Baby steps to a fairer Toronto

Small changes could make the biggest differences in building a city in which everyone is equal

You can only keep checking a person’s vital signs so long. Sooner or later the doctor has to offer some kind of treatment.

For 14 years, the Toronto Community Foundation has been showing up like the ambulance and taking Toronto’s vital signs.

The city/patient, more often than not, has many healthy organs and outcomes. There is evidence of vital signs — the economy is growing, tourism is at an all-time high, safety is not a major concern, highrise towers are springing up here more frequently than anywhere else in North America, we are more educated than most global cities and the average observer thinks Toronto is in pretty good shape and a great place to live.

In the latest Vital Signs report, the Toronto Community Foundation (the agency that does the annual checkup) promotes the dream of Toronto as “One Place” — a city that treats its citizens equally and fairly, offers opportunities for all sectors and classes and does it so well that it becomes an urban region that experiences “One Peace.”

Great concept. Great goal. But, how to achieve it? Especially in the face of so much disparity.

To achieve this “in it together” Nirvana, citizens of a region must have positive shared experiences, like the Pan Am Games or cheering on the Blue Jays. Such communal events help feed the social psyche, but are fleeting. Sustained cohesion comes when citizens share the benefits, share the wealth and share the opportunities.

There’s much work to do to achieve this shared reality, the foundation’s CEO Rahul Bhardwaj told the Canadian Club this week.

“In virtually every category Vital Signs analyses — from the poverty of opportunity for young people to the persistent ‘carding’ of young black men, to the daunting amounts needed to upgrade our transit infrastructure, we see our city on the verge of drifting apart,” Bhardwaj said.

In fact, the increasing difference in the way each of us experiences Toronto is a key element that threatens our social cohesion.

Youth unemployment approached crisis levels at 21.56 per cent in 2014. It’s hovered above 20 per cent for a decade. Youth were the fastest growing segment of homeless people. Toronto’s wage gap is the second largest in Canada. Our top 1 per cent of wage earners share 17 per cent of the declared income — second only to Calgary.

In the poorest 10 per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods, average household incomes rose 2 per cent, while in the richest neighbourhoods, incomes skyrocketed by 80 per cent.

Almost three in 10 Toronto children are living in poverty, a fact referred to as a “hidden epidemic.”

Only 45.7 per cent of Toronto workers have a permanent, full-time job with benefits — the secure conditions that foster peace of mind and the ability to share in the benefits and privileges of living here.

Growing an economy that guarantees success for all classes of citizens is the kind of perennial big-philosophy, theoretical, think-tank exercise that’s unlikely to yield results any time soon.

But there are low-hanging fruits the city can pluck to improve the chances of citizens pulling together.

Stop the mad rush to privatize and contract out well-paying jobs.

The natural tendency for a population with increasing numbers living on temporary part-time jobs is to be jealous of those with good jobs. The rush to the bottom does nothing to improve our civic or economic lives.

Make it politically unacceptable to play off suburbs against the city in any of our debates around big issues. That goes for transit; housing choices and availability and affordability; economic development.

Encourage active living. Walking and cycling deliver healthy living. Make them safer activities. Of 10 Canadian cities studied, Toronto is the fourth most dangerous in which to ride a bike.

Maybe Mayor John Tory can exert a modicum of energy on a safety blitz for cyclists — something akin to his preoccupation with moving traffic.

Don’t tolerate practices that obviously tear at our social cohesion. Hate speech, intolerance and statesanctioned discrimination such as police carding have no place in a city that aspires to be a global example.

Those don’t cost much. But if we can’t manage these achievable improvements, our larger challenges will continue to show up on the charts of every Vital Signs report. Royson James’s column usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca