Ontario’s Big City Mayors (OBCM) met virtually on Friday to advance shared priorities including municipal fiscal sustainability, infrastructure investment, and public safety. These were also the focus of discussion when OBCM welcomed Ontario’s Minister of Finance, Peter Bethlenfalvy to share pre-budget priorities.
While speaking with the Minister of Finance OBCM outlined key priorities including accelerating housing and housing-enabling infrastructure, the future of the Building Faster Fund (BFF), addressing the growing mental health, addictions, and homelessness crisis, and strengthening public safety through increased supports for policing and the judicial system.
OBCM thanks the Minister for the opportunity to contribute to the pre-budget process and values his continued willingness to work collaboratively with Ontario’s largest municipalities.
At the meeting, the caucus also passed three motions (see below) calling on the Province of Ontario to take immediate and collaborative action. The first resolution requests that the province meaningfully consult with municipalities on any proposed changes to Conservation Authorities, including through legislation and following regulations. The second urges the Ministry of Health to take immediate steps to reduce emergency room wait times, including enhanced ER triage protocols and increased funding to strengthen emergency readiness across Ontario’s health care system. It also calls on the Province to introduce Finlay’s Law which would ensure no child in Ontario is left without timely emergency medical care in hospitals. The third reiterates OBCM’s call for a new municipal fiscal framework, focusing on removal of the residential education tax from the property tax base to better align municipal taxing authority with municipal legislative mandates.
“Ontario’s Big City Mayors are united in calling for practical, collaborative action to address the pressures facing our communities. From municipal finances and infrastructure to public safety and emergency health care, the challenges we face require meaningful partnership with the province. We appreciate the opportunity to engage with Minister Bethlenfalvy ahead of the budget and look forward to continued collaboration to deliver sustainable solutions that support residents, strengthen our cities, and drive Ontario’s economic success.” – Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, Chair, Ontario Big City Mayors
About Ontario’s Big City Mayors
Ontario’s Big City Mayors (OBCM) is a non-partisan organization that includes mayors of 29 single and lower-tier cities with a population of 100,000 or more, who collectively represent nearly 70 percent of Ontario’s population and almost 30 percent of Canada’s population. OBCM advocates for issues and policies important to Ontario’s largest cities.
Media Contacts
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, Chair Michelle Baker, Executive Director
chair@obcm.ca michelle@obcm.ca
905-335-7777 647-308-6602
APPENDIX A – OBCM MOTIONS (3 Total)
Motion on Provincial Plan for Consolidation of Ontario’s Conservation Authorities
Moved by Mayor Dorothy McCabe, Waterloo, Seconded by Mayor David West, Richmond Hill and Mayor Elizabeth Roy, Whitby
Whereas the Conservation Authorities Act, 1990 (the “Act”), originally enacted in 1946, was established to allow municipalities to form conservation authorities equipped to deliver local, watershed-based conservation, restoration, and natural resource management programs on behalf of both the province and municipalities;
Whereas Ontario’s thirty-six (36) conservation authorities are each distinct, reflecting the unique environmental, geographic, and community needs of their respective watersheds;
Whereas municipalities have long relied on their conservation authorities to tailor programs to local watershed priorities while ensuring fair and transparent costs for ratepayers;
Whereas municipalities are best positioned to understand the needs of their local communities and environments, and the existing watershed-based structure enables effective, collaborative approaches to water conservation and management that cannot be replicated through centralized oversight;
Whereas Bill 68 (Schedule 3) and ERO Posting 025-1257 propose consolidating Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities into seven regional authorities and creating the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency, a Crown agency that would assume oversight and possess the authority to levy conservation authorities for its costs;
Therefore be it resolved that Ontario’s Big City Mayors requests that the province meaningfully consult with municipalities on any changes to Conservation Authorities so that we can review the full financial, reserves and operational impacts that could affect local control and management of the floodplain areas watersheds and natural resources which Conservation Authorities were established to manage.
Motion on Emergency Room Reform
Moved by Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, Burlington Seconded by Deputy Mayor Ainslie, Toronto
WHEREAS growing pressures across the Ontario healthcare system are increasing patient volumes in emergency rooms (ER), requiring more complex care, and contributing to longer patient wait times in ERs for residents in Ontario’s largest municipalities; and
WHEREAS Health Quality Ontario data from October 2025 reports that patients needing admission to the hospital waited an average of 19-20 hours, with high-urgency patients waiting close to 5 hours on average to be seen by a physician; and
WHEREAS in December 2023, the Auditor General of Ontario reported that significant hospital staffing shortages were reducing access to timely emergency care; and 1
WHEREAS the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario reported in March 2023 that ER wait times were increasing significantly with the longest wait times recorded in over 15 years and that provincial funding was $21.3 billion short to maintain current health programs through 2028; and 2
WHEREAS according to the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA), Ontario has had the lowest per capita hospital expenditure in Canada since 2018; and 3
WHEREAS according to the OHA, approximately 4,200 alternate‑level‑care (ALC) patients remain in acute beds (40% awaiting long‑term care), worsening ER delays; and
WHEREAS Canadian ER researchers have highlighted that between 8,000 and 15,000 Canadians die prematurely as a result of ER overcrowding; and 4
WHEREAS reports of patients dying in crowded ERs across Canada are increasing, such as 16-year-old Finlay van der Werken who waited over 8 hours in an Oakville ER without being seen by a physician and tragically passed away on February 9, 2024 from pneumonia that developed into sepsis; and
WHEREAS ER delays are contributing to excessive ambulance offload times, adding undue strain on response capacity of municipal paramedic services across Ontario; and
1 Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, “Value-for-Money Audit: Emergency Departments,” Dec. 2023, pg. 3.
