Finance committee  Thank you for that, Julie. It's a great question. One has to understand, and I'm sure you do, the complexity in terms of.... The Federation of Canadian Municipalities works directly with the members of Parliament, certainly with bureaucrats—in other words, directly with the gov

Finance committee  Sure. Thank you very much, Sean, for the question. The distinction is basically as simple as this. As I said a minute ago, these are unrecoverable losses. There's no way, no mechanism that municipalities have to say, “Well, if we impose this or a new way of putting this forward

Finance committee  Sean, thank you for putting it that way. It certainly goes to what I've said before. Yes, we do need the provinces to work with us. Quite frankly, in my many conversations with the Prime Minister himself, there are those in cabinet who recognize the concerns and the problems th

Finance committee  There's some concern, but again I can only stress that it's federal leadership we need right now. The recovery is the next step. We need to have the crisis that we face right now addressed immediately.

Finance committee  I alluded to the fact—and we're so very grateful for it—that we have a direct line of communication with Deputy Prime Minister Freeland. We try to meet via conference call once a week with her and/or with Minister of Infrastructure Catherine McKenna. We've certainly talked about

Finance committee  Certainly our position all along has been that municipalities should qualify for that, to be perfectly frank. We brought that to cabinet ministers and to the Deputy Prime Minister. Certainly that was brought up at cabinet, and we were disappointed to hear the Minister of Finance

Finance committee  Certainly that's hindsight. My simple response would be yes. It's never too late to have that conversation. In reality, Marty, the framework is fundamentally misaligned with the modern role that municipalities play, and that has increased in the last four, five, six or seven yea

Finance committee  Thanks for referring to it that way, because make no mistake, our mayors across the country and our provincial associations are talking to the province as well.

Finance committee  What I say to that, respectfully, is that this is a crisis. We've certainly recognized that COVID-19 was not predicted, and it's an unprecedented time that we live in. Quite frankly, the revenue losses that we're experiencing currently could never have been predicted. When we hea

Finance committee  No, we don't. On the property tax itself, certainly there are other reports throughout North America, and probably every provincial association in Canada has looked at that. The actual property tax revenue, based on real assessment, is still the model that's used throughout North

Finance committee  Again, I appreciate the question. I really, truly do. I know the intent is sincere in terms of having us advocate for talking to the provinces as well, and that's exactly what we're doing. My respectful answer to you is that this crisis is just too serious and urgent and it just

Finance committee  Thank you for that, Peter. Yes, I know your mayor well, and Josh is a great board member at FCM. What we called for in the release yesterday is actually for this to be reviewed again in four months' time. I think I mentioned that in my notes. That is important, because we're not

Finance committee  Thank you so very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the committee for inviting the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to join you today. I want to take a moment to thank the other mayors who were able to join us today and all of the witnesses who are bringing this information