The distribution of the fiscal and financial burden of municipal activities and services is a political exercise, difficult and delicate, to which the municipalities of Quebec devote themselves. The municipal councils enjoy a broad discretionary power to this effect, which must be exercised tactfully and in accordance with the enabling legislative provisions.
Several municipalities in Quebec have been looking for some time for ways to finance noise barriers, the costs of which can be overwhelming for their taxpayers. These screens are becoming more and more a necessity to reduce the noise pollution experienced by residents of heavily used roads. The local improvement tax, like the one proposed by the City of Longueuil, is not the preferred solution, and here is why.
We recently learned1 that the City of Longueuil intends to solicit 265 residents of the borough of Saint-Hubert who border Route 116 to help finance a portion of the cost of a noise barrier. On the grounds of being the beneficiary of the infrastructure, each resident would have to pay a bill of approximately $23,600 (or $36,300 over 20 years). The contribution that would be required is based on a relatively old mode of taxation appearing in Quebec laws on municipalities, namely the local improvement tax.
Even though it is a property tax, the local improvement tax differs from the annual tax collected by all municipalities in Quebec for their general revenues, based on the property assessment of buildings entered on the roll. The first characteristic of the local improvement tax is that it is most often limited to a portion of the territory of the municipality, ie the area that directly benefits from the infrastructure or service financed. It could, however, apply to the entire territory – it is then rather called “special tax” – and target a particular service that the municipality prefers to finance by a specific levy, such as for the maintenance of its roads or the construction of a municipal garage, for example.
The second distinction of the local improvement tax is that it can be based on a characteristic other than the property value, such as the area of the land or its length bordering the street where the work will take place. The typical example of a common use of the local improvement tax is that of a levy limited to the precise area where a water distribution network will be installed, often calculated according to the riparian length of the land served, as a fair measure for distributing the costs of installing pipes that must run underground. It is easy to understand that taxpayers not served by the municipal water network, who must therefore have their own individual wells and water supply systems, do not have to finance the infrastructure of their fellow citizens who will no longer have such personal expenses to incur.
In short, the local improvement tax essentially aims to finance an infrastructure or a service intended for certain citizens. Is this the case of a noise barrier? We can doubt it.
The primary purpose of a noise barrier is not to provide a service to the targeted residents, but rather to protect them from a nuisance caused by road traffic that affects them in an unreasonable or excessive manner, that is to say beyond the standards recommended by protection or surveillance organizations, such as the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec. Why should citizens who suffer disproportionately from the horrors of an activity for which they are not responsible contribute in a targeted manner to work aimed at mitigating the harmful effects on their health? Could we imagine the citizens of Rouyn-Noranda subject to an obligation to pay for the construction of infrastructures aimed at protecting them from harmful fumes from the Horne smelter?
The polluter pays principle
The Quebec government has repeatedly stated that it intends to promote the polluter-pays principle in its public policies. Excessive noise is indeed a pollutant and must be treated as such. Isn’t it appropriate to think about this approach, in a context where sustainable development and mobility are on everyone’s lips? The mode of financing by regulatory fee is based on the polluter-pays principle, by providing that the person who, through his activity (driving a car; or building highways), generates a need (noise protection) must contribute to the financing of the regulatory system put in place to meet it.
The municipalities of Quebec can be delighted to have obtained in 2017 a general power of regulatory royalties allowing them to modulate this new instrument with great flexibility. But this authorization remains precarious and incomplete, as the City of Percé recently discovered when the Superior Court quashed its By-law imposing a fee to finance its tourist infrastructures.
Often, it is impossible for the municipality to collect the regulatory charge directly. This would certainly be the case for the City of Longueuil, which has no control over motorists crossing its territory.
The municipality must rely on an agent to collect it, but has no power to compel it. Percé needed merchants to collect his levy, just as municipalities would need the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec to collect a levy on license plate holders. Also, the municipal territory alone is often not optimal for such a perception, which should rather be done on the scale of the agglomeration or the metropolitan community, or even, in certain cases, on the scale of the province.
In short, it is not because the instruments best designed to finance an infrastructure are not yet adapted that it becomes acceptable to stretch the use of a traditional instrument to the point of distorting its attributes.
This text has been modified from its original version to correct the name of the Gaspé town, Percé and not Gaspé, which saw the Superior Court break its Regulation imposing a fee to finance its tourist infrastructures.