Big-city mayors’ small-time agenda

Refusal of Canadian mayors to give as good as they get from federal government leaves them beggars.


Thestar.com
Feb. 8, 2015
By Christopher Hume

There may be strength in numbers, but for Canada’s big-city mayors it seems there could never be enough of them to make a difference.

It’s more a case of multiplication by subdivision.

Despite the brave words at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities summit in Toronto last week, the truth is that this gaggle of chief magistrates has the authority and collective clout of kindergarten coffee klatch. Though they represent the vast majority of Canadians, they are “junior” politicians. Senior politicians - federal and provincial - ignore them as a matter of principle. It is their Charter right.

Indeed, with the concentration of power into fewer and fewer hands at the top of the political food chain, most elected representatives are little more than local fixers, if that. Prime Minister Stephen Harper routinely ignores his own MPs and the tapped-out provinces, let alone Canada’s most important cities.

That this is sheer self-destructive folly should be obvious above all to the man who runs the country, but no. As the late finance minister Jim Flaherty declared back in 2007, Ottawa is not in the business of fixing potholes. With these dismissive and petulant words, he and the Conservatives turned their backs on urban Canada.

When Harper killed the long-form census in 2010, cities were also big losers, as were corporations, universities, researchers and public policy-makers.

It’s not that the Tories don’t care about Canadian cities, they just aren’t aware of them. They focus on sectors, not urban investment. They see business - namely the oil industry - as the source of investment and prosperity. To them, cities are simply places where these activities happen, otherwise of little interest.

The notion of the city as economic engine, intellectual incubator, cultural generator and social equalizer clearly has no currency among Harperites.

On the other hand, Canadian cities desperately need new revenue sources, but they do have options. If they’re serious about rebuilding the urban infrastructure, why don’t they raise the mill rate, introduce road tolls, parking levies, congestion fees ... Instead, we hear a mayoral chorus of no new taxes every bit as shrill as any federal or provincial politician.

Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, looking like a drag-queen contest runner-up in his Best-Mayor-in-the-World tiara, was quick to reassure his political masters that the group wasn’t looking for handouts. God forbid.

No one expects a cheque, he declared, though long-term stable funding for transit and housing would be nice, sir, but only if you please, sir.

Yet Canada’s cities desperately need money, lots and lots of it, about $123 billion.

Ottawa has its own preoccupations, of course; eliminating the deficit and holding onto power. The Tories promise they will lead us to the promised land of balanced budgets - a place, incidentally, to which cities are consigned by law. Not that it’s done them any good.

The mayors’ main argument is that they can deliver the votes at election time. Despite the hint of threat in their claim, it’s unlikely the FCM shindig caused federal and provincial politicians to lose sleep. There were no calls to action, no demands to man the barricades, no hints of civil disobedience.

Instead our mayors continue to pretend they possess the powers, if not the cash, they need to make their cities great. We go along with it mostly out of habit or indifference.

Against a regime like Harper’s, which plays its own rule-free version of hardball, mayoral soft lobs don’t stand a chance. Until they get tough and learn to give as good as they get, Canada’s cities will never realize their potential. Neither will Canada.