Developers aren’t Paying their Fair Share
Since 2006, Toronto has added a half million people, climbing from 2.5 million to just under 3.0 million people today, and the city is expected to add another half million people in the next 20 years, growing to more than 3.4 million people in 2041. Toronto’s growing population is largely being accommodated through intensification of mature urban communities. To help pay for the cost of public services and infrastructure for the new residents in these growing communities, the City of Toronto collects revenue from development charges to pay for a wide range of public infrastructure and services, including roads, water, sewer, parks, transit, fire, police, ambulance, and more.
The Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) also collects Education Development Charges (EDCs) to cover some of the cost of providing schools to the growing Catholic school student populations in communities across the city. Since 1998, when the TDSB ceased to be able to collect EDCs, the TCDSB has collected and invested EDC revenue of over $204 million.
But the TDSB, which runs the English public schools in Toronto, is prevented from collecting hundreds of millions of dollars from new development – unlike the Catholic school system and the City itself – to manage the pressures of growth on the schools in growing communities.
The current provincial regulation governing whether or not a school board can charge Education Development Charges means that developers in Toronto get away without paying one cent to TDSB schools. This has left the TDSB to manage community growth without much-needed revenue from EDCs. And that needs to change.
‘The Missing Money Our Schools Need Now: Education Development Charges in Toronto’ is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
