Mike.
00:06:29.480 Now, you ran for mayor of the city.
00:06:32.540 This would just be one more thing I think Torontonians would be upset about, certainly concerned about.
00:06:38.820 I 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.
00:06:47.780 I mean, we see the mayor opening washrooms, for goodness sake, in press conferences.
00:06:51.920 It 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.
00:07:03.120 Well, no, exactly.
00:07:04.440 I mean, where's your mindset at and what are the issues that you're most focused on?
00:07:09.180 And I think one of the frustrating things is that a municipal sales tax is not being floated as an absolute last resort.
00:07:16.640 It'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.
00:07:27.400 We haven't done zero-based budgeting where you have to go back and account for every dollar.
00:07:31.460 You say, okay, let's go back to basics.
00:07:32.800 What are we spending on?
00:07:34.260 Does this make sense?
00:07:35.160 Does that make sense?
00:07:35.980 You sort of rebuild the budget every year like you do at home.
00:07:39.520 You kind of go, okay, what do I have?
00:07:40.520 I got the Netflix subscription.
00:07:41.840 I got my heating bills.
00:07:42.860 I got the-
00:07:43.460 Wow, we went deep into the line of credit this year.
00:07:45.400 How do we-
00:07:45.800 Exactly.
00:07:46.200 Yeah.
00:07:46.580 All that kind of stuff.
00:07:47.560 That's not being done, which is very frustrating.
00:07:49.800 And 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.
00:08:07.300 Olivia Chow also wants to talk with other levels of government about what they should and shouldn't be funding and so forth. 0.78
00:08:11.920 And I think those are reasonable conversations to have.
00:08:14.080 I do have some words of encouragement in terms of how they approach things, but a new sales tax, no, no dice.
00:08:21.860 That 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? 0.73
00:08:30.000 And 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.
00:08:37.140 Right, 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. 1.00
00:08:44.620 She has to be granted approval by the province to do it.
00:08:47.820 So all cities, you know, have that situation where they don't have taxation powers, but they can seek them from the province.
00:08:54.080 So it's up to Doug Ford whether or not he gives thumbs up or down.
00:08:56.980 When this was last floated, he just said no comment on it, and the Ford government didn't say anything.
00:09:02.300 So you make an interesting point here.
00:09:04.120 I 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.
00:09:12.880 They'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.
00:09:22.920 You won't be thrown out of office for allowing it, and we'll be fine with it, so let us do it.
00:09:26.880 So I think they are trying to shape public opinion first before pushing in this policy.
00:09:32.220 I 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?
00:09:44.360 I mean, what does this do to the city?
00:09:47.520 Well, 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.
00:09:58.600 So 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?
00:10:09.000 So Tax Freedom Day for the average Canadian typically has been falling on a later date every single year over the past number of decades.
00:10:17.520 So the main thing this does is it just adds to the tax burden, and we already pay a lot of taxes.
00:10:23.160 It adds to the tax burden even for low-income people, which is very frustrating.
00:10:26.980 So the main things that happen are you can't pay the bills as much as you used to.
00:10:31.180 You can't pay for your groceries and healthy food for your kids as much as you used to.
00:10:35.660 And 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.
00:10:45.800 I'm going to encourage people to have a look for your article in the National Post on this very topic.
00:10:49.740 I appreciate you talking to me about it.
00:10:53.000 This 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.
00:11:04.980 It's not a good one.
00:11:05.800 No new taxes.
00:11:06.800 Thanks, Anthony.
00:11:07.480 Thanks, Mike.
00:11:07.840 Thanks, Mike.
00:11:19.740 Thanks, Mike.