The cash-strapped City of Toronto is considering a controversial plan to get a little more cash from motorists using parking meters.
Licensing and Standards Committee Chair Howard Moscoe floated the idea of charging a group of drivers for parking who are now exempt.
"I think what we have to do is ... charge the disabled for parking," Moscoe said Monday.
The powerful committee Moscoe chairs is going to explore the idea as a way to generate more revenue from parking.
He admits the idea is controversial but said it is also fair.
"In my dealing with the disabled over the years, they've always said, 'treat us like everybody else.'"
At this time, disabled motorists who park in any one of the municipal parking lots must pay. But if they park on the street, disabled motorists do not need to feed coins or a credit card into an electronic parking kiosk.
That arrangement means an annual loss for the city of about $3 million, according to Moscoe.
His proposal is not being greeted warmly by people who would be forced to pay.
Sandra Carpenter, who drives to work downtown every day, said that the additional cost would be too much to bear.
"It would sort of put me over the edge and I'm working and I'm making a fairly decent income. There's a lot of people that aren't."
Moscoe said the idea was spurred by a recent newspaper report that found widespread abuse of disabled parking permits by able-bodied drivers. According to the report, more than 4,000 of Ontario's disabled permit holders are 100 years old.
It is a statistically impossible situation that the provincial government has vowed to fix.
With a report from CTV's Chris Eby
