I Northerners have it backwards, as usual. We have been saying the North is different from the south. Many of us think the only way to get a sensible government is to have separate governments.
Now a new book has a better idea: Toronto should secede from us. The south is different from the North.
The reasons sound familiar. Apparently, Toronto needs more control over its own taxes. It needs control over its education system. Apparently, the rest of the province is keeping Toronto from solving its transportation and infrastructure problems. We won’t let Toronto spend Toronto income taxes on Toronto problems.
And it is true! But these are the same reasons that Ed Diebel gave for an independent North years ago. Toronto’s champions have turned our arguments upside down. It works just as well that way.
The truth is that Ontario is a monster. It has the biggest, richest, most productive city in the country and that city has to beg for permission to build a subway or develop its waterfront. The crucial problem is that Ontario cities are entirely dependent on provincial governments for permission to do anything new in any field of activity.
How can we explain why cabinet ministers from Prince Edward Island have to be consulted about how the wealth created in Toronto should be spent? Why should any Alberta politician influence subway plans in a city that could swallow the entire Prairie provinces?
The arguments for creating a new province of Toronto are laid out in “Urban Nation” by Alan Broadbent. Broadbent is chairman and CEO of the Avana Capital Corporation, a private investment holding company. He is also the chairman of the philantropic Maytree Foundation. He helped found the Caledon Institute of Social Policy and the Tamarack Institute, a community development organization. He has thought a lot about why Canadian cities are in trouble.
Broadbent’s main conclusion is in the book’s subtitle: “Why we need to give power back to the cities to make Canada Strong.” Others have had the same idea, including Jane Jacobs, author of “The Economy of Cities”, Ed Mirvish, Toronto mayors John Sewell and Mel Lastman and a host of economists.
Toronto’s problems are just the other side of the coin we call Northern underdevelopment. The province runs the mining and forestry powerhouse of Northern Ontario out of 17 closets in Queen’s Park. It isn’t working. Even Premier McGuinty knows it. He set up a consultation between 17 ministries to solve our Northern problems.
Naturally, the ministers are mostly from southern Ontario and they are not going to recommend handing their powers over to Northerners.
We are in a strange situation. The Province of Ontario doesn’t really work for the people of the North. It does not really work for the people of Toronto. The answer is simple. Split Ontario into three provinces.
The northern province could have its capital in Sault Ste Marie. Business can run a contest for the best name. Toronto would be free to become the greatest city in the world. It could build the transit system it needs with money it generates itself.
Depending on just who joined the Province of Toronto, Old Ontario might still have the largest population in Canada. At worst, it would be second largest. Even without Toronto and the North, it would be an industrial powerhouse with some of the most productive farms and most attractive recreational properties in Canada.
Ontario is already three different worlds. To our shame, Torontonians are seriously under-represented in the legislature and Northerners are over-represented. Representation by population is a joke. The problem goes away when Ontario splits. Instead of one legislature doing three jobs badly, we get three bodies legislatures minding their own business.
Splitting Ontario would not be like a divorce – it would more like having the children grow up and set up their own households. Everyone gets more freedom, and they can still sleep over if they want.
Our course sensible solution might not make the rest of the country happy. Canada would finally have a need to reform the Senate and redistribute some seats. But should we stay together for the sake of the others?
Vote for a Free Toronto!
Dave Robinson is an economist with the Institute for Northern Ontario Research at Laurentian
University.
drobinson@laurentian.ca
