Megacity Ever After
A decade after the civic battles that resulted in amalgamation, Toronto is still feeling the growing pains
Once upon a time, Toronto was merely a glimmer of the world-class megalopolis that stands today. Only 10 short years ago, it was a cozy town of just over half a million residents that relied on such novelty attractions as a tall but useless tower and a retractable sports dome to draw visitors to its clean and crime-free locale.
So where did all the people come from? Is Lake Ontario so contaminated as to produce a feverishly mutated population explosion? Is Broken Social Scene more expansively inbred than previously imagined? Do census takers now count squirrels and pigeons?
No, silly. Back then, Toronto was but a few stops on the transit route rather than the entirety of the TTC system map (and then some). The “City of Toronto†we now know comprised a vast urban countryside dotted with five more little kingdoms. The kingdom of Toronto proper actually had a castle, which most of its citizens huddled beneath in the gradual slope of the former Iroquois Shoreline. The three outermost kingdoms — Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough — spread across great, underused expanses of asphalt-encased land. Nestled in the middle were two sibling kingdoms, called York and East York respectively, which, if you live in them now, are almost indistinguishable as such.
They existed for many years, engaging in healthy regional competition, pitting cultural excellence against convenient parking, and local eccentricities against the promise of dependable conformity. They formed a network of suburbs and cities sharing a few essential services like a transit system and a police department but electing their own rulers, however cartoonish they may have been.
But then a dark cloud called the Harris Conservatives descended over the countryside, and threatened to flood the entire place with a great downpour of “common sense.†This flood would render the six cities unrecognizable from one another, creating one massive, gloriously “world-class†super-kingdom of cost-saving efficiency. And a single mayor-king would rule over the whole thing so that Premier Harris could boast that his province would now have a city of 2.5 million. This kingdom would be known as Amalgamation: The Megacity.
The plan, according to Harris and his principal architect Al Leach, was to abolish the governing bodies within the six kingdoms, along with the Metro council responsible for a number of their shared responsibilities, and replace them all with a small, centralized body of all-*powerful officials who would take care of everything that went on in every corner of the megacity.
Almost as quickly as Harris’ plan was announced, and even during the rumours of its inception, the war sirens sounded — quietly at first, and by no more than a concerned few. Folks like former Toronto mayor John Sewell and eventual provincial education minister Kathleen Wynne headed up the Citizens for Local Democracy (C4LD), meeting in downtown churches to express steadfast opposition to having their city hastily grafted together like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.
Facing the powerful majority rule of Harris’ provincial Conservatives, and without the support of the major media, C4LD and their supporters were at a great disadvantage. Despite Leach’s claims that Toronto would be given a “clean slate†to create a better city government and that going from seven councils to one would produce abundant savings (at no cost to taxpayers), the public became increasingly disenchanted. No one liked the idea of having the nature of their city dictated to them.
Local councillors and mayors of the six threatened kingdoms scrambled to maintain their powers and their connection to the community they served. None of them wanted to go from mayor to megacity commuter! At the same time, people from the inner city and the suburbs alike balked at the prospect of deciding what’s what in each other’s neighbourhoods. When it came down to popular opinion, the citizens themselves took the opportunity to denounce the proposition, voting overwhelmingly in all cities against amalgamation in a referendum.
Alas, their struggle would be in vain. For nothing, not even democracy, is a match for such a destructive force of nature as a Conservative majority. Toronto’s only remaining battle would be to choose the leader of this new super-kingdom. But the dark cloud had one last trick up its sleeve; by promising no tax increases at the local level it was able to secure the endorsement of one of the former mayors, the tragically outspoken discount-dealing Mel Lastman. He would trumpet the greatness of megacity-ness in exchange for support from the Conservative juggernaut, and he would win.
But his victory would be bittersweet. Just as the city geared up to become mega, Premier Harris activated phase two of his amalgamation plan and dumped an insurmountable number of social programs and financial responsibilities on the new kingdom. Even before being sworn in as mega-mayor, Lastman panicked under the new financial burden, proclaiming the promised tax freeze to be replaced by a huge tax increase, just to keep the city from going bankrupt.
Thus, on Jan. 1, 1998, the six kingdoms were renamed the City of Toronto. And for a collection of disparate councillors coming together to run a brand new city five times larger than anything they’d experienced, making the megacity work would prove to be the biggest battle of them all. With the additional social service responsibilities, not to mention sorting out some 160,000 often overlapping bylaws, relocating to a single city hall, settling all the layoffs resulting from amalgamation’s downsizing, and standardizing existing services, the city seemed doomed before it even began. Money was borrowed from the province, essential restructuring and maintenance were put on hold, projects were cancelled and investments were rendered impossible as the city tried to simply keep functioning.
De-amalgamation?
It’s no secret that Toronto’s amalgamation met with some fairly abject hostility and, in the decade since it was implemented, an avalanche of Toronto’s problems have been blamed on amalgamation. So perhaps it’s surprising that at no time during the past decade has the thought of de-amalgamation crossed anyone’s mind — or at least their public lips.
