Toronto and Montreal might find mutual benefit working together

Toronto and Montreal have tended to compete for federal attention in the past. But in the future their mayors may find it more productive to row together, given that they are in the same boat.

Thestar.com
March 25, 2015
By Chantal Hebert

In the ongoing courtship between the mayors of Canada’s two biggest cities, Montreal’s Denis Coderre is the pursuer and Toronto’s John Tory the pursued party ... for now.

That’s because if there were a lonely hearts club for Canadian cities, Montreal would be its most prominent member.

Among the country’s big cities, it is a political orphan in just about every way: a metropolis chronically short on clout in the corridors of its provincial capital and mostly absent from the radar of the federal government.

The first predicament is not new.

Montreal’s provincial voting pattern has long been aligned along the sovereigntist-federalist divide.

The Quebec Liberals can afford to take the city for granted, confident that they have the votes of its anglophone and allophone communities locked in no matter what.

The Parti Quebecois knows that it can neither win nor lose a provincial election in Montreal. For the sovereigntist party the real action takes place off the island.

Montreal’s federal isolation is both more recent and more acute.

It has not had a minister at the cabinet table since former Conservative senator Michael Fortier failed to win a House of Commons seat in the 2008 election.

That absence makes Montreal unique among Canada’s larger cities. The situation is unlikely to change if the Conservatives are re-elected next fall. Looking to the upcoming election, Harper’s strategists are targeting a grand total of ... one seat on the island.

For Coderre, striking new alliances is a necessity, not a virtue.

In his previous life as a federal Liberal, Coderre did not always hold everything Torontonian in high esteem.

A few years ago, the worst he could find to say about Michael Ignatieff was that he had fallen under the influence of Toronto advisers.

But that was then and this is now.

Since Tory’s mayoral victory, Coderre has launched a charm offensive on Toronto City Hall.

On Wednesday the Montreal mayor visited Tory for the second time in as many months. If he has his way the new normal would see the two cities have each other’s back.

For now it is Montreal’s back that mostly needs keeping but that could change.

On the face of it, the current federal alignment clearly favours Toronto

The city did elect some federal Conservatives in the last election; the most prominent being Finance Minister Joe Oliver. And corporate Toronto has stronger links to the Harper government than corporate Montreal.

Coderre would undoubtedly be better served by an NDP or a Liberal victory next fall.

Both parties have Montreal leaders and a local power base.

But it is not as clear that Tory would be worse off without the Conservatives in power federally.

Harper’s party has shallow Toronto roots.

A strong wind of change in Toronto this fall could still sweep the Conservatives out of Canada’s biggest city and leave it alongside Montreal outside the federal cabinet room looking in.

And then, no one should presume that Coderre would necessarily have the inside track on a Liberal or NDP federal government.

He was never close to Trudeau or Thomas Mulcair even in the latter’s days as a provincial Liberal. Tory, for his party, does not hail from the same side of the Conservative movement as Harper.

In the end though what Coderre and Tory know about federal politics may matter more than who they know in Ottawa.

There has never been a Canadian mayoral pair quite like those two.

Both have spent a significant part of their working lives on the national scene toiling on behalf of their rival parties.

More so than any of their recent predecessors, they have hands-on knowledge of the ways of the federal capital.

They know that in a country where suburban voters increasingly determine the fate of the contenders, their cities do not always command federal attention proportionate to their size. The weight of the suburban vote will only increase over time.

In the past Toronto and Montreal have tended to compete - sometimes fiercely - for federal attention. But in the future their mayors may find it more productive to row together, given that they are in the same boat.