The great urban disconnect
In making demands on Ottawa, cities are hobbled by tradition and the Constitution
David Crombie has no illusions about any role the federal government might play in the life of Canadian cities.
“If Toronto went out of business tomorrow, the federal government would say: ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ ” says the former Toronto mayor and cabinet minister under Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney. “Ottawa has no connection to or institutional memory of cities. The whole notion that big cities get together and the federal government pays attention to them overlooks one thing — the Constitution.”
In Canada, cities are creatures of the provinces.
Even the best intentions, Crombie points out, don’t survive. In 1974, Pierre Trudeau created a Minister of State for Urban Affairs and Housing, a position that lasted only a few years.
“All that was left,” Crombie notes, “was the CMHC (Central Mortgage and Housing Corp).”
The secret to getting the federal government’s attention, he explains, “is to create a constituency that it can’t ignore.”
One of the most celebrated examples of inter-government co-operation, the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, dates from the 1970s.
“We created a sense that the city was important,” Crombie explains.
“We brought the federal and provincial governments together. Cities are all different places. What matters aren’t just the relationships you build, but also the relationships you build with constituents.”
Architect and planner Alan Littlewood cut his teeth at St. Lawrence, the large, mixed-income residential enclave rightly hailed as a paragon of the public sector working in partnership. “It could not have been done without direct and indirect federal support,” he says. The federal minister at the time, Donald Macdonald, “was directly involved. There was backup through the whole system. Money was available for rebuilding and infrastructure.
“My impression was that the Liberals under Trudeau eventually backed away from cities because they were accused of interfering. When Mulroney got in, an ideological change took place to withdraw and let cities take care of themselves.”
In his latest book, How We Changed Toronto: The inside story of twelve creative, tumultuous years in civic life, 1969–1980, another former mayor, John Sewell, recalls the genesis of the federal housing programs that made St. Lawrence possible. It begins with Trudeau’s minority government of 1972, one in which the NDP under David Lewis held the balance of power.
“When Trudeau and Lewis talked about hammering out a deal that allowed Trudeau to govern,” Sewell writes, “it included . . . a powerful new housing program . . . (that) provided grants and mortgages to non-profits and non-profit co-operatives to buy land and build and operate housing.
“Without this new program, none of our housing initiatives would have gotten off the ground . . . The program was so popular that when Trudeau did manage to achieve a majority in the election in July 1974, the housing program was strengthened, not cancelled.”
In Crombie’s parlance, housing had become the constituency. Decades later, when Waterfront Toronto was launched in 2000 with $500 million each from federal, provincial and municipal governments, the “constituency” was the 2008 Olympics, the sort of thing senior levels of government care about.
More recently, Jim Flaherty, federal finance minister from 2006 to 2014, showed more than usual interest in Toronto. “He was a good man,” Crombie says. “Early on, he understood the importance of cities.”
Flaherty was quick to get on board with Evergreen Brick Works and made waterfront revitalization a personal priority.
Despite the fact Canada is overwhelmingly an urban nation, cities remain largely impotent. Until the City of Toronto Act was passed in 2006 — by the provincial government — speed limits couldn’t be altered or traffic-calming devices installed without Queen’s Park approval. Though Toronto has since been granted more legal independence, it never received the revenue-raising powers — income and sales tax — it desperately needs.
Sadly, trying to finance a city on property taxes alone gets us where we are today; unable to pay our way. Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca