Hogtown seeking more power

Toronto Charter would make major cities into equal partners with feds and provinces

By: Pino Di Mascio

  If a group of Toronto civic leaders and former mayors get their way, Canada's largest city will become as powerful as the provinces and feds in dealing with a broad range of social and economic matters, including taxation.
 

Since many Canadians outside Toronto think power is already overly concentrated in that one city, it may seem odd that Torontonians are striving for even more power

  Last month, the group unveiled its declaration for an urban charter, setting out a vision for a new relationship between the City of Toronto and senior levels of government. The charter would make Toronto a full partner with the Federal and Provincial governments on a wide variety of issues and hard services. The city would also gain taxation powers to match its new responsibilities.
  Given that many Canadians outside of Toronto think power is already overly concentrated in that city, it may seem odd that Torontonians are striving for even more power. The cynical may even suspect the country's economic elite of wanting to cut its ties with the rest of the country. This suspicion flows from the idea that, in the age of globalization, a revival of the old "city-state" is afoot. According to this theory, large urban areas - which have more in common with other world cities than with the countryside - will move to assert their independence so as to increase their international competitive advantage.
  It is true that the Toronto Charter has the potential to widen the gulf between Canada's largest city and the rest of the country. But it also underlines a growing movement in cities across the nation for local democratic reform, spurred by the trend of federal and provincial governments withdrawing from the provision of many public services.
 

Cities have been left to deal with growing homelessness, lack of affordable housing, environmental degradation, immigrant settlement and crumbling infrastructure, but they don't have the power or money to act decisively

  Federal and provincial politics is dominated by talk of the debt, tax cuts, federal-provincial relations and law and order. The only public good to receive attention is health care. Almost all other responsibilities - housing, transportation, welfare, etc. - have been downloaded and then downloaded again. As a result, municipalities have become the government of last resort, the level that must deal with the human consequences of abstract ideological politics. Cities are left to deal with growing homelessness, lack of affordable housing, environmental degradation, implementation of welfare reforms, immigrant settlement and a crumbling urban infrastructure.
  Despite the growing importance of cities in providing public services, our Constitution does not recognize their existence. In our complicated system of federal-provincial relations, municipalities are the creatures of the provinces. As recent experiments in amalgamations and downloading have so clearly demonstrated, municipalities only exist and exercise power to the extent permitted by the provinces.
  The City of Toronto has been the most profoundly affected of any city in Canada. It should come as no surprise that the first call for greater autonomy and more power would come from there. The City has been made to accept greater responsibilities without the power - particularly the tax-raising power - to fund its new activities. The implications of this situation are only starting to emerge. The property tax base was never intended to fund the various services it is now being asked to support.
  The Toronto Charter puts forward a new model for the provision of services and a new challenge in inter-governmental relations. The traditional response of blaming the other levels of government (witness the recent Harris-Chretien squabble over health care funding) has been dropped. Instead, the Toronto Charter accepts a diminished role for senior levels of government. It says 'fine, you have withdrawn from these spheres of public life and we are ready to step in. Now, simply allow us the means address the responsibilities you have given us.'
  So far, federal and provincial responses have been lukewarm. It is one thing to download funding responsibilities, it is quite another to share or transfer power.
  If the ideas in the charter were ever implemented, they could form a new model for governmental relations in this country. For this to happen, however, there needs to be a broader movement. That movement must include more than just civic leaders, and it must garner support beyond the downtown to include the entire urban region. The charter must also win the support of those who are traditionally skeptical of Toronto's intentions, including rural Ontarians and people in other Canadian cities.
  The Toronto Charter makes a commitment to, amongst other things, "accessible democratic governance" and "sharing of wealth with the rest of country". And it's those two ideals - particularly a sharing of wealth - which the Charter's proponents must talk about more loudly if they expect to win the support of people beyond the boundaries of greedy old Hogtown.

Pino Di Mascio is an urban planner with Toronto-based international planning and design firm Urban Strategies Inc. He can be reached at pdimascio@urbanstrategies.com.

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