A second high-profile business group, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, is taking the extraordinary step of endorsing new taxes to pay for public transit in the Toronto region.

It’s the kind of support that Toronto City Council failed to deliver last week when it voted to reject 14 transit taxes and remained silent on a sales tax and development charges.

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce, however, is releasing a report Tuesday, recommending highway tolls and a gas tax as the best options for raising money to built transit and stem congestion. They are among 11 revenue-generating devices Metrolinx is floating to raise $2 billion a year toward a regional transit expansion.

The report also suggests the business group sees “medium potential” in a parking levy, land value capture, development charges, a sales tax, transit fare hikes and high-occupancy toll lanes.

The only non-starters, it says, are a property tax, an employer payroll tax and charging road users according to vehicle kilometres travelled.

In March, the Toronto Region Board of Trade — a chamber member — endorsed a sales tax, gas tax, development charges and a parking levy. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce represents 160 chambers and boards of trade in the province, including 13 in the Toronto region.

A survey of 2,059 of its members showed two-thirds of Toronto businesses support new transit taxes and even province-wide, there is 56 per cent support.

“People around the province recognize that moving goods and services through the GTHA has an economic impact on all of our communities,” said Ontario chamber CEO Allan O’Dette.

“If you have goods in a truck sitting on a highway somewhere that’s costing you taxes, that’s costing you labour,” he said.

Public transit is inadequate in many 905-area communities, said Sheldon Leiba, CEO of the Mississauga Board of Trade. A 20-minute drive can take an hour or longer on transit and while businesses work around the clock, buses are often scarce outside the traditional rush hours.

“Businesses are sharing with us that (congestion) is impacting their ability to attract and retain skilled employees. Because of the length of time it takes employees to drive to and from work, the geographical pool from which they can draw talent is becoming a lot of smaller,” said Leiba.

In Oakville, where 60 per cent of workers come from other municipalities, particularly Hamilton, business leaders consider congestion a quality-of-life issue for their employees, said John Sawyer, president of the Oakville chamber.

“They don’t want them spending hours on the road at the beginning or end of the day,” he said.

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“Sixty-two per cent of the people in Oakville that are employed, leave the community every day to work. We have a high population on the road, about 50 per cent above the provincial average,” said Sawyer.

There are concerns about the government’s ability to spend new taxes transparently and to invest them as intended, said O’Dette.

“The government has made some mistakes particularly in the area of oversight and governance . . . but we don’t want to not be investing in infrastructure just because of mistakes that have been made in the past.”

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