OPINION: Who Speaks for Toronto?

Courtesy TheMarkNews.com

Contrary to what many of its inhabitants may think, Toronto is not the centre of the Canadian universe.

But size does matter. As Richard Florida notes in Who’s Your City? (2009), Canada is more urban than much of the United States and even parts of Europe: approximately 80 per cent of the country’s population lives on two per cent of our land area.

Toronto now ranks 10th among the world’s most competitive cities, fourth on a list of the best global places in which to do business, and 14th in a 2007 report on the world’s leading city brands. Its economy is bigger than many of the provinces’ in this country, and it is increasingly difficult to form a majority government in Ottawa without winning a significant number of seats in the Greater Toronto Area.

Yet who speaks for Toronto? Who speaks for cities?

There has been little change to our system of Canadian local government in over a century. It’s hard to believe that what many refer to as the Magna Carta of municipal institutions in Canada—the Municipal Act—was written by Lord Baldwin in 1849.

1972 was the last and perhaps only time that cities had a formal “inside–the-system” voice at the table through the relatively short-lived Ministry of State for Urban Affairs organized by the federal government.

This fall, when Torontonians elect a new mayor, we must abandon our traditional and outmoded view that municipal governments are really about problem-solving and dealing with local issues. This city is crying out for leaders who are visionary and act as a source of inspiration and ideas about what might be … and what should be.

Everyone knows what leadership is. While it may be hard to define, just like great art, we all know it when we see it.

We are all looking for municipal leaders and elected officials who are prepared to challenge the process and the way things have always been done. We want our leaders to look for new opportunities and be prepared to take risks. Playing it safe and always driving to some nice “middle-ground” option just reinforces mediocrity. We want to participate in building a shared vision in which the way we get there is just as important as where we get: it’s not about the plan, stupid … it’s about the planning. We want our leaders to set the example and deliver small victories along the way. Leaders offer hope, and hope means choices and possibilities. Finally, we want leaders who have passion and are prepared to collaborate so that we become more than the sum of our parts and truly think about the possibilities and potential.

Toronto’s next mayor—and, I would argue, the elected officials of all municipal governments—need to think big. While it may seem like heresy, let’s forget about cost. Leave that to the bean counters. Cost is an excuse not to be bold, not to try.

This city has a mayor and 44 councillors, all of whom are elected and held to account by their wards. What we have developed into is a system of ward-healer politicians, in which speaking and taking a larger, city-wide perspective are done at the peril of the ward electorate. As a result, the city has become less than the sum of its parts; no one speaks for Toronto.

This is not a pitch for a perceived romantic past before amalgamation and the creation of the Toronto “megacity.” We need to move beyond that, because we’re not going back. Form follows function, and it’s time we took a long, hard look at the municipal structure in this city, because it’s not working. In a city with a very long and positive history of civic engagement, good people will always rise above or through structure … but structure can broaden and enhance the ability to participate.

Structure and leadership go hand-in-hand.

Urban settlements are now acknowledged as the drivers of Canada. What happens in Toronto ripples across the country.

We need urban political leaders who are not timid. We remain bound up in the present. While we say we educate our future leaders in an era of unprecedented and rapid change, we remain cautious and are not willing to speculate about the future. Rather than saying, “Yes … Let’s figure out a way to do that,” the phrase heard in most city halls is, “Here’s why that won’t work …”

Leadership matters. As Andrew Isserman wrote 30 years ago in the essay”Dare to Plan,” words that our predecessors used—vision, ideals, leadership, inspiration, and wisdom—have become devalued and therefore lost. With their loss, we have reduced our own aspirations and limited our potential.

The Mark News is Canada’s online forum for opinion and analysis.