There is no need for the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation

The Ontario AG says today that MPAC not only gets many assessments very wrong, it wastes our money. A bigger question is, do we need it at all? In fact we could easily have, if the provincial government wished, a much fairer and more easily understood property tax assessment system that would save over $125,000,000 in direct costs to municipal governments, and untold millions more that private citizens expend in arguing with and appealing the assessments.

How is this possible? It's almost too simple. Instead of trying to guess a house's market value, the assessment would be set at the most recent sale price of the property, adjusted only for inflation, and if required, major disasters, renovations, or non arms length transactions. The vast majority of assessments would not require intrusive home inspections or comparisons with nearby properties. This system would also protect those who have the misfortune of having to pay property taxes they cannot afford because their neighbourhood has become more fashionable. Taxes would be based on what people could afford to pay for their home. There would be no surprises.

We already do the same for the clothing we wear -- taxes are based on what we pay for a suit or a dress, and not on what some government agency thinks it should be worth. Why not for the homes we live in?

health care costs

The Globe's current series about medicare may perpetuate myths and dangerously unrealistic expectations. The introduction states that Canadians "need sustainable health care and to bring down costs in the $192 billion health-care system." However, [As David Dodge, former head of the Bank of Canada pointed out in a recent speech -- and I agree with him], it is not a realistic goal, given an aging population, to expect overall costs to come down, although one can and should try to lower the rate of increase. Moreover the argument about sustainability is disingenuous. Increased health care costs, can definitely be sustainable -- one just needs to increase taxes to pay for it and we have the fiscal capacity to do this. In fact, reducing public levels of expenditure will not likely reduce overall levels of spending on health care, but will only transfer responsibility for payment from public to private funds while likely increasing overall costs.

As jurisdictions like the Netherlands know, state provided home and day care, and thorough regulation of private health-care providers and insurers are among the tools required to control the rate of increase of health care costs.

Not Bloody Likely

John Ibbotson writes in today's Globe that a hung Parliament in the UK could lead to a referendum on proportional representation in the UK and thereby advance the same debate in Canada. However, such a referendum is highly unlikely to succeed, or advance the cause of proportional representation in Canada. Why would supporters of Britain’s Labour and Conservative Parties, who together received 65% of the votes and who each benefit from the current system by receiving about 140 more seats than their share of the popular vote would entitle them to under PR, vote en masse, to change to an electoral system where their seats, and therefore their power, was much less? It boggles the imagination! Let's be realistic. The only beneficiaries of proportional representation in the UK are a minority -- the 35% of the electorate who voted for Liberal Democrats and other smaller parties, but who only received 13% of the seats. For Labour, or even the Tories for that matter, to give the Liberal Democrats their referendum on PR will be like giving free ice in winter – the political cost should be close to zero.

The only way proportional representation will come to Britain will be if it enacts a law to do so and does not hold a referendum. Otherwise it won't happen.

latest letter to Globe -- perpetuating myths

Your headline " It's getting expensive to be an amateur athlete" is inaccurate.
Yes, $725 tickets to Olympic gold medal hockey games and $1250 tickets to Hall of Fame dinners are very expensive. However what is not true, as our men's gold medal hockey players can best attest, is that Olympic athletes have to be amateurs. Indeed, the only Olympic sport still limited to amateurs is boxing.