TheTigerMaster
Superstar
I'll tell you with the problem with this idea is In three words: Toronto, Toronto, Toronto. You ignore that Toronto is surrounded by 3 million suburbanites. It's damned fair to argue cities should have more power and no longer be "creatures of the province," get out from under the OMB etc. etc. etc. But when you treat Toronto as an exception you miss the whole problem. Treating cities as little isolated blocks where someone drew a line when Queen Victoria was on the throne is not how things get done in the 21st Century. You have to look at the urban region. It's not even debatable, in my opinion.
I'd also like to see the same powers extended to all of the large municipalities. Or at least the one is the GTHA
You also demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the governance situation. The city doesn't "give" the province any powers at all. The only power the city has is power that the province, in its grand munificence, has seen fit to give it. You're right that it's antiquated but let's be clear on what's going on.
Of course I understand this. I believe my semantics may have let you to believe otherwise (I had a feeling that would happen ). The whole point of that long ramble was about how the province strong-arms the municipalities too much. You know... "creature of the province" and what not. The city has no power over the province and obviously can't grant or take away power to/from the province. Only the province can do that. Maybe the federal government as well, but then we run into constitutional issues (ironically about the federal gov't encroaching on provincial jurisdiction).
As it stands, the City of Toronto Act already gives Toronto special treatment and its largely been squandered by the immaturity of its citizenry (See: Ford, Robert; election of; vehicle registration tax...) so the idea that Toronto (as opposed to the GTA or even the GTHA) is some special case is both wrong and even insulting, in my opinion..
I never said Toronto is some kind of special case. I'd like to see the same powers extended to the rest of the GTA and any other of the larger municipalities.
Munro is a very smart guy but also very Toronto-centric. To get back to this thread a little bit, Toronto, for all its booming, is not where most growth is taking place in this region. And speaking of straw men and red herrings, Metrolinx is a GTHA agency so Timmins has nothing to do with anything. (I could also be really contrarian and point out that if you want them to pay for transit in TO, maybe they should get a say!)
Metrolinx is an agency of the Province of Ontario. Of course everyone in Ontario gets a say. If a candidate for premier runs on the platform of Metrolinx taking over subways and then privatizing Metrolinx, and everyone in the GTA votes against that particular candidate while everyone in Ontario votes for that candidate... you get the point. I don't care where Metrolinx operates. As long as it's an agency of the Province of Ontario, everyone in Ontario (yes, even in Timmins) has a say over its operations.
To go back to my contrarian Timmins point, if the province is going to give some municipality billions of dollars and use Infrastructure Ontario to leverage the financing etc., it's hardly a ridiculous request that they own it. You could argue it either way but calling it "an incredible encroachment" when they're the ones funding it is almost (but not quite!) as nutty as the suggestion there are actual plans for Toronto to secede; where did THAT come from? The same people who want to de-amalgamate? And people wonder why nothing gets done in Toronto [shakeshead].
(I know it wasn't you who said that...)
Seceding is as nutty as de-amagamtion. It wasn't me who said that.
All that said, Metrolinx ALREADY owns Viva's bus lanes. And, for that matter, YRT contracts service out to Veolia. I don't think anyone knows. I don't think anyone cares. I don't think there is 1 of the 1 million+ people in York Region (including the 20+ members of regional council) who consider it "an incredible encroachment on municipal/regional jurisdiction."
Nobody cares up until the point where the province starts doing things that may be popular elsewhere in the province that nobody at the local level who's actually affected by the changes agrees with. They'll start caring when some MPs want to reduce GTA transit service levels because they happen to be a member of a party that gets its votes mainly from rural areas that want funding for their own programs. Part of the reason we have multi-level governance is to prevent this kind of thing from happening. If we're going to ignore this then we might as well begin uploading many more municipal responsibilities to the province.
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