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Charting a New Path No. 10 / 2020 IMFG forum Charting a New Path: Does Toronto Need More Autonomy? About IMFG The Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) is an academic research hub and non-partisan think tank based in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. IMFG focuses on the fiscal health and governance challenges facing large cities and city-regions. Its objective is to spark and inform public debate, and to engage the academic and policy communities around important issues of municipal finance and governance. The Institute conducts original research on issues facing cities in Canada and around the world; promotes high-level discussion among Canada’s government, academic, corporate, and community leaders through conferences and roundtables; and supports graduate and post-graduate students to build Canada’s cadre of municipal finance and governance experts. It is the only institute in Canada that focuses solely on municipal finance issues in large cities and city-regions. IMFG is funded by the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the Regional Municipality of York, the Regional Municipality of Halton, Avana Capital Corporation, and Maytree. Speaker Biographies from the IMFG-ULI Toronto Event “Charting a New Path: Does Toronto Need a City Charter?” Kristin R. Good is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University. She is best known for her research on local immigration and diversity policies, particularly her award-winning book Municipalities and Multiculturalism: The Politics of Immigration in Toronto and Vancouver (2009). She is the founding co-editor (with Dr. Martin Horak) of the McGill-Queen’s Studies in Urban Governance book series. Her IMFG paper “The Fallacy of the ‘Creatures of the Provinces’ Doctrine: Recognizing and Protecting Municipalities’ Constitutional Status” was published in 2019. Bruce Ryder is one of Canada’s leading experts on constitutional law and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. He is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and has appeared as counsel in constitutional cases at all levels of courts, including at the Supreme Court of Canada. He has served as Assistant Dean, Treasurer, and Vice-President of the Canadian Law and Society Association, and Director of the Centre for Public Law and Public Policy. He has published dozens of articles on constitutional law topics, including “Municipalities and the Right to Vote,” forthcoming in the Journal of Law and Social Policy. Enid Slack is the Director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She has written extensively on property taxes, intergovernmental transfers, development charges, financing municipal infrastructure, municipal governance, and municipal boundary restructuring. Recent publications include Financing Infrastructure: Who Should Pay? and Is Your City Healthy? Measuring Urban Fiscal Health (both co-edited with Richard Bird). In 2012, she was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work on cities. Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) Zack Taylor is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Urban Policy and Local Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy Governance at the University of Western Ontario, as well as a Fellow at the Institute on Municipal Finance University of Toronto and Governance. His new book Shaping the Metropolis (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), compares the 1 Devonshire Place different pathways taken in the historical development of Canadian and American urban governance and their Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3K7 implications for local autonomy and democracy, equity, and urban growth. A modified version of his panel remarks email: [email protected] was published by Spacing.ca. His paper with Alec Dobson, “Power and Purpose: Canadian Municipal Law in http://www.munkschool.utoronto.ca/imfg Transition,” was published by IMFG in 2020. Patricia Burke Wood is Professor of Geography at York University and a co-founder of its City Institute. With Series editors: Philippa Campsie and Tomas Hachard Alexandra Flynn (Allard School of Law, UBC), she is conducting international comparative research into urban © Copyright held by author, 2020 governance, and public consultation about the future of Toronto’s governance structures. She is the author of ISBN 978-0-7727-1017-8 Citizenship, Activism and the City: The Invisible and the Impossible(Routledge, 2017). Acknowledgements Thank you to the Urban Land Institute–Toronto for co-sponsoring the “Charting a New Path” event. Thank you also to Richard Joy and the Institute’s staff for their help organizing the event. Thank you to the speakers for an engaging and productive discussion. Thanks also to Philippa Campsie for her invaluable editing. Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy University of Toronto 1 Devonshire Place Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3K7 email: [email protected] http://www.munkschool.utoronto.ca/imfg Series editors: Philippa Campsie and Tomas Hachard © Copyright held by author, 2020 ISBN 978-0-7727-1031-4 IMFG Forum Executive Summary Across Canada, and particularly in Toronto, calls for greater municipal autonomy, but raised concerns increased municipal autonomy and the protection with entrenchment of municipal authority in the of municipal authority in the Canadian constitution Canadian constitution. She argued instead for a more have been getting louder. On November 28, 2019, the flexible option: protecting municipalities in provincial Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) constitutions using “manner and form” provisions convened a public panel discussion in partnership with that would create a higher bar, such as a two-thirds the Urban Land Institute–Toronto to explore these majority, to amend laws that establish municipal issues, particularly the question of whether Toronto systems. This option, she argued, recognizes both that needs a constitutionally entrenched city charter. These local government is a provincial matter of jurisdiction issues have become no less significant following the onset and that provinces continue to have an important role of the COVID-19 crisis, which has revealed the limits to play in governing metropolitan areas and municipal of municipal powers and financial resources, while also affairs in the interest of the province as a whole. demonstrating the importance of provincial and federal Patricia Wood, Professor of Geography at York support for municipalities in difficult times.This paper University, argued that it is important to consider contextualizes and summarizes the speakers’ remarks to the quality of local governance and democracy for all explore whether Toronto needs greater autonomy, and if residents of the city. If a city charter is a solution crafted so, how that might be achieved. by and for the privileged, she argued, it will do little The event examined the pros and cons of a constitutional to bridge the city’s growing racialized socio-economic amendment to entrench municipal authority. Bruce polarization. Ryder, Associate Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law Finally, Zack Taylor, Assistant Professor of Political School, noted that a single-province amendment being Science and Director of the Centre for Urban Policy proposed by some groups has been used before to change and Local Governance at Western University, noted religious education rights in several provinces, including that the American experience shows that constitutional Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador, and so could protection of municipalities could make provinces be a feasible way to secure more autonomy for Toronto less likely to address urban and metropolitan policy or other cities through a constitutionally protected city problems. If the major policy challenges found charter. in our cities require the mobilization of all levels Kristin Good, Associate Professor of Political Science of government, we need to increase incentives for at Dalhousie University, defended the need for collaborative governance, not reduce them. – 1– Charting a New Path: Does Toronto Need More Autonomy? Photo by George Philipps via Flickr (https://bit.ly/3c0SWxg) for the entrenchment of municipalities in the Canadian Charting a constitution. Building on its extensive body of research on municipal finance and governance, the Institute on Municipal Finance New Path: and Governance (IMFG) is playing an active role in these debates: Does Toronto Need More • In November 2019, IMFG published “The Fallacy of the ‘Creatures of the Provinces’ Doctrine” by Autonomy? Dr. Kristin Good of Dalhousie University. This paper outlines the potential for establishing new protections Introduction for local governments within provincial constitutions Zack Taylor, IMFG Fellow through “manner and form” provisions that restrict Do Canadian cities need more autonomy from provincial the amendment process for municipal acts and similar governments? Across Canada, but perhaps particularly in legislation. Toronto, the demand for fundamental changes to the legal, • As part of the Urban Project, an initiative led by FCM constitutional, and fiscal architecture of local government that brings city leaders together with other partners to is growing. In its 2019 submission to the federal budget identify actionable and scalable solutions to the
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