Exacerbating this situation is the fact that most Canadian cities are governed by a weak mayor system, where the mayor is just another member of council without significant executive authority. The mayor must cobble together coalitions on each issue, and something requiring a little leadership gusto, such as a tax raise, is that much more difficult to achieve. Toronto, at the urging of the Ontario government, is moving to a stronger mayor system (though not as strong as Chicago, New York, or London, England), so any tax room created by Harper represents an interesting challenge for Toronto’s mayor.
Harper may opt to look the other way, but the big-cities agenda is a sleeping giant, and it is in his interest to find common ground. It is a testing issue—one that will signal whether he wants to be a nation builder or do politics as usual. Canada stands alone among the developed countries in lacking a comprehensive national housing strategy and significant national transit funding. Harper can continue this debilitating neglect or find effective strategies to act.
If Harper were in a position to take a radical approach he would recognize that one of the great problems facing Canada is regional disparity. Large parts of the country simply lack the economies of scale to generate wealth and are depopulating as a result. On the flip side, one of the most noteworthy aspects of life in big urban centres is that size permits diversity and diversity permits a certain protection from economic downturns.
So, if the four Maritime provinces were to unite as one political entity, for instance, the new governance structure would represent approximately 2.3 million people. Similarly, a union between Manitoba and Saskatchewan would produce a political unit representing just over 2.2 million people. A concurrent move would be to extract the three largest metropolitan areas—Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver—from their provinces, making them separate political units whose economies would sit in the nation’s cockpit. A city-state of Toronto would have approximately 5.3 million people, leaving the rest of Ontario with just over 7.2 million. British Columbia would become a province of two million people, roughly equal to the new enclave of Vancouver. Quebec, without Montreal’s 3.6 million inhabitants, would now be a province of four million.
While ostensibly radical, this redesign of Canada’s map would actually resolve the anachronism that is our political structure and better prepare our economy for the challenges of the twenty-first century. A new Canada, with nine provinces—each with between two and seven million people—adds demographic balance to a new fiscal strength. The big cities, as de facto provinces, would have greater control over their destinies through financial controls and equitable electoral representation. The rural areas would be kept from the penury of isolation by uniting into larger entities, and in doing so they would not be a drain on the dynamic urban markets that now undoubtedly drive our national economy.
This reconstitution of the country is likely politically unpalatable to Harper, but it vividly highlights the difficulties of Canada’s current confederation. At the very least, Harper can go well beyond his predecessor in convening a truly national conversation about the place of cities in Confederation, which would include premiers and the mayors of our largest cities (probably nine or ten). Such a process might help break a logjam on redesigning our fiscal arrangements and take some of the negative politics out of reassigning taxing duties. If the creation and occupying of tax room was seen as a mutual exercise in the service of nation-building—and, in a famously discredited phrase of the Ontario Harris government, “revenue neutral” —it might be carried forward more agreeably.
If this seems a little too much of a high-wire act, particularly for a government with a narrow minority, Harper might consider the appointment of a royal commission on the state of our large cities. He should be cautioned against repeating an error made by Paul Martin, that of broadening the mandate to include every part of the country. Martin’s original task force on cities very quickly became a task force on cities and communities and, as a result, became significantly diffused in its considerations.
A lot of work has been done on these issues—by experts like Anne Golden at the Conference Board of Canada and Enid Slack at the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance—so this need not be a royal commission that exists forever. In fact, it could report in about two years, about the same time that we are told some parties might be prepared to push the minority parliament into an election. What an exciting set of issues for the country to discuss during an election campaign!
One way or another, Canada needs to answer the question of how the power of urban regions can be maximized in the national interest. While constitutional issues are sometimes eye-glazing, they are critical. We must ensure that the constitution serves the country’s needs in the future, not just the traditions of our past. A New Deal for cities would be a powerful contribution by Harper’s government.
