The City of Toronto faces a fiscal crisis. With a staggering $29.5 billion in unfunded capital expenditures looming and essential services under threat, the city's financial model is buckling under pressure. Against this backdrop, the Board convened our Broken Budgets Symposium, bringing together policymakers, business leaders, and politicians to confront a stark reality: the current financial approach for municipalities is unsustainable.
From reimagining expenditure management to exploring public-private partnerships, the day's discussions yielded thought provoking discussions and actionable insights with the potential to chart a bold course for the city's financial future.
Actionable Insights:
- Adopt a Treasury Board Approach: A structured expenditure management system is essential to prioritize investments and enhance fiscal oversight.
- Address Structural Deficits: Our cities require reliable support from senior levels of government to sustain core services.
- Maximize Public Assets: There is a role, through strategic partnerships with pension funds and private equity, to maintain, manage and leverage public assets for the public good.
- Efficient Service Delivery: Opportunities exist to deliver services differently, including through greater collaboration and coordination with other cities in the Toronto region ensure long-term financial health.
Discussions held at our event brought clarity to the scale of Toronto’s financial challenges and the bold ideas needed to tackle them:
"We need a more structured form of expenditure management, a Treasury Board-like approach for the city, to prioritize key investments and ensure they don't get lost in the shuffle of annual budget cycles."
Shelley Carroll, Toronto City Councillor and Chair of the Budget Committee, underscored a central theme of the day: the need for a disciplined approach to managing municipal finances.
"Effective governance is about asset management. It doesn’t matter if the ownership is public or private; what matters is that the asset delivers value, generates revenue, and supports long-term city goals."
Michael Nobrega, Chair of the IBI Group, the Audit Committee of Toronto Hydro Corporation, and the Centre for the Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine, emphasized the importance of results over ownership, setting a pragmatic tone for the day.
"Municipalities are fundamentally constrained by structural deficits—our resources don’t align with the scale of challenges we face, from homelessness to congestion to climate adaptation. Without external support, we simply don’t have the funds to deliver the services our residents need."
Peter Wallace, former City Manager of Toronto and Senior Advisor, Boston Consulting Group, delivered a stark assessment that made clear Toronto cannot address its challenges alone.
"Copenhagen transformed by leveraging private sector efficiency for public good. By using public assets strategically, we turned fiscal challenges into opportunities that built both economic prosperity and infrastructure resilience."
Luise Noring, Principal and Business Economist in Urban Governance and Finance, shared Copenhagen’s example as a blueprint for how Toronto could harness private-sector innovation to achieve public goals.
Our Broken Budgets event was just the beginning. The Board is committed to advancing solutions to Toronto’s fiscal challenges with a focus on business competitiveness and long-term economic resilience.
Key opportunities include:
- Expenditure Management: Introducing a City-level Treasury Board to prioritize investments.
- Funded Mandates: Securing predictable provincial and federal funding for city-delivered services.
- Leveraging City Assets: Unlocking value through innovative public-private partnerships inspired by global models like Copenhagen.
Securing key ingredients for the future of our economy will again take centre stage at our upcoming event, Race for Space: Navigating Toronto's Employment Lands Crisis. Secure your seat today.
