A wave of municipal property tax disputes is unfolding across Canada this fall, as small business groups push back against commercial tax burdens in Atlantic Canada and Saskatchewan, while Halifax council grapples with inequities created by its decades-old assessment cap system.
Businesses Say They’re Paying More for the Same Property
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has launched petitions in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island calling on municipalities to stop taxing commercial properties at higher rates than residential properties of equivalent value. The campaigns follow CFIB’s Atlantic Canada Commercial Property Tax Report, released in September, which examined 80 municipalities across the four Atlantic provinces and found that in all but four, businesses face higher tax rates than homes of the same assessed worth.
“Same property value, but a much bigger tax bill. That’s the reality for small businesses across Nova Scotia,” said Louis-Philippe Gauthier, CFIB’s Atlantic Vice-president. He and Frédéric Gionet, CFIB’s Atlantic Director, who led the PEI campaign, are both calling for municipalities to adopt five-year plans to phase out the gap and publicly report how the tax burden is split between property classes.
CFIB survey data cited in both campaigns show that among businesses with fewer than five employees, 31% say property tax eats up more than 10% of operating costs, and 40% say it has significantly hurt profitability. Among businesses negatively affected, 21% report delaying or cancelling investments and 18% say they’ve cut staff or hours. Nearly three in four Atlantic small business owners (73%) say they don’t believe their municipality understands how property taxes affect their operations.
A similar fight is playing out in Saskatoon, where CFIB has written to the mayor and city council urging them to maintain the current 1.71:1 commercial-to-residential property tax ratio amid a public consultation on the city’s tax policy. According to CFIB, Saskatoon businesses already pay 71% more in property tax than residential owners on properties of equal value, and while non-residential properties make up about one-fifth of the city’s assessment base, they generate nearly one-third of municipal property tax revenue.
“Small businesses already carry a disproportionate share of Saskatoon’s property tax burden,” said Brianna Solberg, CFIB’s Director for the Prairies and Northern Canada, adding that council should prioritize controlling spending before shifting more of the load onto commercial ratepayers.
Halifax’s Capped Assessments Under Scrutiny
In Nova Scotia’s capital region, the debate has taken a different shape. Halifax regional council voted 12 to five to ask the province to review the capped assessment program, after a staff report found it has created what councillors called significant inequities. The program protects long-term homeowners by limiting annual assessment increases to roughly the rate of inflation, but the report found 79% of taxable Halifax properties are capped, leaving the remaining 21% — including new homebuyers and large apartment buildings — carrying a larger share of the tax burden.
Coun. Shawn Cleary pointed to cases where neighbours in similar homes pay vastly different bills — one paying roughly $8,000 and another $4,000 — depending on how long they’ve held the cap. Coun. Janet Steele said the system risks discouraging people from moving, with older residents avoiding downsizing and young families avoiding larger homes for fear of losing their capped rate.
According to the staff report, removing the cap would not increase Halifax’s total property tax revenue but would redistribute it more evenly, with about 16,000 homeowners ending up paying less. The report estimated that if the cap had been eliminated this fiscal year, the city could have lowered its urban residential tax rate by about 24%, from $1.135 to $0.854 per $100 of assessed value, and apartment buildings with four or more units would have saved $16,200 this year, or $519 per unit.
Halifax Capped Assessment Program: Key Figures
Coun. Sam Austin suggested more targeted changes — such as removing the cap for vacation homes or limiting benefits for very high-value properties — might be more politically achievable than scrapping the system outright. Councillors acknowledged that broader reform would likely require support from the provincial legislature and could prove unpopular.
Property Taxes Enter the Political Arena
The issue is also surfacing in municipal politics. In Winnipeg, mayoral candidate Chris Clacio said he would raise property taxes by 7.5% in his first year if elected, a one-time increase he said aligns with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ alternative municipal budget proposal. Clacio, a grocery clerk running for the second time after placing last among 11 candidates in 2022, argued the City of Winnipeg Charter restricts how the city can raise revenue. “I don’t think people understand that property taxes are the only way we can raise the revenue that we want,” he said, adding he has also committed to discussing a land value tax that would tax land rather than the buildings on it.
Taken together, the disputes in Halifax, Charlottetown, Saskatoon and Winnipeg point to a recurring tension in municipal finance: balancing calls for tax fairness between residential and commercial property owners, and between long-time and new homeowners, against the pressure on local governments to fund services without alternative revenue tools.
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