02-10-2021, 09:57 PM
(02-10-2021, 07:02 PM)jwilliamson Wrote:(02-10-2021, 02:37 PM)LesPio Wrote: This may help Phase 2.
Trudeau pledges $14.9 billion for public transit projects across the country
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau...-1.5908346
This is a suboptimal way to find local transit IMO. Instead of upper level governments collecting taxes and then redistributing back to lower levels by some more or less arbitrary method, we should just collect more taxes at the lower level and less at the higher level. Then funding can be better directed towards what is needed locally instead of what is eligible to be funded.
I don't actually agree that for multiple reasons. One is the same reason that Cambridge was on the hook for paying for LRT: governments express the principle that we're in this together. We pay for some of the needs of other places and they pay for some of our needs. (Politically I'd be in favour of not funding highways in Toronto for instance but the general principle is not good). Another is that municipalities just don't have the proper tax tools at the moment. Taxing properties is not the right way to fund transit.