Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance

The Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance

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The City of Toronto Act, Five Years Later: Has it Met Expectations?

This panel discussion will be held on Tuesday, November 1, 4-6 pm, at the Munk School of Global Affairs, Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility. Moderated by David Crombie, President, David Crombie and Associates, and former Mayor of Toronto; the panelists will include: John Matheson, Partner, Strategy Corp.; Lorne Sossin, Dean, Osgoode Hall Law School and City of Toronto Open Meeting Investigator; Karim Bardeesy, Editorial Writer at the Globe and Mail, and 2011 DiverseCity Fellow, Greater Toronto CivicAction; and Fiona Crean, Ombudsman, City of Toronto. To register for this event, please <click here>.

Canada's cities are critical to the economic prosperity of the country. To be competitive, our cities need to build and maintain infrastructure and they need to deliver a wide range of services that will attract and retain skilled individuals and companies. To deliver these services, cities need adequate revenue sources. Although the roles and responsibilities of cities have changed, there has been no corresponding change in their revenue sources. Cities still depend largely on property taxes, user fees, and intergovernmental transfers to meet their growing expenditure demands. This situation has raised questions about the fiscal sustainability of Canada's cities and has led to a call for new tools to raise revenue at the local level.

The Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance focuses on the finance and governance issues faced by large cities and city-regions in Canada and develops solutions to their fiscal problems. It is the only institute in Canada that focuses specifically on municipal finance issues and solely on large cities and city-regions. It is also the only institute that supports students at the graduate level in the fields of municipal finance and governance so that they have the expertise to work on municipal finance issues in government and the private sector or to undertake further academic research.

Funding

The Institute’s start-up was made possible by the generous support of Avana Capital Corporation. The IMFG is generously supported by: the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, TD Bank, and Avana Capital Corporation.

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The Mandate of the Institute

The mandate of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance is to develop solutions to the fiscal problems facing Canada's large cities and city-regions: Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, and Halifax. The Institute focuses its research on financial tools and local governing structures that support local fiscal autonomy. As part of its mandate, the Institute disseminates its research findings to a wide audience.

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