Why Dorothy McCabe, mayor of Waterloo, stands alone
In January, as public hearings were being held in Kitchener about regional reform, six mayors of Waterloo Region’s cities and townships seized the moment.
They held a news conference to announce their wish to receive more responsibilities for local services, and they called for regional government to be downsized.
They said their proposal, which could move decision-making on matters like roads, transportation, and economic development to the individual municipalities, would reduce duplication of services and confusion for the public, while still respecting local identities and priorities.
But there are seven mayors in Waterloo Region, not six. There are three for the cities and four for the townships.
One person was missing. And the absence was significant.
Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe wasn’t at the news conference.
She had not been invited, because she didn’t agree with the message of the other mayors, she said.
McCabe has long held that the best long-term option is to turn this region into a single city. Not necessarily right now, but eventually.
In her presentation to the committee holding the hearings that day, McCabe said that the focus right now should be on building more homes as quickly as possible.
“Should the standing committee agree that amalgamating Waterloo Region is the goal, I would caution that doing so immediately could be a significant distraction” from municipalities meeting their housing goals, she told the committee.
It might seem counter-intuitive for McCabe to advocate for a change that could result in the loss of her own job.
But McCabe was thinking about bigger issues. And now, as the province’s Bill 162 looms ahead, her reasoning has come into sharp focus.
Bill 162, the “Get it Done Act,” will allow development of more housing and other development on parts of Waterloo Region’s sensitive, protected moraine area — the sand and gravel deposits, mostly in southwest Kitchener and in Wilmot and Wellesley townships, that allow rainwater to soak in and be filtered as it makes its way underground. From there, it is sent to wells and becomes drinking water for homes and workplaces.
We get 75 per cent of our drinking water this way, while most other large cities in southern Ontario get their drinking water from rivers or the Great Lakes.
The moraine is the only part of the region through which the water can easily pass. If it’s diminished by being built on, or if roads are built there, the water supply will shrink, and will also become contaminated by winter road salt and other chemicals, regional staff warned in a report to regional council in March.
And there was this dire warning as well: “If the Waterloo Moraine is developed the need for an approximately $2-billion pipeline from Lake Erie would be required to support growth,” the report warns.
“This pipe will take at least 20 years to build, which makes the protection of the Waterloo Moraine even more important to support building homes.”
We all share the water supply. We’re all connected that way. And so a decision to build in, say, Kitchener could therefore eventually affect the drinking water supply of someone living in a different municipality.
This is McCabe’s whole point. “How do we work through these issues?” she said in a recent interview. “How does that fit with municipalities saying, ‘We want to do this.’”
She says the Region of Waterloo has always been a mediator between individual cities and townships.
“That’s the purpose of the region being here.”
The City of Waterloo has decided not to try to build in sensitive areas. It has already pledged to add homes by intensifying housing density within its own existing boundaries.
The provincial government, of course, has other ideas. For Premier Doug Ford, the whole idea of regional reform — how local government could be rearranged to be more sensible than 59 elected municipal politicians, two levels of municipal government, and a lot of confusion regarding shared and separate responsibilities — is now hinging on whether changing the arrangement will get homes built faster, or not. Ford is happy to have these homes built on environmentally sensitive land.
Frankly, Ford has now run out of time to get the municipal reform job done until after the next provincial election.
The experiences of other municipalities that were forced to restructure show there is a lot of stress, confusion, job loss, resentment and extra expense at the outset.
Over time, it settles down. But Ford won’t want all the anxiety coinciding with his next election campaign. He needs to wait until right after the next election if he’s going to make a radical change here.
In the meantime, he has announced his intention to take planning authority away from the Region of Waterloo. A huge blow, as McCabe sees it.
She believes in one big city of Waterloo Region to make decisions in the best interests of all citizens, and protect against the pressures that smaller municipalities feel, now and in the future.
“It’s really about, in 20 to 30 years, what’s the best governance model?” she said.