PROLOGUE
Toronto the Good. Toronto the Strong. Toronto the Thriving. Toronto the Polite. Toronto the Safe, the Clean, the Green...I was turning these words over in my mind as we stopped at Tim Hortons near Oshawa, for a last stop before entering the city. I wanted to embrace the city, learn its language, hop on its streetcars, "ride the rocket," as they say over there. And I did it all right, commuting one hour back and forth to suburban York University everyday from my downtown apartment. I was entering the city as a stranger...and a few months later I was marching down Yonge street with thousands of other residents, in the midst of big "No Megacity!" signs. Toronto the Good, Toronto the Strong, Toronto the Thriving...Toronto was shouting! I was used to student demonstrations and street protests in Montreal the Political, Montreal the Sensual, Montreal the Creative. But I did not expect this in Toronto.
They say timing is everything. I arrived in the Toronto of the 1990s, the Toronto of massive mobilization, in the aftermath of the sweeping victory of a neo-conservative government mostly elected outside the metropolis. Toronto was coping with welfare cuts, unemployment, a growth in homelessness. Toronto was resisting the wind of conservatism stemming out of a discomfort with the metropolis. I arrived in a city in a state of agitation. Building on a three decade long tradition of progressive political activism, downtown Toronto fought for keeping a progressive haven in an increasingly conservative province. I realised that the image of Toronto from Montréal as a city of "Peace, Order, and Good Government" was a misperception. Toronto was Creative and Political. Toronto was inflamed by passionate social activists and radicals, but also by professional mothers, school teachers, civil servants, university professors, computer wizards, pastors--in other words, political mobilization reached every corner of daily.
In October 1996, the six o-clock newscast featured Mel Lastman, then mayor of suburban North York, stunned at the journalist's question: "How would you react if the cities of North York, East York, York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, Toronto, and Metro Toronto would be amalgamated?" A laughing Mel responded that it was impossible; he asked whether this was serious. Rumours of amalgamation were leaked in the media...It was the beginning of the peak months of the Megacity saga. It was indeed a saga, a historic, quasi-legendary moment in Ontario's political culture. Some moments in a society's life are imbued with political electricity that permeates the everyday fabric. My arrival in Toronto corresponded with these intensely politicised times. And I got carried away in what I would later understand as middle-class urbanism.
Political activity for the urban progressive middle class has been thriving, mostly since the reform movement of the 1970s. Many Torontonians from a middle-class background actively shaped the city's progressive regime over the years. They particularly cherish issues such as access and equity, the quality of life, of education, and the right to have a voice in decision-making. While a change in municipal boundaries usually do not provoke such an emotional reaction among local residents, amalgamation in Toronto captured media attention and political life from December 1996 until the passage of the provincial legislation enacting municipal consolidation on April 21, 1997. Mobilization gradually decreased after that, and political life returned to a more normal course, with its skirmishes among elected officials and more radical activists. While middle-class activism continues to thrive in Toronto, the first four months of 1997 represent a very dynamic moment of insurgency that I like to call the Megacity saga.
This book relates the story of resistance to amalgamation in Toronto. It stresses the importance of these events for social and political life in the rest of Canada. In this age of neoliberalism, the redrawing of boundaries and the reshaping of administrative and political systems of governance seem to obey a single criterion: market efficiency. The Ontario provincial government attempted to reshuffle the governance structure in Toronto without much consideration for the impacts on everyday life in the city, impacts on human relations and identity, impacts on social solidarity and civic life. The Megacity saga demonstrated that people cannot be erased from restructuring processes.
In other words, the politics of everyday life was asserted clearly and loudly by the people we will discover in the following pages, grouped in a movement called Citizens for Local Democracy. By politics of everyday life, I mean focusing on municipal politics on the one hand, and working on the punctual mobilization of a broad base of residents on issues related to their daily life, on the other hand. Warren Magnusson noted that municipalities are located at the juncture of the state and civil society, and thus are particularly well-suited for both institutional and social movement politics.1 Toronto illustrated his argument quite clearly. Moreover, the Megacity saga highlighted the class component of this interface between municipal politics and social movements, an element often absent from academic analyses.
