Photo: Courtesy of Ted Laking
Ted Laking, the President of AYC submits an Op-Ed looking to bring members of all orders of government together to discuss solutions to find sustainable funding sources in Canadian municipalities
YUKON – A Whitehorse Councillor has written an Op-Ed looking to find sustainable growth for communities across the country.
According to Ted Laking’s letter titled ‘Making Your Community Stronger’, obsolete income and financing streams are being stretched thin to pay for transportation infrastructure, frontline services, city services, and other services on which local governments rely.
Laking says that in the coming months, the Association of Yukon communities and similar organizations will be working collaboratively with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to engage federal, territorial, and provincial governments to push for discussions on what a new Municipal Growth Framework should look like.
Laking says this needs to be on the national radar.
“Municipalities receive only eight to 10 cents for each tax dollar collected in the country. And so the responsibility and the cost and the burden on municipal governments to continue to deliver essential services such as clean water or sanitation or waste management, those costs and expenses are going up. But the revenue to the municipalities is not keeping pace with that growth.”
The President of AYC added that he has overwhelming support from other municipalities.
“This is a concerted effort by municipal leaders across the country to put this on this major issue on the radar on the national screen and to push other orders of government to come to the table and sit down with us being you know, basically we’re ringing the alarm bell”
The Op-Ed states that Canada is growing and has just surpassed 40 million people. In the Yukon we have grown to almost 45,000 – that’s a 23% increase in 10 years. At this rate of growth, the territory will have a population of nearly 52,000 by 2030 and over 63,000 by 2040.
Listen to the full interview with Laking and The Rush’s Curtis Geroux here!
