Three questions, answered from the Township's own filings: who is carrying this tax bill, how it compares to comparable neighbouring townships, and where the gap between what Carling collects and what it spends actually goes.
Carling is aging faster than it is growing, and property taxation is growing faster than the cost of living. Put those two facts side by side and you get the real story behind the anger at recent tax increases.
Statistics Canada Census Profiles, Carling Township, 2016 and 2021.
Between 2016 and 2021 the number of residents 65 and older grew 43.9% — faster than the township's total population growth of 32.5%. Seniors are becoming a bigger share of Carling every census, not a stable one. Most people living on a fixed retirement income see it rise each year by roughly the cost of living. Carling's tax bill has not moved at that pace.
Carling audited financial statements; Statistics Canada Table 18-10-0005-01, CPI all-items, Canada, annual average.
A household that once split a tax bill between two incomes, and now covers it on one, feels every increase harder. This is not put out to alarm anyone — it's the same numbers residents deserve to see before they vote.
Levy per occupied household — the actual dollar amount billed to and paid by the average permanent-resident household — is the fairest like-for-like comparison. The peer group: Carling, McDougall, McKellar, Whitestone and Seguin, the five small, low-density, low-service townships in the district without municipal water or sewer.
FIR 2024, Schedule 26A, divided by 2021 Census occupied private dwellings.
This isn't because Carling has the most valuable homes. Seguin's assessment per household is higher than Carling's, yet Seguin's levy is lower — Carling is taxing a smaller base harder. Correcting for Carling's larger seasonal share (60.4% vs. McDougall's 31.0%) narrows the gap but doesn't erase it: on a per-total-dwelling basis Carling is still highest, by about 10% over McDougall.
Carling's total spending per dwelling ($4,148, corrected) sits in the middle of the five peer townships — below McDougall and Seguin, above Whitestone and McKellar. McDougall even spends more per dwelling on General Government ($840) than Carling does ($776). "Administrative bloat" is not the honest headline here.
Carling's cash and cash equivalents grew from $5,770,898 (end of 2021) to $8,688,598 (end of 2025) — up 50.6%, or $2,917,700 — while its controllable operating spending grew every year over the same stretch. The levy is set above what the township needs to spend, and the difference piles up on the balance sheet.
This is a choice this council has made, repeatedly, that its neighbouring councils have not made to the same degree. Ask your candidates whether they'd keep setting the levy above what the township needs to spend, or bring it closer to what neighbouring townships collect.
Carling's savings and surplus, measured against 27 other small Ontario townships using the province's own money report. Carling passes every one of the province's three financial health checks — in the safest zone on all three — but those checks were built to catch a town that saves too little, not one that saves too much.
The province uses these three numbers to find towns that might run short of money. This report uses the same three to look for the opposite problem: a town that collects far more than it spends, year after year, with nothing old enough to need it.
The usual answer to a large surplus is that it's grant money. It isn't: in 2025 taxation was 67.7% of all revenue ($6,637,257), against 22.0% in grants. Nine years running, the surplus has never once been a deficit — seven of nine beat budget, and savings rose from $9.6M (2017) to $29.1M (2025).
Towns of 750–2,250 people that don't charge for water or sewer, ranked by savings against what they collect. Carling ranks in the safest zone on the standard health checks, but 1st of 28 on how much extra it collects each year.
Ontario FIR database, 2024 filings, towns of 750–2,250 people without water/sewer utilities.