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Toronto blackout 2003 (Photo courtesy of Paul Sampson)
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INDEPTH: MUNICIPALITIES » CITY STATES
Toronto: who governs, who pays?
CBC News Online | July 16, 2004
A series on CBC Radio's The House
Reporter: David Michael Lamb
Producers: Alan Guettel, Margaret Daly
 LISTEN: David Michael Lamb full documentary (Runs 32:25)
Bicycle courier Marcel Smazal makes his daily rounds through downtown Toronto. Marcel has seen a lot of changes in his 16 years on the street. Most of the change has not been for the good. Neglect of the infrastructure is showing everywhere.
The streets are a mess of potholes and other obstacles. Although Marcel sees road repair crews everywhere, they never seem to catch up to the ever-growing list of patch-up jobs to be done. "Well, no wonder," the man in charge of the work crew tells CBC News, "the city simply doesn't have the money."
Planners and politicians both admit that the people who live in Canada's cities give Ottawa billions of dollars more in taxes than the taxpayers get back in services. In short, cities subsidize the country.
Now, because they must deal with issues literally on their doorstep, local leaders of Canada's cities are shaping the nation's social policy as much as more senior levels of government – but the local officials are often treated like panhandlers when it comes to getting the money to fix things.
Toronto's director of transportation infrastructure points out that the city maintains enough roadways that, if stretched out, would reach Vancouver. But it's only now that Toronto's been promised a share of the federal or provincial gasoline taxes. And the promised infrastructure funds from Ottawa won't even clear the backlog of required repairs that have passed their due date, let alone pay for new roadways or improvements.
As Marcel makes his courier rounds, he also sees more homeless people than ever before. "Ten years ago, maybe there was the occasional person … now it's every second corner … it's sad."
These are people who've slipped through a social safety net that Ottawa and the provinces are supposed to provide – but because it's the city streets that house them, the city government ends up taking care of the homeless.
Most homeless people are products of shortcomings with the disability, mental health or addiction programs, and cracks in the criminal justice and aboriginal reserve systems. All these are the responsibility of higher levels of government. But who pays for the needle programs, shelters and police time needed to take care of them? Toronto's municipal taxpayers.
Marcel, the courier, also remarks on how much harder it is to breathe the air than it used to be. Pollution, the environment – these are also federal and provincial responsibilities but it's the urban dwellers who suffer the consequences of poor pollution prevention or slack environmental enforcement. To Torontonians, pollution is not a social cause or a futuristic guardianship issue... smog days and asthma warnings are a seasonal reality.
"Immigrants are grateful that Ottawa welcomes them to Canada's cities," says a mother from Pakistan with three University degrees and no job. But who pays the bill while immigrants wait for a Social Insurance number? Local welfare offices.
A July, 2004 study by the United Nations revealed that only New York City has more immigrants as a proportion of its population. Forty per cent of Toronto's population was not born in Canada. While it makes for an exciting, varied ethnic environment it strains the city's transit system, social services and even the traffic court to deal with so many people who are barely functional in English or French.
Immigration is a federal responsibility, and Ottawa spreads money around the country to provide services; Toronto is home to more than half of the immigrants who come to Canada. It does not get that proportion of federal money spent on immigrant programs.
Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone argues that cities are under-represented in Parliament. P.E.I., for example, gets one MP for every 30-thousand citizens. Toronto gets roughly one MP for every 100-thousand people. And P.E.I. has the power to raise all kinds of taxes, while the City of Toronto can't even set parking rates on its own.
High above the city's canyon of bank and insurance towers, the Toronto Dominion bank's CEO and chief economist argues that, in addition to the social justice involved, it simply makes good economic sense to give all Canadian cites the power and the money to deliver the quality of life people expect.
People want to live in cities, they want to work in cities, so to keep the economy productive we should at least keep that from being an unpleasant experience if not actually improve the state of urban life.
Toronto Mayor David Miller says he won't settle for anything less from the provincial and federal governments.
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List of big city mayors, from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities:
Vancouver: Larry Campbell
Surrey: Doug W. McCallum
Calgary: David Bronconnier
Edmonton: Bill Smith
Regina: Pat Fiacco
Saskatoon: Don Atchison
Winnipeg: Sam Katz
Brampton: Susan Fennell
Hamilton: Larry Dilanni
Kitchener: Carl Zehr
London: Anne Marie DeCicco
Mississauga: Hazel McCallion
Ottawa: Bob Chiarelli
Windsor: Eddie Francis
Toronto: David Miller
Gatineau: Yves Ducharme
Montréal: Gérald Tremblay
Laval: Gilles Vaillancourt
Québec: Jean-Paul L'Allier
Longueil: Jacques Olivier
Halifax: Peter J. Kelly
St. John's: Andy Wells
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Watch Brian Stewart's documentary "Cities: The Last Colonies"
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