David Miller, Dean of the Kamikaze School of Municipal Financing

I’ve lived in Toronto on and off since the late 1960’s. It was a wonderful place to live until around 1991. From then on, the quality of every day ordinary life took a nose dive south which it has yet to pull up from. I suspect the new right the city has acquired (to implement and collect taxes on goods and services sold in the city limits) will cause the quality of life to be fully pulverized on impact.

The current sitting mayor of Toronto, David Miller, has announced a number of taxation proposals for implementing the new rights of taxation which the Liberal provincial government of Dalton McGuinty has granted. Some days, I truly do wonder if lefties don't spend hours laying awake at night dreaming up new ways to shove taxes or laws which restrict our freedoms down our gullets.

If I wanted to drive residents and businesses out of the City of Toronto and into the suburbs of the GTA, or even out of the province; I couldn’t think of a more inspired plan than Toronto mayor’s David Miller latest kamikaze municipal 'resource tools' scheme. The Toronto Star carries the bloodletting:

The new City of Toronto Act gives the city a $340 million smorgasbord of possible new taxes and fees to draw on – and Mayor David Miller says he wants to tap some of them this year. On Miller's motion, city bureaucrats have been ordered to conduct a quick round of public consultations and report back in June on which new taxes should be levied.

And although the staff have said it could take a year or more to set up the machinery to collect many of the taxes, Miller said he wants at least some of money flowing in this year, "There are obviously going to be some difficult decisions when they come back," Miller said. "But I think it's important we start. It's important to act reasonably quickly. "The sooner we do that, the sooner we will be able to invest in city building."

Many of the proposed levies are "sin taxes" that would tack 5 per cent on to the cost of alcohol (at LCBOs or table service), tobacco and tickets at cinemas and live events. Parking lots would pay the city a yearly fee per space while an unspecified road toll is suggested for the Gardiner and DVP. Miller said he wants the money from any new taxes and fees – he insists on calling them "revenue tools" – to be earmarked for specific purposes such as new recreation centres, road repairs or fighting climate change.

This means retail sales taxes will hit a whopping 19% for every beer in a pub or a bottle of liquor/wine purchased at the provincially controlled outlet. Let us not even discuss the size of the hit the entertainment industry/ district will be asked to take.

But ask yourself; why should any resident shell out for the extra 5% tax when relief is less than a 20 minute drive away? And make no mistake, if this sales tax hike is even moderately successful, it will be only the first of a million and one new taxes imposed by the municipal authority.

And for all you non-Torontonians who are busy sneering and enjoying our pain - let me say this; if this tax grab is even moderately successful, watch how fast your mayors will be lobbying your own home provinces for the same means and rights of taxation in your cities. I wonder if Alberta takes refugee claimants from Toronto.....?