Transcription du comité 1997-févr-13 | Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

Consideration of Bill 103, An Act to replace the seven existing municipal governments of Metropolitan Toronto by incorporating a new municipality to be known as the City of Toronto / Projet de loi 103, Loi visant à remplacer les sept administrations municipales existantes de la communauté urbaine de Toronto en constituant une nouvelle municipalité appelée la cité de Toronto.

The Chair (Mr Bart Maves): Welcome to the standing committee on general government. I remind everybody in the audience that the rules of the Legislature apply in committee rooms. There are no interruptions allowed from the audience, so I'd appreciate it if you'd keep any input to yourself. We're here to hear from presenters, who have taken a lot of time to prepare their presentations. The same thing goes for members on both sides of the table.

Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): On a point of order, Mr Chairman, before we begin: As you know, yesterday some questions were raised about the provincially appointed trustees and their impact on the budgetary processes of the seven governments, as raised by Councillor Layton. I think the best way to deal with that is to get the trustees here as soon as possible. I know they are scheduled to appear; I'm just wondering when that will happen.

The Chair: As you know, Mr Colle, we sent an invitation to the trustees to appear. We expect to hear back from them today, actually. Can we take that up at that point in time?

Mr Colle: They haven't responded yet?

Ms Elizabeth McLaren: I'm Elizabeth McLaren, assistant deputy minister. Mr Colle, the board of trustees met last week. They received the letter and they asked for a response to be drafted. They are meeting this morning and will finalize that response and send it over. They are dealing with it; they are not ignoring this committee.

Their concern, if I might jump in before their letter comes, is that there is a court case, as you know. There was a court challenge by the city of Scarborough. That was heard last Thursday. The judge has not yet released his decision. I think the board of trustees feels that while it is still a matter before the court, they should wait. We are expecting that judgement next week, and I think their letter will say what they think they should do after that.

The Chair: Maybe, Mr Colle, we can hold a spot in the hearing dates following when we expect a return of the judgement.

Mr Colle: I'd like to know, whether the judgement goes one way or the other, that we still will have them here. That's what I'm concerned about. Have they agreed to come?

The Chair: I don't know that. I'll find out when I get their message.

Mr Colle: Has Mr Leach told them to come? This is what I'm worried about.

Ms McLaren: If I could respond, if the judgement were to go against the government, that would mean the government was not empowered to appoint the board of trustees, so the board of trustees would cease to exist until such time as this bill, if it is reported out of committee, is passed. If the judgement goes against the government, there will not be a board of trustees.

Mr Colle: Since the judgement is pending and the trustees are at this point in time non-entities, non-functioning pending that court judgement, therefore are they out of commission?

Ms McLaren: No, they are not out of commission. Currently, they are carrying on preparing for the work they will be empowered to do if Bill 103 is passed. If the court judgement should say they are not, they will then stop preparing until such time as the bill is passed. In that instance, it would not, I don't think, be appropriate, if they are no longer in existence, to come before the committee.

Mr Colle: Mr Chair, I've got a problem with this. If they are still functioning as trustees, they should be before this committee. If they were saying they couldn't come here because of the court case, I could understand that. That would be basically putting the trustees in mothballs; that's fine. But the trustees are obviously active, working for the ministry, dealing with some pretty substantive matters that were brought forward here yesterday. If they are active, I think they should respect this committee and appear before this committee forthwith.

The Chair: Mr Colle, the subcommittee report, which the committee as a whole agreed to, said we'd invite the mayors and the trustees. We received notification back from all the mayors that they wanted to appear and indeed they've been scheduled to appear. It sounds like we're going to receive some sort of response from the trustees today. Can we wait to get that response? Then, if they're not going to appear and you want to pursue it further, we can do that. There are other means, with the standing orders, through which we might be able to appeal to them to come. Maybe we should wait for the letter and discuss it further as a committee at that point.

Mr Colle: I've got a problem with that. The trustees are functionaries of the minister. These hearings are basically as a result of the minister's legislation. What I find here is not that the trustees are saying they won't come to the committee; you have the minister basically saying they shouldn't come to the hearings. I find that especially inappropriate considering that these appointed functionaries, trustees of the minister, are carrying on their duties affecting this legislation and the future of the proposal for this legislation. They are basically not being allowed to come here because the minister has said they're waiting for the pending court decision.

I would think it's appropriate, if they're not going to come until the court decision about whether they are legal is rendered, then out of respect to this committee and the legislative process the minister should order the trustees to cease and desist until their legality is decided by the courts.

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The Chair: That isn't a point of order. Whether we want to state more strongly that we want the trustees to come here is a point of order.

Mr Colle: Mr Chair, this obviously then goes into a point of privilege of this committee. The committee's function here is to bring forth information and witnesses and government officials who could enlighten the committee in terms of making a better decision on this legislation.

What I find very offensive is that these trustees are saying they can't appear here because of a court decision and they're still carrying on. If they are carrying on, they're being paid by the ministry, they're being directed by the minister; therefore, they should be directed by the minister to come here and explain what their role is and what they're doing in terms of the bill.

If they were really worried about the court case, the minister would therefore say to the trustees, "Cease and desist, because you may be illegal." If they're carrying on these activities which could be illegal right now, I find that an affront not only to this committee but also to the judicial system and to the people of Metropolitan Toronto, who are basically under their trusteeship. You've got 2.3 million people under the trusteeship of these three individuals who are, up until this point, being instructed by the minister not to appear before this committee.

The Chair: With respect, I don't think staff said they're being instructed in any way, shape or form at this point. The minister --

Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): In fact, Mr Chair --

The Chair: I have the floor; excuse me, Mr Gilchrist. Do you want to clarify that, staff?

Ms McLaren: The minister has in no way indicated to the board of trustees that they should or should not appear before the committee. It was their concern and legal counsel's that they should continue to meet and get prepared so that when and if this bill is passed, they are ready to perform their functions and not further delay the municipal budget process. But it was deemed by counsel to be inappropriate that they should make, if you will, a public appearance as a board before such time as that court case is decided. I will take your concerns back to the board of trustees.

The Chair: I've got Mr Marchese.

Mr Colle: Will I get another chance?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): I appreciate what Mr Colle is getting at, but I also appreciate what legal counsel is saying. If the judge makes a ruling, probably very soon, and adjudicates in our favour -- that is, rules them out of existence -- it solves our problem. If the judge does not rule in our favour, they will appear before the committee -- as I understand, that's what we're getting at -- soon after that judgement is made, presumably. These people will either appear before us or will be ruled out of existence. The essential point I want to make is that this whole bill is flawed and the whole bill should be defeated, rather than trying to meddle with these trustees.

The Chair: That's an opinion, Mr Marchese, and we're going away from the point of order.

Mr Marchese: One way or the other, we'll hear from the trustees.

The Chair: Committee, we've got a full docket. I would like not to debate this all morning long.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): The point is that you can't have it both ways. The ministry can't say yes, these people are getting ready, but no, they cannot appear before the committee because of some judicial process. If the ministry is truly concerned about the judicial process going on right now, they shouldn't be doing any work at all, period. We've heard from the assistant deputy minister that they are actually doing some work now. If they're doing some work now, they can appear in front of this committee. The ministry cannot take the position that for some purposes they can carry on with their ministry work but they cannot appear in front of this committee.

The Chair: What I'd like to do is wait until we receive notification from the trustees so we all are speaking from the same page.

Mr Gerretsen: Can't we have the ministry's assurance that the minister will --

The Chair: We've never asked the ministry to ask the trustees. Maybe we can do that.

Mr Gerretsen: Then let's ask the minister to invite the trustees to come here.

The Chair: Mr Gilchrist, do you want to comment on that?

Mr Gilchrist: They have been invited directly. I don't think it would be appropriate for the minister to interfere. It's on the basis of legal counsel, not the minister. If Mr Gerretsen can't understand the distinction, that's very unfortunate.

Mr Gerretsen: I can well understand the distinction, Mr Gilchrist. If you can't understand the distinction between the trustees coming before the committee and yet being able --

The Chair: Mr Gilchrist has the floor, Mr Gerretsen. Do you want to finish, Mr Gilchrist?

Mr Gilchrist: Mr Gerretsen never appreciates when the government has the floor. He thinks this is some kind of rabble.

The Chair: I'd appreciate that we stick to the issue at hand.

Mr Gilchrist: The bottom line is that the subcommittee report, which was endorsed by the committee, has been followed through. The trustees have been invited. Obviously, they're not going to go against the direction of legal counsel and appear here if that's what they've been told not to do, on the basis of a court hearing. We've already been told that the judgement is imminent. I think this is nothing more than posturing and speechifying. Let's get on with hearing the presentation.

Mr Gerretsen: That's just what you've been doing for the last month or so, if not longer.

Mr Colle: On a point of personal privilege, Mr Chairman.

Mr Gilchrist: Oh, come on, Mike.

The Chair: Mr Colle has the floor.

Mr Colle: Mr Chair, as you know, we've heard 200 speakers here. The vast majority have expressed outrage and concern about the trusteeship, which is an integral part of this bill. In fact, this bill is basically a trusteeship bill; there's very little about the form of the new megacity government. It's all about trusteeship and transition.

The point I'm making to you, sir, is that if the government is to respect this committee, since the people appearing before it have expressed that concern about the trusteeship, the ministry should at least have the evenhandedness to put the trusteeship into mothballs until the court case has been heard. That's all I'm saying. That should be done, because they're using that as an excuse not to appear before us. That's the connection. You can't have it both ways, as Mr Gerretsen said.

The Chair: I understand what you're saying. It's more of an opinion than a point of privilege, unfortunately.

Mr Colle: I think it's the privilege of this committee; that's all I'm saying. They are not appearing before us.

The Chair: I will point out one other thing: If the committee has asked someone to appear and they don't want to appear, there are other steps we can take through the standing orders to try to compel someone to appear. Why don't we wait until we receive notification? There are people here who have prepared presentations; I'd like to hear them. When we get that letter, maybe we can discuss further the other avenues available to us. Thank you very much.

MICHAEL PRUE

The Chair: Mr Prue, my apologies for the delay this morning. You have half an hour. Any time remaining at the end of your presentation will be divided equally among the three caucuses to ask questions.

Mr Michael Prue: Thank you very much, Mr Chair and members of the committee. I thank you all for this opportunity to come here today to address you. I'm going to spend about 20 minutes discussing what I think the bill is going to do to the people of East York and try to convince you to steer some other course.

I've said many times that East York is a wonderful place in which to live. It's not the place I was born in; it's the place I came to live in 24 years ago next month. It's a unique and wonderful place. I don't think I could say it any better than the Honourable David Johnson. I'd like to start off with a quote from him because in a nutshell he said what East Yorkers believe and what we're all about. He said in 1985:

"East York is indeed the Garden of Eden, a community with a special identity, a unique pride, a strong will for independence and a capacity to care for its own. The survival of this municipality has been questioned for years, perhaps decades, but survive it has and survive it will."

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That is as true today as when he spoke those words in 1985. What he was speaking about, at the inaugural meeting of council that year, was past attempts to amalgamate East York. In fact, this is the fourth time we've gone through this process in but 44 years. It seems that once every 11 years, somebody comes up with the idea that East York should be gone.

In 1953, proposals were made when Metropolitan Toronto was first being considered that East York should be amalgamated. Of course that did not happen; it survived as one of the 13 municipalities. Along with Leaside, it survived as a municipality. The councils of the time, in both Leaside and East York, voted against Metropolitan Toronto and against their amalgamation.

In 1965, 12 years later, just like clockwork, Goldenberg reported and recommended that East York and Leaside be gone. The cabinet of the day was a little smarter than that. They chose to combine Leaside and East York and not to amalgamate us, and we survived.

In 1975, the government of the day set up the Robarts commission. There was much speculation and many arguments made that we should go to a four-city model, some of the same things I'm hearing today. Robarts was a man of vision, and he saw that East York was a special and unique place, a place that was financially secure and sound and where the governance was probably the model for everyone else. Rather than say that we should be amalgamated, he very bravely said that we were so good we should be expanded.

Today, this is number four. East Yorkers are getting used to this and we're getting pretty good at fighting for our survival. This is not a new threat. It's made all the time and it's made only for one purpose, because in Metropolitan Toronto we are the smallest of the municipalities. We have 103,000 people spread out over 20 square kilometres -- that's eight square miles for those who didn't go to school recently -- and we are the smallest. But we are not a small municipality; we are a large municipality. We are the 18th-largest municipality in this province. We are the 35th-largest municipality in this country.

When this idea was first seriously put to me that East York would be gone -- again -- it was put to me by Minister Al Leach in his office at 777 Bay Street at a meeting with the mayors. We requested a meeting with him when the Toronto Sun reported, in a little, tiny column, that there was going to be a megacity. We all looked at it in disbelief. With the greatest of respect to the Toronto Sun, I thought their journalist had been smoking something funny. But in fact we found out it was true. I attended with the other majors and with Chairman Tonks.

Minister Leach said something I don't think I will ever forget. He said that East York would be gone. Whether it was one city or four cities, it was time for East York to go. I asked him why. I asked him, was it because we were too small? He said, no, that wasn't the reason. I said: "It had better not be the reason, because we are bigger than lots of places. You're going to have to get rid of Sudbury and North Bay, you're going to have to get rid of Vaughan, you're going to have to get rid of Richmond Hill." He assured me that wasn't the reason. I asked him if it was because we were financially sound and prudent, that we had money in the bank, that we had virtually no debts and would be debt-free by the year 2000. He said that wasn't the reason either, because East York was a model. I said I was glad of that too, because you'd have to get rid of North York and Mississauga and all the other people who have handled their affairs well. I asked him why he was doing it and he said, "I have to do something."

What I have seen over these last few weeks and months is an attempt to do something -- no rationale, no reason, just the misguided attempts by someone who thinks he has to do something. I told him at that time I would fight him until the very last, and I have done that and the people of East York have done that. We will not accept a rationale that you have to do something if there's no reason for it.

About East York and why we're so proud to be our own community: We have, as a council, the lowest administrative rate -- that is, the administration costs to run our municipality -- of any municipality in the GTA. According to the figures prepared by the city of Toronto for the other municipalities in Metro -- their figures, not ours -- we spend 7.46% on administration costs. Nobody else can do it for that. In contrast, Scarborough spends 11.3% and Toronto spends 10.3%. We spend 7.4%. We are very efficient.

We have the second-lowest rate of employees per 1,000 population in all of Metropolitan Toronto and one of the lowest rates in the entire GTA. We have the highest rate of voluntarism. More than 10% of the people in East York volunteer and are part of our community. We have the lowest rate of crime of any municipality in Metropolitan Toronto. Metropolitan Toronto being the safest large city on this continent, the safest place in that safest large city is East York.

There's a reason for that, and the people know it well. For more than 30 years, we have resisted all attempts to bring in anything that might lead to crime. We have bylaws against and have absolutely no body-rub parlours or escort services. We have one pool hall, which was grandfathered, but we've never given a licence to any others. We have no bingos, though I don't know how those lead to crime. We have no adult videos. We have no adult entertainment. None of those things exists in East York, and we know that if we are amalgamated they will, because the laws of the other municipalities will predominate over us. We have a family-oriented community. I have two anecdotes about this, both while I was on council, the first when Dave Johnson was still mayor.

An escort service set up in Leaside. The citizens came and the council immediately took action. Within three days the escort service was forced to close and was gone. The second one had to do with people selling bubble-gum cards with naked women on them; they were being sold in a local variety store. A parent called me with concern. A phone call was made to the store. The community police officer came. We took the offending machine out, put it on the street and told the dealer to come and pick it up. That's just the way it is, and that's the way we like it. We don't want to be like the others.

Our financial base is constant and growing. I've heard some people and I've heard some questions -- I've read the Hansard -- that East York doesn't have enough money. I don't know who's feeding these statistics, but it's growing. In the last three years in our commercial-industrial areas we've given out building permits and seen buildings grow: $10 million, $14 million, $11 million. By all accounts, 1997 is going to be an absolutely huge year. We have a lineup of official plan and zoning bylaw amendments right through the summer as they're trying to get in under the wire before this becomes just complete chaos. We think building this year in East York is going to surpass all others. Of all the Metro municipalities, we survived the recession best.

We had the highest rate of commercial-industrial growth the year before last year, and last year we were second. We have the fastest procedures for planning and zoning in the GTA. We can turn around a business and get a new business in under four months: official plan, zoning bylaw, building permit, construction starts. We've done that for two industries in the last year.

Little East York is the 18th-largest municipality, the 13th- largest industrial base. Don't think we're small. Our industrial base and our percentage of industry are bigger than Ajax, Whitby, Pickering, Milton, Aurora, Newmarket, Richmond Hill, not one of which is facing amalgamation.

Our tax base is 4.2% of that of Metropolitan Toronto; our population is 4.8%. Some people have said, "Look, then you have to get stuff." That's true. From time to time the Metro school board gives money to our school board because we have a lot of students. We have the fastest-growing school board in the province. That's about all; the rest of it, we pay our way.

I was reading through the Hansard and the newspapers, and there are a whole bunch of myths I'd like to dispel. I don't know where these myths come from and I don't know why they're perpetuated by members of this House, by the media and by other people. One of the great ones I see almost every day is that 72% of the services are offered by Metro and only 28% by the municipalities. With the greatest of respect, 72% of the expenditures are by Metro, but not the services.

