Spending went up by 43% in the last 10 years, in that 10-year period, whereas population growth is a proxy for needs, right? If the population grows by 11%, ceteris paribus—all other things being equal—revenues and expenditures should grow by that much or by some approximately equivalent level, but it went up by four times the population growth. I'm not going to get hung up on the precise and exact 43% or 41% or whatever. My point is that I don't think the argument made by municipalities across Canada that they are desperately short of revenues is supported empirically by the evidence.
Let me just do a follow-up to that, very quickly. I obviously have a very personal interest in this. I say “obviously” to me, because here in Ottawa I was the one who led the fight against Lansdowne Park, which involved $300 million of public funds from us, the taxpayers of Ottawa, to build a football stadium, when the mayor admitted that we had $300 million of deferred obsolete sewers sometimes dumping raw human waste into the Ottawa River. My fear now is that if we give municipalities a lot of unaccountable money, they will spend it in a profligate and irresponsible manner.
Now, I had a vested interest. I was opposed to the development of Lansdowne Park because they were using $300 million of our money to build a frivolous thing. I'm not anti-football—in fact, I'm a huge football fan—but I don't want to pay for it. I want the millionaires and the billionaires to pay for the football stadium, not me. I want our money to go to sewers or roads or ports.
I put those numbers in there to caution you, because I'm seeing that some of the mayors are saying every night on Power & Politics, “Give us the money, no strings attached.” That really makes me extremely nervous, having gone through the experience with Lansdowne. We ended up suing the city of Ottawa. We lost. We appealed to the Court of Appeal in Toronto, lost again, and finally gave up, but only because courts are very reluctant to overturn legislators, as you know.
My larger point is that I think you should proceed very cautiously in giving a lot of money to municipalities with no strings attached. That's my underlying message.