The secret Toronto summit that no one noticed

Infrastructure is a mess. Transportation is gridlocked. Transit is bogged down by Balkanized fare barriers.

Thestar.com
March 28, 2015
By Martin Regg Cohn

It didn’t attract the attention of a G20 summit - no protests, no police and virtually no press coverage.

Leaders from 28 rival governments slipped quietly into town this past week, but no one paid them heed or homage. Little wonder.

The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area Mayors and Chairs Summit on Collaboration and Co-ordination is a municipal mouthful. But Premier Kathleen Wynne’s brainchild is a worthy, albeit wordy idea.

Better to rebrand it the GTA28 - shorthand for our 24 mayors, plus four regional chairs. (Add Hamilton and you get the GTHA+.)

They issued no formal communique. Merely by meeting, however, the politicians were making a statement - and making history with their first-ever meeting:

If the G20 can make common cause globally, why can’t the GTA28 find common ground locally?

It’s a question that has bedevilled the region for decades. This isn’t the Balkans, but Balkanization is in the GTA’s DNA.

Burlington isn’t Bosnia, Caledon isn’t Croatia, Mississauga isn’t Montenegro, and Scugog isn’t Serbia. But on their own, each of these communities amounts to far less than the sum of the GTA’s parts.

Without unified leadership, regional rivalries pit politicians against one another. Lacking a strong voice, the GTA’s 6 million people go unheard in Ottawa despite producing one-fifth of Canada’s economic output. Without a coherent investment pitch, 20 different economic promotion agencies work at cross-purposes instead of capitalizing on Toronto’s international reputation.

Infrastructure is a mess. Transportation is gridlocked. Mass transit is bogged down by fare barriers. Land use planning is still undervalued.

Give the premier credit for bringing more than two dozen municipal politicians and regional pashas to Queen’s Park for a brainstorming session that included senior cabinet ministers and her top officials. The United Nations Security Council meets more often than the GTA28.

Wynne’s own road to regional co-operation has been a long journey. She first entered politics to fight amalgamation of the old City of Toronto with Scarborough, Etobicoke, East York and York.

Now, from her perch as premier, she is increasingly aware of the municipal silos that obstruct the amalgamated City of Toronto, the megacity that is the GTA, and the city-state that is the GTHA.

No one is expecting Wynne to create a new super-amalgamated entity, given her personal political history. But at least she recognizes the future challenges.

The premier bided her time, waiting out the past few years of turmoil among disruptive mayors. Today, the GTA’s political stars are in alignment:

The dysfunctional Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard) has been replaced by John Tory (open John Tory's policard), who has a city-building background as former head of the CivicAction NGO that pioneered cross-boundary co-operation. Brampton’s discredited Susan Fennell was defeated as mayor by Linda Jeffrey, a former Wynne cabinet minister.

Mississauga’s Hazel McCallion was an early champion of regional economic integration, and her legacy should be carried on by her protege and successor as mayor, Bonnie Crombie. Helping to facilitate this week’s summit, McCallion was in the room keeping her former counterparts in the loop - and in line.

Wynne acknowledged that she waited out last fall’s municipal elections to benefit from an electoral reset and a new mayoral lineup, free from Ford’s discordant conduct.

“This meeting didn’t ever take place with the previous mayor,” she mused after the summit. “There’s been a lot of change around that table ... it was important to wait for that municipal election to take place - and to start with people with their new mandates.”

Tory said the new group of mayors was relieved to rise above personalities and boundaries: “Transportation is a regional issue, economic development is increasingly a regional issue - even things like poverty and housing are increasingly regional issues.”

The summiteers have agreed to meet again every few months. But to achieve lasting results, the premier must mobilize her own political powers.

Metrolinx, the provincial transportation agency, is supposed to put the overarching public interest ahead of parochial interests. As her GO Regional Express Rail intersects with Tory’s SmartTrack, Metrolinx cannot be shunted aside. Nor can land use planning and intensification be an afterthought, as it was during the last Scarborough subway debate.

As Wynne told the Star’s Robert Benzie in a year-end interview, there will be no new bureaucratic structures: “I need to use my convening power, the position I have, to pull people together.”

The premier has been mocked for overdoing her consultations and collaborations. But with 28 interlocutors in the GTA, and even more in the GTHA, this is a conversation worth having.

Rather than reinvent the regional wheel, the premier must reinvigorate it - and exhort it. Only then will the GTA28 get its act together - and get the attention it deserves.