After years of trying to pay for services downloaded from the province, especially policing, Pickle Lake council threw in the towel this week and basically invited the McGuinty government to take over its affairs.
The mess Pickle Lake faces certainly isn’t because the township has been fiscally irresponsible or that residents aren’t paying their fair share (property taxes jumped 12 percent last year, with another double-digit hike eyed in 2006). Rather, it’s because a community of 350 can’t afford to pay policing costs totalling $587,000, among the other services Queen’s Park has shoved onto it.
And sadly, many more small communities across the north also may be forced to hand over the keys, so to speak.
NDP leader and local MPP Howard Hampton was quick to play the blame game, issuing a press release yesterday headlined “McGuinty policies bankrupt northern towns.” But who really is to blame? The McGuinty Liberals? The former Conservative government of Mike Harris, which made downloading a household word in the late-’90s? Or how about the former NDP government of Bob Rae, which had left the province in economic ruin in the first place?
Or is the culprit the federal government, which slashed transfer payments to the provinces in the 1990s under then Finance minister Paul Martin in his effort to conquer the deficit/debt, which the Mulroney government routinely racked up during its years in office?
The crux of the matter, of course, is that there is just one taxpayer. So while it’s great to see income tax cuts and pledges to slice the GST, the cold reality is any savings taxpayers reap there eventually are gobbled up—and then some—at the municipal level through higher property taxes and user fees.
And that, in turn, kills small towns as people no longer can afford their property taxes or sewer/water bills, to use the local weight room, or put their kids in hockey. Small businesses are forced to close under the weight of a crushing commercial tax burden and the steadily rising cost for services.
Is “uploading” the “downloaded” back onto the province the answer to stopping this vicious cycle? Probably not. Will better policies by senior levels of government save the day? Hopefully.
Or is the real problem the fact that 32 million people simply cannot support a country the size of Canada?
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
