Results tagged “budget”

The Hon. Dwight Duncan, Minister of Finance, has just wrapped up Ontario's 2009-2010 budget announcement at Queen's Park. Surprising nobody, the theme of his speech was the need to address Ontario's declining economy: Duncan began by saying that "our province is in the middle of a global economic and financial storm... we have seen a serious deterioration in our fiscal position." Ontario's deficit will come in at $14.1 billion in 2009-2010, and a return to balanced budgets is predicted to take several years. To tackle the province's weakened state the Liberals are proposing a stimulus package ($32.5 billion over the next two years for infrastructure projects, predicted to create 300,000 new jobs, and $300 million for green economy initiatives); tax relief ($10.6 billion spread over personal and business tax cuts); assistance measures (social assistance rates will go up by 2%); and a new harmonized federal-provincial value-added tax. So far, commenters are noting that Ontario's budget follows the pattern set by the federal government, perhaps signalling that relations between the two are improving somewhat.

Today is budget day at City Hall, and the mood is grim but determined. In the face of rising unemployment, swelling welfare rolls, and glum economic forecasts, the rock of weakening revenue and the hard place of increasing social service costs are squeezing the City hard. In a press conference this morning, Mayor David Miller and Budget Committee Chair Shelley Carroll reassured the public that no major service cuts were on the table and that many planned improvements (such as the Tower Renewal program, various environmental initiatives, and TTC upgrades) were going ahead as planned. Miller made a point of contextualizing the pressures the City faces, lambasting the federal government for failing to expand EI eligibility requirements, and reminding us that the hangover of Mike Harris's welfare offloading is being felt to this day.

Toronto's city councillors have voted to change the rules governing their office budgets, which includes the elimination of alcohol with meals with staff, mileage compensation to and from City Hall, and compensation for raffle tickets or silent auction bids. On the bright side, Torontoist's corporate booze budget is at an all-time high.

Members of the Canadian Armed Forces marched in the Toronto Pride Parade yesterday, the first time that they have done so. This confirms, once and for all, that the massive international homosexual conspiracy does in fact attempt to recruit youth to their lifestyle. (Also, there is an enlistment bonus if you are willing to be gay in Afghanistan while carrying a rifle.)

TTC does end-run around Toronto Preservation Board. The TTC wants the right to redesign 63 of its 69 stations. Heh. We have 69 TTC stations. Never noticed that before. Heh.

A three hour Blackberry outage affected millions of people across North America yesterday, leading to much wailing and handwringing over the temporary unavailability of a technology that didn't even exist ten years ago. Truly we are a nation of whiners.

The last time we looked at accessible pedestrian signals (APS), those chirping and cuckooing crossing indicators for the visually-impaired, it was with some surprise at the city's claim that it simply couldn't afford to install APS at more than a handful of intersections each year. Instead of allocating enough money to improve availability of a fairly basic service to visually-impaired residents, the city instead looked for corporate sponsors to pick up some of the considerable slack, resulting in pedestrian signals "funded by IBM" and other organizations dotting the city, a virtual declaration that the city was abdicating its responsibilities.

In this occasional feature, two Torontoist staffers face off to debate an issue that is important to our city. We invite our readers to join in the debate in the comments section after the post.

David Miller delivered a balanced budget yesterday, thanks to higher property taxes, some fabulous new tariffs, and a one-time infusion of $150 million from the the provincial government. According to Miller, the property tax increase of 3.75% is in line with his commitment to limit raises to the rate of inflation (1.9% in Toronto last year), evidence that the mayor is either math-illiterate or assumes that everyone else is.