Bell is president of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities.
Municipal government is playing an increasingly important role in the everyday lives of Canadians.
There was a time when your municipality was in charge of not much more than gravelling the roads and replacing culverts. Municipalities still maintain your roads and culverts, but they are providing many other services as well.
In fact, today’s councils are involved in nearly every aspect of Canadians’ lives.
Not sure how your local council plays a role in your life? Take, for example, a typical spring Saturday for a western Canadian family and consider how the decisions of your council may affect its course.
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You get the family up in the morning for your child’s hockey game. You take a quick shower, where the water first comes from a municipal water plant or reservoir and then is returned to a municipal waste-water treatment facility.
You head off to the game at the municipally owned, operated and funded community recreation complex. It’s a nice day so some family members decide to bike along the new municipal bike path, while the rest travel along the recently patched municipal road to the arena.
Regrettably, during the game your child is injured, and it is off to the nearest clinic in an ambulance provided by the municipality. You’ve heard about doctor shortages and are hoping that you don’t have to wait forever to see a physician.
Luckily, there is a new doctor on call who was recruited with financial assistance from the municipality. After the doctor treats your child and sends him on his way, it’s off to the municipally owned and maintained park for a family picnic. You check out the playground equipment that was recently installed, by municipal staff, to replace the aging swings and slides.
You also notice the lack of mosquitoes, before recalling that the municipality began a mosquito control program this year.
Now consider another scenario.
You begin your day by filling the kettle several times. Your community has been under a boil water order for several weeks.
You find out that this morning’s hockey game has been cancelled because an engineering report has deemed the local arena structurally unsafe. So you drive to the park instead, slowly, because the potholes seem to be growing larger by the day.
At the park, your child falls off of the aging teeter-totter and must be rushed to the emergency room, but it is closed. The local doctor relocated, and the community is having trouble recruiting a new physician. And on it goes…
Wouldn’t it be nice to say this is an extreme example? Unfortunately, it is not.
These situations are all outcomes of the decisions municipal councils are required to make in response to their citizens’ demands for more and improved services as well as transfers of responsibilities from both the provincial and federal governments.
Hence the expression “municipal government is growing up.” By taking on additional responsibilities, in areas ranging from health care to environmental protection and beyond, local councils are maturing into a more essential provider of necessary services than ever before.
The problem is, municipal revenue streams haven’t caught up with the growth spurt they have experienced in service delivery requirements. This creates what is called a “fiscal imbalance” resulting in councils having to make decisions that may have detrimental effects on their communities, much like those in the above story.
“Isn’t that what my property taxes are for?” you might ask. Well, yes, in fact that is the crux of the matter. Municipalities rely almost solely on property taxes to fund everything they do, but property taxes do not grow with the economy. You might say municipalities are living on a fixed income.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has uncovered some alarming statistics.
In his groundbreaking report, Danger Ahead: The Coming Collapse of Canada’s Municipal Infrastructure, professor Saeed Mirza states that “… for the past 20 years, municipalities have been caught in a fiscal squeeze caused by growing responsibilities and reduced revenues. As a result, they were forced to defer needed investment, and municipal infrastructure continued to deteriorate, with the cost of fixing it climbing five-fold from an estimated $12 billion in 1985 to $60 billion in 2003. This cost is the municipal infrastructure deficit, and today it has reached $123 billion.”
In trying to keep up with this deterioration, municipalities have become increasingly reliant on grants, funding programs and other transfers to deliver services and replace aging infrastructure.
There is no doubt that in some cases, these programs are essential. A community of 500 people would be hard pressed to generate enough money for a community centre if left to rely solely on property taxes.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for municipalities to have the resources they need to deliver the services expected of them at the front end? The Mirza report calls for a national plan to eliminate the municipal infrastructure deficit and prepare the groundwork for effective management of our infrastructure in the future.
Why not provide municipalities with a steady, predictable revenue stream that will grow along with the economy, and allow us to provide the services and facilities our citizens want and need?
A recent poll shows Canadians are asking these same questions. FCM recently undertook the largest-ever survey of Canadians’ attitudes on municipal issues.
Canadians believe municipal governments do not have the resources they need to meet the challenges facing them, and they want the federal government to play a major role in fixing the problem. The poll showed that more than 90 percent of Canadians believe the federal government should help municipal governments deal with infrastructure issues.
Canadians understand the need for fiscal balance. Why wouldn’t they? It affects the places we all call home. Our citizens expect and deserve thriving, healthy communities, not aging, crumbling infrastructure.
It is time to take a closer look at the resources available to municipalities and take stock of the roles and responsibilities of all three orders of government. Only through this type of examination can we create fiscal balance in Western Canada.
