The e-library contains information about issues of local autonomy and local self government.

Those who visit the site are encouraged to suggest documents - speeches, research, legislative initiatives, news items, etc. - which might be added to the library. If you have material that you think should be part of the e-Library, please click `suggest a resource' and follow the instructions.

search   |   show all   |   suggest a resource

Description:
Local Government Bulletin No. 61, November 2005

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 website is: http://www.localgovernment.ca .
In this issue:
***
1. Balking at real change
2. Restructuring Toronto until it sinks
3. On the horizon
4. Subscribe to the Bulletin
***
1. Balking at real change.

If you were hoping that Toronto would be the leading example of how Canadian cities might be empowered, it’s time to hope for something else.

After eighteen months of quiet behind-the-scenes discussions, senior staff for Toronto and the province of Ontario have finally released a White Paper on new powers for Toronto. It is entitled `Building a 21st Century City’, and the body of the report is a mere eight pages. The provincial government has indicated it intends to introduce legislation based on this report.

The new powers proposed for Toronto are very limited. All provincial laws, except the Municipal Act, will continue to apply to the city. The city will be given the powers to pass bylaws in a number of broad areas such as `economic, social and environmental well-being of the city’, `safety and well-being of persons’, `protection of persons and property, including consumer protection’, and `services and things provided by the city.’ Precisely what this means, and how broad these powers will be is not known, particularly since the White Paper then says the city will have the power to license these activities.

The city will get a few more development control powers (such as the ability to establish minimum densities and establish standards for green roofs), and the ability to appoint senior staff to watch over its actions - an integrity commissioner, an auditor general, an ombudsman. It will be permitted to enter into agreements with the federal government.

As an indication of just how limited the new leash is, the province will be able to suspend any city by-law it deems contrary to its interests.

The White Paper talks of the new law as a `charter’ for the city, but it is just another provincial law. As reported in Bulletin No. 60, provincial laws can be changed at the whim of the province, and there’s extensive experience with the ways in which `charter’ cities in Canada have been breached.

In short, Toronto does not become a strong order of government with independent powers. It remains a child of the province in most every respect. Here are three examples of powers Toronto needs but doesn’t get:

A. Toronto’s police force – paid for almost entirely by Toronto property tax payers - is controlled by the Police Services Act, a provincial law. The Act requires a Police Board to which the province appoints three of the seven members. Many in Toronto have asked for a larger Board (to reflect the city’s diverse population) and have questioned why the province has so many appointees on the Board. This Act is not being changed.

B. All land use decisions made by the city, including Committee of Adjustment decisions, can be appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board, a provincially appointed body with the ability to replace the decision of elected city officials with its own decision – a power which it frequently uses. This arrangement is not being changed.

C. The main source of city revenue is the property tax, functioning under an exceedingly complex system of rules established by provincial legislation, all sorely out of date. The city is given no powers over the property tax system.

On the question of revenue, the White Paper again proposes no serious change.

Toronto would be allowed to impose taxes on entertainment, alcohol, and tobacco, and to slightly expand its ability to levy fees for services provided. It may be allowed to levy other taxes such as a hotel tax – that is unclear. These are very minor sources of revenue.

It will be allowed to impose `tax increment financing’, a device used in American cities to help rejuvenate communities. It will also be given some new instruments to better manage debt.

The White paper specifically says the city is not permitted to levy corporate, income, sales, payroll or gas taxes – so the city will not be able to raise substantial amounts of revenues to address its problems. Nor does the White Paper suggest the city receive new revenue by reversing the provincial downloading of the costs of social housing, welfare, or transit. Without new money, the city is unable to deliver traditional services such as keeping roads and parks in a state of good repair. As noted, the mechanisms of the property tax system – including the reviled system of Market Value Assessment - will remain entirely in the hands of the provincial government.

Issues of governance were not addressed, instead being left to a governance panel (see Item 2 of this Bulletin.) The White Paper is also silent on issues of regional decision-making.

Quite simply, the White Paper has not fairly addressed the critical issues. One problem may have been that this is a report from staff. The obsequious tone can be seen in the reasons why the Paper recommends that the city not be given control over the property tax system, stating “the province has a strong interest in maintaining a consistent province-wide approach to property taxation.” Yet it is the inconsistency of the provincial approach which has city politicians livid: the property tax levied on commercial properties for education purposes by the province is 40 per cent higher in Toronto than it is in neighbouring Mississauga, and four times as high as in some other municipalities. In fact the province has established a different mill rate for each municipality, ensuring that the rate is far higher in Toronto than anywhere else. That’s the `consistency’ staff were trying to protect.

The report is available at http://www.toronto.ca/mayor_miller/pdf/toact_finalreport111405.pdf .

For an alternative vision of what the White Paper might have said, see the July 2005 proposal advanced by David Crombie, Anne Golden, John Sewell, Ken Greenberg, Paul Bedford and Frank Cunningham, titled `A Plan Addressing Toronto’s Powers and Finances’, in the Library at http://www.localgovernment.ca .

Mayor David Miller has been fulsome in his praise of the White Paper. The provincial government has promised to introduce legislation before the Legislative Assembly adjourns on December 8. One assumes public hearings will be convened in the New Year.

