Lawrence Loh is back east again after a stint as a Medical Health Officer at Fraser Health Authority, now at Public Health Ontario. And already he’s catching up on Toronto politics.
I thought of you when I read this interesting article on Toronto amalgamation, and the comments you made about “suburban alienation” and why folks are mad that their services are deteriorating. Sewell’s comments in particular align with what you shared with me.
From the Toronto Star: “We ask former mayor John Sewell and former councillors what they thought of amalgamation at the time and how it has evolved.”
Spoiler alert: They think it was a Big Mistake.
.
John Sewell, mayor and councillor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, helped lead the bitter fight against amalgamation:
When asked about suburban residents who also share a love of bike lanes, public transit and other urban staples, he says: “Do I feel sorry for those people living in that failed urban form? Yes, I do. Do I think that we should be doing a lot to redevelop them? Yes, I do. Who is going to do that? Those suburban politicians? No, they never would.”
.
Brian Ashton, a former Scarborough, Metro and post-merger Toronto councillor:
… supported amalgamation, thinking it would bring economic efficiencies and “bulk up” the city to get international opportunities. He says he was wrong.
“If amalgamation was right, it was done in the wrong way, at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, and we’ve been paying for it for years. One reason is we haven’t had a mayor yet that wasn’t imprinted with past municipal forms of government.”
.
Howard Moscoe, a former North York, Metro and post-merger Toronto councillor”
“I supported amalgamation because I thought Toronto needed to work as a whole. I kind of regret it now. I knew how well Metro worked.
“The local city was much more personal, much more hands-on. Now there’s nobody in Toronto that feels that Toronto is quote, their government, unquote …”
Is anybody in Victoria taking note? Didn’t the Capital Region residents just vote yes in a question around amalgamation for Victoria during the latest municipal elections?
I suppose it also depends on how big an area you are dealing with.
How big is Victoria versus Oak Bay, Langford, Saanich and Esquimalt?
Remember that the City of Vancouver, is itself an amalgamation of the former municipalities of South Vancouver and Point Grey (and maybe others?). There are also current calls for the UEL to join Vancouver.
There’s probably a bit of a “sweet spot” that not too small, not too big.
i.e. City and District of North Vancouver; City and Township of Langley.
I don’t think merging Langley or North Vancouver is a good idea. Municipalities with small land area have no choice but to develop smart land use plans because they have to maximize their tax base and can’t afford to waste what little land they have. Look at the density happening in the smaller cities, White Rock, Langley City, Port Moody, NVC, New West and to some degree POCO. Compare with Langley Township, Maple Ridge, Abbotsford, places where in my opinion, their large land areas lead to the perception of having endless room for growth hence no urgency for intensification. Well at least what you see on the ground.
The Toronto Star’s Thomas Walkom stated in an October 4, 2003 article that the Harris Conservatives forced amalgamations were used to create larger municipal government entities that the province could download additional costs onto in order to balance the provincial budget. This was not without issues in Toronto’s case. The first post-amalgamation mayor, Mel Lastman, successfully argued that Toronto deserved additional social services funding as social problems tended to concentrate in the city’s core, away from the suburban regional municipalities. Essentially Toronto was supporting more than its fair share of social services and the other regional municipalities were getting a ‘free’ ride. The Harris goverment handled this by forcing the suburban municipalities to contribute to Toronto’s social services budget, much to their chagrin.
Others have argued that the amalgamations, particularly Toronto’s, were designed to hamstring the NDP’s, progressive, urban base by forcing those politicians into a larger council dominated by more, conservative suburban politicians. John Sewell touches on this in the Toronto Star article.
Even the conservative CD Howe Institute came out against the amalgamations in a paper named Local Government Amalgamations: Discredited Nineteenth Century Ideals Alive in the Twenty-First” found at http://www.cdhowe.org/local-government-amalgamations-discredited-nineteenth-century-ideals-alive-in-the-twenty-first/9731.
Any idea why there was no attempt to break apart the new mega city like what happened in Montreal after their forced amalgamation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_municipal_referendums,_2004
I believe there was some talk about de-amalgamation when the Liberals were elected in Ontario but nothing came of it. Possibly, because if Toronto was undone, all the others (and there were many forced amalgamations in Ontario) would want to do it.
I have friends in Toronto who hate not being able to have the things in their city that they would like to see because most suburbanites don’t understand their need.
I personally would not want my vote diluted by someone in what is currently a suburb. Our lives are very different and we don’t have the same needs. Often when discussing things with people who live in Surrey or Delta, the things that I see as good and beneficial and are advantages of living here, they see as bad and think we’re crazy for wanting them and putting up with them.
So, I’m against it for here.
Totally agree.
Coincidentally, Alan Redway, former mayor of East York, one the municipalities that disappeared in Toronto’s forced amalgamation, is arguing for a return to the former Metro Toronto governance model. The Metro level is responsible for regional functions while local governments are responsible for local functions. More at http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2015/01/15/the-case-for-ending-the-toronto-megacity.html.