Tag Archives: sanctuary city

Trudeau’s Refugees May Force a 6% Increase in Property Taxes for This Sanctuary City

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Trudeau’s Refugees May Force a 6% Increase in Property Taxes for This Sanctuary City

[Justin Trudeau has flooded Canada with refugees. A sometime drama teacher, he loves virtue signalling, the dramatic gesture. So, having welcomed the flood, he has failed to back it up with sufficient funding. Is this just incompetence or is he using the “refugees” most of whom are non-White to further replace Canada’s founding/settler people? Woke Toronto some years ago declared itself a sanctuary city, eager to welcome “refugees”, legal or illegal. Not the cost of housing thousands is coming home to roost. Bewildered refugees, often fresh from the airport, find themselves on the streets, the city shelters full to bursting. Often poor native born Canadians cannot find a bed. Toronto City Council is now facing a 6 per cent tax increase to shelter Trudeau’s folly, on top of an already crippling planned 10 per cent property tax hike. — Paul Fromm]

We have to fix things that are broken’: Toronto budget proposes current tax pain for future gain

Toronto residents could see a property tax hike of as much as 16 per cent if Ottawa doesn’t fund shelter for refugee claimants. By Alyshah HashamCity Hall BureauBen SpurrCity Hall BureauDavid RiderCity Hall Bureau Chief Wednesday, January 10, 2024 5 min to read Article was updated 36 mins ago

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Olivia Chow, Shelley Carroll budget
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow with budget chief Shelley Carroll and city manager Paul Johnson after council’s budget committee approved a proposed spending plan that includes a double-digit tax hike. Andrew Francis Wallace

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This will be a painful year for Toronto taxpayers but one that will leave the city in better shape after years of neglect.

That’s the pitch behind a historic 10.5 per cent property tax increase proposed by city staff on Wednesday, requiring the average homeowner to pay close to $400 more a year, in the midst of an affordability crisis.

But this year’s $17 billion operating budget rollout also comes with a threat from the city’s budget chief aimed squarely at the Trudeau government. If the city doesn’t receive $250 million in funding from Ottawa to house the growing number of vulnerable refugee claimants arriving in the city, budget chief Shelley Carroll said she’d be proposing an additional six per cent “federal impacts levy” that would bring the total tax hike to 16.5 per cent, about $600 on average. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.609.1_en.html#goog_1855862712 

“That is the potential crisis we face,” Carroll said, ahead of the spending plan being presented to council’s budget committee. 

After budget committee approved the plan, Mayor Olivia Chow would not endorse or reject the 10.5 per cent property tax hike, or say whether she thought the increase was unaffordable. Instead, she said she would be listening closely to what Toronto residents have to say in public consultations before releasing her version of the budget on Feb 1.

“We have to fix the things that are broken and the financial mess,” she said, noting the city faced a $1.8-billion deficit driven largely by transit and shelter costs, which have skyrocketed during the pandemic. 

The operating budget proposed Wednesday, which increased by $900 million from last year, freezes TTC fares for 2024, slightly increases the police funding (though not as much as requested by the Toronto Police Services Board) and invests in expanding a mental health crisis response service. It increases spending by $152 million for shelter, transit, emergency services and long-term care as well as increasing hours at some public libraries. 

The End Game: What the Immigration Lobby Has in Store for Us

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The End Game:

What the Immigration Lobby Has in Store for Us 

 

 

It has been an ongoing story that never lets up.  Ordinary working metro-Vancouverites, including double-income families, are being displaced by big foreign money and in-migration.  Not only can they not afford a down payment or qualify for a mortgage, in a growing number of cases they can’t even  pay the rent, assuming they find an apartment or basement suite.

 

This housing crisis has provided ample fodder for local news media.  In fact, rare is the night when it doesn’t  pop up  as a news item. Or so it seems.  Case in  point:

 

Yesterday evening, November 21, 2016,  a BC Global TV news reporter asked real estate magnate Bob Rennie about how he would address Vancouver’s lack of affordable housing. His answer: increase supply (surprise, surprise).  How do you do that? By changing zoning laws so that houses could be converted to multi-family suites.  Another form of densification.

The following night, November 22nd, BC Global TV news made Premier Christy Clark’s announcement to create affordable housing its top news story. Her plan?  Spend $855 million to create 5,000 social housing units involving 68 new projects.