While municipal amalgamation may seem an arcane or technical issue, citizens of Metro Toronto did not think so. The story of amalgamation in Toronto serves to challenge this triviality and assert the importance of changing municipal boundaries, fiscal relations, and political responsibilities in this age of globalization. Because neoliberal exigencies are underpinning much of the discourse on globalization, national states have adopted strategies of industrial restructuring and crisis management which have led to the reform of their administrative and territorial structure. This book argues that the Ontario provincial government's decision to amalgamate the former six local municipalities and the metropolitan political structure of Toronto into a single corporation is inscribed in the province's endeavour to position Toronto on the map of the global economy. But also, it is seen as a means to manage the state more efficiently through the devolution of many social services on the shoulders of municipalities. Given Toronto's specific social burden as a metropolis, consolidation of resources within the metropolitan area were essential to bear the burden of the new social responsibilities transferred to the local level.
The province of Ontario had been governed by a conservative government for more than forty years, starting in 1943. It was thus a Tory government that was in place when a two-tiered municipal governance system was implemented in Toronto in 1953, with the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto and thirteen local municipalities (later consolidated into six local municipalities before being amalgamated into one Megacity in 1998). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a centre-left interlude in provincial politics with the Liberal and New Democrat governments pushed towards a "social" (rather than conservative and statist) view of metropolitan governance. However, the return of a Tory government in 1995 marked a shift away from this "social" push. When Mike Harris won the 1995 elections, largely due to a widespread reaction against the New Democrat government of Bob Rae and its "social contract," he ended up acting against both the Tory legacy in Ontario and against the centre-Left interlude the province just went through. Indeed, Harris' platform was more in-tuned with neoliberal than conservative statist policies. The Harris government relies heavily on the idea that globalization requires streamlining policies and more government efficiency.
Indeed, globalization prompts the reconfiguration of state power and its administrative-territorial structure. But as Keil puts it, globalization does not lead to the end of states, rather, it "makes states."2 The state is "re-scaled," "decentred," in such a way that changes in municipal boundaries and political responsibilities become more important than ever. Seen as a neoliberal strategy of adaptation to the forces of globalization, the Toronto amalgamation legislation faced immense resistance from a segment of the population that has controlled Toronto's local institutions at least since the 1970s. The urban progressive middle class was threatened by the disappearance of their major tool for resistance to an increasing provincial-wide discomfort with the metropolis' specific needs. The book starts from the idea that the Toronto Megacity saga was a struggle between the province and the metropolis, the conservatives and the progressives, the urban core and the suburban/exurban constituencies. It was a struggle for the power to define the city, a "class struggle in space," to use Kipfer's phrase.3
In this context, territorial restructuring and changes in boundaries are becoming more important than ever. The following pages highlight the importance of these struggles for political leverage and the development of localized identities. With the increasing urbanization of the world economy, urban politics takes on a central role. Urban movements from the 1970s struggled for quality of life against dehumanizing economic development in cities, for public participation in decision-making, and for the right to difference in the city for marginalized groups. Donzelot argues that the urban question is now more a question of the political capacity of cities to create coherence in ever diversified, fragmented, and open societies.4 Social and economic fragmentation of urban societies are leading to instances of political division reflected on the territorial organization. The issue of local autonomy has a double meaning in the Canadian context. While it could support claims for exclusion from the small unit controlled through political and social enclosure, it is also a search for a balance of power between different levels of government. While provinces have complete jurisdiction over municipalities considered "creatures" of the provinces, struggles for local autonomy seek to ensure an appropriate political role for cities in the process of state re-scaling.
