When you talk about the development of a city, we always talk about how we fund our cities. Is property tax the best way to do it? We've been asking for growth-type revenues in terms of our provincial governments and how we work with them so we don't have to rely on property taxes as the main way of increasing revenues within our city. That's why you see so many cities sprawling all over the place; it's the easiest way for cities to access new revenue.
Your point is exactly right, but it's a difficult one for us to address here. We have seen cities develop in that way, where people can't get to certain places from where they live and they have to drive. That is a challenge that regrettably we have to go back to try to address now, to a certain extent after the barn door.... The horse is gone, at the very least.
We're trying to develop more progressive ways of raising revenue through things like the gas tax that will discourage sprawling growth so cities can grow in another way that doesn't involve us simply expanding the number of houses we build in the periphery of our cities. If this committee can lend any help with new revenue tools--not necessarily new revenue--that would help immensely.