Last weekend, my colleagues Yves Lévesque and Jean-Louis Fortin from the Bureau of Investigation of Newspaper told us that in a good number of municipalities in Quebec, municipal tax increases for the year 2024 significantly exceeded the inflation rate, which ended the year 2023 up 3.9%.
In some municipalities, increases are twice as high as inflation.
Important fact to highlight: I remind you that this general increase in the municipal tax bill in 2024 follows another increase which was strong in 2023, going so far as to exceed 15% and even more.
Should we be surprised? NO. For what? Because the municipal administrations of towns of 25,000 or more inhabitants are carrying a huge burden: they are faced with a workforce that is expensive, very expensive.
As proof, as part of the comparison of 75 benchmark jobs found in the public, parapublic, municipal and private sectors, the Institute of Statistics of Quebec calculates that employees in the municipal sector earn overall remuneration (salaries and social benefits) which exceeds by 36% the remuneration of employees of the Quebec public and parapublic service and that of employees of private sector companies with 200 employees or more.
- Listen to the economy segment with Michel Girard via QUB :
You read that right: thirty-six percent more.
Obviously, we will agree that this monstrous income gap in favor of municipal employees weighs heavily on our municipal tax bill.
Municipal administrations never refer to this generous remuneration when they present their new budgets and the tax increases that follow.
They prefer to blame the “fault” for the increase in tax bills on the increase in the costs of front-line services that they must provide to the population under the powers and responsibilities that the Quebec government has given them.
AT ANY RATE…
While the government of François Legault has made the wise decision to limit for two years the annual increases in the cost of Quebec state services to 3% per year, on the side of the municipalities, it is the law of the Wild West which reigns. or almost. Municipalities are “free” to increase municipal taxes to the level they wish.
I give you an example. On my street, in my town on the South Shore of Montreal, the municipal tax bill increased by 5% in 2024. You will tell me that it is barely 1.1 percentage points more than inflation . Please note: this 5% increase comes after a sharp increase of 15.9% in municipal taxes in 2023. We are therefore talking here about an increase in municipal taxes of 21% in 2 years, double the galloping inflation!
It is worse in many municipalities in Quebec.
We are therefore far from the ceiling for increasing government rates (including Hydro-Québec) of 3% per year that the Legault government imposed in order to allow Quebec households to get through this difficult inflationary period.
- Listen to the economy segment with Michel Girard via QUB :
LET QUEBEC INTERVENE…
Municipalities, for their part, are not “shaming” the financial difficulties encountered by a large majority of households due to inflation and the sharp increase in interest rates.
And the Legault government lets them do it, seeing no point in intervening to impose limits on them in terms of municipal taxation.
This government decision not to limit municipal tax increases is so “inconsistent” that it itself decided last year to cap the level of school tax increases on the same properties at 3%.
It’s never too late to do well. I invite François Legault’s government to step up and thereby impose a ceiling on municipal tax increases on municipalities.
Enough of the municipal tax increases that exceed inflation!