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The levy is dedicated solely to transit and housing projects. It was to max out at 2.5 per cent in 2012, but under Tory’s new plan it will increase to 10.5 per cent by 2025. The increase will bring in billions of dollars the city needs for a transit system and public housing network that absolutely no one pretends isn’t desperate for cash.

“This funding, I assure you, is absolutely needed,” Tory said in explaining his about-face. Without it, “the city will start to strangle itself, on things like congestion, we won’t achieve our environmental objectives and people will not have (an) adequate, affordable place to live.”

The city will start to strangle itself, on things like congestion, we won’t achieve our environmental objectives and people will not have (an) adequate, affordable place to live

Why it took him five years to figure this out — longer, really, given that Tory has lived his whole life in Toronto, where his family has been a fixture in the firmament of local power-brokers — is a valid question. He won the mayoralty after years in private business, notably as a top executive in the communications empire owned by family friend Ted Rogers, and with extensive experience in Ontario politics going back to his job as a top aide to premier Bill Davis. So it’s not like he’s clueless about finance or the needs of Canada’s biggest city.

In signing on to a low-tax agenda he continued a self-defeating tradition started by Mel Lastman, the showman politician and furniture hawker who became the first mayor following Toronto’s 1998 amalgamation by dangling a property-tax freeze in front of voters. No mayor since has had the nerve to venture far from that path. The result is a city starved for the funds it needs to pay for the services it operates. Toronto has the highest property values in the province, and among the highest in Canada, rivalled only by Vancouver. Yet homeowners pay among the lowest residential rates in the region. With a few minor exceptions, municipalities east, west and north along the lakefront bill more than Toronto does. People who can’t hope to afford Toronto housing prices find themselves able to pay higher property fees for the services they use — sometimes substantially more. Only Torontonians regularly insist they can’t possibly manage, despite demanding a larger array of services, of the sort big cities require.