2 Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, “Ontario Health Sector: Spending Plan Review,” Health Report, March 8, 2023.
3 Ontario Hospital Association, “Ontario Hospitals – Leaders in Efficiency.” July 2025 Report, pg. 5.
4 Dr. Raghu Venugopal and Dr. Alan Drummond, “Venugopal and Drummond: Doug Ford has failed to fix Ontario’s ER hospital crisis,” Ottawa Citizen, February 19, 2025
WHEREAS the Provincial Government has taken important steps to improve health care in Ontario, however additional funding and staffing resources for hospitals to reduce ER wait times and increase capacity to provide timely access to care for all patients in ER’s remains critical; and
WHEREAS despite growing concerns regarding staffing shortages in and closures of ERs across Ontario, as well as failure to meet federal standards such as the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale, the Provincial Government continues to receive full contributions of Canada Health Transfers from the federal government.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT Ontario’s Big City Mayors call on the Provincial Ministry of Health to take immediate action to reduce ER wait times with consideration for the importance of enhanced ER triage protocols and increased funding to strengthen emergency readiness;
AND THAT Ontario’s Big City Mayors call on the Provincial Ministry of Health to introduce Finlay’s Law to ensure that no child in Ontario is left without timely emergency medical care in hospitals by:
- Setting legal maximum ER wait times for children under 18 (e.g., physician assessment within 2 hours, admission within 8 hours).
- Mandating safe pediatric nurse-to-patient and physician-to-patient ratios in emergency settings.
- Establish independent oversight to audit hospitals, investigate pediatric ER deaths, and enforce
- Mandate public, independent, and timely (within 1 year) inquiry by the Chief Coroner of Ontario of every pediatric death in an ER waiting
- Fund better pediatric emergency readiness, including staffing, training and infrastructure
AND THAT Ontario’s Big City Mayors call on the Federal Ministry of Health to enforce the principles and requirements of the Canada Health Act through its spending power of Canada Health Transfers to Ontario by:
- monitoring compliance to national health standards, such as Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) in ERs;
- and establishing and ensuring compliance with a new sepsis care
AND THAT a copy of this resolution be sent to the Premier of Ontario, the Ontario Minister of Health, the federal Minister of Health, the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA), and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO).
Motion on Education Tax Reform
Moved by Mayor David West – Richmond Hill, Seconded by Mayor Dorothy McCabe, Waterloo
Whereas the property tax is applied to all properties calculated from the assessed value of the property regardless of the property owners’ income and ability to pay, leading to lower-income individuals and families paying a larger percentage of their income in property taxes than higher-income families, impacting affordability; and diminishing tax fairness
And whereas the property tax was originally intended to support primary core municipal functions and services, notably community infrastructure such as water, wastewater, stormwater, transportation and other municipal services, infrastructure and programs that have a direct relationship to property value and the community one lives in;
And whereas, over the past 100 plus years since the property tax system was implemented, upper level governments have downloaded many different non-core responsibilities onto municipalities thus increasing pressures on the property tax. This increased downloading has added more unfairness to municipal resident’s tax bill. Combined with the already regressive nature of property taxes;
And whereas municipalities are currently experiencing significant challenges in achieving long-term financial sustainability, including funding the increasing costs of providing municipal services and building and maintaining the infrastructure on which their communities rely, while balancing the affordability needs of their residents and property owners;
And whereas the education portion of property taxes is established and regulated by the Province of Ontario under the Education Act, and municipalities, including the City of Richmond Hill, act solely as the collection agent for this levy;
And whereas education is not a municipal responsibility and the collection of this education levy on property tax adds unfairly to municipal taxpayers burden;
And whereas municipalities across Ontario and Canada, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) have called for a review and reconsideration of municipal revenue sources as part of a larger effort to better match municipal mandates with resources to fund these;
And whereas the Province of Ontario funds a portion of education, a provincial responsibility, via a tax levied based on the assessed value of the property and collected by municipalities, which in Richmond Hill represents 20% of the average property tax bill;
And whereas the Province of Ontario has acknowledged that there should be no relationship between property values and education by ensuring that the base rate of per student funding is provided to all students in the Province, regardless of what municipality they attend school in;
And whereas removing the education levy from the property tax would increase tax fairness and increase affordability and is consistent with AMO and FCMs calls for fiscal reform.
Therefore be it resolved that Ontario’s Big City Mayors call on the Province of Ontario to remove the residential property-based education tax as a source of funding for schools, so that municipalities can align their taxing authority with their legislative mandates.
And that the Ontario’s Big City Mayors reiterate our call for a new municipal fiscal framework