Some Great Idea

by Edward Keenan

  On a much larger scale, this same impatience with city hall also arose in other sectors across the city. In 2002, management consultant and American immigrant David Pecault launched the Toronto City Summit Alliance, bringing together business and cultural leaders to address Toronto’s problems – from integrating immigrants, to cultural and business innovation, to poverty – and help foster its growth. In the following years, more than six thousand people would become involved in the group’s projects (it was renamed CivicAction in 2010). The MaRS Discovery district was founded in 2000 as a non-profit corporation to incubate innovative new medical and technological companies by bringing together Toronto’s academic, hospital, government and business worlds so that research can be commercialized. Housed in a converted historic building on the edge of hospital row and a stone’s throw from Queen’s Park at University Avenue and College Street, the organization funnelled tens of millions of dollars into start-up businesses in its first decade.

  Meanwhile, other neighbourhoods across the city were being dramatically reimagined and gentrified. In part due to simple zoning changes made in the 1990s, former industrial zones were repurposed as pedestrian-friendly mini-villages replete with new retail, restaurants and condominiums (the Distillery District, Liberty Village). The formerly derelict Gladstone and Drake hotels at the edge of Parkdale were salvaged and transformed into boutique hotels and community hubs that anchored a new nightlife strip. At the same time, the Toronto International Film Festival, Caribana and Toronto’s Pride festival had grown into some of the largest and most important annual events of their kind in the world.

  To detail all of the notable cultural and civic activity taking place in Toronto in the Lastman years and the period immediately afterward would fill an entire book of its own (in fact, it’s already filled several books). The point is that everywhere you looked in Toronto at the time – everywhere outside of city hall, that is – it seemed that good things were happening. Cultural history was being made.

  Actually, that was true everywhere I looked. But in other parts of the new city, a much different story was unfolding.

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  The reports that would demonstrate this different suburban story were still a few years away, but when Lastman was mayor, the new, post-amalgamated city was sorting itself in a fascinating – and not very healthy – way. Or rather, it had been quietly, subtly sorting itself for some time, and the effect of this became statistically significant by the time Lastman was elected megamayor. The suburbs were becoming poorer, much poorer than the old City of Toronto. And simultaneously, the old downtown city was becoming whiter, and the suburbs were filling up with new immigrants and visible minorities.

  A report issued later by U of T social-work professor David Hulchanski, The Three Cities Within Toronto, compared census data from the years 1970 to 2000 – the latter being the precise midpoint of the Lastman administration – and sounded the alarm at what he found. I will explore the situation of the suburbs in greater detail a little later, but I want to outline the key observations in the report that would impact the city’s politics over the coming years.

  Traditionally, most of Metropolitan Toronto’s old neighbourhoods, 66 per cent of them, had been middle-income (or mixed-income) neighbourhoods, in which the average salary was within 20 per cent of the average for the region. But over the course of three decades, and increasingly in the decade leading up to 2000, fewer and fewer neighbourhoods were middle-income – there was a dramatic increase in the number of both high-income and low-income neighbourhoods. By 2000, only about 30 per cent of neighbourhoods were classified as middle-income.

  In the 1970s, the inner suburbs were the most solidly middle-income parts of the city. There were a few high-income neighbourhoods clustered near Yonge in North York and a very few – seven out of hundreds, to be precise – low-income neighbourhoods in the suburban municipalities. But by and large, York, North York, East York, Scarborough and Etobicoke were solidly middle-class. In 1970, not a single census tract in the inner suburbs was classified as impoverished (or ‘very low-income’). By 2000, the vast majority of Scarborough and York were classified as either low-income or very low-income, as was virtually all of the northern half of Etobicoke.

