You wouldn’t expect the allegedly socialist mayor of Canada’s largest city, which is allegedly teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, to relish his annual meetings with the beady-eyed representatives of Canada’s top credit-rating agencies. But David Miller not only enjoys such encounters, his top aides claim, the credit raters love them as well.

Allegedly business-friendly Mel Lastman, the only other mayor to have managed amalgamated Toronto, never dared talk about municipal finances with anybody who, unlike him, actually understood them. Instead, he delegated the job to such representatives as former city treasurer Wanda Liczyk, whose career ended in disgrace following the landmark Bellamy inquiry into municipal corruption.

Today, the credit raters can enjoy fluent answers to the most detailed questions about city finances from the mayor himself, a Bay Street lawyer. As for Miller, he embraces every opportunity to map out the city’s slow but increasingly steady fiscal recovery — the central concern of his now five-year tenure. The results are positive reports and high ratings.

The latest evidence is the mayor’s presentation of a nominally balanced budget for the first time since amalgamation 10 years ago, a reward earned in large part by new taxes on house sales and vehicles. Miller suffered mightily while guiding the new taxes through council, losing a key vote and enraging the city by threatening to cut popular services in response, but both birds are now well in hand.

The new taxes and fees also vastly increase his political leverage when he argues for a better deal from senior governments. Previously resistant to demands from a city unwilling to raise its own revenue, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has now all but promised relief from some of the unfunded mandates that have been draining municipal coffers since the days of former premier Mike Harris.

With new grants for transit expansion and affordable housing either in hand or in the offing, an emboldened Miller is now touting significant tax breaks as part of an emerging new spending package. Technically a tax-deferral proposal, the plan recently adopted by council will allow developers of virtually any new employment space in Toronto to forgo paying realty taxes for eight years.

An earlier Miller policy to reduce business taxes over 15 years was so incremental as to be unnoticeable. The new one is a dramatic gesture designed to shatter the prevailing image of Toronto as a high-tax location.

Perhaps, as a result, Miller is garnering new support from local business leaders, many of whom were openly skeptical when the left-leaning mayor first took power. Although Miller’s new Agenda for Prosperity — an action plan for business development — is bigger on symbol than substance, it bears the signatures of several prominent figures from business and academia.

As with the new taxes, the new allies Miller has won among the city’s business elite bring political advantage. He pressed it to maximum effect during a recent speech to the Canadian Club that challenged a reluctant federal government to join the civic enterprise. The resulting applause indicated a surprising shift in the elite’s opinion.

Most Toronto residents consider their mayor to be a well-meaning bumbler and city hall to be a maelstrom of inefficiency. But the picture is changing as finances improve. Always ready to unite in opposition to real or distant threats, Torontonians are, more than ever, inclined to listen when the mayor claims the city’s most dangerous economic enemy is federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

Although this attitude is unlikely to have much effect on the next federal election, it does have the virtue — at least, from the mayor’s point of view — of taking the heat off city hall. IE