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If one looks, the amount of tax raised by Metro and the amount raised by the six area municipalities are almost identical. They're at $1.1 billion each: 50.5% is raised by Metro; 49.5% is raised by the local municipalities. Everything else Metro spends is your money. They spend it for welfare. They spend it from grants. They spend it from highways and grants for highways. What they raise and what they spend are two different things. It's one thing to say that they hand out your welfare money, 80% of which comes from the province, and it's another thing to say what they are actually in control of.

The reality is not that they spend 72%. Almost half their budget is provincial grants. The municipalities get almost nothing. In the case of East York, it's a little over $1 million a year on a $60-million budget. In fact, it's been declining. With the greatest of respect, we don't even need it.

Responsibility for actions: They don't do half the services, with the greatest of respect. They spend 80% of their money on three things: welfare, which is your money; police and transit, which is your money, or the money put in by the people who pay with their tokens and car tickets. On the other hand, the municipalities provide almost all the service. We provide the service that people see -- fire, hydro, health, libraries, garbage, zoning, planning, sidewalks, recreation -- we are the ones who collect the tax and we are the ones who issue building permits and make sure this is a safe place to live.

There is almost no duplication among the six municipalities. Each one of our fire departments looks after our own area. Each one of them crosses the border when required. All the municipalities except Toronto are on the same system. We train in the same places; we buy from the same suppliers jointly. Toronto is unique. I can't explain them. Maybe they're a little bit behind us and maybe one day they'll get on the same wavelength. Having said that, the other five of us cooperate in every conceivable way and there is no duplication.

The Ernst and Young report, and I've seen people wave that around, was written by two Americans who didn't even come here. It was kind of a fun report. When I read it, it was kind of a joke, because none of the fire departments was even contacted; they didn't even know what was going on. It was used in Metro figures. The savings inside were to close down 10 firehalls. Anybody can do that. You don't need amalgamation to close down 10 firehalls, but you need a lot of will when you tell people they're not going to get four-minute service. We are set up in every municipality to give that four-minute service. What that means is that if your house is on fire, you can save it. What that means is if you stop breathing, after five minutes you're brain-dead. If you want to give eight-minute service by closing down the firehalls, remember that, and remember that if that's part of this amalgamation plan.

The police: I saw the KPMG study and I thought it was rather hilarious, all the money they could save by amalgamating the police. They've been amalgamated since 1953. I think that's a myth someone should remember.

Parks: Duplication in parks? I don't know about that, but I know that in the places where Metro has to cut the grass and East York has to cut the grass, you can tell which one is which. You can tell because we have to send out East York crews to cut the Metro grass because we get complaints.

Most of the roads in the municipality are local roads, 90% of them. We have to plow the Metro roads from time to time.

The biggest whopper, I think, and I want to deal with the biggest whopper in this whole sad scenario, is the continuing diatribe by Mr Leach, and Mr Gilchrist has joined him a few times, about me and my council for giving away the municipal office. I've seen it in the press, I've seen it in Hansard, I've seen it on television, I've heard it in meetings and I even heard the trustees talking about it. This is absolutely one of the most false things that could possibly be imagined.

I'd like to read the motion which I moved, seconded by Councillor Dale, on December 16, not December 18, which Mr Leach talks about. This was before trusteeship, a regular council meeting, December 16:

"Resolved that the council of the Corp of the Borough of East York hereby investigate the transfer of ownership of the East York Civic Centre, 850 Coxwell Avenue, to the East York Foundation as a cultural and artistic facility."

What the East York Foundation is you may or may not know if you don't know much about East York. It is a foundation which was set up in 1964, in advance of the Goldenberg report, to make sure our cultural, historical and other artefacts did not fall into the hands of other people and did not leave East York. In fact, every single artistic, historical and cultural piece of everything we own is in the hands of the foundation. Our Group of Seven paintings are in the hands of the foundation. All our artwork, 10,000 historical pieces of property, Todmorden Mills, is all in the hands of the foundation.

We were attempting to make sure that all those works of art have someplace to be shown, that's all. We investigated the possibility. We found out, and I have pamphlets for the foundation if any of you want to make donations, that yes, they can take the civic centre. Then we found out from the lawyer that we can give it to them, but we have to go through a process which would be impossible. It took one day; that's all it was. For people to keep going on and on about this event is absolutely disgraceful. For this to be the rationale for trusteeship, I am so disappointed if that's the only rationale for having trustees.

We don't need trustees. This is our fifth year in a row where we're coming in with a zero budget. We already passed a zero budget before there were any trustees and we're going to do it again. We don't need anybody to tell us how to spend our money, because we are more fiscally prudent than almost any government in this country.

One of the reasons we wanted to save our city hall wasn't just to have someplace to show the art, but it exists on the Memorial Gardens. The Memorial Gardens were established in 1948 and were dedicated in perpetuity to the men and women who had died in the Second World War in defence of our country. In the centre of that garden sits the cenotaph. Everything we do is in their honour. We did not build the new building without asking the Legion's permission. We did not put the cenotaph there without asking their permission. We did not establish a day care centre without their permission.

I'll tell you we resent the statements made by Minister Leach. We resent the statements made by some of the people in his ministry that they are looking forward with relish to selling off those Memorial Gardens. If I owe a debt to anyone in this country, I owe it to those people. It is a disgrace that even in jest he would state, and I'm quoting from the Toronto Star of December 18, "`I've got five of them for sale right now,' Leach joked about the city halls"; or the earlier statement made by a member of his staff on November 2, 1996: "It would also decide whether to sell off any vacated city halls, which would basically be considered `real estate assets' at that point, said Leach's policy adviser Jim Murphy" -- or Mr Leach making those same statements. If you want to know what precipitated our action, it was those statements.

I read the Hansard of Mr Leach's statement and he talked about how the Golden report talked about four municipalities and getting rid of East York. There are 51 recommendations. Not one of those 51 recommendations says that. I don't know what report Mr Leach refers to. I've called him on this a couple of times. He says it's in there. I've gone back and I've read it again and again, and it's not in there. There was a proposal -- there were hundreds of proposals received -- that said that, but that is not the recommendation of Anne Golden. I don't know why this myth persists.

The six mayors' report: There are statements made in Hansard about that. That report was made with guns to our heads. We were called into Minister Leach's office. We were told we were going to be amalgamated. We were told there was going to be one level of government, and he told us, "If you want one level and if you want it to be you, come back with a report." So we came back with a report. For 23 days we studied. We worked out an alternative which he didn't buy.

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I didn't make that report and I didn't sign that report with a great deal of pride. I did that trying to save my municipality, but don't think for a minute that this was done for any other purpose except that we had a gun to our heads.

He talks about duplication. If there is duplication, and there's not much of it, the duplication exists between Metro and the area municipalities, not between the municipalities themselves. It is a much smaller duplication, with the greatest of respect, than that which exists between the federal and provincial governments. If you want to get rid of duplication, I would suggest you start there.

Statements made in the press recently, and I want to deal with Mr Clement and his referendum: This is a pretty good whopper too. He stated, and I quote, and he faxed this out, I don't know, in 100,000 copies: "The six mayors decided the question. They are administering the process, they are actively promoting and funding one side of the issue and they are in charge of counting the ballots. Clearly this is not how a referendum ought to be conducted." This of course is not true.

(1) Section 65(5) of the law, which this province passed with the Municipal Elections Act, 1996, says that we have the right to hold a referendum, and I voted for that.

(2) The council of the borough of East York, at its meeting held on January 17, 1997, voted unanimously the use of an alternative method of mail-in ballot as permitted by section 42 of the Municipal Elections Act, 1996. I voted for that. So did everybody else.

(3) The council of the borough of East York, at its meeting held on January 20, 1997, voted unanimously upon the wording of the question that would form part of the authorized referendum adopted by council. I too voted for that.

Last but not least, I would assure this committee and I would assure this House that I will not be there on referendum night counting the ballots. I don't know why anyone would think that I will be there counting ballots or any of the mayors will be counting ballots. Your law requires, section 11 and section 12 of the Municipal Act, that the clerk do so with people who are paid and who have sworn an oath. I don't know why this myth persists that our referendum is not legal and binding at least on ourselves, because it is in strict conformity with the law you passed and which was promulgated and came into effect on January 1 this year.

I think that's enough for myths.

Economic impacts: You've heard it from everybody. It's in the paper every day. The downloading, according to the Globe yesterday, is up to $988 million. That's going to mean a lot of money for East Yorkers, $4 million being taken out of the school boards in Metro and taken to other places in the province. You've heard about the impact of AVA. You've heard hundreds of people talking about how this is going to devastate and ruin the best city in the whole world. You've heard from the board of trade.

Our municipality did a little checking around just to see what the impacts would be on the downloading of services, and I have a package for you which you can have later.

We looked at a couple of properties, what would happen with the downloading, and this was before it mushroomed to $988 million; this is when it was only around $500 million. We chose a few properties in East York. We chose my house. My taxes are going to go up $619. I don't mind that. We chose Mr Parker's house on Cameron Crescent. Mr Parker, your taxes will be going up $542. We chose Mr Johnson's house on Glenwood Terrace -- his will be going up $690 -- and we chose a few others.

The effect on business I think is much more devastating. One of our largest places, Coca-Cola on Overlea, is going to see a $131,000 increase in their taxes. We wonder for business and we worry for business whether or not they're going to flee to the 905 area or, worse still, even flee to other countries.

I want to wind up and leave some time.

I see some difficulties with what's happening. Number one, the public obviously does not support this initiative. Drive through East York, take some time and see the signs on everybody's lawns.

Second, this one will hinder, not help, the long-term formation of the GTA. I don't know what little tiny municipality -- let's pick one, East Gwillimbury -- wants to serve on the same place or can serve on the same place with a megacity of 2.3 million people. If you don't have representation by population, I don't know how Metro Toronto wouldn't have its own way on everything or why any of the others would want to cooperate.

Number three, the speed of this amalgamation: This is seven corporations, $7 billion. I ask you, I question you, if you understand business, how would you like a brand-new board of directors with 45 people, most of whom don't know each other; how would you like to take them and hand them seven corporations with $7 billion in assets and say: "Start over again with staff that we've picked for you and that you can't replace for three years. Now go and do a good job"? I don't think it can be done. I think it's going to be devastating.

Number four, you are literally crushing the roots and identity of large groups of people. In East York we hold this almost sacred. You are crushing that identity. We are fighting to maintain that identity and we do not wish to be something that kids read about in the history books.

Last but not least, if you don't understand any of those other things on the government side, please understand that after the last round in 1965 with the amalgamations that took place, most of the Conservative members lost, and in fact most of those places didn't vote Conservative again for 30 years. The feeling out there is so strong that I think you might be contemplating your own political suicide. Please don't do it to us. Please save yourself. Thank you very much.

Applause.

The Chair: Order, please. I have to remind audiences about participating, and applause is included in that. Please keep that to a minimum.

Mr Prue, thank you very much for coming forward today and making your presentation. You've effectively exhausted all the time for your presentation.

Mr Prue: I took a half-hour? Okay.

The Chair: I want to thank you for coming forward before the committee today and making it, though. Thank you very much.

JANET MAY

The Chair: Would Janet May please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee. We're going to need everyone in the room to come to order quickly, please. Mrs May now has the floor.

Ms Janet May: My name is Janet May and I lived in North York for 16 years. Three years ago, my family moved to the High Park area in the city of Toronto. I presently work part-time for the Toronto Environmental Alliance, a grass-roots, non-profit, non-governmental organization. I'd like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to address the committee. In my work as a local environmentalist I have learned the importance of participatory democracy and the feeling of empowerment when my concerns are listened to and acted on by local representatives.

I do not support Bill 103 and the downloading of services. Like many others, I believe these changes are too much and are being pushed upon us too quickly. Like many others, I wonder why, if these drastic measures are such an improvement upon our present system, they have to be forced upon us so quickly.

I do think that some type of municipal reform is needed to eliminate duplication of services, but like Mayor Prue, I would agree that this duplication of services is between Metro and the local municipalities. As well, I think that because Bill 103 will have an enormous effect on the environment, this committee should insist that it be placed on the environmental registry under the Environmental Bill of Rights.

For the past six years, I have worked on the issue of urban pesticide use or rampant lawn spraying and can personally testify to the effectiveness of local municipalities. In 1990, while living in Don Mills in the city of North York, my friends and I, all mothers of young children, became very concerned about pesticide spraying which was taking place on our local parks and school yards. Within two weeks of discussing our concerns with our school trustee, we had convinced the school board to declare a moratorium on pesticide use on board property. Within a month, pesticide use was on the agenda of North York city council. Within a year, a multistakeholder committee had developed a pesticide reduction strategy for the city. Within two years, pesticide use in the city of North York was down by 89%. Presently, the city distributes information about alternatives to pesticides in its hydro bills and holds annual education sessions for the public.

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Six years ago, at the same time as we approached North York, a group of moms just like us went to East York council. East York's response was much more dramatic. A moratorium on pesticide use in parks was declared, and this remains in effect to this day. I recommend that sceptics who think it is impossible to maintain high-quality sports turf without using pesticides go and visit Dieppe Park near Mortimer and Coxwell in East York. I just threw that in as a plug for no pesticide use.

Also for the past six years, grass-roots groups and concerned individuals have been asking Metro council to eliminate pesticide use on Metro parks. Unfortunately, this process has been much slower and at times very frustrating, despite the efforts of some councillors to implement progressive policies. This is due to a larger, often more inefficient bureaucracy. As well, as everyone here probably understands, it is more difficult to reach consensus and find common ground with larger councils that represent more diverse views and interests.

One of the problems I faced while living in Don Mills and attending committee meetings in Metro was distance. It took me an hour to travel to Metro Hall by TTC, and I often spent a whole day waiting for my issue to be discussed. Just this past Monday I spent all day at Metro Hall waiting for an issue to be put on an agenda. This, to me, indicates how inefficient larger governments can be. The volume and complexity of issues on the agendas at Metro committee meetings often makes it difficult to schedule deputants with any accuracy. In contrast, local councils are closer geographically to residents and are able to give deputants specific times to appear at committee meetings. A megacity will be inconvenient for many citizens and will result in decreased citizen input into municipal affairs.

A few weeks ago, the staff at TEA sat down and compiled a list of environmental bylaws, initiatives and programs within each of the municipalities comprising Metro Toronto. Within a very short period of time we had a list of 82 examples, and this list is by no means complete. Some of these programs include the anti-idling bylaw in the city of Toronto, the incineration ban in the city of Toronto and the pesticide ban in East York. None of these bylaws are to be found across the entire distance of Metro. These programs are the response of local governments to concerns raised by residents and grass-roots community organizations. Some programs are identical, no matter which municipality initiated them, but they may have been implemented at different times. Other programs are very different and reflect the individuality of a community, as shown by my pesticide examples. If taken individually, these 82 programs may seem insignificant, but put together, they are an impressive testament to local accountability and accessability.

I do not believe the megacity will produce accomplishments like these. Chaos is likely as the new structure struggles to coordinate present municipal bylaws. The added burden of the downloaded services can only result in a city council with too many responsibilities, not enough resources, and minimal accountability to those it is supposed to represent.

I do not believe that environmental issues will even appear on the agenda of a megacity council that will have so many extra responsibilities. Who then will take responsibility for the environment? The present provincial government has in the past year and a half demolished environmental gains that took years to achieve. Environmental deregulation, or letting the foxes guard the henhouse, is a reality. The Ministry of Environment and Energy has slashed its budget and staff this past year. The KPMG report suggests that the megacity can find savings of between $25 million and $45 million by selling off waste collection services and waste water treatment facilities. I find it hard to believe our drinking water will not be privatized if the megacity goes through.

Everyone needs clean air to breathe. Everyone needs clean water to drink. Everyone wants their children and grandchildren to have a healthy environment in which to live. My experience has shown that small, local councils are the most responsive to environmental issues. After all, the slogan is, "Think globally, act locally," not "Think globally, act regionally."

I hope our government will pay attention to the concerns and recommendations of those addressing this committee. I hope this government will accept the results of the referenda. I hope this government will have the courage to admit that Bill 103 and the downloading of services are a mistake and will withdraw them.

Mr Colle: Thank you very much. I guess the whole thing comes down to, if you've got this one big government, how is it going to, in a nutshell, make the environmental problems in what we call Metro worse? Is that what you're telling us?

Ms May: I'm sorry?

Mr Colle: If we've got this one big, monolithic megacity, why is it a given that it's going to make air quality or water quality worse?

Ms May: I think you can see it most prominently in the city of Toronto, where grass-roots organizations have been able to go to city council and insist on bike lanes, for example. The city of Toronto has a lot of bike lanes, which of course promotes bicycle transport and not car transport. I think when a megacity comes into effect, bylaws like this are just going to get lost in the shuffle.

Mr Colle: It's just that suburban dichotomy where you've got a different interest coming into play.

Ms May: Exactly. Etobicoke and Scarborough are very car-dominated.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms May, for coming forward this morning.

VICKI OBEDKOFF

The Chair: Would Vicki Obedkoff please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Rev Vicki Obedkoff: I've got some printed remarks, but I'd rather wait till I'm finished because I'm going to change the order. Thanks for letting me speak to you.

I wanted to build on what the previous speaker said about the environment. I live in the city of Toronto. I work in Etobicoke as a United Church of Canada minister, but today I'm speaking personally as a citizen.

Amalgamation has already affected my life, and it hasn't even happened. When my best friend died of breast cancer, I said I'd do something, and since then other women I know have died of breast cancer. So I started to do research and have discovered the growing evidence that things going wrong in the environment are now screwing up our immune systems. The evidence has particularly grown with organochlorines. It's some synthetic compounds using chlorines that get into our water chain, our food chain, get into our bodies and trigger malfunctions. The scientific evidence on the Great Lakes is growing for this. Environmental regulations have been crucial to zero tolerance of these kinds of toxins.

Anyway, I saw an ad put by the city of Toronto in the paper saying they were setting up a brand-new committee to implement the recommendations of an Ontario primary cancer prevention report and they were inviting citizens to join it. I thought: "This is wonderful. In memory of my friends, I'm going to dedicate all of my volunteer time to this." So I made all the telephone calls to find out about the committee and was told I should write out my résumé. I did that. I went to the department of public health for my interview, went through all the screening procedures, but then nothing happened and I was told it's all in chaos now. This whole new initiative is not going to go ahead because we're all waiting because we may not even exist as a city any more.

I have no hope that in a megacity with fewer staff spread over a large territory and all the chaos and confusion that's going to result for years to come, there's going to be the guts and the resources to take these kinds of initiatives. The city of Toronto primary cancer commission was going to say even though the province is getting rid of its environmental regulations and going in the opposite direction, we are going to do what we can in our city limits to limit and regulate the transport of toxic chemicals and substances and stuff that gets into our water and food chain. I am hugely personally disappointed in this, obviously not just personally, but for an opportunity to really do what we can with the knowledge we have now to be proactive about what makes people die from cancer.

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It's really hard to follow on the mayor of East York's presentation. It was absolutely wonderful about the effects that Bill 103 will have on municipalities. I have stuff written here about the downloading, about the extra property taxes, but you all know that. So my question is why. I come back to, why is this being done when none of the experts say it's a good thing?

I was struck by Mayor Prue's comment that Minister Leach wanted to "do something." Then I was watching TV the other night and I saw a clip from the debate with Barbara Hall. I've got here to quote where Mr Leach said, "We've made a promise and we're going to stick to that promise," and I thought, "What promise?" When did Mr Harris or Mr Leach, during the election, promise amalgamation and what promise is he going to break by not going ahead with Bill 103?

I can only think that the promise means provincial tax cuts. If the promise was to give us our provincial tax cuts, it amounts to a microwave for me for the devastation of our cities. If the promise is to get our tax cuts, do we take the cynical view that this is a grab to get at the $1-billion reserves that the cities hold to help pay for these tax cuts? If it's a rush to pay for the tax cuts and get budget lines off the provincial books and grab extra revenues and reserves and put them on to the provincial spending powers, I think it's cynical and self-serving beyond belief and I can't think a government that was well intentioned would do this. So I believe you won't. I really have to believe that all of us coming here today and over the weeks are making a difference to your common sense.

If it's not then to get at the reserve money and to desperately find money to pay for tax cuts, I think, well, what is the reason? I'm struggling. I know there's a lot of rhetoric that in the new globalized world we have to have big, globalized cities so that some investor knows the name "Toronto" and doesn't have to bother with little names like East York or Etobicoke or Mississauga; the trucks know where to come. Well, I've visited cities in Guatemala and around the world where -- what's the word for it? -- the corporate vision has won over. Showcases get built. They look really good, but the gap widens between the inner-city core which becomes unlivable and the showcases.

I was conducting a Bible study in a church back in BC last summer. A Korean investor's wife was there and we were going on about high interest rates and how they contribute to the debt and deficit and all that stuff and how if we lower them, the bondholders will take out their money. She said, "No, they won't. You make the rules. If we lose a couple of million dollars because the interest rates go down a little bit, we'll live with that. We've come to Canada because it's safe and it's clean and our children are going to get a good education," and the list went on.

I thought, it's the same with investors. I've heard stories that given the choice between Buffalo and Toronto, people will finally come here to Toronto because it's livable downtown rather than Buffalo, even if it means spending more money to do business. So I don't buy the vision that we have to become bigger is better, to somehow become glitzy and all the people are going to want to come and spend their money here.

I'm almost out of time. I don't know what to contribute that's new except to say, please don't do it. I think you're people of intelligence. You've heard all the arguments and reasons and no one's going to look silly if they back down. If any one of you starts to question Bill 103 and has the courage to raise the questions, the public is going to be extremely grateful.

Mr Leach is not going to look silly or Mr Harris is not going to look weak if somehow he says now: "To be responsible and responsive, we're going to listen to the people. We're going to accept the results of referendums." People are going to cheer and say that is the sign of a maturing government. We know you want to do something decisive, but let it be in accord with the public will. Please slow down and listen to the public will and work in partnership with it.

I'd like to stop there because I would like to engage with some questions.

Mr Marchese : Thank you, Ms Obedkoff, for your presentation. You have been very eloquent, as so many before you.

I have a particular point to make and that is, Mr Leach has been quoted as saying, "All I've heard is that it's a bad thing to do, but nobody has given me any evidence it's bad." In fact everybody that has appeared before this committee is saying it's a bad thing. Mayor Prue came and he gave an excellent presentation as to why it's a bad thing and there are a whole lot of studies saying it's a bad thing. How do you respond to the fact that Mr Leach is saying he has seen no evidence against it?

Ms Obedkoff: I'm boggled. I don't understand that and I'm boggled. There's tons of evidence. If we can learn from history, Detroit, Chicago, other cities -- I lived on the south side of Chicago for two years. They made similar policies. There's a huge gap between the people who are really poor and rotting inner-city cores and the outer suburbs. If this is the vision that people want, we'll get it. But why are we so arrogant as to think the same thing that has happened to other cities is not going to happen to us? We're not nicer people or smarter people than other people globally. It's a historical pattern.

I'd also like to say something about trustees. In 1934 city regional governments were put in the hands of three private trustees. This country was Germany. This is a move that's done in Fascist climates, not democratic countries.

Mr Marchese: I'm worried about what Mr Leach is going to do. He's going to pretend that he's listening to people, so he might make some changes to this bill, such as diminishing the power of these trustees. Would that satisfy you if he just did that?

Ms Obedkoff: No. I want the government to do the right thing, and the right thing is not to lay devastation to our city. No one is going to think they're silly or weak if they listen to the people and allow the evidence to come through. I'd be the first to write congratulatory letters and work in partnership.

I think Mayor Prue was right. Mr Leach thought he had to do something and it's proceeding in a nonsensical direction.

Mr Marchese: Thank you very much.

Ms Obedkoff: You're welcome.

ALEXA MCDONOUGH

The Chair: Would Alexa McDonough please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Can I have some order around the room, please.

Ms Alexa McDonough: Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before your committee this morning. I do so to share my experience as a resident of the Halifax regional municipality and as a member of the Nova Scotia Legislature when merger legislation for Halifax was introduced and approved.

Municipal amalgamation in Halifax has not delivered. Transition costs were more than double the estimate made by the province's merger coordinator. Transition savings have largely failed to materialize and taxes are going up. There are really three points I want to make to your committee this morning.

The first is that the direct costs of the merger were significant and they came in far above the original estimates -- at least $22 million instead of $10 million. Four municipalities with a total population of 330,846 were merged. A total cost of $10 million was estimated by the merger coordinator, one of Nova Scotia's leading chartered accountants by the way. By law, he was given control of expenditures by the municipalities during the pre-merger period to keep costs under control. The mayor of Halifax now states that the total direct costs will be between $22 million and $24 million.

The senior Halifax regional municipality staff appointed by the merger coordinator have now recommended that the province should allow the municipality to amortize these costs over a 10-year period rather than the five-year period established by the merger legislation itself. Indirect costs of the merger were never estimated or monitored. There's no doubt that considerable time has been spent on the training and orientation necessary to combine staff from very different corporate cultures, but no dollar figures have ever been assigned.

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The second point I want to make is that taxes did not go down as a result of the merger. They are in fact going up, as are costs. The Halifax merger coordinator forecast savings of $10 million. These savings were supposed to pay for the costs of the merger, after which property and business taxes would be reduced, thanks to the municipal merger.

Savings, as it turned out, were vastly overestimated by the merger coordinator and it is now estimated that savings achieved due to the merger amount to $2 million at most; instead the costs of the merger transition are themselves contributing to higher taxes.

Taxes were frozen last year, which was year 1 after the merger, until the situation became clearer. Now the council of the Halifax regional municipality is debating how much taxes will increase in year 2 when a new tax structure is also being introduced.

The council has proposed that residential property taxes in many areas of the new merged municipality increase, on average, by nearly 10% this year alone. In fact the council's proposal calls for average property taxes to increase in most areas, even though plans also call for reduced education budgets in the urban core.

This month the municipality is conducting an advertising campaign which modestly states, and I quote, "Establishing a fair and equitable tax structure is a major challenge."

The most prominently promised saving was in the cost of the council itself, because four mayors and councils would be replaced by one. Residents were promised fewer politicians and that the merger would get government off their back.

However, the one council for a much larger municipality is costing just about as much as the combined cost of the four previous councils. Councillors need much greater support services to be able to serve the much larger number of constituents they now represent. The mayor's office is much larger than any of the four predecessors, again due to the greater size and complexity of the operation.

Higher service levels in outlying areas and equalizing the salaries and wages of people doing the same work are two other amalgamation-related forces that are starting to drive up costs.

It may be noteworthy that the Halifax merger was accompanied by a major realignment of provincial and municipal responsibilities, which itself is contributing to the rising property taxes following the merger. It has been suggested that one purpose of merger was to disguise the downloading of provincial costs to the municipal taxpayer, and I note with interest --

Mr Colle: Not here.

Mr Gerretsen: It can't happen here.

Ms McDonough: I note with interest today in the Ottawa Citizen that there is an article by Andrew Sancton, a highly esteemed professor in public administration with particular expertise in municipal administration, suggesting that the very same thing may be true of the proposed merger here in Toronto.

The third point I want to make is that the merger was imposed from above, without local approval and therefore without the necessary community-based support and participation. The Halifax merger was not requested by any of the municipalities. It was not approved by referendum or by plebiscite.

The one vote in which a Halifax municipal merger was on the agenda was the provincial general election of 1993. The only political party then in favour of a Halifax municipal merger, the Conservative Party, received their lowest popular vote in almost 40 years and barely held on to one of the 17 provincial ridings within the region. The Liberals and New Democratic Party, who campaigned against the merger, won 16 seats.

The provincial government's decision to impose the merger came as a shock. There was no formal advance notice and little forewarning. The bill was rammed through the Legislature within three months of its announcement. Citizens had little opportunity to study the plan. Public opinion polls, for what they're worth, showed that opposition to the merger process ranged from 70% to 90%.

Each neighbourhood and community that is now part of the Halifax regional municipality finds that decisions affecting them are being made by a council composed primarily of representatives who are unfamiliar with their neighbourhoods or communities.

Some forecast that decision-making will become a series of tradeoffs, pushing costs still higher. Others fear that the policies which proved appropriate for the various communities, such as heritage protection, for example, in the historic areas of Halifax, will be swept aside by a council which, by nature, has a majority who are not knowledgeable about the particular aspect of community-based issues.

It will take at least two more years before all the evidence is in on the Halifax merger. It is already clear, however, that the transition was very expensive and that it produced cost pressures that must be dealt with for years to come.

What can Ontario learn from this recent experience in Nova Scotia? I leave you with one question: Is it worthwhile to destroy local representation and to massively disrupt local government when higher costs and higher taxes are the predictable result?

Metro Halifax has 330,846 residents. Metro Toronto has 2.3 million. US consultant Wendell Cox has shown that US cities with a population of more than one million cost 18% more per capita to operate than cities with populations between 100,000 and 500,000. He shows a much greater spending gap, on average 152% per capita, between amalgamated cities of the same size.

The bottom line is that an imposed merger will likely cost Toronto taxpayers even more than a provincially imposed merger is costing the taxpayers of Halifax.

I just want to say in the final analysis, and perhaps most importantly, I think the biggest cost and the worst cost to the citizens of Toronto will be in the lesser democracy and the lessened accountability. At a time when there is a genuine crisis of confidence in public officials and in government, it seems to me this is a cost that cannot be afforded.

Applause.

The Chair: Order, ladies and gentlemen; especially not during a presentation, please.

Mr Gilchrist: Thank you, Ms McDonough. It will be the record for a long-distance visitor coming before us here these five weeks.

Let me just start with a couple of the points in your report on which we've had slightly different information coming from the Nova Scotia government itself. Our minister, Al Leach, met with the minister responsible. They said their biggest regret was not having trustees in place who would have ensured that when things such as the severance packets were negotiated for the 144 people who were let go, there were controls in place to guarantee that it was done by a more fiscally responsible standard and you wouldn't have had a situation where people were paid severance packets and then immediately rehired by the new city government. Have you heard similar concerns down in Halifax?

Ms McDonough: Yes, those have been concerns, but let me say it's also typical of this government, which rammed through the legislation without consultation and against the strenuous objection of the citizens, that what they're interested in talking to you about is how they might have saved more money instead of whether the citizens have actually benefited.

Mr Gilchrist: It's my understanding that the chamber of commerce, which had been one of the proponents of amalgamation, is solidly on side. Their quote was, "So far, so good." They didn't believe it was appropriate to have all four municipalities, including Bedford, which for those here in Ontario who probably aren't aware has a population of about 12,000, maintaining separate economic development offices. They have their own industrial park. There was a competition in the community against each other about the siting of things like a Price Club when you've got a huge opportunity -- I would ask you whether you would agree with this statement -- to develop Halifax region as a major transportation hub.

Ms McDonough: Yes, I would agree. The same point needs to be made here, which is surely that there are not just two options, the status quo or this draconian legislation. Surely there is an option to provide for better coordination around such matters as those you've identified -- economic development, transportation planning -- while you also preserve at the more local level the democracy that is very much prized by the citizenry.

The other point I've alluded to in my presentation is that the very concerns that have been borne out in the Halifax situation will be even more serious in an area like Toronto which is so much more populous.

Mr Gilchrist: Would you agree with me that there is one very important distinction with the nature of the Halifax amalgamation, given that you've got a very developed urban core, the Dartmouth and Halifax area, but that two thirds of the geography in the new city are rural or relatively undeveloped areas, whereas Metro Toronto, from one end to the other, is a totally urban area? Would you at least concede that part of the inspiration for the amalgamation was the opportunity to have rural land into which the city will grow in the future?

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Ms McDonough: I've no trouble agreeing with that, but I don't see what it has to do with justifying plowing ahead with this legislation. It seems to me the argument could be even more strenuous against the proposed Toronto amalgamation simply because of the massive numbers involved and the almost certain inaccessibility and lesser accountability that is going to obtain in the instance of such large government units.

Mr Gilchrist: Leaving the population numbers aside though, there is a commonality in terms of the service delivery all across Metro, which was not the case in the new city of Halifax where right now it has been issues of the redistribution of services which have left many of the councillors in areas like Bedford to complain about how many dollars are being spent in their community now today. It's the balancing of the rural and urban differences that is creating a lot of the funding challenges, as is the case in every amalgamation where an urban core takes on rural land around it. Is that not one of the challenges facing Halifax today, to balance the rural and urban needs?

Ms McDonough: Yes, it is one of the challenges, but I guess I would simply restate that to use that as an argument to justify going ahead with the Toronto amalgamation is just --

Mr Gilchrist: I'm asking you just to make a distinction between the two.

Ms McDonough: I think the other thing, if I understand your point, is that the argument you make simply underscores the point made by Professor Andrew Sancton when he said, under the title "Convenient Political Cover," that "Amalgamation can provide convenient political cover for further reducing the size of municipal bureaucracy," and goes on really to talk about how there seems to be two things going on here and it really surely helps to disguise the downloading that the provincial government is doing on the municipalities, which is one set of phenomena happening at the same time that the government is plowing ahead with this amalgamation. I think it's very convenient for the government of the day that it causes great confusion in terms of tracking how much of the damage is being caused by which of these two phenomena, but it doesn't justify going ahead with either one.

The Chair: We've come to the end of the allotted time. I want to thank you, Ms McDonough, for coming forward this morning.

Ms McDonough: Thank you for the opportunity to appear.

The Chair: Would Michael Thomas please come forward.

Mr Marchese: Mr Chair, Guy Hunter is not next? Please explain that.

The Chair: He's cancelled. Michael Thomas, please.

Mr Marchese: Michael Thomas is here somewhere.

The Chair: Is Joan Doiron available? We'll have Joan first, and then if Michael's back, we'll have Michael.

JOAN DOIRON

The Chair: Welcome to the committee this morning.

Ms Joan Doiron: My name is Joan Doiron. I started my comments this morning with your coat of arms. I'm actually not sure how to say it in Latin -- maybe we could get some help from the Romans who are in the room later on -- but it sounded pretty good when I heard what it meant. Audi alteram partem; I'll let somebody else translate that. I think you had it translated for you.

Mr Colle: Listen to the other side.

Ms Doiron: Yes, and I thought that was neat. They had neat ways of saying that back there in the Roman times. It's more or less the essence of what I have to say to you.

Actually, I thought our government was with that statement, because look at a couple of things they said in the CSR, as we call it:

"Let's reinvent the way government works, to make it work for people."

"We will work closely with municipalities to ensure that any actions we take will not result in increases to local property taxes. We want to ensure that municipalities do everything possible to deliver services more efficiently."

"We don't have time in Ontario for a sterile debate using the outdated labels of `left' and `right.'"

"We know there are many more sound ideas for making government more efficient.... We will sit down with municipalities to discuss ways of reducing government bureaucracy with an eye to eliminating waste as well as unfair downloading by the province."

"But how we get there will be discussed in partnership with all Ontarians. This is the Common Sense Revolution.... No hidden agenda."

That's what you said in 1994.

I had difficulty finding a copy of the CSR. My MPP's office didn't have a copy; I guess they weren't supposed to have one. The receptionist referred me to the PC Party. Then I was told it was out of print. I persisted, since I was profoundly puzzled by Bill 103 and what might have been its origins. I had to persist since this dry bill was promising or seemed to be promising to turn my stable life as a 60-year resident of Metro Toronto into chaos. Finally I found a copy of the CSR at the Metro library. Having been a former librarian myself, I should have known to go there in the first place. Perhaps I discovered why it is difficult to obtain.

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These quotes certainly give the sense of a government that is working with Ontarians, discussing key issues, having non-partisan debates about greater efficiencies, eliminating waste and stopping downloading on municipalities. It doesn't sound too bad, does it? I could even perhaps vote for a lot of that stuff myself. But there seems to be little relationship -- and I think it's been pointed out to you in spades in the hundreds of deputations you've heard -- between Bill 103 and the CSR.

Bill 103 removes my rights to democratic representation through my elected local councillors. Let me tell you that it's my local councillors whom I work with day by day in all kinds of issues, big and small. Key decisions will be made in the new proposed 103 system by appointees who meet in private. It's bad enough that they're in control, but for them to meet in private is outrageous. This is hardly "no hidden agenda." Why is this being done? What have Metro residents done to deserve such shoddy treatment? Bill 103 requires me to pay ever-increasing property taxes while removing from me any control over how these taxes are spent. I can't help but compare the French and American revolutions and the Canadian rebellions of 1837. It seems a bit ridiculous to be making those comparisons, but it just comes right out at you.

The CSR promised no unfair downloading; Bill 103 is a recipe for exactly that. CSR suggested a partnership with all of us; Bill 103 sets up a highly polarized situation -- us versus them -- with Metro residents as the enemy. I've always thought of myself as a pretty law-abiding, active citizen and as a teacher and parent very active in a lot of issues in the city for many years. I just can't believe that you hate me so much, or you want me to become a criminal, I guess, and then you could lock me up. You can't mean that. I take that back.

No government can rule without the consent of its people. After all, 72% of Ontario did not vote for the current government. Lots of people stayed home. This means that you must represent all of us. Key decisions must he made with full participation of those affected. Of course, members of the Legislature must use this democratic forum to listen to each other -- see your Latin motto -- make amendments and arrive at conclusions only after full debate. Your committee must do the honourable step of letting Bill 103 die here. It would be a true example of democracy and I think a sign that you're truly courageous people if you did that. This does not mean status quo. That's been said repeatedly to you. I don't want status quo. It means that your committee should make recommendations about how needed municipal changes should be made.

We are interested in efficiency and reducing costs. This is precisely why smaller units are much better. Your own earlier studies indicated your support for strong local government, which is much more cost-efficient. Actually, that's what I always thought was a Tory position: that you want decentralization, you want local control. That's why many years ago even I voted, and had signs up, for David Crombie. Megacities mean mega-cost, a police state mentality -- witness the 50% of the current budget at Metro which is now going to police -- with little citizen participation and lots of fear.

Just to give you a good example of efficiency, I am the current chair of the Better Transportation Coalition of Ontario, a group which supports cost-efficient ways of moving goods and people; that is walking, cycling, transit, rail. One of our groups is the Coalition on Sensible Transportation, based in the 905 area. CSR asked citizens for ideas on reducing costs. We took you at your word. COST -- and I've enclosed that document for you -- responded in 1995 and 1996 with several letters to the province about how many millions could be saved on such projects as the 407 highway.

We have yet to receive replies to our suggestions. We had press conferences here at Queen's Park about highway costs and safety, but we still have not heard a response from your minister to our concerns. I would suggest that is actually where you can go to save a lot of personal and public money for people. This well-served, transit-friendly place in downtown Toronto that has bicycle lanes and is really pleasant for walking saves me thousands. That's how your people in Ontario can save personal money and you can save public money. Please look at it. I haven't had a response, as I said.

We want to work with you to reduce costs in the province -- financial costs, environmental costs, community costs. With the Premier we want to "hope for a better future for our children." He said that in the CSR. This is why you must let Bill 103 die. It insults us and our democracy. It cries out for a democratic replacement.

The Chair: You've exhausted your allotted time. Thank you for coming forward to the committee today.

MICHAEL THOMAS

The Chair: Would Michael Thomas come forward. Good morning, Mr Thomas. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Michael Thomas: Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you this morning. My name is Michael Thomas. I was born in Ontario. I grew up in Ontario. I went to the University of Toronto and I've worked in architecture, urban design and community development for the last 30 years. The reason I'm here this morning is because Bill 103 is in direct violation of the Habitat Agenda. This is a 241-page agreement signed by Canada in Istanbul last June at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. The government of Canada committed all Canadians to supporting the principle of decentralized, local decision-making with full citizen participation as the indisputable foundation on which to build local and global sustainable development.

I'm a strong believer in local sustainable economic development. As past founding president of TEDRA, the Toronto East Downtown Residents' Association, I authored a 182-page report called Healing the Neighbourhood, and we published it last October. In the report, residents define "healthy neighbourhood" and we detail 81 recommendations to sustain and nourish our east downtown neighbourhood. This report is the result of years and thousands of hours of monthly neighbourhood council meetings attended by politicians, police, planners, developers, business owners and residents.

The Metro Toronto level of government has continually frustrated TEDRA. Last Wednesday you listened to David Wood describe Metro level services provided by police and business licensers in our neighbourhood. He described those services as poor, insensitive and unresponsive.

In the November 1994 municipal elections the city of Toronto ran a referendum to ask voters, "Are you in favour of eliminating the Metro level of government?" and 58.1% responded yes.

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Before the provincial election in June 1995, the Mike Harris task force held hearings across Metro Toronto and published the Trimmer report in April 1995. This report cautioned against "false economies of scale which in smaller operations are subsumed into larger ones for the sake of efficiency; they get bogged down in bureaucratic growth." Your report recommended eliminating Metro and establishing a GTA services board.

During the 1995 election campaign Premier Harris and the Conservative Party published the Common Sense Revolution, a booklet of promises. Mike Harris promised, "If I do not live up to anything I have promised...I will resign." Voters believed him and elected him Premier.

Following the election, the Golden report of the GTA task force was tabled in January 1996, and in accordance with its findings, Metro Toronto council passed a motion in April urging the province to end Metro and move its larger services up to a GTA coordinating board and the rest down to strengthen the six local municipalities.

However, in spite of all this, on December 17, Bill 103 landed like a bomb planted to destroy all momentum towards the GTA board. Instead, the seven Toronto-area councils were to be amalgamated into one.

A financial study from KPMG was immediately presented as proof for cost savings even though they disclaim their own report. The same day, the city of Toronto released an analysis of the KPMG report by Andrew Sancton. He found the comparison of costs across the six municipalities fascinating and lamented that amalgamation would destroy any opportunity to benchmark efficiencies and copy innovations between the six different cities. He also doubted there would be the projected $100-million saving in duplication costs and found it to be an insignificant 1.8% of total spending.

Two days after Bill 103 was introduced, I received a flyer in the mail from the government of Ontario announcing the new city of Toronto, a change for the better, as though Bill 103 was already law. The Speaker of the Legislature has pronounced this document to be in contempt of parliamentary procedure.

Bill 103, if passed, gives the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing total control over the seven old councils and over the one to-be-elected new council. A board of three trustees makes final decisions on everything, is exempt from damages caused through neglect and cannot be taken to court for anything.

If amalgamation is such a great idea, why is it necessary to suspend democratic rights and freedoms? My father and millions of Canadian men and women went to war to fight totalitarian and Fascist regimes.

I'm really curious about the inclusion of neighbourhood committees in Bill 103. Is this a muddled afterthought that local delivery of services and accountability is really the way to go? Except that even the function and method of choosing committee members gets to be determined by the new council, possibly still under the control of the minister.

You should know that there are already over 100 neighbourhood organizations across Metro, and none of them would ever hold themselves accountable to any council. We have to work with all levels of government to hold municipal, provincial and federal policies and services accountable in our neighbourhood.

On January 10 the city of Toronto released a study by Wendell Cox comparing the amalgamated model with a local city/GTA model. He showed that the megacity would be less efficient, less democratic and more expensive. So why a megacity? The answer: mega-week. The government couldn't find the $3 billion more you still need to cut from spending to cut income taxes 30%. No wonder we didn't get the Minister of Finance's promised financial statement last November, and no wonder you seek to destroy local councils and school boards in order to seize assets and reserve funds.

Ignoring David Crombie's Who Does What panel's final report dated December 23, a report you commissioned in May 1996, in which he carefully maintains an even exchange in disentangling municipal and provincial revenue and spending programs, the government, in a blitzkrieg series of announcements starting on January 13, downloaded a long list of provincial responsibilities on to municipalities: transit, roads, social housing, libraries, public health, ambulance, special care homes, social assistance programs, child care, long-term health care. The list goes on and on.

The Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto has estimated each business in Metro will face a $7,800 rise in property taxes. It predicts a mass exodus. The latest net downloading costs are estimated at $1 billion annually, or about $ 1,000 for each residential property tax bill. Brilliant. Cut income tax 30%, raise property tax 40%, and let the local councils take the heat for slashing former provincial services in a desperate attempt to keep property taxes down.

This government has cut services. You've stripped labour, equity and environmental protection laws; you are offering public institutions for sale; and now, last week, you launched a $50-million advertising campaign to tell the world that Ontario is open for business. You've set it up so private interests can make unholy profits on human misery and on our common good without government interference.

A word of warning: In this month's Atlantic Monthly magazine is an essay entitled "The Capitalist Threat." George Soros, an American who made a fortune in the financial markets, writes:

"Laissez-faire capitalism and the belief in the magic of the marketplace must be tempered by the recognition of a common interest and the need to sustain the values of an open society. An open society is a complicated, sophisticated structure that requires deliberate effort to bring into existence and institutions to protect it. Too much competition and too little cooperation can cause intolerable inequities and instability."

The United Nations has called Toronto the most ethnically diverse city in the world and one of the most livable. This high quality of life has been achieved by open and efficient local government. It will be an international humiliation for all Canadians to lose this.

I ask you to slow down and back up. Keep your promise, as you heard from Joan, not to unfairly download services. Keep your promise to sit down with municipalities --

The Chair: Mr Thomas?

Mr Thomas: I'll just finish in two seconds.

The Chair: I'm sorry to interrupt, but we're already at 11 minutes, so you're going to have to wrap up with the last couple of lines, please.

Mr Thomas: Keep your promise to resign if you break these promises. Withdraw Bill 103. Continue responsible negotiation for revenue and service change in Ontario. Passing Bill 103 will be a violation of your oath of allegiance to the Queen to uphold the democratic rights of all citizens. Passing Bill 103 will be a declaration of war on the old Toronto cities. In order to avoid financial ruin and oblivion, these cities will have no recourse but to declare a state of emergency as outlined in Bill 103, section 10(3)(b), and seize authority from the minister. In order to put an end to such an emergency, your government will have to rescind Bill 103 or resign. I trust you will have the common sense to avoid throwing us all into such total chaos.

The Chair: Thank you very much for coming forward and making your presentation.

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DOUGLAS HOLYDAY

The Chair: Would Doug Holyday please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Mr Douglas Holyday: Thank you very much for inviting me to appear. I guess I'm here in two instances actually: I'm representing council and I'm going to present council's position as it's been prepared, but as you might have heard, sometimes I have differences of opinion with those people and I have a few comments of my own that I'd like to make. So I'll start with the presentation as prepared.

I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to present the concerns and recommendations of Etobicoke council. These concerns have been voiced by a number of residents who are very much involved in the ongoing review of Bill 103.

In one of these hearings you were advised that Etobicoke had a meeting relating to the referendum on Bill 103 which 11 people attended. In fairness, I should point out that that was not a public meeting, that it really was a regular meeting of council, a committee of the whole where we allowed deputants to speak. I might point out that the first two deputants were former Liberal candidates who came in, and they were speaking about the referendum and the need to have it. I guess the other nine people who were there were their supporters.

Etobicoke residents are concerned about the issue, which was evident at an earlier publicized meeting on the megacity issue where there were about 200 residents. We are continuing to hold public meetings to educate the public and to encourage them to make their own determination with regard to Bill 103. These meetings were well attended. The latest one was on Tuesday, February 11, and again there were about 200 people there. I think this conveys the impression that the citizens of Etobicoke are very concerned about this issue.

In addressing Bill 103, I believe I speak for all members of council and the public when I say that we are frustrated with the lack of information to which we must respond. The proposed legislation does not provide us with any information about the form of the new city government and how it will function. This information will only be determined if the legislation is adopted during the short period of time between that date and the end of the year. The complexities of building a new government from the ground up and the need for thoughtful consideration of a number of critically important issues during such a short time frame presupposes a limited chance for success. Again, I mention that's the comments of my council.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves forced at this time to comment on legislation which outlines the shape of the new government but does not offer any substance in terms of how it will actually function. In reviewing the government bill and supporting documents, we do not find any solid information to substantiate the government's claims that the new city will be more efficient, more responsive, provide more jobs or be effective to operate. The government has not provided a white paper in support of the legislation as might be expected.

Furthermore, much of the government's own information is contradictory. For example, the backgrounder released from the Legislature speaks of community councils to reflect community needs and assigns them some responsibility to approve zoning amendment applications, minor variances, subdivisions and community planning and engineering standards. Although I now understand that legislation will be introduced to deal with community councils in the next few weeks, Bill 103 itself does not provide for these crucial parts of the new structure.

I would like to make it clear that Etobicoke has always supported the restructuring of service delivery and the reorganization of government responsibilities where this will lead to increased efficiency and savings. This part I do agree with. Since 1988, the city payroll has been reduced by 20%, for a total cost reduction of $20 million. Restructuring and downsizing have reduced staff by more than 400 positions, and the number of city departments has been reduced from 10 to seven. Etobicoke's portion of the tax bill has not increased -- counting this year, which will happen -- in five years, and the city has reduced its general government expenses by almost 11% during the last three years.

Etobicoke has been a leader in contracting out municipal services where this has been shown to provide better service at less expense to our taxpayers. The other area municipalities and Metro Toronto have made similar reductions to achieve more cost-effective government.

The city of Etobicoke has consistently supported measures which will make government more effective and responsive. In the city's brief to the Golden task force, council supported the downsizing of the Metro level of government with the following comments: Services which respond to the community needs, such as parks and roads, should be transferred to local government; services which respond to universal social programs, such as welfare and possibly education, should be transferred to the province; and services which are not consistent with boundaries, such as police, homes for the aged, garbage disposal, recycling, water supply, pollution control and, I would suggest, economic development should be retained by Metro.

Etobicoke supports giving the area municipalities financial and administrative responsibility for local services over time, including ambulance services, licensing, planning, regional parks, roads and traffic regulations and the collection of fines.

Etobicoke also supports a regional GTA board structure with political representation by population from local municipalities. We believe you do not have to adopt such a radical proposal to clarify local government responsibility and improve efficiencies.

The minister has said that the issue of amalgamation has been studied for decades and that the current legislation merely finalizes the lengthy review. In fact, many of the past studies, such as the Planning Act reform, dealt with amalgamation only in an indirect way. The most recent studies have dealt with restructuring only in the bigger context of governance issues across the greater Toronto area.

We believe the current amalgamation proposal is fundamentally flawed because it does not provide for an effective integration of government functions within the GTA region. The GTA level is the most effective level in which to coordinate a number of services, such as overseeing urban development patterns, the planning and development supporting hard and soft services, and environmental issues. It is the most effective level at which to undertake international economic development and to equitably distribute the benefits of economic growth. Yet the current legislation does not deal with governance issues at the GTA level. It will create a government within Metropolitan Toronto which we believe will be too large to deal responsively with local issues while being too small to effectively deal with issues across the Toronto region. Total amalgamation of both levels of local governments and Metro does virtually nothing to deal with the broader issues affecting growth and development throughout the GTA region.

The minister has indicated that amalgamation will result in more jobs in Metro. We believe that investment in the local economy requires the certainty of a predictable outcome. Those who are considering investing money need to be assured of a reasonably predictable future. If the amalgamation proposals are adopted, government structures will not change overnight. Given the enormous task of reorganizing service delivery and consolidating such things as the thousands of bylaws currently in place across Metro, we believe the transitional period will stretch on for a number of years.

The government has also been largely silent on the monumental task of amalgamating the 40 collective agreements currently in force. Standardization of wage rates and benefits, negotiating costs and retraining of staff will not occur overnight. To imply that this will be in effect by January 1, 1998, is unreasonable and reinforces the image of a local government in flux. The political and regulatory processes will also be in transition. Taken as a whole, we believe this transition period will be one of great uncertainty for business. In the short term, we believe investment and job creation are likely to decline as businesses will unwillingly gamble their investments on such a shifting environment.

The government's own estimates of potential savings are vague and limited by a number of qualifiers. The consultants take great care to emphasize that the actual savings will depend on careful management of the transition process. I note that the minister has recently been quoted as saying these actual savings may now be less than initially estimated by roughly 50%. Whatever the number turns out to be, it can only be determined at the end of the transition process after the estimates have been done. For now, we are asked to accept the government's estimate as the rationale for amalgamation.

The government suggests that the centralization of management functions and other operating efficiencies will generate these savings. The government's estimate suggests a 10% reduction in total employment after amalgamation. That of course is of the municipal forces. However, centralized management will require a local presence to deliver services across the city. The new city won't keep all its parks crews and snowplows downtown. While it may be true that the responsibility for delivering services may become clearer, the bureaucratic structure which actually delivers the service may not significantly change.

The government has suggested that a fundamental reason for amalgamating the area municipalities is to make the political process more open and accountable to residents. The legislation currently provides for a council comprised of 44 members and neighbourhood committees advising each councillor. Without the community council's ability to share some parts of the workload, it's difficult to imagine that one councillor can effectively deal with the volume of work currently undertaken by seven.

For example, each of the area municipalities currently reviews development applications, official plan and zoning amendments and committee-of-adjustment applications. The Planning Act requires that these matters be heard by council or a committee of council established under the act. The land use committees or their equivalent in the area municipalities currently meet for a total of three and a half days every two weeks to deal with development applications. More than 180 official plan and zoning applications were dealt with in 1995 alone. Assuming that half of the 180 official plan and zoning applications require a public meeting under the Planning Act, the council will be required to hold more than 90 public meetings, or at least three meetings every two weeks throughout the year, just to deal with these applications. There were also 385 site plan control applications and 2,600 variances processed by the area municipalities in 1995.

How will one council or one delegated planning committee deal with this volume of work while remaining responsive to the needs of the communities? How will a council ever find the time to listen to and consider the views of the residents?

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We believe the workload alone will lead to the standardization of the development review processes, the implementation of uniform property standard provisions and a loss of sensitivity to local issues and identity. Community planning and the many other issues which will face the new council will decline as one size fits all.

Since smaller councils develop more intimate knowledge of the issues which are important to the community and are more accountable to the electorate, we believe it would be more difficult to achieve consensus within a large council on important issues. Clearly, the new council will need some mechanism to stay in touch with its residents and businesses. However, the community council structure seems to us in many ways to simply replicate the current division of responsibilities on many issues between Metro and the local municipalities.

We do not believe that having community councils and the city council with different responsibilities will be any less confusing and more efficient to residents and businesses than the current structure. The legislation provides for the appointment of neighbourhood committees which will advise directly elected councillors. Since the councillors will essentially be dealing with roughly twice the number of constituents as they currently represent, they will very likely be unable to deal directly with their electorate. They will come to rely on their neighbourhood committee representatives to present the views and concerns of the residents and businesses.

When an issue arises, a resident will presumably have to appear before the neighbourhood committee to obtain support, then appear before the community council for a recommendation, and finally appear before the city council for a final decision. This does not indicate that the total amalgamation of the local municipalities will achieve a more responsive and accountable political structure.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to present council's views. However, the minister's statements that the bill will not be substantially amended have given cause for some reservation about this committee's ability or willingness to recommend meaningful changes to the legislation.

If Bill 103 is supported by this committee, we would ask (1) that the transition to a megacity be transparent to the residents; (2) that services, including development control, the issuing of building permits, libraries and recreation programs, continue to be delivered in a local facility; and (3) that any structure proposed should maximize service response and minimize time and travel costs for both consumers and staff.

Once a decision in favour of amalgamation is made, it will be very difficult to undo. We believe the government owes us the time to evaluate other options more completely. Let's get it right the first time and not assume we might get it right as we go along.

I'd like to add some things to that. My own thoughts on the governance of the Metropolitan Toronto region were originally that I preferred the double-direct type of regional council. The only thing I thought was that the regional council should be somewhat bigger than it is now. What I envisioned was that it would take in Mississauga, Vaughan, Pickering and some of the urbanized areas around Metropolitan Toronto which I believe are sharing in a lot of the things the taxpayers of Metropolitan Toronto pay for. I think when we initially started this exercise the thing was to try to eliminate the hole in the doughnut, or to make a situation where that didn't occur, and to level the playing field.

In Etobicoke we've made it very hard. We, first off, have a large majority of the commercial-industrial tax base in Metropolitan Toronto, but we are bounded on one side by Mississauga and on the north side by Vaughan. Our geographic situation is that we're north and south, but narrow, and so it was very easy for our businesses to transfer over to Mississauga. Consequently, we lost a lot. We had a lot of old industry that needed to have new locations. Of course, off they went to places like Mississauga. Part of the reason, though, was the tax situation. All the mayors were pushing to have this level playing field.

That brings us to the situation of taxation of the new megacity, if in fact that comes about. It can't be done in any way that would increase taxes in the Metropolitan Toronto area, thereby defeating the very reason we started to do this. I would ask you to give consideration to the fact that whenever any changes are made in the taxation system, they come out to be revenue-neutral and certainly don't put us in a worse situation than when we started here.

I mentioned this double-direct election to a regional council. I also envision that the local councils would be downsized, that the responsibilities done by the municipal governments would be turned over to the government most suited and most able to do that and provide the service in the most economic and efficient way.

Also, things like the school board might be given consideration to be combined with council so it could be run the way we run our boards of health and our library boards, with a combination of citizens and councillors, and thereby help reduce the cost and get some of the efficiencies you're trying to get with the megacity, where you're trying to get accountability on fewer people.

I guess, unfortunately, the views I have expressed have been considered but certainly aren't being put forward.

I'm also concerned that if we do go to the megacity, the local identity is going to suffer a bit. I come from Long Branch and my dad still lives in Long Branch. That was taken over by Etobicoke in 1967. I guess it was a difficult time for the people who lived there at the time, but in the end Long Branch is still Long Branch and it really has operated very similarly to what it did.

The thing with Etobicoke is that it's not Long Branch. Long Branch had 10,000 people; Etobicoke has 320,000 people. We have a lot of community things that go on there that centre around a focal point. In a lot of cases the focal point, I believe, is the mayor and the council. We have our Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame. It's one of the best in the province and maybe in the country. People are always coming to us, asking us how we did it and how does it operate and how could they formulate something along those lines. I'm afraid that if there isn't a council thrust behind a program like this, it might fall by the wayside.

We have other things. We have ecumenical breakfasts built around our churches. It's called the Mayor's Ecumenical Breakfasts. Those people are concerned that if there's no focal point, how is this going to continue? We have the Mayor's Tournament for Heart and Stroke golf. If there's no focal point, will that continue? We have Arts Etobicoke and the Mayor's Luncheon for the Arts. There's a whole host of things that function around council and around the mayor and that official spot. Of course, there are all the requests for ribbon-cuttings and anniversary attendances and so on, where they want an official representing the community to be there. I think one mayor throughout this whole region is going to have a very difficult job trying to ever fulfil those responsibilities.

Under the system that I think has been set up, and I haven't seen it in Bill 103 but it certainly was mentioned by the minister when he made the announcement, he proposes there will be six districts and in those districts there'll be seven or eight wards. Those councillors elected in those wards are going to appoint one of their own to be the chair of that division, and that person will then sit on the executive body of the new city. I think that person should be elected and that person, if elected, would have the support of the community to carry on those things I've just mentioned.

Anybody who's running would be free to run for that spot as well. I suggest it could be done with a double ballot. The residents would be asked to tick off who their councillor was going to be. They would then be asked to tick off any of those who have declared they want to run for chair. Of course, if you're going to run for chair, you have to run throughout the whole area, as well as in the area you have to be represented. That way, accountability comes to the system.

If it's left up to appointments, I could see where three councillors might get together. If they could find a fourth one who's not interested in being the chair to support them, they could take a turn at a year each. It'll be insignificant to the community. It would be something like the chair of our administration committee or our general committee or any of our committees at council now. People, unless they appear before them, don't even know who they are. It wouldn't carry the same authority or respect in the community and enable that person to be able to continue these things that make up our local identities.

I would just ask the government, if it's going to go ahead with this, to please give serious consideration to allowing that district chairperson to be elected. If you did that, it would go somewhat towards keeping local identities intact and even soften the changeover.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Holyday. We have a little over three minutes per caucus for questions.

Mr Holyday: Oh, I had one other thing I meant to do before you start the questions, another thing I was concerned with. We know the government's side of this. They've made it quite apparent. We know councils all over the world here have put proposals forward for this new scenario. But what I don't know is what are the scenarios put forward by the other two parties: the opposition and the third party. What I'd like to do is invite the leaders of the third party and the opposition to come to our council and tell us what they want.

We all know the status quo isn't acceptable. There's too much government, there are too many politicians, there's too much bureaucracy, duplication, inefficiencies, everything you want to name, so changes have to be made.

These people have an idea. We don't all agree with the idea, but I want to know what your ideas are, I want to know what your parties' ideas are, and I think the public should know what your parties' ideas are. I would like to invite you to come -- as a matter of fact I can even give you a date. It would be a week Monday at 10 o'clock in the morning. We'll give you as much time as you need and you can appear before the committee of the whole of Etobicoke council and tell us what your parties want to do, what you people would like to see.

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The Chair: Thank you, Mr Holyday. We're now stretching our three minutes for each caucus.

Mr Colle: Thank you very much, Mayor Holyday, for coming. I think you've made a very good point because it's very difficult in opposition ever to get -- as you know, the print media has been boosting the megacity from day one and we haven't had our two cents' worth, but basically I think as Liberals what we think is essentially what you're getting towards, the system of double-direct where Metro gets folded into the GTA, but you've got to have independent competing municipalities about approximate size throughout the GTA. It's basically the Golden-McCallion approach. I will be there on your invitation to further expand on that.

The question I have for you is what you're proposing in terms of this elected community council chairman, whatever -- and it's not in this bill, as you know. This is just conjecture. We haven't seen anything. Aren't you basically trying to go back to what exists now where you need someone locally who people can identify with and who can be involved in local issues, and at the same time connected with the bigger issues? Aren't they just trying to reinvent something that already exists? Shouldn't we basically just adjust and make the corrections to what we have?

Mr Holyday: I think you're only talking about one position here. What they're talking about, I guess, is blending the whole bureaucracy. I'm talking about a way to at least try to save some of the local identity, save some of the ongoing things the people in the community care about and give them a way to have a focal point to address their needs.

A lot of people, if they want to open a beauty salon, want the mayor there to come and open it. I don't know that that requires having separate bureaucracies, but it does require somebody who they're suggesting is going to be in place anyway, but I'm suggesting it would be done in a more community-oriented way where the community picks that person and they would have the responsibility of doing these official things in their area.

Mr Colle: The other thing is that the government keeps on saying: "The municipalities just offer marginal services. Most of Metro's services are amalgamated." They use this 72% figure, essentially forgetting that most of the 72% Metro spends is provincial dollars. Would you like to comment -- you've been at Metro, you've been locally -- in terms of what the local service provisions are and the duties locally compared to the sort of understanding and the impact on local communities about the Metro and the local level?

Mr Holyday: I think that in our community the people do appreciate the local service. We're going through some difficult times right now and I can tell you things are changing. When we first started taking phone calls about amalgamation, the calls were at least three to one opposing it. I can tell you they're not anywhere near that now. I don't know if that has to do with the ongoing situation in Etobicoke or whether that's commonplace throughout Metro.

We put forward the mayors' plan, which was to take the services and try to spread them around the municipalities and we would divvy up the cost. Scarborough would be in charge of one aspect and Etobicoke would have another one and so on. That, I thought, might have been workable at the time we presented the program, but once we got into this debate about having a referendum and all the different ideas that came forward on the referendum, it made me wonder, boy, if the mayors and the councils can't agree even on how to hold a referendum, it would be very difficult for them to agree on how to split up all the services.

Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): Mayor Holyday, you asked a fair question in terms of what our positions are as opposition parties. I think it's fair to tell you that we don't have a fully complete position, in part because we don't believe this is the kind of issue on which you can just overnight come up with a position and say this is what it should be, but we have some basic principles we would follow.

The first is that, as both the Golden report and the Crombie report found, what we should be doing, first of all, is addressing the issue of the GTA as a city region. I think they are complimentary to what you were saying about creating that body, probably not just as a service board but eventually as a form of government that would become the regional government that would be responsible for those services that need to be governed and coordinated at that level, and then within that looking at the local municipalities in terms of what changes, if any, should be made both in terms of delivery of services and even the question around boundaries.

That's sort of the context we would set, but clearly I want to emphasize that we would not do it in this kind of haphazard way of rushing through for the sake of meeting some crazy deadline that's been set by the government on its own without any sense of what it's doing. Maybe if I can go from that into a question --

Mr Holyday: I thought that was a question. I was going to answer it.

Mr Silipo: Go ahead.

Mr Holyday: It's difficult to accept that it's been overnight. When this started, I think your party was in the government at that time, maybe two years ago or better now; that was with the Golden report. I recall that even during the last municipal election, this was a big issue then, and shortly thereafter I recall the mayors' meeting with Alan Tonks, and then we met with people from your government and staff people too. As a result of that and as a result of discussions with the board of trade and others, the Golden commission was set up. That certainly wasn't overnight; that's gone on for quite some time. I guess I am a little surprised that there isn't any position coming forward from your party that --

Mr Silipo: But you'll recall that the Golden commission, under our government, was also going to be given more time to get into some of these other issues. It's clear that had we been the government, it would have continued and we would have dealt with the results of those recommendations. I'm not telling you anything differently on that score.

Mr Holyday: The other thing is about the time frame. Here we are now in a situation where we've got to go the balance of the year, and if these changes are to occur -- well, something is happening, of course -- we're in the situation of being in limbo. To let that go on for a year or two, with elected people sitting there not knowing if they're going to be elected at the end of this or what the new terms of the government are going to be, I think would be totally improper. Because of the timing of the municipal elections, your time frame is narrow, and if you're going to do something, you've got to act. You can't keep putting it off and waiting forever.

Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): Mayor Holyday, why do you suspect that the mayors' original proposal made to Minister Leach prior to Christmas isn't being focused on even in the so-called referendum debate? Do you, as one of the signatories of the proposal made in early December, still subscribe to most of the ideas in it?

Mr Holyday: As I mentioned, at the time we did that, we had to come up with an alternative to one big city, and then we had to work out how we could handle the responsibilities of Metro, which I guess was the same situation and problem the government was faced with. We thought the method we put forward was workable.

As I mentioned, after seeing what took place with the referendum and the debate around that one issue, which isn't a major issue compared to the handling of all these services, everybody went every which way. People changed their mind two or three times. Some people were going to have a full-fledged vote on it, with polling stations and ballots, and then they were going to have a mail-in. It's all over the lot.

I think we're in this situation, from a municipal standpoint, because we couldn't agree. My council wants one thing, Scarborough council wants another thing, the city of Toronto and North York want another thing. There were so many scenarios proposed within Metropolitan Toronto that we actually didn't have a position. We, by that, virtually turned it over to somebody else.

Mr Hastings: Do you believe that the question or questions posed in the so-called referendum are clear, concise and very comprehensively stated for all the voters in Metro Toronto so that when they go to the polls everybody knows what they're voting for?

Mr Holyday: I didn't support doing the referendum the way it's been proposed. I could see the scenario you're talking of; the fact that if you're only dealing with one question, you're not dealing with the problem. As a matter of fact, the problem doesn't come down to one question. There is a series of questions, and if you put them all on the ballot you'd come back with so many answers you wouldn't know what to do. I didn't support spending the $300,000 in Etobicoke on a referendum.

The Chair: Mr Ford, you'll have to be quick.

Mr Douglas B. Ford (Etobicoke-Humber): I'm going to try to be quick. I just wanted to point out to Mayor Holyday that I perceive this as being equity across the board. Toronto is the heart of Ontario, possibly the heart of Canada, as I see it, and this government has to take care of all our people across this province. That's why we're in this bit of a dilemma with the mergers of the cities: to give equity across the board in the tax base. Not only that, the various cities, which are broken up now, are competing head-on with one another and trying to cannibalize the industries in those townships.

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When some of those townships grow on the outer skirts of the GTA, they take away some of the businesses in the present cities. Consequently, that leaves a problem for that city in its tax base for its residents and for its commercial value. That's the same thing that's happening in downtown Toronto. I can understand the concern with the people in Toronto, because this government's priority is taking care of all the people across Ontario.

Interruption.

The Chair: Order.

Mr Ford: You can say "Shame," but I have been here 64 years. Everybody else who has been here that length of time, bought their home and built a business, let them say, "Shame."

The Chair: Mr Ford, you weren't that quick. Mr Holyday won't have an opportunity to answer.

I want to thank you for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.

Ladies and gentlemen, we can do this with an audience or without an audience. I've asked politely several times over the last six days to hold your comments to yourselves when members of the committee are talking to witnesses. If you can't do that, we'll have to do that without an audience.

Interruption.

The Chair: Order. It's the last thing I ever want to do. I've been very fair to this point; I think you all agree with that. But I cannot tolerate shouting down of members of this committee and I won't, so don't let that happen again.

DUDLEY PAUL

The Chair: Would Dudley Paul please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Mr Dudley Paul: My name is Dudley Paul. I am a constituent of ward 12 in the city of Toronto, where I live with my wife and two sons. I have come before this committee today to voice my opposition to Bill 103, something which I suppose won't surprise most people in this room, and my opposition to the amalgamation of the six local governments in Metro into one enormous city government, the megacity.

I'd like to start by saying I am a teacher in the city of York, which is arguably one of the most multicultural parts of the country. The diversity of needs are great in this city, with its many transient and stressed families, people who have just arrived in this country, often from war-torn parts of the world, families which need the support of an accessible local government.

Last year, I worked with a family of people who had just arrived from Mogadishu, Somalia. Because they were on the wrong side of the conflict that has raged there for years, the children were unable to get the proper medical attention they needed. Both children were mostly blind, suffering from a debilitating eye disease. They weren't attending school. Their parents and caregivers simply didn't know what to do to get them there or to get them the help they needed.