  Pretty much the exact reverse was true in the old City of Toronto. In 1970, virtually all of the old city south of Bloor Street (and south of Eglinton in the west end) was low-income or very low-income, with high-income neighbourhoods clustered around the Yonge and University subway lines in the north end of the city. There were far fewer middle-income neighbourhoods downtown than in the inner suburbs in 1970, and most of them were clustered at the eastern and western borders. But by 2000, much of the old Toronto was high-income or very high-income. In the east end, south of the Danforth, formerly impoverished neighbourhoods were now middle-income, with a distinctly upward trend line. Outside of large subsidized housing projects such as Alexandra Park, Regent Park and St. Jamestown, virtually all of the old City of Toronto was becoming richer.

  There was a dramatic ethnic element to this sorting: by 2000, in high-income neighbourhoods, 84 per cent of the population was white. In low-income neighbourhoods, 60 per cent was made up of visible minorities. And the same was true of immigration: in the richer city areas, only 32 per cent of the population was born outside Canada, while in the poorer ones, 62 per cent were immigrants.

  For reasons that Jane Jacobs laid out, the separation of neighbourhoods by income and ethnic status can be a problem for the city all unto itself, since diversity is part of what makes neighbourhoods and, by extension, cities work. But the way this sorting was going down in newly amalgamated Toronto made it even more of a potential, pernicious problem. Unlike the old City of Toronto, the inner suburbs had not evolved over generations to serve different kinds of populations. They were mostly built rapidly and according to the assumption that they would serve a middle-class, car-driving population. Whereas in the old city, where immigrants had traditionally landed and there was always a large low-income population, there were a lot of community and social services available throughout those neighbourhoods. And since these neighbourhoods evolved before car travel became the main way of getting around, most people in the old city could find these amenities and supports – parks, welfare offices, public pools, libraries (not to mention things as prosaic as grocery stores) – within a short walk of their homes. In the inner suburbs, on the other hand, there were very few social-service agency locations, and parks and swimming pools and libraries – just like the businesses located in malls – were designed as regional attractions to be driven to.

  But the discontent of the suburbs was still simmering in the background. In the spotlight, the voices creating energy in the central city were ready to take their act to city hall. Like Mark Mattson, who, as Waterkeeper, would host a fundraiser with U.S. Waterkeeper leader Robert Kennedy in support of mayoral candidate David Miller.

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  It’s easy to forget now that the election of David Miller as mayor seemed like a revolution at the time – an underdog story of a citizen movement rejecting the officially approved choices presented to them by the municipal establishment.

  When Miller announced he was running for mayor in early 2003, my news editor at Eye Weekly told me he was the best candidate but that it was too bad he had almost no chance of winning. He was polling at only 8 per cent popular support, behind candidates like scandal-plagued Lastman budget chief Tom Jakobek, conservative business titan John Tory and ex-mayor Barbara Hall. While Jane Jacobs had endorsed him, he had, at the time, the support of only one other city councillor. Miller was advised not to run by many of his own closest allies, who feared that if his campaign managed to get any traction at all, he would split the centre-left vote with Hall and allow Tory to win. By almost every informed observer, the contest was considered a two-horse race between Tory and Hall, and the latter was a prohibitive favourite.

  But, facing a dour civic mood, Mille
r told a clear, optimistic story about where the city should be going. He used the planned island airport expansion in the downtown waterfront as a symbol of neighbourhood-destroying backroom deals that would harm the environment. He adopted a broom as his symbol, and the broom would, naturally, sweep the city clean. He talked about a ‘clean waterfront’ as a pillar representing environmental sustainability, ‘clean streets’ as a point about beauty and neighbourhood vitality, and ‘clean politics’ as a vehicle for citizen engagement and an end to backroom influence peddling. On that foundation, he asked people to imagine a ‘magnificent city.’ He was pitched in advertisements as a man who looked and thought like a visionary but talked ‘like a neighbour.’ The key message of his campaign, in a particularly depressing political period, was that the city deserved a better government, and that the citizens would be welcomed into his administration to help build something better, something that more reflected their hopes and dreams, and that would improve the quality of their lives.