Important state and economic restructuring waves are flowing through Toronto. Inevitably, this entails cultural and social redefinitions as well. Citizens for Local Democracy initiated a debate on the meaning of democracy. Taken within the context of state re-scaling processes, where different levels of government attempt to adjust the boundaries of their responsibilities to the socio-economic context, rethinking democracy takes a specifically geographical signification. In Toronto, the city has become the point of departure for this redefinition. It is the argument of this book that this entails thinking through the issue of citizenship and membership as well, for many residents of the metropolis do not have citizenship status. What does this mean for membership in society? For political action? The Megacity saga demonstrated citizens' attachment to democratic institutions and processes, but also their willingness to improve them. It opened a window of opportunity for the redefinition of citizenship and democracy, both theoretically and empirically.
A Note on the Making of the Book
When I set out to complete my Master's in Political Science at York University, I wanted to work on the increasing importance of urban politics in the international arena. I had just spent a year with youth in Quebec City working towards the United Nations' Habitat II Summit held in Istanbul in June 1996. But I arrived in Toronto and was completely enthusiastic about the wind of political mobilization sweeping the city on issues related to the importance of urban politics not only in the international arena, but mostly within the state's re-scaling strategies. I wanted to know more about this tradition of middle-class urbanism in Toronto, its impact, its strength, its agenda, its relations with other social movements. In the whirl of the Megacity saga, I could not resist writing my thesis on Toronto, which became a clear illustration of state re-scaling processes, world-city formation, middle-class urbanism, and a live public debate on democracy and citizenship.
I participated actively in these events throughout 1996-97 through various interviews, rallies, and weekly meetings. My main source of information was the very rich e-mail forum list servers. This book is basically a discourse analysis that focuses on story-lines that occurred during the "Megacity saga." I collected thousands of pages of material, from government reports, from newspaper articles, and from the e-mail list servers. Although e-mail material is just beginning to make its way into social research, and although it is considered a grey zone between the public and the private domain, I feel it provides incredibly rich information. This material, by the very nature of its real-time exchanges, calls for an analysis of interactions. At the same time, by its written nature, it necessitates a textual analysis. Despite the interactive nature of e-mail exchanges, it is handicapped from body language, face-to-face interaction, and thus renders participant observation practically impossible. Nevertheless, it provides, on a daily basis, dense data on people's feelings and ideas, and it acts as a fluid and interactive type of archive, usually closer to conversation and interviews than to official documents.
David Harvey explains that discourses constitute "moments" in the social process, in a dialectical relationship with beliefs and values, institutions, material practices, and relations of power:
Discourses express human thought, fantasy, and desire. They are also institutionally based, materially constrained, experientially grounded manifestations of social and power relations. By the same token, discursive effects suffuse and saturate all other moments within the social process (affecting, for example, beliefs and practices as well as being affected by them).5
Discourse analysis seeks to understand why particular vocabulary or rhetorical strategies are used in specific events, and how this usage has the power to construct concepts and categories we use to make sense of the world.6 However, this kind of link between discourse and power also depends on the legitimization, institutionalization, and routinization (i.e., it has to be constantly reproduced in speech situations) of these concepts and categories. It is at this point that resistance to the dominant discourse can occur. Actors can use story-lines drawing on other discursive categories such as songs, poetry, humour, metaphors, and on grammatical techniques such as using the active voice and personal pronouns.7 This is what happened during the Megacity saga.
When I came back to Toronto in the summer 1998, I found a city still impregnated by political mobilization. The new amalgamated city had been incorporated on January 1, 1998. A new megacouncil was trying to set foot in City Hall. But the whirl of the Megacity saga seemed to have calmed down a little. Other substantive issues such as homelessness, poverty, access, equity, diversity were occupying the social agenda more prominently. And as the World Cup was raging in the cafes of Little Portugal, the finals between Brazil and France were electrifying the city much better than issues of local autonomy...But when I came back again in February 2000, the city was definitely mobilized. Toronto was preparing its bid for the 2008 Olympics. Bread Not Circuses was active to make sure social issues were considered. Citizens for Local Democracy was strategizing for the November 2000 municipal elections. Councillor Walker was preparing for depositing a motion to the council for a debate on the secession of Toronto from the province of Ontario.
