Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has announced a four-year plan to have the province take over $935 million in social service costs now being paid by municipalities.
"Social programs as a general rule don't belong on property taxes, so we are going to upload the Ontario drug plan costs and the Ontario Disability Support plan costs as well," McGuinty said at an Ottawa meeting of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
If the Liberals are re-elected Oct. 10, the uploading plan would start Jan. 1. It would cover costs downloaded to municipalities by the previous Conservative government.
McGuinty said the previous government's decision to download the costs to municipalities was "one of the worst misjudgments'' it made.
"They've been a burden to every municipality and we're taking them back in full,'' he said in a statement.
The pre-election pledge is the next phase in a plan to ease the burden on property taxpayers while addressing the foremost concern of municipalities.
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario says there's a gap of nearly $4 billion between what municipalities get to deliver provincial programs and services and what the cost actually is.
Ontario residents currently pay the highest property taxes in the country to help pay for social services.
The cash-strapped City of Toronto has been calling on the provincial government to pay for some of the downloaded services for some time.
Earlier this month the city announced sweeping service cuts totalling $83 million to help ease the financial crunch. Some of the cutbacks include closing community centres on Mondays, closing libraries on Sundays and reducing snow removal service.
Toronto if facing a budget shortfall next year of $575 million.
Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone said Friday's announcement was welcome news, but noted the downloading of services has left Toronto hundreds of millions of dollar short over the years.
"We would like to think that this is the beginning of a process of addressing that," Pantalone told CTV News.
Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara on Friday announced the government had a surplus of $2.3 billion in the 2006-07 fiscal year achieved through higher revenues and lower-than-expected expenses.
Sorbara said the cash wouldn't be used to help bail out Toronto, saying Canada's largest municipality has already received 500 per cent more funding from the Liberal government since 2003.
New Democrat Party Leader Howard Hampton announced last week that he too would take over some of those costs if elected premier this fall, including transit costs, court costs and disability assistance.
With a report from CTV's Paul Bliss and files from The Canadian Press
