Murray calls for funding change

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This article was published 14/10/2022 (1289 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mayoral candidate Glen Murray wants to change the way the province provides funding to the City of Winnipeg.

The city’s two major sources of revenue are property taxes and the annual operating grant it receives from the province. The vast majority of taxes Winnipeggers pay go to other levels of government, Murray said Thursday, and it’s time for the city to get its fair share.

Rather than continue trying to stretch the annual operating grant — which has been frozen at $121.2 million over the past seven years — Murray said, if elected Oct. 26, he would call on the province to end the model and instead give the city one percentage point of the seven per cent provincial sales tax revenue.

He emphasized this would not increase the PST, and would support the city’s growing tax base in the future.

“We’re simply not retaining enough of the money… to allow us to maintain a healthy, dynamic, successful city,” he said. “And in fact, right now, we’re not even able to maintain minimal service level.”

Murray estimated such a move would net the city around $200 million a year to use to invest in services and chip away at debt.

“We would be able to plan out 10 years, because we wouldn’t have a grant program that can be changed all the time and it’s completely unpredictable,” he said.

Meantime, Murray accused other mayoral candidates of planning to go to the provincial and federal governments “hat in hand” to be able to fund their election commitments.

“The other candidates for mayor that have costed these things out are all counting on hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions, of dollars in funding from the other levels of government,” he said.

Earlier this month, mayoral candidate Scott Gillingham promised to drum up an additional $42 million a year through hikes to property tax and frontage levies. At that time, Gillingham accused Murray of making campaign promises without the numbers to back them up.

“If you try to do it based on a property tax base or frontage levy, the only way you can get it raised, even a small fraction, any kind of percentage of the money needed, you would have to increase the tax burden… We need a smarter solution,” Murray said Thursday.

When asked how the city could approach working with the province to make such a change, Murray noted Manitoba is going into an election next year.

“I think that I wouldn’t start with the province,” he said. “I’m going to start engaging Winnipeggers and get them on side, (based on) the fact that our current levels of funding in the city are not competitive with other cities.”

Winnipeg could end up making the initiative the subject of a referendum, Murray said, adding he would be open to other solutions presented by the province, should he become mayor.

“We have to have something that’s realistic. I can’t make the city’s problems the province’s problems, I need to have a workable solution.”

Advance voting is open; election day is Oct. 26.

There are 11 candidates running for mayor: Murray, Gillingham, Idris Adelakun, Rana Bokhari, Chris Clacio, Kevin Klein, Shaun Loney, Jenny Motkaluk, Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Rick Shone and Don Woodstock.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca