Toronto City Council recently passed its 2024 budget after a lot of drama. The 2024 operating budget and the 2024-2033 capital budget reached C$17 billion and $49.8 billion respectively.  This included a 9.5% property tax increase, the biggest increase in 25 years.

For months, Toronto City Council struggled to fill in a projected $1.8 billion shortfall. The Toronto Region Board of Trade predicts a “fiscal chasm” of $36 billion over the next ten years, so we can expect more of the same.

To fill the gap, Mayor Olivia Chow and City Council requested cash transfers from the provincial and federal governments and raised property taxes.

Eventually, a combination of transfers, a property tax increase, and unloading the care of some major roads to the provincial government balanced the budget.

The reality is the City’s budget is wasteful. The biggest waste by far is TransformTO Net Zero. This is Toronto’s plan to fight climate change.

Judge for yourself. Canada emits 1.5% of global greenhouse gases. Toronto has about 7.6% of Canada’s total population. According to climate.gov, a US government website, Earth’s temperature has risen by an average 0.06° Celsius per decade since 1850, or roughly 0.006° per year. I prefer a more generous estimate of global warming of 0.0096° per year.

That implies that Toronto’s contribution to global warming is about 0.00001℃/year (0.0096 x 0.015 x 0.076 ≃0.00001). That’s it. That figure is so tiny that it’s insignificant.

Do you know how much Toronto City Council has allocated to eliminating 0.00001℃/year? According to the 2024 Budget Briefing Note Carbon Budget Baseline, capital and operating budgets for greenhouse gas reduction actions for 2024 alone are $1.5 billion and $63.6 million respectively. The TransformTO capital plan for 2024-2033 is $12.9 billion.

It gets bigger. TransformTO 2022 Annual Report: Laying the Foundation for Net Zero states that to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets “…over the next thirty years, the total investment required by the entire [Toronto] community, that is, the City corporation, the business community, other levels of government, and individual residents, is $145 Billion.”

Let me repeat that figure: $145 billion. A staggering amount of money will be spent to accomplish nothing. Well, almost nothing – it will reduce global warming by 0.00001℃/year.

Imagine what we could collectively achieve by spending the money allocated to “fighting climate change” to solving real problems like homelessness (a real emergency), deteriorating public infrastructure, public transportation, etc. Three homeless people died every week on the streets of Toronto in 2023.

Here’s one example of what TransformTO, will fund: “Expand Neighbourhood Climate Action Champions Program”. They will “inspire, motivate and encourage residents to undertake community-focused actions to support TransformTO and reduce emissions to net zero.” If you live in Toronto, I hope you will sleep better at night knowing that climate missionaries will come knocking on your door to educate you about climate.

How did we get to this point? The answer is broad and deep, but let’s limit it to Council’s role.

In 2019, City of Toronto Council voted unanimously to declare a climate emergency and committed to achieving Net Zero by 2040, one of the most ambitious Net Zero targets in North America. A news release showed Toronto’s eagerness to follow:

Toronto is joining more than 800 cities around the world in acknowledging the scale of the climate crisis including Amsterdam, Auckland, Barcelona, Edmonton, London, Los Angeles, Montréal, New York City, Ottawa, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney and Vancouver.

Could the governments of so many big cities spanning the globe all be wrong? As of today, 2,355 jurisdictions around the world have declared a climate emergency. Yes, it is possible; groupthink can and does lead to bad decisions.

Then Toronto City Council guaranteed absurd spending on net zero by ensuring “a climate lens that evaluates and considers the climate impacts of all major City of Toronto decisions, including financial decisions”. This means in effect that reducing greenhouse gases will outweigh all other criteria and considerations during the budget preparation process.

This is what fanaticism looks like. So, Toronto’s budget crisis is at least partly self-inflicted, but Council is making property owners pay for its mistake via higher property taxes.