Recent articles in the Globe & Mail (Margaret Wente, May 29th) and the Toronto Star (editorial, May 28th) comment on the perception that “Toronto the good” has somehow now lost its civic leadership, hope and optimism to places like New York and Chicago and they speculate how this could have happened.
Forgotten is Ontario’s election in 1995 of Premier Mike Harris who claimed he was going to run Ontario “like a business.” For Toronto it did not help that he neither understood nor even liked the city. Eight years later Toronto’s civic pride had been thoroughly browbeaten, traded in for tax breaks and an anti public, anti city attitude. Over a decade later his legacy still haunts Toronto proving you “never get tax breaks for free.”
Public space, the greatest enabler of civic pride, was seen by Harris as costly and not terribly important. Public infrastructure built during this period was often ascetically unappealing and seemed to apologize for its public role. Schools and community centres were starved of funds so making predicable our youth gun violence of today. Provincial service downloading robbed the city of its energy as suddenly there was a huge bill to pay all for these new services and no time to think about the future.
Yet despite this my perception is that the city is now in a transition period that will eventually see its political leaders of today make way for the new, bold, visionary leaders of tomorrow. Ironically, our problems (gridlock, crime, poverty, immigration integration, education issues and so on) are now provincial and federal problems too. As Toronto’s prosperity goes so too does the province’s prosperity (and the same can be said of other cities and their respective provinces). It is only a matter of time before each level of government truly recognizes that their fates are so completely entwined with each other that policy coordination between them on the matter of cities is not just a “nice to do” its a rather a matter of competitive necessity.
The Harris’ legacy proves that what we strive for today, good, bad or indifferent, the consequences will be with us for a very long to come. I am optimistic and look forward to Toronto (and other Canadian cites) taking their rightful place in Canada’s future success.
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