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A tipping point for waterfront property owners

Comments by Bob Topp, Chairman of the Coalition after Property Tax Reform, at the MLA Meeting on July 27, 2007

We're now at a tipping point for waterfront taxpayers in Ontario. All our efforts will be rewarded or not on election day, October 10.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight once again about property taxes. In the time I have available, I'm going to tell you very briefly what we've achieved to date, but more importantly what remains to be done, and how you can help.

What have we accomplished?

• We have built a coalition of over 1,000,000 frustrated and unhappy taxpayers across Ontario. As WRAFT, a purely waterfront group we weren't being taken seriously at Queens Park. When CAPTR was formed in early 2006, the government and the opposition parties started to pay attention.
• The government put a freeze on assessments which not surprisingly comes to an end right after the election. It was intended to make us forget the vagaries of the assessment system but as the waterfront real estate market continued to boom in 2005 and 2006, there is no question that with the moratorium on assessments during that period saved us all significant tax dollars.
• While the large part of our effort was directed to convincing the Liberal government to introduce serious reform, specifically to put a cap on assessment increases, we also worked with the official Opposition and were gratified over a year ago when PC Finance critic Tim Hudak introduced a private members bill calling for a 5% cap on annual assessment increases. Even more rewarding for us was the news this spring that John Tory was including the 5% cap as a major plank in his election platform. We were also pleased to watch the NDP plan evolve, a permanent freeze on assessment until you sell your property. In other words all political parties were having a serious look at property tax reform.
• Over the past six months, extensive research carried out by the bureaucrats together with numerous meetings with our group gave us hope that the government would introduce meaningful reform in their spring budget. Instead we were disappointed to see that all the Finance Minister came up with was a return to a four-year assessment cycle and the phase-in of increases over the subsequent four year period. To us this is just a band-aid, an installment plan which does not begin to equate to real reform. They got this concept from a similar system used in two US jurisdictions. Interestingly in both these jurisdictions there is also a cap on assessment increases.

That's the recent history, in a nutshell.

Where do we go from here?

There is a provincial election on October 10. CAPTR is a non-partisan organization. Interesting things happen during election campaigns. It is our intention to attempt to convince the government now in power to think again. We believe a cap on assessment increases, the reduction in volatility and the resultant predictability of your tax bill from year to year would be well-received by the majority of Ontarians. The Finance Minister, in his budget speech said in reference to the cap and I quote: "one that, as it turns out, would tend to favour the more affluent". Contrary to the Finance Minister's oft stated view that the cap would favour Rosedale at the expense of Rexdale, we have recently obtained extensive data from MPAC which clearly demonstrates that owners of lower value properties would be the major beneficiaries. (We shared this information with John Barber a few days ago and many of you saw his article in the Globe and Mail yesterday.)

As well as attempting to convince the government to strengthen the reform package, it is our intention to raise the profile of the property tax issue, to make it a key factor in people's minds when they enter the polling booth. We plan to do some polling. We plan to carry out a radio and print media campaign. We plan to be active in a number of key ridings, door to door and at all-candidates meetings. To do this we need to raise some money. As MLA members, you will shortly receive a letter from us asking once again for your financial help. MLA members have been generous in the support of our efforts. We are asking all our waterfront member associations and other coalition partners to contribute and we hope that as in the past MLA members will help out. After all the effort that many of us have expended over the past three years, we really are now at a tipping point. In a little over two months, we will find out whether we can look forward to real reform of the property tax system in Ontario.

Thank you.

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