5,000 units. That sounds like a lot. Except when you consider that in addition to the number of foreign-born migrants coming in from other provinces, 30,000 freshly minted New Canadians are settling in the city every year via the airport express.  Repeat.  While 5,000 units are being built, 30,000 extra people are inserted into the housing market each year.  This conjures up the image of Charlie Chaplin in the factory scene in “Modern Times” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfGs2Y5WJ14  . No matter how hard Charlie tries to keep up with the flow,  he can’t move fast enough to deal with the stuff that it is coming at him down the conveyor belt.

 

Let’s do the math.

 

Let’s err on the conservative side and assume that each unit will be occupied by 4 people.  That would  mean that those 30,000 extra people would require 7,500 units,  or 625 units every month for a year.  In other words, just 8 months of business-as-usual immigration would wipe out the benefit of 5,000 social housing units.  This is not to say that these immigrants will dwell in the new units, but that they will increase the pool of city residents looking for housing, thereby bidding up real estate prices and pushing more Vancouverites out of the market.  Premier Clark might as well use the $855 million to pay for their moving vans.

Bottom line: Increasing the supply of housing in the context of continuing large-scale immigration is FUTILE. It is the Labour of Sisyphus. Like bailing water out of a leaky boat. Even a cretin should understand that, but apparently politicians and realtors have failed to reach even that modest mental bench mark.  Or could it be that the rewards of not understanding it are too great to resist?

Obviously the solution is to reduce demand. How do you do that? Simple. You lower the federal government’s immigration and refugee intake. “But wait”, they will say, “immigration policy is not in our jurisdiction”.  True. But do you ever hear a Vancouver Mayor or a city councillor call for a halt to immigration? Or at least a moratorium to allow Canada’s urban centres to catch their breath? A pause that would buy some time so all levels of government can repair infrastructure or improve social services or expand medical services or train more doctors or build more residential care facilities?

The answer is “No”.  Not now. Not ever. Immigration is the Elephant-in-the-Room .  The love of mindless  growth that dare not speak its name. The very idea of reducing demand is outside the box.

Instead, what we have heard from city politicians across the land is a perennial demand  that Ottawa cough up federal funding to cope with the growing demands that immigration-driven population growth inflicts upon their property taxpayers.  Taxpayers who are not only expected to fork over the money for infrastructure,  transit and social service costs and  ESL  training——but move over and squeeze tighter  and tighter for an endless queue of migrants whom the self-serving immigration lobby insists we need.

 

In essence, the Conference Board of Canada, the federal cabinet, the Mayor, the city council and the Bob Rennies of this world are issuing city residents an ultimatum:  Either submit to ever increasing density and live in a shoebox—-or leave.  Make Vancouver a “Sanctuary City” for illegal migrants, but offer no sanctuary for Canadian Vancouverites who cannot afford shelter.

Growth mongers need to answer several questions.

 

What is your end game?

 

What is your population target?  How many people do you want to live in this country?” 40 million? 50 million? Or is it John McCallum’s wet dream of 100 million citizens?

 

If so, where do you intend to fit them in?  The wetlands that comprise 14% of Canada? Or the lakes that make up 7.6%? Or the permafrost tundra, or the boreal forest upon which global climate stability depends, or the mountains which together account for another 73% of this “big” country of ours?   The Canadian Shield alone occupies 48% of the land. Think of undulating hills of spongy swamps, decaying peat,  and thick taiga forest on top of rock dotted with thousands of lakes—not an ideal site for the town home accommodation of ten million refugees and 50 million immigrants,  wouldn’t you say?

 

And then there is that one little detail, that provision in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees freedom of movement.  How do you intend to command so many millions of newcomers to make these God-forsaken regions their home? Answer: You can’t.  And if you can’t command them or direct them, how would you entice them? And if enticed, how would you make them stay?  There is a reason so few Canadians live there. Other than the sub-zero temperatures and the black flies, that is.  They need a viable economy.

 

Economics compels 80% of us to live in cities. The trouble is, only 5.2% of Canada is arable, and of that , only .5% is classified as “Class 1”, half of which is found in Ontario. And wouldn’t ya know it, most of it is close to that  beacon of mass immigration, the GTA.  B.C.’s Fraser Valley is also in the cross-hairs.  Canadians have already lost one fifth of this priceless Class 1 farmland to development. Do you propose that that continue? No?

 

OK then.  We’ve ruled out the uninhabitable 94%, and we don’t want to lose any more of our prime arable  land.  And mass immigration is off the table.  So that leaves us with but one option.  Pack’em into urban sardine cans.

 

That’s it, isn’t it? The end game.

 

Tim  Murray

November 22, 2016