6 Ways to Lower Taxes and Make Life More Affordable

  • The average Canadian family paid 43% of its income to taxes in 2023 (more than housing, food, and clothing combined) and would pay almost 50% to cover budget deficits. Fraser Institute 2024
  • Unfortunately, Ontarians are facing large tax increases that could consume 60% of their family income to pay for:  
    • Increasing healthcare costs, Old Age Security, and Canada Pension Plan for an aging population
    • Increasing subsidies for public sector pension plans
    • Increasing costs to repair and replace aging public infrastructure: roads, bridges, nuclear plants, schools, hospitals, social housing
    • increasing subsidies and legal settlements for Indigenous peoples
    • Increasing subsidies for $10 a day child-care 
    • Increasing subsidies for affordable social housing 
    • Increasing subsidies for electricity
    • Increasing climate change damages and subsidies
    • Increasing interest costs for Ontario’s $439 billion debt, the largest of any sub-nation in the world, accumulated during the past 40 years with virtually nothing to show for it
    • Proposed payments by Ontario PC government to businesses and workers affected by new U.S. tariffs. Paid to who? How much? For how long? Paid by who? Duplication of Federal EI?

Six ways to make life and government services more affordable and lower taxes with the Ontario Innovation Party:

1. Shift Ontario Healthcare Care from Sickness to Wellness:

  • A combination of health IT and payment reform will provide primary care teams powerful incentives to keep their members healthy and eliminate all categories of waste, about 65% of health care spending, according to Dr. Brent James 
  • A new value-based model of health care rewards care providers for outcomes rather than the volume of services and shifts their focus from reactive sick care to the proactive management of health. Health teams with a panel of 450 members are accountable for costs and health outcomes. ChenMed clinics have reduced hospital visits by 30% to 50%
  • A $50 billion a year savings opportunity (about 25% of Ontario's budget), a healthier and more productive society with a higher labour force participation to increase GDP per capita, and a meaningful impact on the most vulnerable in society

2. Access to Justice with Online Tribunal and Court

  • Resolve simple disputes online quickly and fairly 24/7
  • No real estate, just phones, laptops, and the internet
  • Eliminate buildings, millions of papers, vehicle trips, sleepless nights and days away from work, family, and friends
  • Resolve disputes in two months for $200 rather than two years and $50,000
  • Alleviate needless torment, financial hardship, and family breakdown
  • Resolving motor vehicle disputes with an online tribunal (BC Civil Resolution Tribunal) instead of a brick-and-mortar tribunal is expected to save $1 billion in court costs every year (and lower insurance premiums), according to David Eby, former BC Attorney General. This is a $3 billion a year savings opportunity in Ontario
  • Disruptive technologies and business models improve access, quality, and affordability
  • The existence of online tribunals and courts that put access and remedies at the fingertips of all will incentivize individuals, corporations, and governments to follow the law and court orders
  • Protect Ontarians and reduce court time and costs with software that ensures basic processes, rules, and laws are followed by police, assistant Crown Attorneys, and judges
  • Protect Ontarians by using claims data (shared with third parties with APIs) and analytics to prevent claims, disputes, harm, and injuries; save billions of dollars each year and lower insurance premiums - see Claimstat 2.0

3. Making Government as a Platform Real

  • “Reorganizing the work of government around a network of shared APIs and components, open-standards and canonical datasets, so that public servants, businesses and others can deliver radically better services to the public, more safely, efficiently and accountably.” Richard Pope
  • Use GOV.UK Service Manual or Service Toolkit. It's a single page that brings together all the things that are available to help teams build brilliant government services  
  • Build a suite of digital service platforms which provide common functionality to anyone building government services such as an identity verification platform, payment platform, notification platform, common form-building platform, case management platform, publishing platform, hosting platform, and canonical registers (for individuals, companies, and land) - that every government service team can use 
  • Build once, use often. Save money, and provide a better, more consistent user experience
  • Remove silos, eliminate duplication, and make things more efficient 
  • Services can more easily be designed around the needs of citizens rather than the organizational structure of the government
  • Digitalize paper certificates and licenses such as driver's licenses and school certificates
  • Innovators inside and outside government can participate to improve public services
  • Collaborate with digital teams from other countries such as Estonia, Singapore, Korea, UK, Finland, Australia, India, and U.S. Digital Service and 18F. Use GOV.UK Service Toolkit and Service Standard
  • For example, the City of Toronto spent millions of dollars building a website, renting a payment platform to collect taxes, and a booking platform for recreational activities like swimming. 443 other municipalities are duplicating the same work. If each McDonalds' restaurant built its own website, POS system, and mobile app, the price of a Big Mac would likely double
  • See Richard Pope PlatformLand and Tom Loosemore Government as a Platform

4. More affordable housing in Ontario: 

  • Higher housing supply to meet demand. Dashboard to ensure new housing (market-priced and subsidized) and public transportation (roads and rail) targets are met to welcome more than 300,000 new immigrants each year
  • Remove barriers, policies and rules that restrict new housing (while immigration targets are increasing) and contribute to higher housing prices, higher subsidies for affordable social housing, more people living in unsafe homes, higher stress-related healthcare costs, longer commutes, more talented graduates leaving Ontario, and more difficulty for employers to fill jobs and grow their businesses which reduces government tax revenues
  • Simpler, clearer, faster building permit application process and quicker inspections
  • More options to convert a single residential dwelling to 2-4 units
  • Loans up to $300,000 at 1% interest to built more legal basement apartments  
  • Increase construction capacity with more skilled trades through immigration modern workshops in high schools, advanced robotics, and off-site construction 
  • Transit-Oriented Development: with more density along transit lines, land, construction, and maintenance costs per unit is lower, utilities are cheaper to build and maintain, and government services are easier and cheaper to deliver

