Young leaders demand more than 'status quo' budget at Toronto city hall

As it approaches its 20-year anniversary, the Toronto Youth Cabinet is still advocating for a better Toronto.

Thestar.com
Dec. 19, 2017
By Jennifer Pagliaro

"On behalf of the youth cabinet we want to express to you how much a spending freeze in 2018 would hurt Toronto's youth and other marginalized youth," begins Riley Peterson.

The 18-year-old Ryerson University student is seated directly in front of Mayor John Tory and a committee of his hand-picked executive members on this mild May day.

A freeze, direction endorsed by Tory and his allies, would make it harder to access social services and to break the cycle of poverty, Peterson says. It would leave residents waiting for better housing and transit.

"We need to break away from the status quo by truly investing in our city and the services that make it function," she tells the committee. She endorses raising property taxes beyond the rate of inflation. "People are not numbers on a financial statement that the city balances."

When she's done with her deputation, Tory challenges the teen, asking if she's aware this is just the beginning of the process.

Peterson looks directly at Tory, hands clasped in front of her.

"I'm aware of that, but also every year we come back, begging, basically, for money for our services."

Peterson is one of just over a dozen young people tasked with running the Toronto Youth Cabinet, an official advisory body to city council, which turns 20 next year.

As this term moves into its final year, the group has become increasingly vocal about their vision for the city and how to fund it, challenging the adults who ultimately make the decisions.

"Honestly, I just Googled like "youth municipal politics," says 20-year-old Keisha St. Louis-McBurnie of how she found the TYC and got involved.

She's seated in the 15th floor office the TYC shares with the Toronto Seniors' Forum in the east tower of city hall with Peterson and two other female leaders who all tell similar stories.

Beyond a Grade 10 civics class that doesn't make civics sound very interesting, there are few lessons on the important of the municipal level of democracy thrust upon young people, the group says. And city hall, like other institutions can be an intimidating place for the teens and 20-somethings they represent.

The TYC has aimed to change that.

The cabinet was established in 1998 by then-councillor Olivia Chow to promote youth participation in city issues, with youth defined as anyone between the age of 13 and 24.

It remains enshrined in the cabinet's constitution for its members to reflect the city's youth in race, ethnicity, religion and other identities, and to represent all corners of the city.

Seven working groups led by youth tackle the big issues: Newcomers, community safety, transit, education, equity and employment, housing and the budget.

"We're adding an additional lens to how we're looking at city council," says executive director Edna Ali, 21.

"Especially for the budget we add a different perspective, because I think a lot of the people in those discussions are focused on what's going on now and what's happening in the city now, but we're also looking at 10, 20, 30, 40 years down the road too," adds Peterson, who is the group's budget lead.

"I think as youth we're kind of tired of like just scraping by every year on the budget and not investing in the city now is going to have a real impact on our futures so that's what I mean by status quo budgets."

The youth cabinet is also challenging council for promising new initiatives without funding them in the budget.

In the preliminary 2018 budget, there are $41.2 million worth of programs and services that are not yet funded, though Tory has promised to add many to the budget. They include student nutrition, a low-income transit pass, an anti-Black racism plan and more childcare spaces.

"It's not just they've promised it, they've made announcements," said St. Louis-McBurnie. "Why did you announce it if you didn't have the money to fund it? I think that is disingenuous."

Like many other young people, St. Louis-McBurnie, who lives in co-op housing in Cabbagetown, says she's come to accept she'll never own a home in the city. As the group's housing lead, she said that affordability crisis impacts youth like her in many ways.

"There are other things I have to think of: I'll have to pay rent; I have student loans to pay back; If I have a child, I have childcare costs. I mean, when we talk about housing it isn't housing in itself, it's housing in conjunction with other issues that young people are facing," she said.

"The mayor loves to say that he got the province to finally do something. But what did you finally do? There are things that you have to do as the mayor of the city to actually advance affordable housing and so for me, overall, the long-term vision would be more social housing. We have not built social housing since the 90s."

Factoring into a city that is increasingly unaffordable for youth is a troubling unemployment rate, said Mana Sadeghipour, 25, who leads the equity and employment working group. The current rate, around 18 per cent is, according to city data, nearly triple the overall unemployment rate for the city and consistently higher than youth unemployment rates for both Ontario and Canada.

"There's definitely a lower standard for youth and their standard of living and I think that's something that needs to be talked about," Sadeghipour said

Chow told the Star she launched the youth advisory body to be an active participant in city debates.

"Given the city of Toronto provides services that have dramatic impact on young people, they, young people themselves, need to be engaged and provide wisdom, not just advice, and intervention to how the city functions and delivers service," she said. "It's their city."

For now, the women in charge of the youth cabinet say they don't have political aspirations. They're happy trying to make progress behind-the-scenes while aware of the lack of youth and women of colour represented on council.

"In the future, possibly."

"Maybe one day," they say.

With the last budget of the term to be finalized in February, Ali said she'd like to see the whole process changed.

"Why are we only asking for the public consultation at the end?" she asked.

Instead of first setting direction like keeping taxes low, why not look at the city you want to build and then decide how to fund it? the group asks.

When describing to her peers what a budget freeze means, Peterson said she tries to explain it on their level, instead of how it's usually discussed: The impact on single-family homeowners.

"Well that's why you wait 10 or 15 minutes for the Jane bus or why your local library has weird hours, just breaking it down like that and then they start to say, like, 'Why? We should be investing in our services because we need them.' And then it comes to down to, well, we need to generate more revenue to do that and property taxes is one of the ways to do that."

That stretching of dollars, she said, is felt across the city's waitlists for affordable housing and recreation and in recent statistics that one if four children live in poverty in the city.

Then she pivots to a term the adults downstairs have been using a lot.

"Youth are at the end of the road that we're kicking the can down," Peterson said. "It's something to think about."