Advocacy

Provincial Priorities and Advocacy for 2025

ROMA and AMO unite on pre-budget and pre-election priorities and advocacy

• Municipalities are focused on providing things that matter most to Ontarians, including:
  • Building more homes to support growth and to make housing more affordable;
  • Dealing with homelessness and the drug crisis to improve quality of life for everyone; and,
  • Providing important core municipal services like policing and transit while keeping property tax growth to a minimum in the face of ongoing cost of living challenges.
• Delivering on these priorities is impossible with the current provincial-municipal fiscal arrangements.
• In 2023, Ontario’s municipalities subsidized the province by more than $5 billion in areas that are provincial responsibilities elsewhere in Canada. These include community housing, social services, long-term care, public health, and ambulance services.
• Municipalities urgently need the province to reset fiscal fundamentals to address the growing threats to quality of life across Ontario.
• AMO’s recent provincial pre-election campaign, Vote like your quality of life depends on it, sought to ensure that voters knew what kind of provincial support their municipalities need to deliver the quality of life they expect, and that provincial parties know what commitments are needed to appeal to people who live, work and invest in Ontario’s communities
• ROMA and AMO are aligned in requesting a collaborative review of the provincial-municipal funding framework, and urge all provincial leaders to commit to concrete action on:
  1. Funding infrastructure for housing and the economy
  2. Reducing provincial reliance on municipal subsidies
  3. Fixing broken provincial systems to address homelessness
• AMO and its members are ready to work with the government to achieve real results for Ontarians.