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Bulletin No. 27, May 2002
LOCAL GOVERNMENT BULLETIN - No. 27, May 2002

The purpose of this bulletin is to focus debate on the need to increase the powers and authorities of local government in Canada and to ensure local communities achieve more autonomy. The Local Government website is http://www.localgovernment.ca . It contains a library of useful documents and an archive of past bulletins. As of April 2002, this site replaces www.localselfgovt.org .

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In this issue:
1. Sgro report misses the mark
2. FCM tackles the issue of local power
3. Court orders de-amalgamation in Ontario
4. Subscribe to the Bulletin
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1. Sgro report misses the mark

`Canada’s Urban Strategy, a Vision for the 21st Century’ was released at the beginning of May, but it has quickly fallen off the national news radar. Perhaps the problem is that it’s the wrong vision.

The Strategy had gained a certain cache by carrying the imprint `Prime Minister’s Caucus Task Force on Urban Issues.’ It was chaired by Judy Sgro who picked up her local government credentials as a councillor in North York and Toronto before being elected as a Liberal MP in York West. These were promising signs for what the task force might accomplish.

And on first blush its recommendations seemed attractive - federal money should be put into urban transit, infrastructure like water and sewage, and affordable housing. These are all areas which cities have complained for years are underfunded.

But the more one delved into the report, the more it was clear that the Task Force proposes to overlay urban areas with a welter of federally-devised programs. It’s a strategy that cities and local governments neither need nor want. They need and want more autonomy, more scope to make decisions for themselves, and the financial resources to pay for those decisions themselves, although these ideas are not reflected in any of the Task Force’s 37 pages.

If these proposals are implemented, local governments will become marionettes on the policy strings of the federal government as well as being `creatures’ of provincial governments. Nothing could be worse.

There’s little reason to expect the federal government would prove a good master at devising programs that meet local needs. It is much more interested in programs which serve its own federal interests, whatever they might be. That urban residents are very much under-represented in Parliament - in some cases federal rural ridings have as little as half the population of urban ridings, giving each rural individual double the political clout of their urban cousins – doesn’t help either. Urban areas can’t expect to get a fair shake from the federal government whatever good intentions might exist on Parliament Hill.

Noted urbanist Jane Jacobs provides an even more powerful reason for thinking that the federal government can never devise programs that serve the needs of particular cities. `Nations’, she writes in her magisterial book Cities and the Wealth of Nations, `are not discrete economic units, although intellectually we pretend that they are and compile statistics about them based on that goofy premise. Nations include, among other things in their economic grab bags, differing city economies that need different corrections at different times.’

The problem with national policies, argues Jacobs, is that they will benefit the economies of some cities and damage the economies of others, since each city is usually at a different phase of the economic cycle. Citing examples from a vast range of large cities around the world, she argues that cities are better off when they are freed from the dead hand of national policy.

The Task Force didn’t even touch on these kinds of truths. Instead, it proudly lists the four pillars on which it is based - new federally funded programs; better co-ordination of current federal programs; more collaboration between various levels of government; and better understanding by the federal government of national urban data (the very data Jacobs calls `goofy.’) These four pillars are of no use to local governments whose councillors and mayors feel they are elected to address their problems, and that the federal government should give them to room to do just that.

A serious urban agenda would begin with the widely shared truth that Canadian cities are the country’s economic, social and cultural engines, and conclude with the notion that they need more autonomy and enough tax room to address their problems as they see fit, with feedback mechanisms that tell them when they are getting it right and when they are getting it wrong.

With this interim report out of the way, maybe in its final report later this year the Task Force will treat local governments as serious levels of government that deserve support, autonomy, financial independence and the room to govern well.

The Task Force report is at http://www.liberal.parl.gc.ca/urb/home_e.htm

2. FCM tackles the issue of local power
At its convention in Hamilton starting on May 31, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities tackles the issue of local, power head-on in a session promising to include some of the heavy hitters on the issue.

The session, on the second day of the convention, is chaired by John Honderick, publisher of the Toronto Star. Honderick has committed the Star to a year-long focus on urban issues (with an obvious focus on Toronto) in the declared hope that the city can gain more power and more finances. Many have noted that Honderick’s interest in local autonomy is relatively new - the paper led a very strong fight in favour of forced amalgamation of Toronto municipalities (including refusing to send reporters to many large anti-amalgamation meetings) – but not unwelcome.

Glenn Murray, mayor of Winnipeg, is on the panel, and he is one of the country’s pre-eminent voices for stronger cities. Murray is involved in the C5 initiative in which Jane Jacobs has played such a leading role, along with the mayors of Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. (See Bulletin 15) Don Drummond, Senior VP and Chief economist for the TD Bank will also be there. Drummond is the author of the tough report published by the TD Bank advocating more powers for cities, noted in Bulletin 26. Also on the panel are MP Judy Sgro and Toronto Board of Trade chair Elyse Allen.

It seems like a good session to serve as incubator for resolutions which the FCM might adopt as a parting gift to retiring FCM president Jack Layton (a Toronto city councillor), who has done much to advance the cause of strong local governments.

3. Court orders de-amalgamation in Ontario

The first unravelling of a recent amalgamation has occurred in Ontario. The sad news, both for those in Ontario and Quebec who continue to fight against forced amalgamation, is that this example will probably have little spill-over impact.

The recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in the case of Berrick Gold Corporation, et al, vs. the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Township of Black River-Matheson, and the Town of Iroquois Falls, has concluded that the restructuring, required by the Minister’s Order of December 1996, be set aside effective January 1, 2002.

In 1996 the Ontario Government passed an Omnibus Bill which included sections authorizing – almost requiring – the amalgamation and restructuring of municipalities. The government threatened municipalities with the promise that if they did not restructure on their own, it might be forced on them and that occurred in several parts of the province. The municipal councillors of Black River and Iroquois Falls, to the east and north of Timmins, saw this as an opportunity to gobble up unorganized townships on their periphery, and swallow new property tax revenue from two mines and many cottages. They used the legislation to hide opposition to these moves. Staff of the two municipalities worked out an agreement to annex almost a dozen townships, then voted on it as though it were a restructuring in the hope that it would comply with the legislation

Before Al Leach, Minister of Municipal Affairs, endorsed this restructuring in December 1996, the two mines and cottagers’ associations objected and made strong arguments to the Minister that the law had not been complied with. The Minister ignored these arguments and ordered the restructuring.

The court case challenging the municipal bylaws followed. The trial judge concluded that these acts were done in “bad faith,” although the Court of Appeal was somewhat more restrained simply saying that the municipal decisions were “beyond the law-making powers of the town, and therefore illegal and void.” The court concluded that what was done was nothing more than an attempt to unilaterally annex the townships under the guise of a restructuring proposal.

The decision is a strong reprimand to the provincial government, but seems confined to this particular set of facts.

The decision - Court File #658/01, Ontario Supreme Court of Justice (Divisional Court) - does not appear to be available electronically, although a summary of the decision can be found on the website of Weir Foulds, one of the law firms involved http://www.weirfoulds.com/publications/practice.htm#municipal and look for the case `Spiritual compliance with legislation.'

4. Subscribe to this bulletin

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More information about the sponsors of the bulletin, a library of relevant and useful documents, and an archive of past bulletins, can be found on our web site. We appreciate your comments, your feedback to j.sewell@on.aibn.com and items of interest that you wish to share with us and others who visit the web site.

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