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Expensive farmland close to millions of people is best suited for school kids on field trips, families on farm vacations, and young people learning about agriculture, and for growing labour-intensive crops like organic vegetables, fruit, meat and eggs, not low-value crops like corn and soy.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkXEM7fgGDc

New taxes on sales, gas and HOV lanes may be “fair and balanced” but they will be aggressively opposed and politically damaging to any government imposing them.

A far more politically defensible way to finance Toronto transit is Land Value Capture. The Ontario and municipal governments should finance the new transit by collecting the rise in land value that the new projects produce — a process that makes transit self-financing, with no need for other taxes.

Google the following:
Land Value Capture as a Tool to Finance Public Transit Projects in Canada

Letters:
Tolls, Taxes: Globe and Mail: April 19, 2013

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is right to forge ahead with Toronto-area transit upgrades, even over the complaints of parochial mayors. However, instead of new taxes and tolls – which will pit suburban dwellers against downtown residents and businesses – the new transit should be financed by collecting the rise in land values that the new infrastructure itself will generate.

Land-value capture makes warranted transit “self-financing,” with no need for politically unpopular new tolls or taxes.

There are two big problems with our property taxes: they are too high, and too low.

http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/2013/02/13/tax-reform-badly-needed-in-…

How can that be? Well, it’s because in Ontario, as across Canada, property tax is actually two taxes: a tax on land, and a tax on buildings.

Taxing land value is fair, because a site’s value stems from the community around it; land rent is higher in the middle of a bustling city than in a quiet village, and higher in a town than in a remote wilderness.

Municipal governments should finance infrastructure by collecting the unearned income (economic rent) that accrues to land. No new taxes needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdE1umKfyJA

Warranted new projects (parks, schools, transit, roads, hospitals) always raise local land values more than the cost of the project. Presently this wealth disappears into the pockets of local land owners. Instead, Land Value Taxation should be used to finance the infrastructure.

Why we need land value taxation.
A Telling Silence www.monbiot.com

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 22nd January 2013

You can learn as much about a country from its silences as you can from its obsessions. The issues politicians do not discuss are as telling and decisive as those they do. While the government’s cuts beggar the vulnerable and gut public services, it’s time to talk about the turns not taken, the opportunities foregone: the taxes which could have spared us every turn of the screw.

Dedicated transit tax runs out of gas fast.
http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=190063

Car culture councillors would quickly vote down Adam Giambrone’s suggested 3¢ transit-dedicated gas tax (NOW, November 22-28, circulation 400,000).

And even if it did pass, huge numbers of car people would tank up outside Toronto, driving and polluting even more.

Giambrone says the property tax base is already “overburdened,” but equally so are the income tax base and the sales tax base.

A Land Value Tax is a better way to finance transit.

Letter to the Editor: Increased transfer payments are not the best way to address Toronto’s grotesque income disparity, as Wayne Roberts suggests (NOW, October 4-10).

Transfer payments are financed by taxing jobs, businesses and sales, which damages the economy by killing jobs, punishing successful businesses and raising the cost of products we all need.

The Finance Ministry is vowing to push forward the land tax bill, stalled for a decade, and may increase the tax ceiling, says the Fiscal Policy Office (FPO).

Director-general Somchai Sujjapongse said the FPO is now amending details of the draft. Once the amendment version is completed, it will arrange a public hearing.

The major amendment is the tax ceiling rate. http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/economics/296036/long-stalled-land-…

Under the current draft there are three tax rates depending on the purpose of land usage.

Toronto Star, Saturday, May 19, 2012

There’s really only one way to make Toronto housing affordable for everyone — including young families. But the City can’t do it alone; the provincial government will need to help out.

Step one: the Ontario government would need to instruct the Municipal Property Assessment Corp.(MPAC) to ignore buildings and assess only the land under buildings.

Step two: Toronto would then apply the municipal tax to the lot values alone, also ignoring buildings.

Watch video: Land Value Taxation and the Built Environment

The main benefits of LVT (revenue-neutral municipal tax sifting off buildings onto the land below the buildings) are:

1. LVT doesn't punish businesses, landlords or home owners for fixing up, expanding, renovating, or re-purposing their buildings;

by Tom Gill

They show that €9.5 trillion (£7.9tn) is tied up in household wealth.

That's a vast resource that if tapped would solve the country's public finances overnight and provide plenty of resources for growth, jobs and high-quality public services for all.

Equal to almost €400,000 (£330,000) a family on average, the figures show Italy is considerably richer than other leading developed economies, including Britain, France and the US.