(Quebec) Can the City of Percé collect $1 each time a tourist spends more than $20 at a store in their area?
Posted at 8:00 am
A Supreme Court judge will have to answer the question dividing this much-loved Gaspésie commune, which controversially introduced a tourist tax in spring 2022.
“For the lawyer that I am, that’s a good point of law,” Supreme Court Justice Isabelle Germain said Wednesday, just before accepting the case for deliberation after two days of hearings.
The outcome of this legal battle between the city of Percé and some of its merchants will be followed by municipalities across Quebec looking to increase their revenues thanks to new powers gained in 2018.
The municipality of Îles-de-la-Madeleine has already announced that from 2023 tourists visiting the archipelago will be subject to a fee of US$ 30 collected by transport companies.
“If we listen to the meetings of the municipal council on the Magdalen Islands, we realize that they saw what was being done in Percé and were inspired by it,” explains Tommy Gagné-Dubé in the interview. , Assistant Professor in the Department of Taxation at the Université de Sherbrooke.
“They also saw what they had caught. So there is an emulation effect and that is why this cause is so important. She will come and mark whatever the outcome. »
More than 500,000 tourists a year
Percé and its famous rock are visited by more than 500,000 tourists every year. The village of 3100 people needs to maintain a number of infrastructures to accommodate all these people.
The municipality therefore decided last May to introduce a tourist fee. The first draft of the rules required merchants to collect $1 each time a visitor made a purchase of more than $20 from their business.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
The mayor of Percé, Cathy Poirier, said last June that this regulation was a first in Quebec.
But this practice of turning dealers into collectors without their consent would have been illegal, according to a legal opinion by the association of municipalities.
So the city council changed the bylaws to make merchants pay — making them debtors — every time a visitor pays more than $20 to their business. The trader is therefore free to pass the fee on to the tourist, but is not obliged to do so. This nuance was at the heart of the process on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“The municipality has decided to use the dealers against their will to make this collection and we will see if this is legal,” plaintiffs’ attorney Me Frédéric Sylvestre said in court. “This ordinance is badly born, written in a hurry” and “has loopholes,” he believes.
Before they reached the court, the slingshot of certain merchants moved to the town council. The June 7 meeting was particularly stormy.
“It’s disrespectful to merchants,” said Jonathan Massé, spokesman for the Comité de citoyen-merchants, a group that is suing the community. “People who worry take it as aggression. »
Opponents accuse Percé of not consulting them, charging an unenforceable fee and making their work more difficult.
According to the city itself, last summer, at the height of the tourist season, almost half of the merchants refused to pay the fee. The community made only $155,000 from their measure, a far cry from the $1.5 million they were expecting.
In court, Percé argued that merchants benefit from tourism and therefore have to contribute to the financing of the infrastructure. “Isn’t it ultimately the retailer who benefits from the tourism infrastructure? Asking the question means answering it. They are almost only open in the summer,” argued in court Me Claude Jean, representing the city of Percé.
“You think the city is doing this to annoy the merchants? They benefit from it,” continued Me Jean, who said only a minority of them were against the royal family.
The mayor said last June that this rule was a first in Quebec. “It will follow in several communities because several other communities have our problem, this imbalance between population and tourist traffic. The population encourages us to continue in this direction,” said Cathy Poirier.
Judge Germain did not say when her decision, which has been eagerly awaited in Percé and elsewhere, would come. “I say to the traders: there will certainly be wounds to heal, but it will be necessary to go to the court’s decision,” said their lawyer Frédéric Sylvestre.