CROMBIE’S CRUSADE
Mayor out to prove that Mississauga’s days as a bedroom community are over,
Bonnie Crombie, mayor of Mississauga-turned-freedom fighter, has become her city’s liberator. She is its saviour, a municipal emancipator leading the struggle to deliver Ontario’s third-largest city from the shackles of Peel Region.
“It’s time,” Crombie declares to anyone who will listen. “It’s time for Mississauga to become independent. It’s time for Mississauga to join the modern age. We’re coming into our own. We’re only asking for what many smaller cities in the province — Windsor, Sudbury, Guelph, London, even Dryden — already have: the power to control our own destiny.”
Created in 1974 when thenpremier Bill Davis ruled the province, Peel Region was designed to bring order and efficiency to what was a formless suburban-rural landscape that added up to less than the sum of its parts.
Now Peel’s biggest city, Mississauga, is an economic powerhouse with a population of 721,000 and 1,400 multinationals operating within its borders.
Crombie is adamant: Her city has had enough of carrying Brampton and Caledon on its fiscal shoulders, fed up with having to defer to smaller jurisdictions that the mayor says don’t pay their way. Peel Region costs her city $85 million annually. But when it comes to making the big decisions, Mississauga’s strengths, its size and economic heft have been carefully excised from the process. Though it pays 60 to 65 per cent of the freight, it gets just half the votes on regional council.
“Brampton and Caledon have their own agenda,” Crombie continues. “Regional staff has its own agenda. There’s duplication and lack of efficiency.”
Clearly, the suburbs aren’t what they used to be. Indeed, the inspiration for Crombie’s crusade is Mississauga’s desire for cityhood, its growing urban aspirations. Its days as a bedroom community are over. No more car dependency. No more multiplication by subdivision. No more sprawl.
“Some communities will resist,” Crombie admits. “But most Mississaugans are embracing this. It’s a real shift. It’s the new Mississauga. We don’t build single-family homes any more; we build condo and townhomes. I want Mississauga to become a smart, sustainable, livable, walkable city. I want a vibrant downtown where people choose to go. I want transit. “We’re building our LRT.” She talks about the former industrial sites on the shores of Lake Ontario now being prepared for redevelopment. As Crombie points out, they will be locations where Mississauga enters the 21st century fully fledged. These new communities will be a dense mix of residential, retail and commercial uses. In other words, they will break with the traditional Mississauga planning model in which each activity had its own zone. That translated into one place to live, another to work, play, shop and so on. It made life without a car impossible. This regime of separation was a vain attempt to clean up the perceived messiness of the city that planners and politicians of the 1950s and ’60s mistook for chaos and confusion and therefore wanted to eliminate.
But, as it turned out, many actually prefer the diversity of the city. Crombie happily imagines walking to the café and shops down the road. She also hopes to address the growing problem of affordable housing, which she claims is thwarted by a regional government that remains indifferent to the issue.
Meanwhile, Mississauga has become a city of condo towers, each more outlandish than the next.
A proposed development called M City is a good example. To be built on land owned by Rogers, it comprises a number of garish residential skyscrapers that would look right at home on Dubai.
But, Crombie insists, “We’re making room for middleincome housing. We want housing that families can afford in communities where people can walk to work.”
Unfortunately, Canada’s profoundly flawed constitution puts provinces in complete control of cities. As a result, Mississauga’s fate is in the hands of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Crombie has presented her case to Ford, who has made no secret of his willingness to intervene directly into city affairs. He has already wreaked havoc in Toronto where he cut council in half and is now “uploading” its subway. Last year, he also cancelled board chair elections in several regions including Peel.
Like his predecessor, Mike Harris, Ford is convinced that he can make Ontario’s cities and regions run more efficiently. Like Harris, who gave us amalgamation, Ford’s chances of success are limited. And as Crombie will tell you: Cities are in the best position to know their own needs.
Vive la revolution.