It seems that it often takes crises or tragedies to reveal to us how much the mayors are doing a job that goes well beyond zoning bylaws and the municipal budget. Again last week, we saw the mayor of Baie-Saint-Paul, Michaël Pilote, be the voice of his community, capable of both bringing his fellow citizens together and representing them to the Prime Minister and the authorities.
This was also the case for Mayor Colette Roy during the Lac-Mégantic tragedy. Or for Régis Labeaume – even if he didn’t need more notoriety – during the attack on the great mosque. Or for the Mayor of Gatineau, France Bélisle, like her predecessor Maxime Pednaud-Jobin, during the almost annual floods in this municipality.
Many people have noted that the new generation of municipal leaders is of exceptional quality. Les Plante, Marchand, Fournier, Boyer, Beaudin, Caron, Côté, Damphousse – and this list is far from exhaustive! – have become essential interlocutors on all issues, and not just those that fall under the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
And this new generation not only relays the demands of its citizens, it talks about more global issues such as the environment, sustainable development, housing, homelessness or public transport.
This is why it was unfortunate to see Prime Minister François Legault address the Union of Quebec Municipalities in recent days, using only accounting arguments to refuse requests for recurring funding for the adaptation to climate change.
Especially with the recent weather events – which are less and less exceptional – it was a bad time not to show a little openness.
Because the governments of Quebec – all parties combined – may have said that the municipalities are partners, they have often treated them as cash cows. In short, when things were going badly in public finances, responsibilities were transferred to the municipalities with little or no financial compensation.
The problem, in fact, stems from the tax system imposed on municipalities since 1979-1980, when municipalities were given the bulk of property taxes, but by depriving them of almost all other sources of revenue.
Property taxes are excellent for financing property services: water, roads, police and firefighters, snow removal, park maintenance and other public infrastructure.
But cities today do much more than that. They must deal with the environment – from air quality to waste management –, culture, sports and leisure, public transport, social housing, and so on.
Added to this are more recent issues. Homelessness, a few years ago, was a problem for Greater Montreal. Now it’s an issue all over the place. And it’s hard to find the resources to deal with these problems with property taxes alone.
In addition, dependence on property taxes has perverse effects. The only way to significantly increase municipal revenues is to develop, build and have new buildings to tax. This leads to urban sprawl, more roads and highways, and less green space.
For decades, governments have consistently narrowed cities’ room for manoeuvre. Like the “Ryan reform” of 1992, named after the Minister of Municipal Affairs at the time. Unable to compress its spending, Quebec imposed cuts and new responsibilities on municipalities that still have effects today: withdrawal of funding for public transit, making cities pay for the services of the Sûreté du Québec and part of the maintenance of the secondary road. Reduce school tax offsets.
All of this means that today it has become urgent to start reviewing municipal taxation in order to reconsider the political choices made more than 40 years ago and which obviously do not take into account realities that we could not have imagined the time.
There is a favorable window that opens. The next provincial elections will be in 2026, the municipal elections in 2025. There is therefore time to have a frank and open discussion on the place of cities in all these new issues and on the financing of their new obligations.
The new generation of mayors who see their role as more than scooping up snow and litter and patching up potholes will certainly be there.
It would also, of course, require the political will of the Legault government. But after the fiasco of the third link, this government must find a way to revive itself politically.
In this context, giving Quebec cities the financial means to do their job well, among other things with regard to adaptation to climate change, could well be a winning initiative for everyone.