QUEEN’S PARK – In the Legislative Assembly, Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke MPP John Yakabuski re-introduced his Private Member’s Bill which aims to bring fairness to all of Ontario’s municipalities. If passed, the Gasoline Tax Fairness for All Act will ensure that every municipality will get a share of the gas tax that every driver in the province pays for.
Currently, the Gasoline Tax Act only permits those municipalities that have a rapid transit or public transportation system to get a tax rebate. As a result, only 100 out of 444 municipalities received money from the gas tax even though every resident in the province pays into it.
For a decade now, MPP Yakabuski has been advocating to amend the Act to ensure that all municipalities share in a portion of the gas tax. By making all municipalities eligible to receive a rebate the provincial government would be creating an equal playing field. The federal government currently distributes their portion of the gas tax to all municipalities; only politics stands in the way of the province distributing its rebates in a similar manner.
“I first introduced this Bill years ago in recognition of the fact that rural municipalities depend on roads and bridges as their public transportation system, yet receive no gas tax funding,” MPP Yakabuski said. “This issue became all the more pressing last month when Premier (Kathleen) Wynne committed to increasing the share of gas tax funding from two cents per litre to four cents per litre, which would mean that (as things currently stand) municipalities without transit will be out an additional $300 million by 2021-2020.”
The MPP noted that he was disappointed when Premier Wynne had her MPPs vote down this PMB in 2015, but that she now has an opportunity to make things right with the over three-quarters of municipalities in the province by supporting this fair and reasonable piece of legislation.
