It’s time for the GTA to come together, Wynne says
Ontario’s premier says John Tory being elected as Toronto mayor “a good moment” for the area’s municipalities.

thestar.com
Dec. 20, 2014
By Robert Benzie

The Greater Toronto Area is at the dawn of a new era of regional co-operation, says Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Wynne said the recent election of Toronto Mayor John Tory has triggered “a good moment” for GTA municipalities to begin working together on everything from better integrating public transit to improving land-use planning.

“This is not something that has been talked about a lot, but I hope that there is a more robust discussion about the regional well-being,” the premier said in a year-end interview with the Star at Queen’s Park last week.

“John was part of CivicAction and he convened all the mayors of the region a number of times and CivicAction is going to do that again,” she said of the non-partisan Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance.

“But I really hope that he and I and the mayors in the region can work together to start thinking about not just how do we have (transit) fare integration ... but how do we think about the future of this region?”

In 2011, as CivicAction chair, Tory brought together 700 local municipal leaders for a summit and produced a report entitled “Breaking Boundaries: Time to Think and Act Like a Region.”

That 56-page study urged GTA municipalities to “leverage regional economic co-operation” and expand regional transit.

“I think having a mayor of the city of Toronto who’s got that kind of consciousness is very important to that discussion,” said Wynne, mindful her Liberals won the vast majority of GTA ridings in the June election.

“When people think about Ontario and they think about Toronto they don’t think about the city of Toronto, they think about the whole region.”

Wynne - who first became active in politics in the 1990s opposing the amalgamation of Toronto, North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, East York and York into one megacity - stressed she doesn’t want to see a new governing structure imposed on the cities.

“I’m not talking about formal governments, another layer of government. I am talking about ... regional chairs and the mayors of the municipalities ... coming together,” she said.

“I’ll give you an example. (Last year, then Mississauga mayor) Hazel McCallion pulled together the mayors ... after the ice storm and she got them to talk to the provincial government with one voice on reimbursement.”

The premier, who remains close to the retired McCallion, said the GTA has a unique opportunity with Tory and new mayors like Mississauga’s Bonnie Crombie and Brampton’s Linda Jeffrey.

“Before John was elected, we had mayors outside of the city of Toronto who were interested in thinking about that. I mean, Hazel McCallion has been talking about needing to have a regional discussion for years, but with John now as the mayor I think we’ve got an opportunity,” said Wynne.

“There are land-use planning issues, there are transit issues, there are other issues that I think the mayors in this region need to be working on together,” she said.

“And I think it will provide a great opportunity not to form a bureaucracy, but to form some consensus on some of these issues that need attention.”

Wynne said she wants to build upon the work of CivicAction and other organizations.

“It’s a good moment for this discussion of the strength of the GTA and how we can make it even stronger,” the premier said.

“The Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance is a body that has done some good work; we need to figure out whether it needs to be strengthened,” she said of private-public group that promotes investment in 29 GTA communities.

“Those are discussions I want to have with the mayors.”

Asked if an emboldened GTA would have more clout in dealing with Ottawa to secure transit and other infrastructure funding, Wynne emphasized that’s not her intention.

“That’s a very political lens of what I’m talking about. It’s not the reason that I want to have this discussion, it’s not the reason that I want the mayors to be part of a conversation and I think I need to use my convening power, the position I have, to pull people together.”