Last week the Canadian Urban Institute issued a report on the city of Toronto. The institute’s study concluded that businesses were fleeing the city in great numbers to the outlying 905 region. The report also revealed that between 1998 and 2005, seven office towers were constructed in Toronto compared to slightly over 100 in areas that surround Canada’s largest city. according to the report it will only be a matter of time before the role of the city and the suburbs will be reversed and Toronto will be nothing more than a bedroom community for the bustling areas in York Region, Peel and Durham.
Commenting on the study, Mayor David Miller did what he is famous for — he blamed someone else. Miller said that this outflow was caused by the province because the education portion of the city’s business assessment is higher in Toronto than it is in the ‘burbs. Once again, the mayor took no responsibility for anything that he and his council have done or haven’t done that is causing businesses to pack up and leave; high levels of business taxes being the main reason for the loss of businesses.
The Canadian Urban Institute’s report recommended that business taxes be lowered in order to attract businesses to the city and discourage those that are here from leaving. as long as Miller and his socialist cohorts are running the city, this will never happen. It’s not as if the mayor, who has an economics degree from Harvard doesn’t understand; he does. He is just too ideologically driven to care. There is no organized opposition party to oppose him and the municipal system lacks the checks and balances that are found in other levels of government. and it doesn’t help that people pay very little attention to how their government is run and the local media are in a constant state of adulation over the mayor’s politically correct positions. There is nothing to counter Miller and the council from acting solely on ideological grounds.
Miller likes to tell us that as long as he makes the city more beautiful by planting trees and as long as he throws more money at the arts, businesses will be attracted to the city. Toronto will never be a beautiful city until it’s cleaned up and the downtown core is free of the homeless that now inhabit the city. This is something that the mayor and city council have absolutely no intention of doing. as far as the arts are concerned, it is hard to imagine that all this spending will affect where businesses stay or locate. after all the businesses that are leaving are going to Vaughan and Markham, not to Katmandu or Beijing. The people who work in the suburbs can still take advantage of the positive things that Toronto has to offer without living or working here. all other things being equal, the spending that the city does would attract businesses; but the problem is that all other things are not equal.
The situation is only going to get worse. as businesses continue to leave the city, the gridlock problem becomes worse. It wasn’t that long ago that traffic jams during rush hour on roads such as the Don Valley Parkway only clogged traffic in one direction. Now, the major arteries are becoming clogged going in and out of the city. and Miller’s spending all the cash he can beg on public transit is not going to help the situation. Public transit does nothing for those who live in the city but work in 905 country.
Perhaps Toronto is too big, too dynamic and too important to be run by the type of municipal government that seems to be more in tune with smaller centres. The addition of party politics into the municipal system of government might provide the type of opposition that currently does not exist, mainly due to a lack of interest. We would probably be better off if more municipal functions would be uploaded to the province. Let the province be responsible for such major things as setting tax rates and public transportation that end up affecting more than just the city. Leave the city to deal with purely local matters such as fixing potholes and collecting garbage.
Gee, if that were to happen, we might even get some potholes fixed.
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