Ten years in, it would seem nearly impossible to untangle the financial mess of who would be responsible for what and which fraction of what new tax would go where without enduring an even more endless debate at City Hall. As tenuous as Toronto’s programs may be, the fact that they are all bound up together is essential to the city’s framework. Which is why it’s no surprise that the Toronto Star’s recent amalgamation retrospective yielded little more than dismissals from the former cities’ former mayors at the mere mention of de-amalgamation.
But it is possible. Only four years after Montreal’s 2002 merger, 15 of its municipalities jumped ship in a legal de-merger that saw their respective powers restored and left that megacity with just over half of its boroughs. According to Andrew Sancton, director of Western University’s local government program, the Montreal merger was already far more complicated than Toronto’s amalgamation, involving four times as many municipalities and even the creation of boroughs that never existed before. But Quebec Premier Jean Charest acknowledged the public opinion and made de-mergers possible by way of a referendum.
While this scenario is unlikely in Toronto, a different kind of de-amalgamation may be brewing. Over the holiday break, the Toronto District School Board, which was created right along with the megacity out of the six former boards, began to ponder the possibility of its own split in order to — get this — improve efficiency and cut back on bureaucracy. Ironically, the very person who may be able to help this happen, provincial education minister Kathleen Wynne, launched her career in politics by fighting vehemently against amalgamation as a leader of Citizens for Local Democracy. And yet she seems reluctant to encourage dismantling the school board, displaying the same centralizing mindset that created this mess in the first place.
Still Mike's Megacity
BY Edward Keenan
The phrase is so often applied to Pierre Trudeau to describe his effect on Canada — official bilingualism, patriating the constitution, empowering the Supreme Court and creating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But applied to Mike Harris, it was also the theme of an EYE WEEKLY editorial a few months ago.
And, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the amalgamation of Toronto, it is an apt sentiment, for nothing has defined our city, for bad and for worse, like the ongoing damage inflicted by Premier Mike Harris and his so-called “Common Sense Revolution.†Harris and his ministers always took an obscene amount of pride in sticking it to the poor, but they also had a great fondness for aggressively screwing cities. To Toronto, he gave the gift that just keeps on taking.
Amalgamation is the most obvious of his legacies — the forced creation of Canada’s fifth-largest government, an unwieldy body that has proven ill-suited to responding to local constituent’s concerns. And this, too, at great monetary cost: the hundreds of millions of dollars that were expected to be saved have turned into hundreds of millions of dollars of extra costs — the municipal government employs over 4,000 more people today than its predecessors did a decade ago.
And in many ways, amalgamation was simply a smokescreen, or an enabling principle, behind which to change funding formulas. Costs for social services were downloaded to cities, creating an ongoing fiscal disaster at the municipal level that still exists today, and which Premier Dalton McGuinty has only now started to reverse.
Of course, Mike Harris also forcibly merged the school boards, and made them an area of provincial jurisdiction. In seizing them for the province, he implemented a funding formula that disregarded the need for building maintenance and support staff, and that left little or no room for special needs programs. Today, Kathleen Wynne, who had been one of his most vocal critics, is education minister, and she has yet to even really begin to undo the damage.
Speaking of funding formulas, Mike Harris’ government changed the TTC’s long-standing funding arrangement that had seen it thrive and expand, so that for most of the past decade the transit system received no funding at all from the provincial or federal governments. In the meantime, even as ridership has risen, subway expansion projects were cancelled, regular maintenance fell by the wayside and the system started crumbling.
We may also thank Harris for the embarrassment of Mel Lastman’s term as mayor.
So look around at the city: when your local councillor takes weeks to return a call, that’s Mike Harris’ legacy. When politicians battle at City Hall about introducing new taxes to fix the forever-enduring cash shortfall, that’s his legacy. When teachers buy textbooks with their own money, or when kids get beat up in hallways that have no monitors, that’s his legacy. When one wonders why the TTC has failed to maintain its streetcar tracks and service deteriorates while fares rise, that’s his legacy. He haunts us still. Even after a decade, it appears the exorcism will take a long time. Today, even more so than when he was premier, this is Mike Harris’ Toronto. The rest of us only live in it.
Megacity players
BY Edward Keenan
Mike Harris
Then: Progressive Conservative premier of Ontario who led the “Common Sense Revolution,†including the forced amalgamation of cities and school boards, huge spending cuts, downloading of costs onto municipalities and giant tax cuts.
Now: With his party polling low and plagued by the Ipperwash and Walkerton scandals, and his personal life apparently troubled, Mike Harris resigned as premier in 2002. He has since been a fellow at the Fraser Institute think tank and a director of Magna International.
Al Leach
Then: Minister of municipal affairs and housing who presided over amalgamation.
Now: He retired from politics in 1999 and served on the Toronto Police Services Board and the GO Transit board. Since 2005, he has apparently been retired from public life.
Steve Gilchrist
Then: As parliamentary assistant to the minister of municipal affairs and housing, he was the “attack dog†mouthpiece of amalgamation.
