Ontario can’t grow if a stagnant economy won’t allow it

What if Ontario had a Growth Plan but didn’t grow economically?

What if the Greater Toronto Area and the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) — the regional economic engine that generates most of the province’s horsepower — pulled in different directions?

A decade after Queen’s Park tried to map out a co-ordinated regional vision for the GTA and GGH, the future is here. And it’s not as envisioned.

Despite a trilogy of ambitious and aspirational provincial plans — The Big Move (transit), the Greenbelt (sprawl), and the Growth Plan (land use) — the lay of the land hasn’t turned out as planned.

Never mind that the economy hasn’t performed as predicted. The bigger surprise is that provincial officials failed to factor economic growth — and decline — into the overall equation from the start.

A sobering report to be made publicThursday by the independent Neptis Foundation makes the case that Ontario has been trying to get a grip on population growth without grasping the economic fundamentals that underlie it. Until planners take account of the ups and downs of GDP in the GTA (and across the GGH that stretches from Niagara to Oshawa), the province will keep missing the mark — either underestimating our development needs, or overshooting them.

The Greater Golden Horseshoe generates two-thirds of Ontario’s economic activity and will soak up billions of dollars in infrastructure investments over the next decade. More than a lucky horseshoe, it is an economic lifeline that cries out for better transit lines, not just ribbons of asphalt, to transport people to workplaces and get goods to market.

But before you can move anything around, you first need facts on the ground.

It makes no sense to map out transit to growing communities without first figuring out where the economic growth will come from.

Controlling suburban sprawl makes sense. But comprehending the nature of Ontario’s industrial decline — and the economic opportunities in other sectors — is a pre- requisite to the reurbanization that brings revitalization.

“The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than nonresidential and employment-related development,” the Neptis report notes. “The Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region.”

Other megacities with smaller populations have conducted greater economic research as part of the planning process. Ontario didn’t so much put the cart before the horse as place housing ahead of the Golden Horseshoe’s economic engine.

It’s not that there’s no growth. Despite the de-industrialization of traditional manufacturing centres amid globalization — 200,000 manufacturing jobs lost — there has been a surge in knowledge-intensive, high-skill, value-added “core” jobs in pockets of the GTA and GGH that planners have neglected.

Downtown Toronto is ground zero for growth, with an increase of 12 per cent in employment growth to 465,000 jobs (the rest of the city saw a decline of 12 per cent) from 2001to 2011. But the Neptis report identifies other employment zones across the GTA that account for nearly one million car trips by commuting workers every day.

The megazone encircling Pearson Airport boasts about 300,000 jobs. That makes it bigger than business districts in Montreal, Calgary or Vancouver, yet it is a transit black hole that remains off the radar of provincial planners. The Pearson megazone is the second-biggest source of jobs in Canada, yet it lacks a single subway stop.

“It doesn’t show up anywhere in the Growth Plan or the Big Move,” notes Pamela Blais, an urban planner and geographer who authored the Neptis report. “It’s a major economic centre, and a major source of congestion.”

Two other megazones — near Markham at the 404/407 highway interchange, and west of Keele St. stretching to the 400/407 highway interchange — also show robust growth, but will generate more commuter congestion in the ab- sence of transit links. These job nodes are economic orphans, perched at the intersections of rival jurisdictions, without any one municipality taking ownership of their problems.

Knowledge-intensive industries have also mushroomed in suburban hot spots and the Waterloo area, but without strong transit links they also suffer from transportation isolation. With the Greenbelt and the Growth Plan now under review, and the Big Move next up, it’s time for the province to start connecting the dots — if not the 110 municipalities that make up the GGH.

These reviews provide a golden opportunity to inject economic reality into the Greater Golden Horseshoe’s future. Without those linkages, municipalities will lapse into parochial decision-making that distorts land use strategies.

There’s no point building out bedroom communities that are divorced from employment zones. And there’s no percentage in building transit lines to nowhere. Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn

There’s no point building communities that are distant from employment zones