At about 130,000 people, the city of York is fairly small, about the right size for a city, I think. As a result, it was reasonably easy to make the connections needed to help these children get medical attention, to assess what they needed for school and get the assistance for them to negotiate their way, both throughout the school, which they obviously needed because they couldn't see, and also for the curriculum.

It was easy to make the right phone calls so their parents could get help with translation. This was a case where both Metro and the city of York worked together to do what was needed. This is just one example of many instances where a reasonably small, albeit imperfect, bureaucracy works. Cooperation between Metro, local governments and school boards occurs every day to make this city more livable.

So I pose the inevitable question: Why? Why is it necessary to bring on such radical legislation as Bill 103? What justification is there for it? Are we facing a crisis which threatens the safety of citizens of this city, of this province? No, I don't think so.

Justification for this legislation seems to revolve around ending duplication of services and streamlining them. Is such radical legislation needed to streamline services? Is it worth the potential chaos? I think not. Streamlining of services can be easily managed under current municipalities and municipal structures.

Another justification for Bill 103 seems to be that it may save money. I think it will more likely cost us more. Even Mr R. Hikel, the author of the government-sponsored KPMG report, noted, "There's been no amalgamation of which I am aware, in the current fiscal environment, that would demonstrate the certainty of savings in Metro Toronto." He also noted, "It's possible that the amalgamation could produce significantly lower savings than we talked about or even a negative result, a net increase in expenditures." Savings, if there are any, will come at the cost of up to 4,500 jobs at all levels of local government.

Citing US census data, Wendell Cox, author and consultant, has reported that amalgamated cities of over a million people spend about 30% more than average-sized cities per capita and 152% more than cities with populations of between 100,000 and 500,000. Even the US government, as long ago as 1987, reversed its support for metropolitan amalgamation.

Also, when we look at the effects of downloading approximately $1.6 billion in welfare, social housing and other costs on to the new megacity, expenses will balloon. About 27% of the 573,000 Ontario families on social assistance live in Metro. The potential for increased costs which the new megacity will have to bear in difficult times is enormous. We can expect taxes to increase anywhere from 15% to 30%. We can expect that services will be cut. Neighbour will be pitted against neighbour as interests collide.

It seems to me to be pretty thin justification for the damage done to local democracy in this city by Bill 103. It's democracy that I would like to talk about now.

Under Bill 103, there will be 44 councillors and one mayor to represent 2.3 million citizens, a population larger than five Canadian provinces. Each councillor will represent anywhere from 32,000 to 52,000 people. Under conditions like that, I don't believe there is any way that councillors can maintain adequate contact with their constituents and become involved with the issues that affect them. I don't see how they can be accountable to the people who live in their wards.

In fact, this sort of ratio is closer to that of the federal ridings on which the new wards would be based. We don't expect federal politicians to keep in touch with the day-to-day issues that affect people's lives, like those people in ward 12 where I live. But we should expect local politicians to be available. With 44 councillors and one mayor, I think the whole nature of local government, with its greater accessibility and accountability, is jeopardized. In this way, Bill 103 is an experiment in municipal governance, with no great justification and certainly no study as to whether it will be any better than what we have now.

This experiment brings an astonishing cut to governance, one which should demand considerable discussion and debate, yet legislation is being pushed through at the pace of an express train. There is little opportunity for reflection, and I would like to speak about that next.

Other than the hastily prepared KPMG report, there have been no other studies, to my knowledge, which support the megacity as we see it today in Bill 103. The Golden task force recommended ways to combat regional fragmentation, linking Metro to cities and towns in the greater Toronto area. The Metro task force, the Trimmer report, recommended eliminating the Metro level of government, not amalgamating all the municipalities within it. The Who Does What panel did not explicitly recommend amalgamation. While panel chair David Crombie favoured amalgamation himself, even he stated that amalgamation must be tied to a carefully planned regional structure, not pushed through with little thought to the consequences, as seems to be what's happening with Bill 103.

Bill 103 represents a reversal on the part of Premier Harris. Responding to questions posed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation before the 1995 election, he said he would not eliminate local governments. Yet less than two years later, we have just that with the proposed megacity.

Finally, I would like to talk about the trustees and transition team described in Bill 103. I believe these are the most deplorable aspects of this legislation. Here we have the imposition, before this legislation was given even first reading, of a panel of three appointed trustees, with the power to limit spending of local governments to under $50,000. Under restrictions imposed by Bill 103, a local council may not transfer money between reserve funds, appoint a person to a position or hire a new employee without the approval of these appointed trustees. Incredibly, these trustees are not accountable, for according to subsection 12(1) of the bill, "The decisions of the board of trustees are final and shall not be reviewed by a court." They may not talk to the press. They are not subject to the questions of the general public.

The transition team, another group of appointees, will have the power to decide on the organization and staffing of this new megacity. They may demand city documents, hire department heads, and recommend the rationalization and integration of services across this megacity. Incredibly, under subsection 18(1), the decisions of this group of appointees may not be reviewed by the courts.

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In conclusion, it seems to me that a government which would introduce this legislation has little concern about the effects of its decisions. Perhaps the government's belief in its ultimate common sense has blinded it to the fact that it must not introduce legislation which is fundamentally opposed to democracy, which strips the powers of locally elected governments for the sake of convenience, which shackles them, as the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing said the other night, "to be on the safe side." It seems to me that a government which places its notion of common sense before reason and the common good promotes dictatorship, not democracy.

For that reason, I respectfully urge the members of this committee to recommend the withdrawal of Bill 103.

Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): Thank you very much for coming down and making a presentation to us. I have a couple of brief questions. During the election campaign and in the Common Sense Revolution, they mentioned nothing with respect to the megacity or all the dumping. Do you believe that if Mike Harris had said something to that effect prior to the election, during the campaign, the people would have voted him in?

Mr Paul: That's speculative. I think it's a bad idea. I can't imagine why people would vote for something like this. It makes no sense to me at all.

Mr Sergio: Another question, since time is of the essence here: We have been telling the government that the figures they provided with the introduction of the legislation were wrong. On January 23, even our leader said there is a $1-billion discrepancy in there. "Where is it? Give us the information, give us the figures." They said: "It is not so. Our figures are correct."

Now we have a government official, a deputy, saying they haven't been telling all the facts. Do you believe the people of Ontario are losing faith in this government when not all the facts have been put on the table?

Mr Paul: I can speak for myself and most of the people that I talk to. I'm quite involved with teachers' federations and parent groups, mostly people concerned with education. I don't know anybody in that constituency that supports this government or the megacity.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs Julia Munro): Thank you very much. You've exceeded the time. I appreciate your coming before us today.

WALTER PITMAN

The Vice-Chair: Could I have Mr Pitman, please. Good morning and welcome to the standing committee.

Mr Walter Pitman: Thank you very much. First, thank you for giving me this opportunity to address this committee. I'm not going to spend a great deal of time on the bill itself. I can say that I feel the same outrage and frustration and fury about the way in which this process is going on and what appears to be the only outcome available. I, like so many other speakers this morning, would say that really the only procedure for this committee is to withdraw the bill.

I'm going to make a very personal commitment this morning, and that is simply to indicate the fact that as one person from Toronto, who was born in Toronto, who has lived here for most of his life, I see the destruction of a great city. I left Toronto for a number of years, returned, and within a year I was asked to head up a commission to look at racism in this city. Paul Godfrey was concerned about the number of East Indians who were being beaten up on subways. It became very clear that it was not a matter of the subways; dealing with safety and security on the subways was very easy indeed. It was a matter of dealing with the fact that half the people who come from other countries to Canada come to Toronto, and half of those who don't come immediately end up in Toronto. In other words, we have this magnificent city, this racially diverse city, which has managed to attract more people of different cultures, different religions, different colours than any other city in the world, with perhaps less racial violence than any other city in the world.

That is tied to governance. What we discovered when we did our report, Now Is Not Too Late, is that every municipality in Toronto dealt with it differently but dealt with it appropriately, and as a result, we have the kind of city we can now be proud of, the kind of city that the United Nations revels in; it indeed suggests to other cities around the world that they should come to Toronto to see how it has been done here.

I teach a course now for an organization called Elderhostel. It brings people from all over the continent to learn about Toronto. It's a course on Toronto. People come from every city on this continent and they are amazed by the city. They couldn't believe what was going on in the papers last fall, when we talked about, in a sense, destroying what they believe is the magic. It corroborates exactly what Fortune magazine has said about this city: that it is extraordinary, unique and has to be nurtured rather than destroyed.

As I said, I left Toronto for about 20 years, for professional reasons. I came back to discover that I was now in a city that was an artistic marvel. We are the second city in North America artistically. We have far more arts here than Chicago or San Francisco. You can name any of the American cities other than New York. We're the third English-speaking city in terms of the arts in the entire world. That happened because of the kind of city we are. We were able to use the centre of the city, where obviously the artistic activity was going on, and develop that, at the same time making sure there was arts activity going on in the other cities around. It was able to be done appropriately.

I want to suggest to you today that governance is the essential reason we have the kind of city we have every reason to be proud of and are told by people around the world to be proud of. We do have problems, but they are not being dealt with by this bill.

Ironically, the term "megacity," for anyone who's looking at worldwide development, is a suggestion of horror. When we talk about megacities, we're talking about the Mexico Citys, with 20 million people. We're looking at maybe 20 or 30 of those kinds of megacities, certainly in the southern hemisphere, in the next 50 years. What people are saying is that they will be the hell-holes of this planet in the 21st century.

Here we are talking about a megacity in Toronto, when we have a city of communities, of neighbourhoods, where people can come to know each other and know each other's problems. We want to talk about a megacity in that kind of a context? We've got to get rid of this global preoccupation tied to the moral imperative of technology. We must stop being the pawn of multinational corporations who for some reason think megacities are a part of that total plan for the planet which will bring about that kind of world which will be dehumanized, even though it may be financially and commercially advantageous to a few.

I would suggest that doing it in the name of lower costs is no reason at all. We've talked about Golden, we've talked about Crombie. We have a treasure in this city, and her name is Jane Jacobs. She knows more about cities and the way they develop on this planet than perhaps any other person. What she says is that it will not cost less. She knows that. She says it will dehumanize, will destroy the glory of this city which has developed over the last century and a half.

I'll say just a word about what I see as the diminishing of democracy. Democracy is going to have a hard time in the next 50 years. We thought when the Berlin Wall fell that democracy would flourish. What we're discovering is that we have another threat -- someone has already mentioned the Soros article -- the threat of unleashed capitalism. That is one of the major problems we have. I see no reason to put more politicians out on the street, no reason to have 4,000 or 5,000 civil servants on the street. We've bashed civil servants, we've bashed politicians, we've bashed the democratic process, and we've destroyed the faith of people in the way we do things together, which we call government. To do that, I would suggest to you, is a very dangerous thing indeed. This bill -- I'm not going to go through the individual parts of it -- is an attack on our whole concept of people governing themselves in their own best interests and the interests of the people around them.

Listen to John Ralston Saul. Read his Massey lectures and what they say about the nature of our society if we allow this kind of development to carry on. We're just three years from the 21st century and we have many real problems to face. One of them, of course, is economics. I am embarrassed by the number of people I see with their hands out as I walk down Yonge Street every day. We are not dealing with that problem. What we've discovered is that the global economy is not going to provide jobs for people; it's a job-poor economy. We now realize that we've got to develop local economic development. We've got to devise ways whereby people can be used to do the things that have to be done, to serve each other, to serve the environment, in a sense to knit that society together.

This kind of development is in direct opposition to everything we know that would make things better in terms of local economic development. Strengthen your local governments. Give them more power. Believe me, I know exactly how governments can do that. For a number of years I was involved with the university world. You can use the fiscal power of government to get cities to cooperate and to get them to do the things you think have to be done. That's an example.

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For a couple of years recently I found myself chairing the Interim Waste Authority. I took more abuse in two years than I had taken in a lifetime. So I know that local governments can't do everything; that's why the Golden report, and that's why Crombie is so concerned about the development of a greater Toronto authority. You can't deal with garbage on a local neighbourhood basis. Nobody wants it in their neighbourhood and no politician is going to survive a day -- just look at the political effect of my colleagues' activities. We managed to get rid of virtually every government member there was in the 905 area, as the Liberals lost their seats in the 905 area in trying to solve that problem too. In other words, it's politically impossible to do certain things at a neighbourhood level.

That's why you're going to have to deal with this on a greater Toronto authority level. That involves transportation and a whole series of things. That, it seems to me, is the area you should be looking at immediately: strengthening your larger area, strengthening your local development. By doing that, you will save the environment for the children of the future.

I am ashamed about the fact that Toronto, this great city, in the sense that everybody looks at us as the greatest in the world, doesn't look after its own garbage. It sends it to the United States. It sells it to the United States, and the cost is horrendous. When the present government decided we'd get rid of the whole responsibility for garbage, it added $100 million to the debt of this province in one stroke simply by getting rid of everything that had been done to ensure environmental responsibility, a direction that would have provided some way, until better technology can deal with waste, that we at least look after our own waste in our own community, as opposed to the imperialist system of sending it to somebody else.

The Chair: I'd ask you to wind up. We've come to the end.

Mr Pitman: There seems to be a Canadian perception that anything worth doing must be done somewhere else. It's a colonial concept that the best cannot possibly be here in Canada. Well, Toronto is the best city in the world. We have a right to be proud of that and we have a right to do everything we can to stop the irreparable damage that will be done by this bill.

The Chair: Thank you very much, sir, for coming forward today.

KAREN STONE

The Chair: Would Karen Stone please come forward. Good morning and welcome to the committee.

Ms Karen Stone: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak before you on the City of Toronto Act, Bill 103.

Let me begin by giving you some information about myself. I came to Canada from Great Britain with my parents when I was six months old. My earliest memories are of Toronto. When I was eight, my family moved to the United States. For 13 years I lived away from Canada and for most of those 13 years I missed my home. When the first opportunity to return to Toronto came, I took it, and I've lived here ever since. I may not have been born in Canada, but this is my home.

It is for this reason and others that I support Bill 103. I have always believed that Toronto is a great city and I believe that unifying the seven local governments will make Toronto even greater. I have heard comparisons that if Toronto is unified, the city core will become like some major American cities, such as New York or Los Angeles. I would like to remind people that those cities, even if Toronto were unified, are still considerably larger than Toronto. Toronto's population would be 2.3 million. New York's population is over 10 million, as is that of Los Angeles. Additionally, New York and Los Angeles have very different demographic patterns from Toronto.

Toronto also has an advantage over most American cities in that its citizens appear to be determined to maintain their neighbourhoods, regardless of municipal boundaries. For example, Greektown extends through both North York and East York. Chinatown covers the existing city of Toronto and the city of York. How, then, would unification weaken these communities' identities?

I have also heard local councillors say that they're the people who get things done in a community. If that were so, wouldn't you think I would know who my local councillor is? If my local councillor really did get things done in my community, why isn't he knocking on my door to ask how I feel about local services or holding town meetings to keep me advised of ongoing issues?

Interruption.

The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen.

Ms Stone: I find it disconcerting that my local councillors are eager to hold meetings for issues that they don't like, and yet I don't hear from them when there is an issue they do like. I am one of the people of Toronto who would like to be kept informed on all of the issues, not just the ones my local councillors disagree with.

In doing some research and while attending community meetings, I have been told that the regional government of Metropolitan Toronto currently provides almost 75% of the services that we receive right now. The aim of Bill 103 is to continue to provide those services as well as provide the remaining 25% of services that the municipalities currently provide.

In attending community meetings this week, I have heard speakers opposed to Bill 103 say that municipal governments compete to provide better services at better rates than others and that implementing Bill 103 would remove the incentive to compete. I agree with the opponents to Bill 103 when they say that municipal governments compete with each other. However, it is not to provide better services.

I have never seen any marketing by a municipality to say that their local services are better than in others. I have seen in the news items about the outrageous expense accounts that councillors have municipal governments pay. Those expense accounts are paid by my tax dollars, and I have to say I resent someone expecting me to pay for things like $200 dinners or evenings at strip clubs.

I am a member of a board of directors for a condominium corporation. Can anyone honestly tell me that I would remain a member of the board if I expected the owners of the corporation to pay for dinners out or for extravagant expense claims?

I heard it said at a community meeting last night that a larger regional government would lose touch with its taxpayers. Isn't that what the community councils and volunteer neighbourhood committees would be for? If an issue is important enough, these councils and committees would have the strength to go to the regional government and suggest options and solutions for problems within the communities. Additionally, volunteer committees would be more community-oriented than paid politicians. I believe if you're dedicated enough and you believe in your community, you shouldn't need to be paid. Being a member of a neighbourhood committee should be an issue of wanting the best for your community, not how much you get reimbursed for your time.

Recently the media carried the issue of smoking bylaws in restaurants. None of the existing municipalities came up with consistent rules about smoking. In some restaurants you could smoke if your maximum capacity was a certain level. In others you could only smoke if you were in a separate environment, such as another room. In still others you couldn't smoke in a restaurant, period. What sense does this make? No wonder no one liked the non-smoking bylaws; there was no consistency. One government would provide the consistency that providing efficient and effective service needs.

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People keep saying that six municipalities provide better service than one, because their service would be local. I'm confused.

Interruption.

The Chair: Order.

Ms Stone: When I go grocery shopping, I don't go to six different stores to get my milk, my meat, my bread, my fruit and vegetables, my non-perishables or my household products; I go to one store. It saves me time and it saves me money.

One point that seems to be getting lost in this issue is that unification would not happen overnight. People in Toronto would not suddenly wake up one morning to find that their community is now part of a unified Toronto. It would take until 1998 to make the transition to a unified city and it would take the cooperation of many people to make it happen.