5. More affordable and faster commute in Ontario: 

  • 12 new subway lines across GTA
  • Subway stations designed with mixed-use development like retail, rental housing, office, and underground parking increase ridership. The monthly rental income pays for subway lines, keeps transit fares low, and creates a positive cashflow. Learn from Hong Kong MTR
  • Transit-Oriented Development: Design 15-minute neighborhoods where daily necessities are within a 15-minute walk, bicycle ride, or transit ride from home. Live, work, and play without a car
  • Integrated fares, schedules, and tracks
  • Buyback Highway 407 ETR and cut toll fees by 50% to alleviate traffic on Highway 401. The billions of dollars in Hwy 407 toll fees could stay in Ontario (instead of going to companies in Spain and Quebec) and pay for subway lines

6. Increase tax revenue without raising taxes in Ontario:

  • Increase worker retiree ratio to ease the tax burden on existing taxpayers: higher immigration, more childcare staff funding to increase spaces, and healthcare focused on keeping you healthy
  • Teach entrepreneurship + intellectual property = job growth
  • Co-ops to promote industry-specific productivity investments in software, equipment, training, and IP strategies to increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and wages
  • Industry Canada has estimated that increasing interprovincial trade by 10 percent would increase Canadian’s income by 5.1 percent
  • Build a new international airport. According to Deloitte’s Passport to Growth, every 1% increase in international arrivals generates $817 million in increased exports for the following two years
  • Build 12 new subway lines across GTA: save time and money, attract top talent, eliminate GTA productivity loss estimated at $15 billion a year by 2031, according to A Green Light to Moving the Toronto Region
  • Transit-Oriented Development: fewer cars, less traffic, shorter commutes 
  • Goal: 99% public services online: simpler, clearer, faster. Eliminate millions of vehicle trips and lineups at Service Ontario, tribunals, courthouses, and hospitals. Stop wasting people’s time and improve Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and wages
  • Retroactive minimum wage law for rideshare drivers and delivery drivers and cyclists. This law could double their net incomes (and increase government tax revenues) since many drivers are paid below minimum wage after their vehicle expenses. Together, UBER and Lyft are the largest private employers in Ontario. Other jurisdictions like Minnesota and New York have passed such laws

7. BIGGEST political mistakes in Ontario:

  • Hoping a balanced budget would help them win one election in 1999, the Ontario PC sold Highway 407 ETR with 16 lanes across the GTA to three (3) foreign companies in 1999 for $3.1 billion to generate a profit of $1.6 billion. The lost income for the Ontario government over the 99 year term is about $500 billion. One truck driver delivering food can spend over $100,000 on 407 ETR toll fees each year. Today, Highway 407 ETR is the world's most expensive toll road and Highway 401 is the most congested highway in North America
  • Ontario PC's proposal to spend upwards of $80 billion to build a tunnel with four lanes under Highway 401 in Toronto  
  • Failure to open a new subway line every 7 years like most large cities. The construction team could gain more experience and subway lines could be built faster, better, and cheaper   
  • Failure to design subway stations with mixed-use development like retail, rental housing, office, and underground parking. With this business model, the income from rent, advertising, and parking fees can pay for subway lines, keeps transit fares low, and create a positive cashflow. Learn from Hong Kong MTR. This requires vision to buy land at future subway intersections 20 years out
  • Failure to spend 5% to 8% of government budgets each year to accumulate new housing units for the less fortunate. With time the cost to provide subsidized housing would decrease. Instead, an increasing number of subsidized housing units are rented from private Landlords
  • To quickly brand themselves as "green" for the 2014 election, the Ontario Liberals paid about $180 billion over market for "green" electricity contracts, according to Ontario Auditor General
  • Failure to build the 2nd international airport in Pickering after the Federal government purchased 18,600 acres for this purpose in 1972. In the 1970's, the Ontario PC refused to build utilities to service the new airport, stopped construction of Egiinton Ave. subway, and failed to complete the Allen Expressway to QEW. The GTA is expecting 10 million new immigrants in the next 25 years. Hoping it might help their local candidate win the next election, the Federal Liberals changed the zoning for the airport lands to a park, with no plan B. To buy 20,000 acres along a major highway in the future could cost $30 billion. A great transportation network is critical to attract business investments and top talent who will pay taxes for an ageing population and public infrastructure
  • Hoping a balanced budget would help them win one election in 2018, the Ontario Liberals sold the majority shares of Ontario's Hydro One to Americans for $8 billion in 2017. The poles and electric wires are critical to distribute electricity across Ontario and are the most profitable part of the business 

Do you agree?

An Ontario Driven by Innovation

It is time to build a better future for Ontario – one where innovation is at its core. Focused on human centered design, disruptive innovations, and making Government as a Platform real to radically improve access, quality, and affordability of government services.



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