Mississauga byelection ad targets Parrish on land transfer tax

With just over a week left until Mississauga's mayoral byelection, talk of taxes is heating up — and so are attacks between two high-profile candidates.

Dipika Damerla is targeting her former Mississauga city council colleague Carolyn Parrish on social media and her website, saying Parrish has "mused at city council about doubling land transfer taxes."

For her part, Parrish says her opponent is oversimplifying a complex issue.

The evidence Damerla includes is a roughly 10-second clip of Parrish speaking during a January 2022 meeting of council's general committee. In it, Parrish says, "Well, I'm interested not just in capital gains tax, but I'm interested in all forms of taxation, that are in our power, to do with housing transfers from one owner to another."

The ad then cuts to Damerla promising to keep taxes low and reject any attempt to introduce a municipal land transfer tax in Mississauga similar to the one in place in Toronto. Toronto's local tax is levied in addition to the provincial land transfer tax, and brings in nearly $1 billion for the city each year. 

The full recording of the commitee meeting offers some context for Parrish's remarks.

The committee was debating the city's pre-budget submissions to the provincial and federal governments, which included recommendations for generating municipal revenue and discouraging real-estate speculation.

Parrish was responding to former mayor Bonnie Crombie, who expressed opposition to the possibility of an enhanced capital gains tax on some residential properties in the city.

Parrish did not specifically refer to a municipal land transfer tax after making the comments featured in the clip circulated by Damerla's campaign.

Instead, Parrish went on to say that she'd like city staff to explore the revenue implications of an annual surcharge on homes valued at $2 million or more, starting at 0.2 per cent and going up to one per cent.

"It's a progressive form of tax, just like income tax is. People who have a house that's worth $2 million can afford to pay an extra 400 bucks in taxes a year," she said.

"I would like to look at all of these [forms of taxes]. We've talked about it before. We talk about building a soccer stadium, we talk about all kinds of things we'd like to do for our city, and we can't do it because we don't have the money," Parrish continued.

At Thursday's mayoral byelection debate, CBC Toronto asked Damerla if the short clip used in her attack ad backs up the claim Parrish would try to bring a municipal land transfer tax to Mississauga.

"I would invite people to watch the entire video and come to their own conclusions," Damerla said.