As I am finishing this manuscript, I cannot help thinking about future projects, as political life always outstrips analysis. But I will leave the reader with the story of the Toronto Megacity saga as it unfolded since 1996. The following pages are mostly narrative, they relate the events through the voice of citizens and residents of Toronto. Some theoretical considerations are sprinkled throughout, but mostly as suggestions for analysis. Chapter 5 is more explicitly theoretical, considering the academic debate on citizenship and democracy. This book was not written with a theoretical outlook, but rather from an archival perspective. Toronto has opened the door to very interesting debates on state restructuring, democracy, and middle-class political mobilization. The story of the Megacity saga highlights these trends very clearly. The book does not intend either to provide a technical impact analysis of amalgamation or to make recommendations on the optimal urban governance structure in this age of globalization.
Rather, the following analysis of amalgamation in Toronto highlights the rationale behind the Harris government's restructuring policies, which are solidly grounded in the neoliberal discourse on globalization. Although many observers were puzzled by the neo-conservative government's rejection of traditional statist policies on the one hand, and its decision to create a huge bureaucratic entity through amalgamation on the other hand, I conclude that amalgamation was in fact very much in-line with the rest of the Tory agenda of the mid-1990s. Toronto and Ontario more generally was infused by negative reactions to this neo-conservative agenda. While some leftist observers and activists quickly dismissed Citizens for Local Democracy because it was very middle-class, the following analysis suggests that it is specifically this middle-class character that makes it very interesting, especially in the context of Toronto's history of progressive middle-class urbanism. After all, Citizens for Local Democracy was able to mobilize a huge number of people of the issue of municipal boundaries...a rather arcane issue for most Canadians! The ultimate failure of the movement to prevent amalgamation and its gradual fading away was of course rooted in the Canadian system of governance which states that ultimately provinces have power over municipalities and can decide their faith. But the Megacity saga also highlights a series of contradictions between differing segments of the middle class: urban/suburban or progressive/conservative. These contradictions also impact political agendas within the Left, which is divided between old and new conceptions of citizenship and democracy, and between a focus on the democratic process and an emphasis on eradicating inequalities.
This book is but one story on the Megacity saga; it is my story. In some sense, it reflects my personal journey. I remember vividly my arrival in Toronto, my love-and-hate relationship with the city, my everyday experience in learning English, the strong friendships I enjoyed, the numerous puzzling intellectual questions the city inspired me. This is but one story. It is a story that I hope will appeal to citizens and residents of Toronto, but also from other cities in the world. It is a story that I hope will inspire politically-engaged intellectuals and socially-minded policy-makers. We have much to learn from Toronto. I learned much.
Notes
1. Warren Magnusson, The Search for Political Space: Globalization, Social Movements, and the Urban Political Experience (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).
2. Roger Keil, "Globalization makes states: perspectives of local governance in the age of the world city," Review of International Political Economy 5, no. 4, (1998), 616-646.
3. Stefan Kipfer, "Urban Politics in the 1990s: Notes on Toronto," in Possible Urban Worlds, ed. Inura Zurich (Zurich: ETH, 1998), 172-179.
4. Jacques Donzelot, "La nouvelle question urbaine," Esprit 258, (novembre 1999), 87-114.
5. David Harvey, Justice, Nature & the Geography of Difference (Cambridge and Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 88.
6. See Maarten A. Hajer, The Politics of Environmental Discourse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); also contribution to the special issue of Urban Studies 36, no. 1, (1999). See also the excellent analysis of knowledge production within social movements, using the case of the Toronto Metro Network for Social Justice, by Janet Conway, "Knowledge, Power, Organization: Social Justice Coalitions at a Crossroads," Community Social Planing Council of Toronto, Occasional Paper 1, (Fall 1999).
7. M. Richardson, J. Sherman, and M. Gismondi, Winning back the words: Confronting experts in an environmental public hearing (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1993), 16-18.