2. Restructuring Toronto until it sinks

There have been extraordinary complaints in recent years about how dysfunctional Toronto City Council has been since the megacity was created in 1998. Council agendas for the monthly meetings are usually more than 3,000 pages long which ensures that most city councillors have read only a small portion of the agenda that they are expected to debate. The city itself is geographically so large that few councillors can say with assurance they know the lie of the land in any particular location being debated at any particular moment. With 45 members the council is so big a serious debate on the floor of council is difficult, given the strict limitation on the length of speeches and the fact that after 20 people have spoken, no one remembers what the first 15 have said. The influential players on almost all important decisions are lobbyists, and citizens find their access to City Hall very limited.

These are just some of the complaints about how the city is governed. A related problem is money: the city is financially unable to present the programs expected of a modern city, such as fixing potholes, keeping the litter off the streets, and running a good array of recreational programs. Recent murders among black youth using guns – the murder rate in Toronto has climbed ominously this year – are a good indication of just how sadly the city has been attending to normal business in recent years.

Many people have suggested that it would make more sense if Toronto were divided into smaller self-governing parts linked together by some upper tier or regional government. But when city council said six months ago that it was appointing an advisory panel to review city governance, that kind of an option was specifically not part of the terms of reference of the panel.

The panel was chaired by Ann Buller, chair of Centennial College, and included Sujit Choudhry, professor of constitutional law at the University of Toronto Law School, and Martin Connell, chair of the Calmeadow Foundation. None have previous direct experience in city politics. As they state in Appendix 1, “we started with only the most rudimentary knowledge.”

The panel’s recommendations were made public on November 23. The key proposal is to treat the mayor as the key player in city government, at the expense of virtually every other member of council. Thus the mayor would appoint the chairs of all the standing committees, the community councils, and the Toronto Transit Commission. These individuals would form an executive committee which would set council’s agenda and prepare the budget. The mayor would direct, appoint and dismiss the city manager, so that all city staff would owe their allegiance to the mayor, not to city council, and certainly not to the public. The notion that city staff are independent professionals would disappear.

None of the other recommendations mean much in light of the extraordinary centralization being proposed.

Toronto has some sense as to how the kind of system being recommended by the panel will work in practice. That experience was picked up when Mel Lastman was mayor from 1998 until the end of 2003. Senior staff reported directly to Lastman, the two most notable examples being the City Treasurer, Wanda Liczyk, and the Commissioner of Development Services, Paula Dill. Ms. Liczyk’s activities have been carefully reviewed in the public inquiry recently concluded by Justice Denise Bellamy looking at the MFP scandal in which Ms. Liczyk was a leading errant actor. The activities of Paula Dill , besmirching her vote in a critical process so that the bid for control of Union Station was eventually awarded to the client of the mayor’s son, was also exposed by a judge. The only person who hinted at staff wrong doing was Rita Reynolds, the Privacy Commissioner and she was fired for not being “a team player”. Why anyone would think that Toronto should be restructured to formally embody the power Lastman exercised is hard to fathom. But as noted, none of the three people appointed by Mayor Miller to the panel were familiar with the machinations of Toronto City Hall.

A copy of the report can be found at http://www.toronto.ca/governingtoronto .
The panel commissioned two research studies, both of which are on the web site. One summarizes urban governance in London, New York, Vancouver and Chicago; the other looks at citizen participation in Montreal, Vancouver, London, Portland, and several Brazilian cities.

It remains unclear what kind of public process will be followed in considering these recommendations. The panel held just one public session, and it was but seven days before the published report was released, so one can assume that it had no impact on the panel’s recommendations. Perhaps the recommendations will go to Toronto City Council for discussion.

3. On the horizon

John Ibbitson, the national political commentator for the Globe and Mail, has a knack for summarizing what’s on the political horizon, soon to land at our feet.

In his new book, “The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream,” he makes two recommendations about cities. Here they are:

“There are two concrete steps the federal government could take to rejuvenate Canada’s beleaguered urban spaces. The first would be to cancel the gasoline tax rebate (though any existing agreements should be honoured until they expire), recognizing that it is a policy failure, and instead to permanently transfer the equivalent portion of the federal government’s taxing powers to the provinces. ... In exchange for this permanent fiscal windfall, the provincial governments would have to agree to spend the new tax revenue on municipalities, without cutting existing grants, for a five-year period.”

“The second concrete step that Ottawa could take to improve city living would be to fight the scourge of homelessness. . . Ottawa could transfer a portion of its taxing power to permit provincial governments to fund subsidized housing, treatment programs for the mentally ill or disabled, or shelters for the homeless, as they saw fit.” (p.123-124)

Ibbitson does not think cities deserve a great deal of attention, stating “Our cities are not nearly so troubled as their worst critics claim they are.” The two proposals cited are the only urban issues addressed in this 250 page book. But given Ibbitson’s penchant for detecting coming trends, they might be worth paying attention to.
4. Subscribe to the Bulletin
The bulletin is sent monthly, at no cost, to about 1500 individuals involved directly or indirectly in local government in Canada. Those who receive this Bulletin directly (not forwarded by a third party) are already part of the subscription list. Others who wish to subscribe should go to http://www.localgovernment.ca and follow the instructions. To unsubscribe, please send a message to info@localgovernment.ca indicating your wish to unsubscribe.
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.
- end -