Now: After serving as municipal affairs minister in the Harris government’s second term, he stepped aside amidst a controversy (an investigation cleared him). He lost his seat in the 2003 provincial election and has served as vice-president of the Canadian Hydrogen Energy Company. He is the nominee to run for the federal Conservative party in Ajax-Pickering in the likely election later this year.
John Sewell
Then: The former mayor and municipal affairs columnist led the anti-amalgamation forces as leader of Citizens for Local Democracy.
Now: He ran unsuccessfully for provincial office in 1999, and wrote a column for EYE WEEKLY until 2005. In the 2006 municipal election, he ran unsuccessfully for council. He currently writes a monthly column for Post City Magazines and continues his activism.
Kathleen Wynne
Then: Co-chair of Citizens for Local Democracy opposing the amalgamation of cities and school boards.
Now: Wynne was elected as a school board trustee in 2000 and then as a member of provincial parliament in 2003. Since 2006, she has served as Ontario minister of education. She defeated John Tory, leader of the PC party, in her 2007
re-election bid.
Barbara Hall
Then: The mayor of pre*amalgamation Toronto and steadfast opponent of amalgamation.
Now: After losing mayoral races to Mel Lastman in 1997 and David Miller in 2003, Hall has remained active in politics. She is currently the chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
Mel Lastman
Then: The long-serving (and only) mayor of North York who opposed amalgamation and then, after the Conservatives began backing him for mayor, became in favour of it.
Now: After a contentious term as mayor, during which he called in the army to plow snow, suffered through a high-profile paternity suit (concerning adult children of a long-time mistress), shook hands with Hell’s Angels, and joked that he was afraid Africans would boil him in a pot and eat him, Lastman has returned to his first love: making annoying TV commercials for the Bad Boy furniture chain.
Future of the megacity
BY Chris Bilton
Just a few short months after amalgamation in Jan. 1998, EYE WEEKLY columnist William Burrill suggested that it would be in Toronto’s best interest to take its 2.5 million inhabitants and simply separate from the province of Ontario — and from the country of Canada, too. Rather than continue being subjected to crippling social-service downloads, “taxation without representation†and anti-democratic policies, Toronto could start its own kingdom and be free of the Harris government forever.
Sure, it was a half-baked idea, but the rationale behind it wasn’t entirely crazy. “Just think of it,†Burrill wrote, “a sovereign Toronto, with no GST, no provincial sales tax, no yearly tax returns to Ottawa, no Harris cutbacks and no federal clawbacks. We will only pay (all too gladly) our Toronto taxes and keep the rest of our hard-earned cash. The kingdom of Toronto will be such a stinking rich city state that we might even be able to afford a real NHL hockey team.â€
Money was No. 1 on the list of problems with amalgamation back then. Not surprisingly, it’s still the only thing keeping Toronto from functioning as the world-class city it’s supposed to be. Despite its massive taxpaying population and its international corporate hubbery, this city is like a child actor whose parents are mismanaging the contracts so horribly that chemical dependence and career-ending catastrophe loom closer than college. Instead of investing in a future, it often seems like council spends an inordinate amount of time averting disaster.
While amalgamation itself didn’t necessarily create the ongoing financial woes that Toronto has had to deal with for the past few years, it certainly didn’t make them any easier. According to professor Andrew Sancton, the director of the University of Western Ontario’s local government program, “ad hoc bailing-out mechanisms and the postponement of maintenance†were where amalgamation cost the city the most. And, of course, there was the ill-fated promise of a municipal tax freeze. “Without the tax freeze,†says Sancton, “no doubt that we wouldn’t have gone through that nonsense. Costs were going up and everyone was trying to hide the fact.â€
Presently, the fact that essential services like the TTC still rely primarily on user fees or that Toronto receives only a pittance of the taxes collected from its residents means that things aren’t going to get any better. And yet with its amalgamated population totalling nearly 20 per cent of Ontario, there’s no reason why Toronto shouldn’t be able to throw its size back in the face of the government that created it.
Although amalgamation created equality among the former municipalities that actually benefited places like York and Scarborough, Sancton says the overriding legacy is that the new council is essentially too big to do things that municipalities do. And yet it should be big enough to do what a kingdom does.
In a pro-amalgamation editorial in the final weeks of the former cities, the Toronto Star argued: “This is a city with so little clout in Ottawa and Queen’s Park that its citizens should embrace any effort that raises its profile and the power of its civic leader. One mayor speaking for a unified city will command the respect and credibility that’s due to this great metropolis.†But, somewhere between this chest-thumping hopefulness and Burrill’s satirical “Kingdom of Toronto,†the potential for Strength and Action evaporated.
Consequently, Sancton thinks part of the solution is through more power. He feels the mayor’s role needs to be stronger, and not just by adapting a browbeating, no-BS style of leadership, but through institutional strength. While council’s executive committee hasn’t quite shown its usefulness, as this summer’s tax debacle proved, Sancton says that failing to improve this apparatus will pose even more problems for council. Bt he is hopeful, indicating that they are taking steps towards a “strong†mayor’s office like in American cities.
After all, if New York City can make its five boroughs and eight million residents into a functioning metropolis, Toronto should have no problem. Then again, New York does have a whole century of amalgamation on us. We might just have to be patient.
