🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Xiaohua Gong’s Plan for a “Vibrant, re-energized new economy!”
🔗 LINK: gong4mayor.com/economy/index.html
🔧 DOABLE? No.
💰 COSTED? This is not even in the same galaxy as “costed.” It is a plan that has never even heard the term “costed.” It is a total stranger to the notion of cost. If “costed” is a single point in the universe, this plan is the furthest possible distance from that point. We measure its distance from a costed plan not with metres or kilometres, but in lightyears.
✨ OVERALL: ⚫️ (Zero out of five)
As the election draws to a close, I’ve been trying to find the most fiscally irresponsible platform promise. I think Xiaohua Gong — also known as Edward Gong, or “the guy with all the signs” — has delivered.
This is going to be hard to beat.
Gong is promising a “reprieve and immediate abatement of 1000 dollars per household on property taxes provided you spend the money on services or renos/household repairs in Toronto!”
As far as I can tell, the City has no mechanism for ensuring any money is spent within the City. A hypothetical system where residents have to submit receipts to get the $1,000 rebate would be enormously complex and bureaucratic, and also seem to make it impossible for this to be an “immediate” rebate.
So let’s just assume everyone gets this $1,000. Census takers counted 1,160,890 Toronto households in the latest census. Giving each of them $1,000 would cost about $1.1 billion.
That’s about 20% of the City’s annual take from property taxes. It would make City Hall’s current budget crisis much much worse.
As campaign promises go, I don’t recall ever seeing a more expensive promise with no apparent thought toward how it would be paid for.
Gong says these $1,000 cheques would help “Build Toronto's Manhattan to Revitalize the Economy” and also, somehow, “turn Toronto into the world capital of metaverse, blockchain, crypto, and digital asset exchange.”
“We need Torontonians to come back to town to settle and spend! Spend, stay and no more war on cars! Grab your $1000.00 check and spend in Town!,” he says.
Look, there’s a lot going on here. I’m not sure that giving every household the equivalent of an extra 83 bucks a month to spend will make that much of a difference in the City’s economic vitality, even if the money is paired with an end to “the war on cars.”
$83 isn’t even enough to pay for a dinner out for the average household. And the utility of this kind of public resource giveaway needs to be compared to the utility of using that money to provide shared services like transit and park maintenance.
In addition, there are obvious logistical challenges with renter households, who represent about half the city population. How would City Hall ensure landlords don’t just pocket the $1,000 rebate? Gong’s got a lot of signs but there is no sign of this plan making any darn sense.
PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.