Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.
I want to pursue my initial line of questioning with Ms. Leibovici. You mentioned in your submission that the property tax is a 19th century tool, and I would tend to agree with you there. The sort of golden era for Canadian cities I guess lasted up until about 25 years ago. I remember certainly in Toronto where we had garbage pickup twice a week, recycling once a week, and city services were all there, all free—well, paid through the property tax. But for a variety of reasons over the last 20, 25 years or so, cities are finding themselves with less and less cash.
As you know, in Toronto now, within the 416, the land transfer tax is double. They've been able to generate a lot of money through the doubling of the land transfer tax. Cities are having to become more and more creative in ways to raise revenue in order to deliver the services that citizens require. We also hear in Toronto that they're talking about a casino to raise money.
Could you talk a bit about the ways in which cities are going to have to think outside the box in terms of raising revenues to maintain the existing infrastructure, but also to expand the infrastructure they have currently, plus maintain a quality of life that the citizens of each city have been accustomed to? Could you please discuss that a bit?