I keep hearing that a transition team is like saying we don't trust the municipal councillors. To use an expression, hogwash. We need a transition team to make sure that key issues don't get missed. What one municipality provides exceptionally well may be something to keep in a unified city, while other municipalities may have other things that they also do exceptionally well. It is for this purpose that we need a transition team. How are we to know what to keep and what not to?

As well, the municipalities need the transition team to help them in determining how to improve service delivery. We've all heard the saying, "You can't see the forest for the trees." The same could be said for unifying Toronto. Each municipality is going to want to protect its communities, and well they should. But how do you protect your community and cooperate in providing an improved level of service? The best answer for that is a transition team. When you are having trouble making up your mind on an issue, do you just toss a coin or do you talk to someone who is objective and can offer you a different point of view?

I have learned that after unification, how services are delivered and where they are delivered will be determined based on the most efficient and economical method of providing those services. Decisions on services would not be limited to municipal boundaries that make no sense. Further, the new municipality would start with a clean slate and be able to use the best and most effective ideas for providing better service for less money.

If a service should continue to be provided locally, then that's what would happen. Some of those local services that could stay local would be things like day care, planning, construction permits, libraries and recreation. It seems to me that if these services are staying local, what change would I notice? I would still be able to dial 911 to get a fire truck, an ambulance or the police. My garbage would still be picked up, my streets would still be cleaned and snow would still be cleared.

I have heard people say that the government is moving too fast, that change doesn't have to happen today. I would ask, if not now, when? Restructuring Toronto has been a topic of discussion for 20 years. The issue of change has been studied by Anne Golden, David Crombie and others. We can't keep talking about how to make Toronto better without actually doing something about it.

The government was elected primarily on the basis that it would do what it said it would do. Are we now, the people who elected this government, going to condemn the government for doing what we want it to do? I have always heard people say that politicians are hypocrites and not to be trusted. Why is it that when a politician actually does what he says he will do, the voters are still not satisfied?

A point for people to remember --

The Chair: Ms Stone, I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up. We've come to the end of your allotted time.

Ms Stone: Yes. Canada is a parliamentary democracy. That means that when you have a majority government, you have the power to implement your policies. It is to the Premier's and to Minister Leach's credit that the public is being consulted at all. If we wanted a dictatorship, we should have kept the New Democrats. Their social contract had considerably less input than the City of Toronto Act.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Stone. I'm sorry to interrupt, but we've gone beyond your allotted time. I want to thank you on behalf of the committee for coming forward and making your presentation today.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don't think I should have to remind you that if someone comes before this committee, they should not feel in any way intimidated or uncomfortable because the people in the audience don't agree with their viewpoint. I'm not going to allow people to come before this committee and feel that way. I'm also not going to let members on either side be hooted down or hollered at, as happened before.

We can do it with an audience or without an audience, as I said before. I can't pick people out who are sitting at the back making catcalls and clapping, so I'm not going to start trying to do that. We'll just ask everyone to leave. So please refrain from that participation. I've said that several times. I see a lot of people nodding out there, because you know that that's the case. Thank you very much for heeding that.

Would Mr John Sewell please come forward.

Mr John Sewell: Mr Chairman, I understand a bell usually rings at four minutes to 12. Is that going to happen?

The Chair: Mr Sewell, what I might suggest is, we're going to have a bell probably in about two minutes. If you prefer not to start, we can just go and the members can vote. All members have to have the opportunity to vote. As soon as we come back from that vote, we'll begin your presentation, and then Elizabeth Hill's.

Mr Sewell: What time would that be?

The Chair: As quickly as we can get in there and then have the vote.

Mr Sewell: Is that 10 minutes, 15 minutes, something like that?

The Chair: Five minutes, probably.

Mr Sewell: Okay, sure.

The Chair: Is that acceptable to all committee members? So we'll recess until after the vote.

The committee recessed from 1156 to 1207.

The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats and put an end to your conversations. Order, please. If you're going to have conversations, have them in the hall.

JOHN SEWELL

The Chair: Welcome, Mr Sewell. You have 10 minutes this afternoon to make your presentation.

Mr John Sewell: I have lived my whole life in Toronto and am proud to have played a part in the city's political life.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs and other members of the government have said Bill 103 is about amalgamation, and their remarks have addressed issues around that subject. I believe the arguments made by the government are shallow, not supported by experience in other urban areas, and that amalgamation will do substantial damage to an urban area which, while not without problems, works reasonably well.

But the few minutes allowed for my presentation do not permit me the luxury of discussing the amalgamation issue. I want to talk about the sections of the bill that are part of another agenda about which apparently the government dares not speak publicly, an agenda which you, as members of the government party, are expected to support.

Take sections 12, 13 and 18, for instance. These sections state that organizations appointed under this legislation, organizations which have power comparable to or in excess of existing municipal councils, are exempt from the rule of law. I am referring to the board of trustees and the transition team, the decisions of both being final and, as these sections state, "shall not be reviewed or questioned by a court."

Suppose the board of trustees or the transition team decide, as they are clearly permitted to do in the sweeping powers given them in this bill, to cancel a contract which someone has with the municipality. These sections mean that the aggrieved party has no remedy in the courts. Suppose the transition team decides to fire a staff person who objects to the havoc being wreaked by the team. These sections mean the aggrieved party has no remedy in the courts. Suppose the trustees decide to help themselves to municipal funds. These sections mean that they can get away with any nefarious behaviour they want, since their decisions are final and may not be "reviewed or questioned by a court."

I want to ask each of you a question: When you ran for office, did you ever imagine you would be asked to establish an appointed body that was beyond the reach of the courts and of our legal system? I'll bet most of you only thought that kind of thing happened in Communist countries where the leaders said it was in everyone's interest to establish strong governing bodies that would not be distracted by individuals who tried to press for their personal rights in court.

What you have found, probably as much to your surprise as to the rest of us, is that the leaders of the party to which you belong now demand, here in Ontario, in Canada, of all places, that either you support this totalitarian action or you be dismissed from the government. Something has gone dreadfully wrong for your leaders to ask you to be so unreasonable, so dictatorial, so revolutionary. Would your children or grandchildren think you wise to support such action? Or the members of your church? Of course not.

I will put this as kindly as I can. These sections have nothing to do with amalgamation; they are about tyranny and they demand your immediate repudiation. Do not follow the unreasonable demands of your leaders; reject them. Do not begin to go down this course that forsakes the rule of law.

Let me turn to sections 9, 10, 11, 16 and 17. These sections take decision-making away from locally elected councils and put it in the control of a provincially appointed board of trustees and a provincially appointed transition team. The effect of these sections was summed up by the person who supposedly knows most what this legislation is trying to do. Minister of Municipal Affairs Al Leach, in his December 17, 1996, letter to all councillors in Metro, wrote, "During 1997 you are still a member of a duly elected council with of the rights and duties that such a position entails except as concerns the financial management of the municipality."

Mr Leach did not say, "You will be penalized or prosecuted if you waste or fritter away the municipality's resources in the road to amalgamation." He could have said that, but he didn't. Instead, he removed all aspects of financial management from elected councillors and put them in the hands of people whom he personally appoints and who report privately to him.

These are very powerful sections. They dispense with elected councils because the government leaders have a better idea: They will appoint their own people to make the important decisions. Your leaders think that people who are elected to govern cities can't be trusted to do their bidding. Better to push them out of the way.

Perhaps some of your colleagues in the government will say this is an example of "direct democracy," which of course is what the parliamentary assistant to the Premier has recently written to many people about. Others would see this as part of a policy of drastically cutting down the number of politicians. But members of the public would not agree. I think they would call this the replacement of local democracy with dictatorship, and they would be right. Those who will make the decisions are not responsible to the city's citizens. They certainly aren't elected by them and they have no intention of listening to them, and unlike municipal councils, which can be taken to court, they are above the law. These characteristics have the smell of dictatorship and arbitrary decision-making.

Who would ever have suspected this kind of legislation would be proposed by government leaders in Ontario? How can you as individuals be part of this destruction of democracy? Not one of you ran for office on the platform that you would dispense with elected officials at another level of government because you thought dictatorship was better. Of course you didn't.

Each of you, I am sure, has a strong personal value system, one that is rooted in the idea of democracy. I'm sure of that. We want to hear from each of you personally reaffirming that value and denouncing these pernicious sections. Tell your leaders they are wrong and that as individuals you will not countenance legislation which puts our cities under the control of those who have all the characteristics of dictators in Communist countries.

Sections 14 and 20 state that the provincially appointed trustees are paid for by Metro property taxpayers, even though the province appoints them and they report to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. These sections offend against a very old principle: No taxation without representation.

How can you forge ahead with these sections which offend such a venerable democratic principle? Why would your leaders ever ask you to support something so offensive? I suspect you won't find very many members of the public willing to support these sections. The last time a government tried to impose taxation without representation in North America was in the 1830s, and that led to rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada.

Section 24 gives the Minister of Municipal Affairs, without notice or consultation, the power to make virtually any order he deems necessary or appropriate. This section is unusually blunt, indicating the minister may, and I quote from that section, "impose conditions on the exercise of the powers of an old council." This is straightforward autocracy, something that could be expected a few centuries ago. Now, as the 20th century draws to a close, you are being asked to again support this kind of nefarious behaviour.

You know as well as I do the saying of Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." The minister, the person you are being asked to support, is bound to misuse such far-reaching powers. Indeed, he already has. The minister has ordered that the board of trustees are not permitted to speak to the press. In doing so, he has reinforced the dictatorial nature of the board of trustees and his control over it. Do not support him. No one elected you to countenance this kind of autocracy. Reject these sections and this approach.

Time prevents me from making a full analysis of this bill. Were the government not so intent on hurrying the bill through this process, I would have had the opportunity to make a full presentation, a full one that this bill deserves. Indeed, were your leaders not in such a rush to enact this folly, all those who have asked to speak would have had the opportunity to do so.

But in the few minutes remaining, I wish to touch on one more matter: reserve funds. The bill makes but one mention of reserve funds, section 11, which restricts expenditures from reserves. Nothing in the bill protects reserve funds, which amount to over $1 billion in the Metro Toronto area.

Why are reserve funds not protected? Amalgamation proposals are always very specific about what happens to reserve funds. The minister's order for the Kingston amalgamation says reserve funds -- and it's very specific -- will be kept to be used only for the benefit of the taxpayers of the former cities in which the revenues were generated. Bill 103 gives no such assurances.

I hope your leaders will say this is an oversight to be quickly remedied by an amendment, but I fear the worst. I believe your leaders have their eye on this pile of money, either to use it to fund severance pay of the 4,500 staff they must dispense with if they wish to realize the savings they have touted, or simply to transfer it to provincial coffers to deal with your financial problems.

As a property taxpayer in Toronto, I am not willing to let you squander this money, although the legislation takes away my recourse through the courts. This bill prevents any legal action against the board of trustees or the transition team, the bodies which will take control of the reserve funds the very second this bill is given royal assent.

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Don't be a party to this theft. Do not support your leaders as they pull you down such a dishonourable path. Your leaders ask too much of you in Bill 103. They promise amalgamation, but they deliver autocracy and dictatorship. Do not support their wicked schemes. They have no place in Ontario. Stand up for your own values, the values of democracy and the rule of law which so many other Ontario residents share.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Sewell. We've gone well beyond the allotted time. I want to thank you for making a presentation today.

ELIZABETH HILL

The Chair: Our next presenter is Elizabeth Hill. Welcome, Ms Hill, to the committee.

Ms Elizabeth Hill: Thank you for the opportunity to present my views on Bill 103. I have three points to make about Bill 103: (1) it's undemocratic; (2) it's a tax grab; and (3) it must be stopped.

My name is Elizabeth Hill and I have lived in the city of York for 20 years. I have raised two sons there, and when they were young, I got involved in their schools. When I was 12 years old -- a long time ago -- I wrote a letter to the Toronto Star, and it was published, that if I were a school trustee, I would change things so that boys studied cooking and sewing and girls studied manual training. I saw things, in my view, that needed changing and at a very young age I felt I had the opportunity to be involved.

Well, I did run in an election, in ward 4. Ward 4 is roughly Dufferin to Caledonia and Rogers Road just north of Eglinton in the city of York. My friends and my sons helped me in that campaign. I spent about $1,000 and I was successful. I'm presently in my ninth year as a public school trustee representing the residents of ward 4. I saw public office as an opportunity to make a difference in my community. That opportunity for other residents and for future generations is being replaced by a megacity, mega-government, mega-bureaucracy, mega-expensive, mega-mistake with Bill 103.

Bill 103 is amalgamating six cities into one which is bigger than some provinces. With that, the basic democratic opportunity for ordinary working people to actually exercise their democratic right to run for office will be just a pipe dream. Twelve-year-old girls who feel there's an injustice will never be able to dream to run for local community office. Your new councils and boards will be taken beyond the budget and the resources of the average person. As well, the councillors and trustees will be further removed from their constituents and will be practically inaccessible.

The tax grab: I truly believe that it's deliberate, the process of Bill 103, because if you remove those who are closest to the people's needs, the gatekeepers, you open the door to the government's true agenda, which is to take money away from people in Metro, to reduce their services and provide a 30% tax cut which will benefit the wealthy. To make it clear, I wanted to demonstrate something but I understand you're not allowed to use props. The lunch pail is symbolic of working people and the briefcase is symbolic of business and the wealthy, and the taking of the money from one and placing it in the other is what Bill 103 is all about. That's what the tax shuffling will do.

Much has been documented about the effects of downloading of social services to the local taxpayer and the uploading of education dollars to the province, which will give it control over the cost per pupil. There are grave concerns about the destructive impact on public education and the inability of the new megacity to provide needed child care, long-term care and other services which are expected to increase.

Bill 103 must be repealed. The forced amalgamation is autocratic and repulsive to the majority of taxpayers.

Let me tell you a true story that happened in the city of York. Some local politicians decided to sell a public park called Fairbank Park to a developer so he could build condominiums in it. The citizens gathered around and they demonstrated, petitioned and acted for three years. They made a lot of noise against this plan to take away their parkland. One of the local aldermen said to them it didn't matter what they thought because he was elected and he would decide what was best for them. He thought that democracy stopped when he was elected and that he now had the power to do what he wanted.

You might know that there was a happy ending to this story. The people won. They saved their park. Children can play on the swings, slide on toboggans and enjoy the green space. They lived happily ever after, until the Tory government came to power. Now they and everyone in the province -- we -- have the biggest fight of our life, a fight to preserve not only a park but a community, a city and democratic rights.

Yes, honourable members, I believe the Tory government is wrong. The people know it, and the people's opposition must be heard. If you have any love in your hearts, defeat this mega-monster bill. Thank you.

Mr Silipo: I don't know if you were here this morning. Mayor Prue said that basically the one reason he's been given as to why this is actually proceeding is because Mr Leach felt that he had to "do something," that something being that he had to show -- assuming that they were making some changes here but that there was no sense nor rhyme to it. Is that your sense of why this is happening? I know you talked about the tax grab, you talked about the undemocratic nature of it. How much credence do you give to that notion that what we're seeing here is just actions by a government that's trying to use this bill as a smokescreen for those other actions that you've described?

Ms Hill: I tried to make it clear, with taking the money from one to the other, that's what it's all about. Eroding the democracy is for a reason. People don't take power just for the sake of taking power; they take it for a purpose. I believe that what this government is trying to do is to erode our social services, take them away, privatize them, reduce public education to something that people will want to get away from and go to private schools, and eventually we won't have a public education system. I hope I'm answering your question, but I think that is the real agenda.

The tax grab is not just the taxes but it's taking control and reducing our communities to something that cannot provide the resources. That just opens the door for privatization so somebody else can do it and make money and pay a pittance to working people, the same working people who now are benefiting from good benefits and decent salaries.

Mr Silipo: One of the things we're heard a lot about, particularly this morning in the presentations, were the pieces dealing with the powers that are given to the trustees and the transition team. I guess I'd like to ask you, if the government sees its way to making some major changes in those areas and reducing or removing some of those draconian provisions, does that make this bill more acceptable?

Ms Hill: No, it doesn't to me, because that is just the flavour of doing it, but the fact is that what we're dealing with is still a forced amalgamation of cities without the consent of the people, without their having full information and debate. It still leaves open the opportunity to reduce the closeness of those who are elected at the end of this year, the elected representatives, to their constituents, because there will be huge areas.

It is a lot more undemocratic. That is the most obvious, repulsive part of it, as we just heard the speaker before me talk about it, but I think changing that will not make it palatable.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms Hill, for coming forward and making your presentation. We'll recess until 3:30.

The committee recessed from 1231 to 1530.

DAVID PERLMAN

The Chair: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the standing committee on general government. The first presenter this afternoon is Dominic Bellissimo. Not here yet? David Perlman? Good afternoon, Mr Perlman, and welcome to the committee.

Mr David Perlman: Thank you. My name, as you said, is David Perlman. By way of introduction, briefly -- there's more in my written presentation but I won't take up time with it -- I'm a resident for the last 22 years of downtown west Toronto, in the Kensington Market area. I've been an active member of my community there for many years, a member of local associations and on the board of community centres and such like. I've also worked at various times on committees reporting to the city of Toronto, to Metro and to the district health council.

By the way, in that context, my previous contact with the minister, Mr Leach, was in the context of him being the general manager of the TTC. I was a member of the Spadina transit consultative committee in the context of TTC plans to put a Spadina light rapid transit line through the community. It was a terrible design initially, so we had about eight years to observe Mr Leach. The process was excruciating for the TTC and our community.

