FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 29, 2004

PROBLEMS CONTINUE WITH MPAC

Laurie Scott calls on Liberals do a better job of protecting Ontario’s Forests

Laurie Scott is questioning why the government has not acted to deal with the property assessment problems plaguing many forest owners. While delivering his recent report, Environment Commissioner Gord Miller spoke about the Government’s failure with the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program (MFTIP). “The damage that is being done will have an impact on the landscape for generations”, said Miller.

The MFTIP program was introduced by the Conservative government to bring greater fairness to the property tax system by valuing forestland at 25% of the residential farm tax rate. Recent changes have been made to the way the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) values its properties for assessment. Forestland owners are now being assessed with a sales comparison approach. This approach has resulted in large property tax increases for forestland owners, taking away the incentive for sustainable forestry and replacing it with an incentive to sell their land.

The Environment Commissioner also said “an arbitrary administrative re-interpretation of property assessment methods has led to rapidly increasing property taxes for property owners. Thus, the central purpose of the program has been frustrated.”

“All the Liberals need to do is to clarify section 19 (5.2) of the Assessment Act for MPAC,” said Laurie Scott. “Why haven’t they done so? The program is in jeopardy, and so are over 700,000 hectares of Ontario’s forests.”

Although the Liberals promised to protect one million new acres of greenspace on the outskirts of our cities, promise # 48, this promise doesn’t seem to include Ontario’s forests.

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