  By October, Miller had gained the lead, and Hall’s directionless campaign saw its support collapse almost completely. It was a race now between Tory’s talk of efficiency and ruthlessness and Miller’s hopeful message of a clean sweep led by citizens. Miller won narrowly, by 36,196 votes, and to his supporters it looked like a revolution that would transform everything. I mentioned earlier the Trampoline Hall event where Miller spoke eloquently about aesthetics and beauty and the power of citizens. The only other points you might need to know about that night was that there was a crowd lined up in the rain outside the windows hoping they might eventually get in, and that a woman actually got up and cried, saying this was the night she finally fell in love with Toronto.

  When Miller sat down with the editorial board of Eye Weekly, he swept us off our feet. He said he thought allowing bands to put up posters for concerts was a free-speech issue; that people should be thought of as pedestrians first, cyclists second, transit users third and car drivers last; that the neighbourhood was the most important thing to think about when you think about the city; that environmentalism was a priority. And he spoke at length of cleaning up municipal ethics: ‘I think we’ve all seen that city hall over the last few years has become a place where if you’re an insider or a crony, you get your needs met; if you’re a citizen, a resident of a neighbourhood, you don’t.’ He wanted an ethics commissioner, audits of city processes and a lobbyist registry. But he also said leadership style would be essential. ‘Right now, the culture basically is, “What the hell does the mayor want? We’re going to go run around and say that that’s our opinion, even if it isn’t.” That’s an issue of leadership.’ He said he wanted citizens and city staff alike to be more involved in advising and operating the government.

  It was as if our editorial board had written his platform. But more than that, he spoke intelligently and easily on whatever we brought up for over an hour without steering the conversation to his stump speech – he was thinking as we were talking, and giving thoughtful answers. We put him on the cover drawn to look like a superhero – the first time in its history Eye Weekly had ever endorsed a political candidate.

  And when he took the stage at the Bamboo nightclub on the waterfront and hoisted a broom over his head in victory, there were thousands of rapturous, chanting and (frankly) shocked supporters there. In the balcony, a friend looked at me and said, ‘This is probably the closest thing I’ll ever experience to Trudeaumania.’

  Three years later, the transformation that Miller heralded was less than evident to a lot of people. In 2006, he stood in the sunlight outside Downsview subway station next to a map. He was running for re-election, and cruising to victory over uninspiring challengers, but his campaign lacked the thrill and optimism that had carried him to victory in 2003. Miller was still popular – his approval ratings measured as high as 80 per cent – and he would go on to win a majority of the vote in almost every city ward, as strong a mandate as one might ever expect to see in Toronto. Yet the boundless hope that had propelled his long-shot 2003 campaign had given way to a sense of satisfactory inevitability.

  If those who had voted against him fearing an extreme NDP-led socialist agenda had grown comfortable with his leadership, then among his strongest supporters there was a mild feeling of disappointment. During an onstage debate sponsored by Spacing, for example, I asked him why it was that Lastman had been able to build more kilometres of bike lanes than he had, and the crowd whooped and roared. Anti-poverty activists accused him of neo-liberalism. At one point, Jonathan Goldsbie of the Toronto Public Space Committee told the press Miller was a ‘pimp,’ because he’d signed an outdoor advertising contract for bus shelters and garbage cans with Astral Media. An article in Toronto Life wondered if he was merely a ‘visionary plumber.’

  At this campaign event, in a bid to create excitement, Miller unveiled ‘Transit City,’ a map that outlined planned TTC expansion in the coming years. The map was heavy on surface transit – although an expansion of the Sheppard subway east into Scarborough and an already-planned extension of the Spadina subway to York University were there, a new network of rapid ‘Busways’ and light rail transit lines carried the bulk of the expansionary load. There was no specific funding attached to the plan as a whole – Miller would be asking the province to fund some of the lines, and the TTC would invest in others as money became available.

  The press that had gathered for the announcement collectively yawned. We’d already seen a lot of this in various plans and documents, and there was no firm timeline attached to funding. A reporter from the Globe and Mail asked if we’d trekked all the way out to the far end of the subway line in North York just to rehash existing unfunded ideas. ‘What’s new,’ Miller said, ‘is we’re committing to a city-wide, integrated network of transit, of speedy, reliable service.’ Putting it all together as a coordinated plan and then committing to find the money needed to build it was the big news here, Miller said.

