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Bulletin No. 17, June 2001
LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN – NO. 17, June 2001

The purpose of this bulletin is to focus debate on the need to increase
local self government in Canada and to help local communities achieve more
autonomy. The local self government web site is http://www.localselfgovt.org

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In this issue:
1. Local eyes turn West
2. Turn-around time for the big city?
3. Joe Clark speaks about cities
4. Subscribe to the bulletin
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1. Local eyes turn West

The election of Gordon Campbell as Premier in British Columbia several weeks ago is leading to speculation about the changes to municipal law that can be expected from Campbell’s government. (Campbell won 77 out of 79 seats.) Various suggestions were made during the campaign regarding enhanced municipal powers, and there’s much hope that the following ideas, which are known to be under active consideration, will soon be announced:

a) Municipalities will be given significantly enhanced powers to do virtually all the things that a province can do:
b) Only when the provincial government has expressly announced that it is occupying a certain legislative area, will a municipality be constrained from action;
c) The province may not shift any responsibility onto municipalities unless that shift is accompanied by revenues sufficient to cover the cost of these responsibilities.

These changes would be welcome examples of an enhanced local government sector anywhere in the country. They would go far beyond the relatively modest changes in legislation that have occurred in both Alberta and Newfoundland.

Campbell has already announced the introduction of one local government practise: he has said that one Cabinet meeting per month will be held in public. Across Canada, local governments are required by legislation to make decisions in public. This means that a significant portion of political debate occurs in public, and that all staff reports are immediately accessible by anyone who wants them. Most local officials believe that carrying on democratic government in this full light of public scrutiny is the only sensible way of doing things. Imagine if provincial governments, which are prone to making their decisions in the secrecy of Cabinet, discover these open windows. Campbell’s move to open Cabinet deliberations augers well for the ability of at least one provincial government to learn from the locals.

2. Turn-around time for the big city?

This last half of the first full year of the millennium may prove to be a real turn-around period for cities. It would follow the dark night of the big city soul with amalgamations of the largest urban centres in Ontario, and the legislated amalgamation of most urban areas in Quebec, to be completed next January. (A decision on the court challenge by Montreal municipalities to Bill 170, one of the fusion bills, has yet to come down.)

The agenda for the next six months is quite extraordinary. In September, Halifax will be hosting a conference of big city mayors that will obviously raise issues for many large urban areas. In October, under the leadership of its new president councillor Jack Layton of Toronto, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is meeting in Toronto on the future of municipal government.

Then, following municipal elections in both Winnipeg and Montreal, the C5 - the mayors of Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal working with Jane Jacobs - will meet in January. At their meeting in May the five mayors agreed to undertake research on the benefits of reinvesting in cities and a preferred alignment of appropriate funding sources and expenditure responsibilities, and to explore how citizens groups might participate in this power-seeking process.

This focus on big cities is resulting in renewed interest at the national level. Senior politicians are being approached with the offer of education around city issues in the hope that commitment will follow.

3. Joe Clark speaks about cities

Joe Clark, leader of the Progressive Conservatives and the acknowledged leader of opposition voices in Parliament, spoke at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Banff in late May. His remarks were unusual: it is rare for a federal leader to give such prominence to municipal concerns. The following are excerpts from his speech:

`In the modern world, it is not enough to stand still, because others will overtake you. That applies to municipalities, as well as countries. You can't simply
measure yourselves against other Canadian communities. You are competing for skilled workers, and growth industries, with communities in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, in Europe, and increasingly, in Asia and Latin America.

`In a world where people move often and freely, and where knowledge is a precious commodity, quality of life becomes a critical factor in attracting the people who will run the industries that will, in turn, sustain your communities. People now care about where they live, not just where they work. And people, particularly knowledge workers, have choices.

`Our country needs to accept a new concept about the role of municipalities in Canada's economic life. Municipalities are about more than sewer and water, although delivering those services remain core obligations of every municipality. As you know, they are now also about public transit, housing and homelessness, social policy and economic development.

`The legislation in most provinces that creates municipalities did not envision the 21st century. It didn't foresee the degree to which major cities have become powerhouses, and centres of influence. It didn't foresee the degree to which rural communities could be orphaned by one wave of technology, nor potentially revived by the new mobility of modern information technology…

`It is no longer your proximity to natural resources, or your positioning on a deep-water port, or even the tax incentives that you use to attract new businesses, that will determine the success of a city's economic plan. It will be whether or not skilled knowledge workers want to live there. When you go out to attract a new business to your community, you are no longer talking just to the company president and financial officer who are assessing the tax rate, municipal infrastructure, and access to transportation. You are also talking to the head of human resources, who is going to be assessing whether she can recruit and keep workers. She will be deciding whether your community is liveable.

`Canada has, in fact, some very competitive quality of life advantages. ..Clean air, abundant water, accessible outdoor recreation, and four distinct seasons - that's a good base to build on. Globally, a clean environment is a diminishing asset that can only increase in value for Canada, if we protect it.

`We also have attractive national assets - universal medical care, good educational institutions, a national pension plan. These are assets that many other countries are only now learning how to build. They can be improved, but they also need to be protected… No municipality will be able to overcome the deterioration of these assets, but your economic prosperity plan is going to increasingly depend upon them, when you recruit international knowledge companies, who in turn, must recruit international knowledge workers….

`As entities originally created to deliver services, you are now faced with challenges beyond the original scope of municipalities. In some cases, provinces should revisit your enabling legislation. At the federal level, we need to be sure we are thinking of municipalities in terms that recognize the full scope of your current obligations.

`We also need to look at how municipalities are funded. That is an issue not just for housing, but also for transit, infrastructure, parks and recreation, crime and all of the other aspects of managing a city. The Big Cities Policy in the Netherlands is a bilateral funding agreement between the Dutch government and four biggest cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. Earmarked funds are channelled from the central government to the cities for infrastructure, housing, transit, quality of life, economic development, and job creation. Cities present plans to the national government, and municipal councils are tasked with spending the earmarked dollars efficiently and effectively.

`The United States has been investing heavily in infrastructure renewal with a $217 billion Transportation Act for the 21st Century. One study showed that under that policy, a city the size of Toronto would have qualified for about $127 million annually. The US government is also looking at housing with building programs and cheap mortgages. Of course, in the US, cities also have the flexibility to levy sales taxes, hotel taxes, and municipal income taxes. In Germany, as well, municipalities are entitled to a fixed share of senior government revenues, as well as direct revenue from local taxes, charges and fees; and indirect revenue from a 15% share of national income tax.

`My point is not that these arrangements would better serve Canada, but
that other countries are recognizing the ballooning scope of municipal services and finding ways to fund it appropriately.

`First and foremost, we must recognize that municipalities are currently the engines of the Canada's economic growth, and the site of many of our most serious social problems. That will continue to be the case in the future...Success in the knowledge-based economy will depend on our ability to attract the best and the brightest - and the most responsible. We need citizens who feel an obligation to make their communities work. Cities that will appeal to mobile workers are cities that will have invested in their infrastructure, their downtowns and waterfronts, their older neighbourhoods, and their core services.

`It is essential that we recognize that there is a third level of government. It is not enough for senior levels of government to download problems without downloading solutions…Municipalities have become the front line troops in our economic strategy. You need operating supply lines and effective air support to be successful on the ground…’

The full text can be found at http://www.pc.parl.gc.ca and follow the links to `Leader’, `speeches’ and 2001.05.28.

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