Municipal Research; To Promote the Application of Scientific Principles to Government Volume 87 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ...yearly expenditures of the provinces. The other available ways of raising revenue, however, would supply the provinces with sufficient funds to carry on their respective governments even though the Dominion subsidies should be entierly done away with. As the following extract points out, the federal and local governments have each a distinctive field of taxation. "There is a marked difference between the Dominion and the Provinces as regards resources. Direct taxation is one of the sources which local governments have for revenue and for replenishing their treasury, but it is not the only one. There are resources within the Provinces themselves in the franchises of the different Provinces--franchises of great value. These have been differently treated by different Provinces and differently treated in the same Province under different Governmental management. Take, for instance, the Province of Ontario. Up to the time the present Conservative government came into power certain classes of franchises, most valuable in themselves were treated differently from what they are to-day. These include mines, wood-pulp preserves, water-power franchises and the like. The Province of Ontario, in a little district up in its Northern Territory, actually makes out of its use of the public franchises millions of dollars per year, whilst in other Provinces these resources are not husbanded, but are given away for a song. Scattered all over each Province are valuable assets over which the Dominion Government has no control and from which it cannot get a farthing. The Provincial Governments have full powers over these and could get from them a large accretion to their revenue like Ontario. It is a mistake to think that all elasticity of revenue is in the...