Tory urges council to seek audit before imposing new taxes
By Jeff Gray - Globe and Mail
Provincial Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory came out of a meeting organized by right-leaning city councillors yesterday to repeat his call for council to perform a “value for money” audit before imposing the new taxes proposed by Mayor David Miller.
“We’ve got to make sure we have the house in order,” Mr. Tory told reporters outside his office, accusing Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty, who granted Toronto the power to impose the new levies, of being too quick to look to taxpayers for more money.
Mr. Tory, who lost to Mr. Miller in the 2003 mayoral election, also repeated a pledge from his campaign platform to speed up a review of the offloading of social programs onto municipalities, which has been blamed for the financial problems facing Toronto and other Ontario cities.
Mr. Tory wants the report, which he said was being used as a stalling tactic, by year’s end; it is currently due in February, 2008.
In an interview, Mr. Miller - who is on good terms with Mr. Tory and speaks with him often - said he disagreed with the leader’s call for an audit. Mr. Miller argued that the city’s finances have already been scrutinized, internally and externally, over and over again, and they are shown to have been very well managed.
“I think the hundreds of thousands of dollars that it would cost to do a value-for-money audit, given that we’ve already been audited, given that we have external benchmarks, given that we’re already audited by three separate auditors, wouldn’t be money well spent,” Mr. Miller said.
Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East), a Conservative opponent of the left-leaning Mr. Miller, arranged the meeting with Mr. Tory and invited a group of like-minded city councillors to attend.
Mr. Minnan-Wong said he wanted to help push the city’s case for more money from Queen’s Park as an issue in the October provincial election.
(He added that he and colleague Karen Stintz have also requested meetings with Mr. McGuinty and NDP Leader Howard Hampton.)
Yesterday’s chat in Mr. Tory’s office came after threats from Mr. Miller of massive budget cuts - including the possible closing of the Sheppard subway - after Mr. Minnan-Wong and others on council voted to defer consideration of new taxes on home sales and vehicle registrations until after the Oct. 10 provincial election.
The mayor had argued the two new levies, which would bring in about $350-million a year, are necessary to shore up the city’s finances.
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