Fiscal Health
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Toronto’s Future: Who’s Paying? The 7th Annual IMFG Toronto City Manager’s Address
Campbell Conference Facility Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaChris Murray, Toronto's new City Manager, is a former planner who thinks of the future in terms of decades, not years. In his address, Toronto's Future: Who's Paying?, he will discuss the "elephant in the room" when it comes to municipal government: what kind of city are we leaving behind for future generations?
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Does local government autonomy promote fiscal sustainability? Lessons from Illinois’ home rule municipalities
What are the consequences of home rule authority on fiscal sustainability? What lessons does this hold for Canadian municipalities? This seminar will address these questions by analyzing the experience of over 50 cities and villages that adopted home rule within the past two decades.
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Promise and Peril in the Smart City: Local Government in the Age of Digital Urbanism
Campbell Conference Facility Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaThe recent swell of interest in smart cities draws attention to the way the city of the future will be designed, built, and run. Increased use of technology in municipal servicing and governance holds tremendous promise to increase community engagement, create efficiencies in service production, better manage scarce resources and increase sustainability. At the same […]
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Financing Infrastructure: Who Should Pay?
Editors Richard Bird and Enid Slack and chapter author Matti Siemiatycki discussed the key themes of IMFG’s new book, Financing Infrastructure: Who Should Pay?, followed by a reception and book signing. Politicians and citizens universally agree that Canada’s urban infrastructure urgently needs work. But few cities have room to raise additional revenue, and the federal and provincial […]
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Returning to the Golden Rule of Balanced Budgets: The Institutional and Political Economy of Restricting Public Deficits and Debt
The “golden rule” of public finance states that over an economic cycle, governments should borrow only to invest and not to fund current spending, and that the current budget must always balance or be brought into surplus. In Ontario, all municipalities are subject to legal borrowing limits, with special exceptions for Toronto and York Region. […]
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Understanding Smarter Cities: What Happens Next?
Innis Town Hall Innis College, 2 Sussex Avenue, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaAs part of IMFG’s ongoing series of publications and events, we are pleased to co-sponsor the following event, organized by the Urban Studies Program at Innis College. The intended audience includes local and regional stakeholders, government and industry partners that are developing smart cities strategies, researchers and community members. Panelists will highlight previous smart cities […]
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Investing in Toronto’s Future: The 6th Annual IMFG Toronto City Manager’s Address
Campbell Conference Facility Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaToronto is an exceptional city at least partially because of public policies and past investments. As Toronto City Manager Peter Wallace discussed in his 2016 remarks to IMFG, Toronto faces challenges in meeting the demands of a global, international city. On October 26, Peter joined IMFG to discuss how the City of Toronto can address these […]