York Region CAO Bruce Macgregor stepping down

Yorkregion.com
July 24, 2023
Kim Zarzour

York Region’s top bureaucrat is stepping down.

After 16 years as chief administrative officer, Bruce Macgregor looks back at the many changes.

“I had the privilege of being at the region during its coming of age,” he says.

When he arrived, the region was a series of small communities and farmland close to the city, but Toronto was at its limits with burgeoning pressure for urban expansion and York Region population was about to explode.

It would require building water, wastewater services, rapid transit, administrative building expansions and housing projects to keep up with the growth.

Through the years, Macgregor gained a reputation for collaboration.

Today he views that as his greatest accomplishment and challenge: managing relationships with other levels of government, in particular the province, as well as agencies and the development industry.

“It’s a challenge because people have different expectations. Governments do as well, and not everybody’s at the table funding what they would like to see.

“Many of the most important things we’ve done couldn’t have happened without commitments from those senior levels of government … and a fairly strong development charge bylaw that provides funding from that industry as well.”

He recalls how, on his first day in his new role with the Region, his wife was concerned.

She picked up the day’s newspaper and pointed to an article putting York Region in the centre of a major scandal involving politicians and staff.

“Is this where you’re going today?” she asked him, with a furrowed brow.

It was 1991 and the region’s engineering commissioner at the time was fired after a series of articles published in the Globe and Mail. It culminated in the civil servant winning the one of the largest libel judgments against The Globe in Canadian news media history.

But Macgregor, a civil engineer newly hired to the Region, was unperturbed.

"My perspective was, with the region’s reputation what it is right now, there’s nowhere to go but up!”

More than 30 years later, Macgregor, and the region, have both gone up, with Macgregor having risen to the top job in one of the fastest-growing regions in country.

As he leaves his position -- Sept. 29 is his last day on the job -- there’s controversy once again, this time as the province looks to make key changes to how regional government functions.

Representatives from the Region of York have expressed concerns about Ontario’s many changes to lower-level governance including removing greenbelt protection, the loss of development charges to fund growth, transferring regional planning to local municipalities, giving some local mayors more power and possibility of dissolution entirely as has been proposed for the Region of Peel.

But Macgregor remains circumspect.

He wants his legacy to be one of building up, not tearing down, he says.

“We live in a time, coming out of the pandemic, when we actually performed brilliantly as a civilization, with people helping people, yet we seem to … be harshly critical of many things.”

Despite the negativity, the future, for York Region, looks bright, he says.

“The foundation is strong. It’s an assembly of great communities, places that people still want to go to.”

Leaving that behind is bittersweet, he says.

“I’ve come to know many of the people here personally, both elected and staff, and the agencies and municipalities we deal with … It’s not the edifices and the organization, it’s the people. And that is something you miss as you put it behind you.”