The Rural Ontario Municipality Association does what it says on the tin: it represents the interests of Ontario’s rural municipalities, as a counterpart to the overall Association of Municipalities of Ontario — not to mention more specific groups like the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM, although despite the name it represents the province’s northeast) and the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA). ROMA is holding its annual conference this week in downtown Toronto, and I was invited to moderate one of the highlights of the conference: the ministers’ forum, during which municipal representatives get to pepper members of Ontario’s cabinet with questions of varying levels of policy detail and hostility.
Ever since I first started attending AMO and ROMA conferences as a reporter, I’ve found the ministers’ forum an eye-opening event. Try as I might to keep my eyes on events and issues outside Toronto, the reality is I live and work in the provincial capital, and these events are one of the most reliable ways for someone like me to get a sample of what’s important to municipal leaders outside the biggest cities.
This year’s ROMA forum was a bit different, however. What struck me (as I stood somewhat uncomfortably on stage) was how many of the questions were much more general than might have been expected. For all the talk about the divide between rural and urban Ontario — and the differences are real and shouldn’t be discounted — many of the concerns raised by rural elected officials could just as easily have come from their big-city counterparts.
Admittedly, some officials have a foot in both worlds. Burlington mayor Marianne Meed Ward, whose city may be half-rural (as she told the audience Monday) is also the current chair of the Ontario Big City Mayors. And it was Meed Ward who raised an uncomfortable topic: while the premier announced a “New Deal” for Toronto late last year, other cities also face serious financial pressures, and they could use a new deal of their own.
The author hosts the ministers' forum at ROMA's annual conference, in Toronto. (Steve Paikin)
From the moment the government announced the deal with Toronto in November, Meed Ward’s question was pretty much an inevitability. Which isn’t to say that Queen’s Park isn’t working mightily to try to sidestep the issue. From its inception, the deal was structured to address issues that are as uniquely Toronto-centric as possible: the city has the biggest burden of transit and shelter-operation costs in the GTA by far and was almost alone in the province in being responsible for the operations and upkeep of two major expressways. From the perspective of the premier’s office and the Ministry of Finance, the point was to avoid setting a precedent that would justify further demands from many of Ontario’s other 443 municipalities.
The catch, in politics, is that other people aren’t required to accept the premises you lay out — Ontario’s mayors, councillors, wardens, and reeves are entirely within their rights to see a precedent or double standard if they so choose. So there was Meed Ward, garnering substantial applause as she asked Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy when the government would be writing cheques for the smaller towns and cities as well.
Bethlenfalvy, unsurprisingly, didn’t promise that a firehose of money was about to be unleashed on small and rural municipalities. He listed many of the measures the government has already implemented to spend money in rural Ontario but stopped short of promising that any new measures were on their way, in, say, this year’s spring budget.
Agenda segment, June 1, 2023: Who should pay for growth?
The issue isn’t going to go away anytime soon, however. While the New Deal might have reduced the property-tax increase Toronto requires to make the budget balance (federal contribution pending), other cities around the province have their own budgets to balance, and they’re looking at property-tax increases at least as high as what’s being considered in Toronto. It’s fair to ask how long Queen’s Park can reasonably fend off their demands and what the political consequences would be.
(Toronto has told Ottawa it will label any further tax increases a “federal impacts levy” if the prime minister doesn’t come to the table with new cash; such a tactic is equally available to councils around Ontario — but they’d be targeting the provincial government instead of the feds.)
What the Tories have going for them, across most of rural Ontario at least, is that it’s currently difficult to imagine their facing serious political risks in most ridings. The Liberal brand collapsed across rural Ontario in the 2011 election and never really recovered. Even before that, many rural ridings were Tory redoubts. And if rural voters were inclined to punish the Tories, the other parties would need to make a case for themselves in rural Ontario first. They’re all trying to do exactly that: NDP leader Marit Stiles, Liberal Bonnie Crombie, and Green leader Mike Schreiner also all spoke at ROMA this week.
The immediate financial pressures will likely pass before voters get to render their next verdict on Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives: if nothing else, it’s likely that the Tories will become more generous with provincial cash in 2025 and 2026, as the province’s fiscal cycle inevitably waxes and wanes according to the electoral cycle. But that won’t do anything for municipal budgets this year — and you can never tell what voters will and won’t remember when it next comes time to mark a ballot.
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