  I rode the subway back down to city hall with Miller. We were joined by former TTC marketing manager Bob Brent – an admirer of Miller’s work on the TTC – and a rotating cast of regular citizens startled and happy to see the mayor on the train with them. They approached Miller throughout the trip to shake his hand, to tell him they were voting for him, to let him know they thought he was doing a good job. Despite this glad-handing, I took the opportunity to ask Miller about the disappointment people were feeling. We’d expected transformation. Where was it?

  ‘That’s not what people tell me on the street: people tell me all the time that they’re happy, keep it up,’ he said. ‘I’ve done pretty much what I said I would. I think people put their hopes in me, and I’m very proud of that, but it’s not just about me, it’s about Toronto. And I think people share my frustration that Toronto can’t succeed the way it should until we’ve dealt with the leftovers from the Harris era, the downloading and the lack of funding.’

  People might be disappointed that he had not turned the city into a network of bike lanes overnight, but he had never promised to make any such radical overhauls. In fact, he’d been clear from the beginning that he thought change came at the street level, slowly, organically. As he repeated to me, it isn’t about showpiece megaprojects: ‘It’s not how you build a city, and it wasn’t my vision of building a city three years ago. You don’t build monuments. You build a city neighbourhood by neighbourhood. It’s an incremental thing, and it should be. Cities are organic, and that’s why things like the community safety plan work, because it’s about neighbourhoods and about investing in young people in neighbourhoods. That’s why Clean and Beautiful works: it’s about bringing neighbourhoods together – the businesses, the people, the city – to make the neighbourhood a more livable place, to make the public space more livable. And that’s my philosophy on how you build a city.’

  Indeed, the symbolic gesture that had fulfilled his big campaign promise – killing the island airport bridge at his first meeting – put
the kibosh on the very notion of grand projects. And much of what he could cite as his most important accomplishments, addressing the infrastructure gaps leftover from Lastman, didn’t feature prominently in news reports about city hall. It simply wasn’t sexy. Miller and his council implemented a plan to update the sewer system and pay for it with a gradual increase in water fees over the course of twenty-five years. They developed a long-term plan to slow the rate of commercial tax increases to bring them gradually into line with the rates of other GTA cities. Miller campaigned hard – to the annoyance of politicians at other levels of government who thought he should tend his own fiscal garden – to get a ‘new deal for cities,’ and wound up securing a share of the gas tax from both the province and the feds that amounted to roughly $200 million per year in transit funding. He fully implemented the TTC Ridership Growth strategy that included running buses more frequently and better, and, over the course of his term, saw ridership increase to record levels. He installed a lobbyist registry and integrity commissioner to keep the backrooms free of undue influence. And in the lead-up to his re-election bid, he finally put to rest the long-standing debate about what to do with Toronto’s garbage – we’d been shipping it to Michigan and lots of right-wing councillors wanted to incinerate it – by buying a landfill near London, Ontario, and recommitting to a strategy to gradually increase the amount of waste we recycle and compost. The official plan was rewritten to guide the evolution of the city, and, late in his second term, a new harmonized zoning bylaw was passed for the first time since amalgamation.

  Perhaps most significantly, Miller persuaded the province to introduce the City of Toronto Act, which would be passed at the tail end of his first term. The legislation was akin to a municipal charter for Canada’s largest city: it gave the city more authority to act on its own on a host of local matters; gave the city some leeway to introduce taxes beyond property taxes – including road tolls, vehicle registration and land transfer taxes – and it gave more authority to the mayor’s office, allowing him to appoint committee heads in consultation with city council, to establish a governing executive committee to control council’s agenda, and to act as the CEO of the city. The legislation stopped short of implementing a ‘strong mayor’ executive system that would have given Miller the presidential-type powers many U.S. mayors enjoy, but he insisted he did not want such a system. The mayor was a leader, he said, but council ruled the city.