Toronto has been climbing out of a deep fiscal hole. But there’s more work yet to do in 2024
CTV
This past year may have been a turning point in Toronto's spiralling financial woes, thanks in large part to a landmark new deal around the city's finances. However, the city is not out of the woods yet when it comes to its fiscal challenges, and some key questions will need to be answered in the year ahead.
This past year may have been a turning point in Toronto's spiralling financial woes, thanks in large part to a landmark new deal around the city's finances. However, the city is not out of the woods yet when it comes to its fiscal challenges, and some key questions will need to be answered in the year ahead.
“They (the city) are still in a really difficult financial strait,” Professor Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute at UofT, told CP24.com. “They have billions of dollars in backlog for capital investments, they still continue to have a budget gap as the budget season opens, and they have huge housing needs and other infrastructure investment needs that are going to stretch over decades.”
The city said in August that it was facing a $46.5 billion shortfall over the next 10 years, including a $1.5 billion operating shortfall for 2024 and $29.5 billion in capital needs.
Toronto scored a big financial win recently in its new deal with the province, which is expected to provide $7.6 billion in capital relief in the coming years, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars to operate shelters and transit.
But that doesn’t solve the problem.
One pressing issue for the near future is that the city is still waiting for reassurance from provincial officials on another major financial challenge, the loss of development charges in Ontario's housing legislation.
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