In any event, we cannot afford to wait. If there is anything to learn from the U.S. and British experiences, it is that the collective costs of deferred maintenance of the urban economy can be irreversible. We must seize the initiative ourselves. The fundamental strategic goal for the Toronto area must be to become financially self-sufficient, not only from an operating perspective, but generating a significant proportion of the capital requirements for new investment. We need a strategic vision that defines Toronto's needs as a North American and global city in the same way that our competitors have been doing so effectively.
Productive investment has to be distinguished from mere municipal consumption.
Indeed, rather than more roads and sewers and recreation centres, Toronto's most important new infrastructure priorities could be a new freeway to the U.S. border for trucks only, a new department of bioengineering at the University of Toronto, and ensuring the future for embattled Livent Inc.'s theatrical presence here. Toronto is one of the few world cities that still operates these services as main-line businesses. The federal and provincial governments could greatly assist the effectiveness of such a fund by granting it the tax exemptions, depreciation and tradable tax credits characteristic of U.S. cities. Such techniques have been thoroughly tested by other cities and, while largely foreign to the Canadian and Ontarian fiscal traditions, are commonplace in our real urban economic environment. Toronto also desperately needs the management capacity for urban regeneration that is characteristic of every other world city.