Leaders of Canada’s cities, towns and villages are pressuring federal party leaders to promise to permanently double annual gas-tax revenues flowing to local governments, extending a one-time bonus in the last Liberal budget.

The resulting hundreds of millions of dollars per year in infrastructure funding are desperately needed to maintain and improve traditional priorities, including transit and roads, some leaders of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities told reporters at a Toronto hotel on Thursday.

Municipalities are looking for a federal partner eager to also work together on challenges including climate resiliency, the opioid overdose epidemic and getting broadband internet across rural Canada, said Bill Karsten, FCM president, and Toronto Mayor John Tory.

“Canadian municipalities do, in fact, have in excess of 60 per cent of the infrastructure in Canada and yet we collect only 10 cents on every tax dollar” paid by Canadians in income tax, said Karsten, a Halifax city councillor.

“It’s not sustainable.”

Canadian municipalities have gotten cheques, usually in the millions of dollars, since the Justin Trudeau government announced a “one-time municipal infrastructure top-up” in the 2019 federal budget.

Municipalities are asking federal parties to pledge to essentially double the $2.2 billion they are slated to receive in 2019-2020, when the funding is supposed to drop back down, and to keep doubling amounts previously promised for future years.

The national windfalls have, in Ontario, helped fund Toronto subway cars and streetcars, a stormwater drainage system for Tiny Township and replace a bridge in Chatham-Kent.

During the 2015 election, municipal leaders asked for an end to federal governments treating cities like very junior partners, and to replace sporadic big-cheque photo-ops with ongoing stable funding.

Tory, a one-time leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals delivered on 2015 pledges for ongoing stable funding for transit, housing and more. He wants a 10-year national transit funding plan extended by decades or made permanent.

“I’ve had more visits from federal ministers than, you know, I think probably has ever been the case for any Toronto mayor,” said Tory, adding, “There needs to be a commitment on all parties to say regardless of who forms the government, they will do that” going forward.

Asked if municipalities need something stronger than federal goodwill to have more clout, Tory said mayors don’t sense any appetite for constitutional change to strengthen cities so governments need to find some other way to ensure “we have a seat at the table.”

Demands for increased gas-tax funding comes after Ontario Premier Doug Ford cancelled a previous provincial Liberal promise to boost the municipal share of provincial gas tax revenues.

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That decision is expected to cost Toronto, over the next decade, $1.1 billion that had been earmarked to pay for day-to-day TTC maintenance and upgrades to the existing system.

Correction - September 13, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the amount of extra annual funding municipalities are seeking annually as $819.4 million.

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