In Ontario, municipalities, other than Toronto, have historically contributed to the capital costs of building local hospitals. Mississauga is being asked to pay a $450 million local share for the Mississauga Hospital rebuild from property taxes.
In 2022, the Province committed to rebuilding the Mississauga Hospital. The City of Mississauga is thankful that the Province is investing in this important healthcare project.
Many of Toronto’s hospitals are regional, in that they serve a broader population than just Toronto. The same will be true of the new Mississauga Hospital (The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital).
The new Mississauga Hospital will serve a population of over 1.7 million people from Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon, Halton, Toronto and beyond.
At the last census, Mississauga is home to 717,000 people, or just 42 per cent of the regional population that will be served by this new hospital.
While it may be called the Mississauga Hospital, it will serve many more people than just those who live here.
Paying a local share is a substantial financial burden to place on less than half of the population that the hospital will serve.
There is no legislation that requires local funding for hospitals; but it has become a practice through Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care policy that communities pay a local share even though funding healthcare is solely a provincial responsibility.
Almost 70% of all new hospitals require a local share and each municipality has paid differing amounts, meaning the local share payment practice is subjective and varied.
The cost of a hospital doesn’t change based on the size of the city, but rather on the number or people it will serve, market prices for labour and supplies, and land value.
In Etobicoke, the Province fully paid for the new Trillium Hospital on the Queensway with no local share. Unlike every other municipality, Toronto is not required to pay a local share.
If Toronto, a city with a population of almost three million, doesn’t have to pay the local share, Mississauga (with only one-quarter of that population) shouldn’t have to either.
Healthcare is entirely within the jurisdiction of the provincial government, and as such, property taxes shouldn’t be used to fund the Mississauga Hospital project.
Unlike income tax (collected by the provincial and federal governments), property tax doesn’t consider people’s incomes, only the assessed value of their properties.
Therefore, seniors on a fixed income, who may have lived in their homes for 30 years, will be taxed based on the value of the home today. The property tax effectively becomes an income tax but is not scaled like the federal and provincial income taxes are. It hits people with lower incomes the hardest.
In 2024, the Region of Peel’s tax increase was 4.9%, which combined with Mississauga’s modest 2.3%, delivered a tax bill to Mississauga residents of 7.2%.
Funding this hospital would require a 0.4% – 3% levy on Mississauga residents every year, for 20 years.
If the City were forced to add a new hospital levy (which at 3% translates to a 1.2% tax impact on the residential tax bill), a property tax bill increase in Mississauga could rise to 8.4% or higher. Reducing this tax bill would mean significant cuts to other programs and services residents rely upon.
Increases like these are unsustainable, but without provincial or federal support, will become the norm.
The federal and provincial governments have significant taxation powers not available to municipalities.
The Province receives health transfers from the federal government, which are meant to be used for projects like this one.
Since 2005, federal health transfers have risen over 212% whereas health spending has only risen 158%.
Mississauga residents are already taxed for healthcare through federal and provincial income, payroll and consumption taxes (GST, HST), which rise when the economy is good.
Paying a local share for this hospital isn’t fair to Mississauga property taxpayers nor sustainable over the long term.
The Province should use the tools at their disposal to fully pay for the Mississauga Hospital.
Mississauga is already facing fiscal challenges to maintain existing and build new infrastructure.
Despite earning a Triple-A credit rating for 21 straight years, our ability to close our annual infrastructure gap gets harder each year. In 2024, the gap was $44 million. Closing this gap would add 2.4% to the City’s already stretched budget.
At the same time, we are facing a series of financial pressures, including:
City of Mississauga is currently underfunded by $868 million compared to other regions in the province (that’s $575 per person annually).
As well, the capacity in our community to fundraise is being tested. For instance, according to recent reports, the Mississauga Food Bank has seen the fastest growth in usage of any food bank in Ontario. One in 13 residents of the city now use a food bank, and one-third are children. There are similar stories from many of the members of the Metamorphosis Network.
Mississauga is one of the best run cities in Canada and we are making smart investments, but we do not have the financial capacity to meet these demands, let alone contribute $450 million to build a hospital within provincial jurisdiction.