TORONTO - An NDP government would ease the cash crunch on overburdened Ontario cities by footing the bill for some provincially mandated services and going Dutch on operating costs for public transit, party leader Howard Hampton said Tuesday.
Hampton said if elected, his party would assume financial responsibility for a number of services currently being paid for by the cities -- a measure known as uploading.
He accused Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government of shortchanging cities across the province by dumping costs on them, forcing municipalities to hike property taxes to pay for services.
"The McGuinty government is a deadbeat government that won't pay its own bills,'' Hampton said.
"Now property taxes are up, support for services is down and today's families are paying the price.''
Finance Minister Greg Sorbara, who was travelling Tuesday, denounced Hampton's plan in a statement issued through his office.
"The last time the NDP were in power they drove this province into the largest debt Ontarians have ever faced and it looks like Howard Hampton wants to do the same thing again,'' Sorbara said.
If Hampton was sincere about his plan, his caucus should have supported past Liberal initiatives that were designed to take the pressure off municipal governments, he added.
"If the NDP were interested in helping municipalities, they should have voted for the uploading of public health and land ambulance and dedicating gas tax (revenue) to municipalities for transit,'' he said.
Although the writ has yet to be dropped, the unofficial campaign in advance of the Oct. 10 vote is well underway, judging from the recent number of campaign-style speeches of announcements of late from the province's three principal parties.
Hampton also pledged to freeze transit fares for two years and pay half the operating costs for public transit starting next year.
Combined, these measures would save municipalities $645 million next year, he said, while freeing up $221 million for Toronto alone.
Hampton's recent talk about uploading comes at a time when Toronto is in the midst of a financial crisis, though he said the announcements aren't meant to coincide with the city's cash problem.
"The smallest municipality in the province will benefit from this significantly, just as the largest municipality in the province will benefit significantly,'' he said. "It's all about fairness.''
The NDP is trying to appeal to urban voters by talking about uploading services, said University of Toronto politics professor Nelson Wiseman.
"It's a logical position for the NDP to take, but the NDP knows it doesn't have to live with its policy because it's not going to get elected,'' Wiseman said.
But downloading costs onto the cities has also "negatively affected'' other parts of the province and not just the major centres, he added.
Enid Slack, director of the University of Toronto's Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance, said the province should foot the bill for "most'' social services to ease municipal property taxes.
While the province allows Toronto to levy some taxes under the City of Toronto Act, Slack said they are "smaller taxes,'' and that cities should either get more power to raise revenues or be freed from paying for some services.
"You can either upload some of the expenditures, or download some revenues,'' she said. "It's a pretty simple equation.''
