Cities need a new deal
Toronto had a brutal reminder of just what it means to be a creature of the province when Premier Doug Ford slashed city council nearly in half during last October’s municipal election.
Queen’s Park’s plan to upload Toronto’s subway system against its will — perhaps better called theft, given how much city residents and riders have paid to keep it on the rails over the years — is another example of what it means for a Canadian city to be under the provincial thumb.
For the current government, this is all just as it should be. What Toronto decides, Ontario can overrule. What the city owns, it can take away. The province can do whatever it wants to this city — along with every other municipality in Ontario — and reply to any outrage with the same breezy “because I said so” that a parent gives a child.
And why not? In law, Toronto — a vital economic driver not only of this province, but the entire country — is nothing but the dependent child of Ontario.
But in drafting Canada’s constitution, which set out this arrangement, nobody debated whether this was the best way to govern cities or grow the nation over time. In1867, when the constitution (then the British North America Act) was signed, no one thought much about cities at all.
There simply wasn’t much to think about. The vast majority of Canadians — some 80 per cent — didn’t live in cities. Canada was predominantly rural and the big concern then was building railways to bind the new Confederation together.
More than 150 years later it’s obvious that the existing distribution of power and taxing authority — the federal and provincial governments basically have it all — leaves big cities and their citizens at considerable disadvantage.
Cities have few rights or means to chart their own future. The main revenue source municipalities control is property tax, and that can’t possibly stretch to meet the increasing demands placed on it.
In Toronto, public transit can’t keep up with current demand, let alone build what’s needed. Affordable housing is in such short supply that businesses are warning the city’s economy will suffer for it and homeless shelters are overflowing. The city’s social fabric is fraying.
And Canada’s largest city is far from alone. That’s why big cities are once again clamouring for a better and more direct relationship with the federal government.
In 2002, when the Star launched a campaign for this — we called for big cities to be granted more power, funding and respect — it was called a new deal for cities. It made sense then; it makes even more sense now. Earlier this week, the big city mayors caucus of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities met with Prime Minister Trudeau to ask for creation of a federal-municipal forum that would “modernize” their relationship. They want to make sure cities are at the negotiating table when the federal funding and policy decisions that affect them most are made.
“This does not require a constitutional amendment,” said Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson, chair of the mayors caucus. “This is just common sense and it requires political will.” He’s right on both counts. It’s common sense that the level of government that has to face the people daily has the ability to meet their needs. And it’s particularly important that the Trudeau government find the political will to tackle this now.
Toronto and other big cities are at serious risk of being caught in the middle of the political battle brewing between Conservative premiers and Trudeau’s Liberals over carbon pricing and other hot-button election-year issues. We need only remember what happened last summer, when Toronto urgently needed help managing a major influx of refugees and asylum seekers, to see that.
The Ford PCs inflamed the situation and then walked away, declaring they wouldn’t work with the federal government to address it.
Abdicating responsibility was never an option for Toronto, with people arriving on buses looking for beds in packed homeless shelters. So Ottawa rightly bypassed the province and handed its money, albeit not enough, directly to the city.
Until cities are involved in setting the agenda, they’re vulnerable to the agenda of others — and that’s bad news for Toronto. Ford takes pleasure in deriding his hometown as “the bubble” full of elites. In his parlance, “real people” live somewhere else.
Well, the elites in this bubble — which include the lowestpaid workers in the service industry to the top-paid executives in the financial sector — contribute to the entire country’s welfare and it’s time they were properly recognized for it.
We’re a long way from 1867. Today, Toronto and other major cities are the engines of our economy, not to mention home to most Canadians, and they deserve to live in cities that work and where they can prosper.
Thankfully, other cities don’t get the same love-to-hate treatment that Toronto does. Quebec’s provincial government does not go out of its way to malign Montreal, nor does British Columbia with Vancouver. But politics change and cities are rightly feeling vulnerable, leading to the big city mayors’ visit to Ottawa.
The lesson the Ford government has brought to Ontario is this: cities need a more direct line to the federal government to ensure they can address urgent social issues and infrastructure needs, and build the prosperous communities we want for the future.