Our greatest consolation eight years later is that the TTC line that goes into effect this spring is a vast improvement from what was originally contemplated in the late 1980s. Mr Leach's consolation is probably that Bill 103 gives him the opportunity for revenge on all of us -- neighbourhood activists, city politicians -- all in one fell swoop. Get rid of us all once and for all. I think these days he must feel like he's died and gone to bureaucrats' heaven.

There's something I want to say through you to Mr Leach, which is that I believe Bill 103 needs the same kind of shakedown that the Spadina LRT did, because if it gets railroaded through now the way they wanted to railroad through that Spadina LRT in its original lousy form, I believe it's going to cut the heart out of our city in the same way as that LRT would have cut the heart out of the Spadina communities.

I'm not advocating eight years of consultative nonsense the way we had with the Spadina LRT, and it's not going to happen because the one good thing I can think of to say or the best thing I can think of to say about Bill 103 is that it's an awesome cattle prod. I think many local civic community activists and politicians are realizing for the first time in their lives the power of the province to do pretty much what it likes in certain respects.

In terms of a cattle prod, it should be used to herd the local councils within Metro and from the surrounding potential GTA communities into a forum for structural change. The way it's being talked about now, in order to force Bill 103 through by the end of this year, it is like using a cattle prod set to kill. I don't think it serves Crombie's dream of a greater GTA, Golden's dream of a greater GTA, your own dream of a greater GTA, greater Toronto, to load six screaming cities into an already overloaded, obsolete Metro and drive it off the edge of a cliff.

Metro, as your minister knows from his TTC experience, is already too small to bring about the essential coordination of regional services. It certainly can't bring about coordination of transit, we've learned that already, because it doesn't deal with the GTA. It probably can't work for policing or any of the other essential services that need to be regionalized, and as a local government for this city, it is already too large and too remote to thrash out or deal with any genuinely local issue.

This other cockeyed idea, the Toronto Star's latest editorial midgetry on the subject, which is this GTA, this amalgamated Metro as a stepping stone to a greater GTA council, is a ludicrous idea. If you implement a GTA council that is co-extensive with existing Metro boundaries, then what you're going to do is seal the fate of any future truly regional GTA. You tell me which of the contiguous 905 municipalities, having seen these six government lambs led to the slaughter, is going to participate in your confederated greater Toronto area. All you have to do is look at what happened in Hamilton last weekend in terms of their plebiscite to realize that if you implement a Metro-extensive GTA, you've basically put paid to the essential idea of a truly regional confederated greater Toronto, which is what is essential.

I've got one central suggestion that I want to make to this committee. I understand that Bill 103 talks about local community councils as subcommittees of what I would call mega-Metro here, but I think this is really fuzzy thinking, because what is needed is a sharpening of the distinction between regional issues and local issues, not a blurring of the lines.

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I believe what needs to happen is that you need to take this idea of the community council that's right there in Bill 103 and stand it on its head. Rather than taking the path of annihilating the existing local councils that we have in order to impose from above a kind of pseudo-community council structure reporting back to Metro, what you need to do is give official notice that Metro is obsolete, that its boundaries are no longer meaningful in a GTA context, and you need to require all existing local councils within your projected GTA to send their democratically chosen delegates to your City of Toronto Act table. You need to then set a reasonable time limit on their deliberations and you need to wave your Bill 103 cattle prod as necessary to impose urgency and order on the process.

My time is flying here and rather than saying things already ably said by many people -- I've been really moved. I've listened to about 100 of these submissions to this committee so I'm not going to try and restate a lot of things that have been said but rather, anticipating that there may not be time for questions, I'd like to put on the table a couple of the ideas I'm hearing advanced by proponents of this particular megacity proposal.

The first one is Mr Gilchrist's favourite. He has been using it on TV and various places. He says if you just drive any of the streets, like Lawrence Avenue or Sheppard or Finch, from the border of Etobicoke all the way across to the border of Scarborough, you won't see when you're passing from Etobicoke to North York to Scarborough. You don't see the internal limits of these cities any more. His point is that if you can't see these boundaries, they're of no meaning and the regional government should therefore override them. But the point is that if you travel those roads west from Etobicoke into Mississauga or east through Scarborough into Markham, you're not going to see those boundaries either. So the point is not that the internal boundaries are meaningless but that Metro's boundaries are meaningless, and this is what needs to be addressed.

The second one that seems to be gaining a lot of ground -- I heard Case Ootes on Metro council last night using it -- is this argument that Metro is already delivering 72% of the services, so if Metro is delivering 72% of the services and all these other six lazy, good-for-nothing councils are only delivering 28%, get rid of the lot. We'll just make the Metro councillors or the GTA councillors work a little bit harder and these other six governments don't need to be there.

It's catchy, but it makes no sense. In fact it's the perfect illustration of what is wrong with the thinking behind Bill 103 in its present form. Metro or a GTA council must handle the big-ticket items. That's the whole point. It's got to handle transit. It's got to handle police. It's got to handle all those areas of regional concern, and these are necessarily expensive services, therefore the 72% figure. But just apply that to your hospitals and see what nonsense it makes. The big-ticket items in hospitals are tertiary care, transplantation, major surgery, a specialized children's hospital.

The Vice-Chair: Can I ask you to wind up, please.

Mr Perlman: I'm wrapping up. One paragraph to go.

So if you take the same winner-take-all logic, you would have every community hospital and clinic amalgamated into your tertiary care mega-hospitals, and the brain surgeons would be doing double duty as clinicians.

The point is that the case for regional renewal is compelling. There are few who would deny that. As an example, anyone who dials 911 in the region should be able to count on timely, excellent, uniform response, and there could even be savings in this kind of centralization, but what is the price of that excellence and savings if by ripping the heart out of local government, you make it an inevitability that people are going to have to dial 911 more of the time?

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Perlman. You've exhausted the time available. Thank you for appearing here today.

DOMINIC BELLISSIMO

The Vice-Chair: Dominic Bellissimo. Good afternoon and welcome to the committee. You may begin.

Mr Dominic Bellissimo: Thank you very much, and I apologize for being late. I feel like I'm working longer and longer hours all the time.

I'd like to begin by introducing myself, and I'm wearing two hats today to speak on behalf of two different organizations. The first one is the Metro Network for Social Justice. We'll be sending in a written submission after this weekend's meeting that we're having. I have to be frank with the committee and say that there were some people on the steering committee of the Metro Network for Social Justice who didn't feel that many of the ideas that we would put forward in opposing Bill 103 would be listened to by this committee, but I assured them that I would come and do my best to get the members here to consider some of our recommendations. The Metro Network for Social Justice is a non-partisan coalition of more than 180 organizations here in the Metro area. We share a commitment to social and economic justice.

I'm also here as a resident of ward 3 in the city of Toronto, and I'm representing a local group that just formed four weeks ago called Ward 3 Communities Against the Megacity.

I want to commend the committee for their endurance. I know that many of the things I'm going to add today in opposing Bill 103 are not going to be new ideas. You've probably been hearing them from thousands of people, and I just want to add our voice and my own personal voice to the thousands of others that have come in to say Bill 103 just does not make sense on many levels.

I'm going to ask you to consider looking at Bill 103 and its implications from the point of view of the kind of work I do. I work on a daily basis with students and with parents and with young adults who are from various racial and ethnic organizations and communities in the city, and when I look at some of the provisions of Bill 103, when I look at some of the downloading of services and programs, I'm really quite worried.

I want to step back for a second to ask myself, is the real activity and exercise that we're engaged in about duplication? I ask myself, do people really wake up in a cold sweat at night saying: "Oh, my God, we have too many fire departments. Oh, my God, we have too many departments of parks and recreation"? I don't know very many people who actually say that to me on a daily basis, and I work with hundreds of people in public education and in the local residents' groups I'm a member of.

I ask myself then, who's really behind saying this is about duplication, disentanglement, streamlining, making our services more efficient? Who would be opposed to making services delivered in a very efficient and cost-effective manner? No one would say, "Waste our taxpayers' dollars." Often we're here as the taxpayer criticizing you for spending too many of our dollars.

I have to say then that one of the strongest voices that we hear asking for Bill 103, certainly the board of trade is asking for it and it seems to have a very, very supportive ear. We also hear from bank presidents who say that. We also hear from large sections of corporate Canada here in Toronto and in Metro saying, yes, things need to change and Bill 103 is the answer.

I don't agree. I could speak about the outrage of the loss of democracy. If I were to come in and say to you that as MPPs you've now lost all of your ability to make decisions, you've now lost all of your ability to spend dollars, and I and three other people have been appointed as a trusteeship committee that's going to make those decisions for you, I'm sure you would react in a way that would express your outrage as well. I would hope that you would.

I'm not going to speak for a very long time about how Metro is being treated very differently from the rest of the province in terms of the forced amalgamation with a very, very tight time line, with, in a sense, disregard for the referendum process that was announced early. I'm glad to see that the government has agreed that now some of the referendum results will be looked at. I suggest that was more a question of the large outcry over the bill and the number of local community residents and organizations beginning to be organized and pressuring for that.

I want to speak for the bulk of my time now on the downloading of services. As I said before, the voices of the board of trade have often been heard and expressed in the pages of the mainstream newspapers and through some of our government MPPs. I'm asking you to hear some other voices.

I'm not here on behalf of every person of colour in the city or every student who doesn't have English as their first language; I'm here as a person who works with those communities on a daily basis. When I think of Bill 103 passing as is, I fear that with the downloading of these kinds of services and costs, while they won't result in the loss of tremendous services overnight, over a period of a year, two years, five years, we won't recognize if we have our public library system ever again. We won't recognize our community centres that disappeared. We won't recognize some of the fees that have to be charged to maintain the parks and recreation programs we have, services like child care, homes for the aged, our welfare programs that we all pay taxes for because people have a right to and deserve those services.

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I don't make any apologies or any complaints when my taxes are taken off my property tax or when I pay for my taxes because I want those services to be used. I feel that Bill 103 with this downloading is going to have a double impact, particularly on women and particularly on communities of colour, communities which don't have English as their first language. I would ask you to think -- over the thousands of people you've heard over the last few days, have you heard from people who have come in and read their brief in a language other than English? Have there been provisions made for any kinds of translations of the bill? I certainly know a lot of people who say they're nervous to come here and say what they're thinking in their first language.

I also worry about Bill 103 resulting in the privatization of services that we all value. We own them, they're our services. Why should we give them up? Why should we lose hydro? Why should we face the possibility of privatizing water, for example? I recently returned from England where they have a disastrous situation with the privatization of their water system. Not only has the quality of the water decreased twice, but the rates have doubled twice as well. I just don't think that privatization, which may result from Bill 103, is the way to go.

Certainly in ward 3 one of the things we're hearing about when we knock on doors and talk to fellow neighbours is not that they're outraged at the loss of local democracy. Many of them as workers in the Portuguese or Italian or Vietnamese community didn't feel they had much control, much democratic voice to begin with. They're certainly outraged at the thought that AVA is coming, that their property taxes are going to double, that they're not going to receive more services for that increase in taxes. In fact, they're going to begin to lose the services that many of them have fought for and valued this number of years.

Finally, I would ask you to listen to the voices that say we shouldn't continue to shift the property tax burden on to residents, homeowners and tenants as opposed to large companies, large industries living in the Metro area. When I think for myself about who has the ability to pay property taxes, me or my local branch of the Royal Bank, I don't have to think very long who has the ability to pay.

I would ask you to take some of this into consideration. We'll be submitting very, very specific amendments to Bill 103 that we hope you will look at, but I've really come in urging you to use some of the time that you've talked with people, to really listen to those of us who are opposed to what may happen over the next few years for our standard of living and for our local communities here in Toronto.

Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): Thank you for your presentation. You say that people don't wake up saying, "There are too many fire departments." Of course they don't. But there are people who have trouble sleeping at night, many people in Ontario who can't afford to pay the taxes they're paying, various taxes: sales tax, income tax, property tax. There are seniors who are losing their homes, have to sell their homes because their taxes are too high. The taxes of many of the people you say you represent will actually be going down, their property tax, and they will be able to save.

Metro has some very serious problems right now. I don't know if you know, but there are thousands and thousands of tax appeals right now. The wealth that exists in Metro and the way that so many homes have had their property taxes held so low, a lot of it is generated from commercial activity, much of it in downtown Toronto, the big companies that certain people don't think add value, but they create a lot of jobs and they pay tremendous taxes. A lot of people haven't been paying their fair share compared to the rest of the people in Ontario, and these are some of the things we are trying to fix.

An earlier presenter this morning said there are probably 100 neighbourhoods in Toronto, and I've been trying to count them here: Lakeshore, Mimico, Parkdale, Dovercourt, High Park, Swansea, Rexdale, South Kingsway, Beaches, Cabbagetown, Annex, Forest Hill -- I can hardly name them all. But the reality is the neighbourhoods often don't have anything to do with one another or don't share much in common.

For instance, in north Etobicoke you have Rexdale. I don't think there's too much interface, other than at the city hall meetings, between Rexdale and the Lakeshore. They have different needs, they have different communities. This bill will empower, I believe, neighbourhood committees or neighbourhood councils which can do the kind of thing that you do, that would give you and the people in your neighbourhood group a real, direct voice in a Metro government so you could do more of what you do.

I see it as a natural evolution that started in the 1950s. The change has happened in 1953 with Metro and it happened in 1967 when it went to six cities and it's going to happen again -- a natural evolution over decades where services are provided and taxes are kept reasonable. I can see the neighbourhoods gaining a greater and a stronger voice in this model. Would you comment on that, please.

Mr Bellissimo: Sure. I think we confuse the issue when we talk about three different kinds of taxes. When we say income tax, sales tax and property tax, you're really levelling in all kinds of different government responsibilities. When you simplify the situation to say: "This is actually going to be better for you. We've removed education from the property tax" -- I thought that made a lot of sense actually, to have the province pay for education. But when I see the tradeoff of hundreds of millions more dollars being downloaded on to me as a community person in the municipality, I don't see that there's really any savings. I think in fact it's going to be more devastating for me.

What's happened is that in the guise of simplifying some very complicated problems that do overlap, it's been very easy to convince people that this will be of benefit. I don't think necessarily that the tax appeal situation is insurmountable. You can freeze property tax assessments right now until municipalities have the ability to start looking at what needs to change in property tax. I don't deny that the property tax is really way out of whack right now. I don't deny that.

The Chair: Mr Bellissimo, I apologize for interrupting, but we've gone a little beyond our allotted time. Thank you for coming forward today and making your presentation to this committee.

MARGARET SMITH

The Chair: Margaret Smith, please. Good afternoon and welcome to the committee.

Ms Margaret Smith: Mr Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Margaret Smith, and I thank you for this opportunity to speak about the proposed Bill 103, the City of Toronto Act.

At this stage in the hearings, it is difficult to present a point that has not already been made. I am also concerned that I present information that will actually be considered. Recent statements by the Minister of Municipal Affairs seem to dismiss the people who have expressed concerns or opposition to this bill as either "lefties" or as people who did not vote for this government and hence are not part of its constituency. I find this attitude shocking and I feel disfranchised as a citizen. However, I will make my comments here today assuming it is time well spent. I will comment on the issues of local government, citizen involvement and competitiveness.

First, on local government: I have lived in Toronto for 24 years and have been involved in my community. For some time I was involved in advocating for accessible and affordable day care. I appeared before commissions, committees and task forces at the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government, appealing for action on this issue. My experience was that only the municipal politicians at Toronto city council were able to find a flexible, innovative solution to help deal with this issue. These politicians were more accessible and responsive.

It's not that the federal and provincial politicians were not interested. However, the issue of day care at the provincial and federal levels is far more complicated and solutions are more expensive. Local government has greater flexibility to innovate. The complexity of modern urban planning issues demands greater innovativeness, flexibility and experiment to find customized solutions that are cost-effective at the local level.

The minister has indicated his commitment to strong local government. However, there does not seem to be agreement on what the concept of local government entails. I'm not convinced that 44 councillors representing 2.3 million people -- that is, one councillor for about 52,000 people -- is the appropriate condition for strong local government. I have no confidence that the neighbourhood committees will be effective, because experience indicates how difficult it is to make them work.

Professor Andrew Sancton at the University of Western Ontario, an expert in local government, observed that increased size is not consistent with greater flexibility and innovation. The Brundtland report reinforces this view: "Good city management requires decentralization of funds, political power and personnel to local authorities, which are best placed to appreciate and manage local needs."

The provisions in Bill 103, section 16(4), set out the duties of the transition team. The broad scope of these duties for an appointed team, accountable only to the minister and above court review, is not consistent with the Brundtland recommendations. In fact, this bill gives political control over the new city to the minister for an indefinite period; the team may continue beyond January 31, 1998. This exercise of power by the province is not consistent with strong local city government. In fact, it appears to completely emasculate local government.

Citizen involvement: I have worked for many years as a planner in a large corporation. In my experience working with both the private and the public sectors, early and effective citizen involvement results in better and more informed decisions. I was a member of the Canadian Standards Association technical committee that developed guidelines for public consultation. It is generally accepted that involving those affected by decisions early in the planning and decision-making process is cost-effective and an important aspect of best business practice.

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Premier Harris often speaks of the model of government analogous to that of a business. He suggests that the Premier represents the role of CEO, his cabinet members are the board of directors and the citizens are the shareholders. I do not agree with using this analogy, even to make the point about running government efficiently and effectively. But if we have to take this analogy, the CEO and the board are accountable to the shareholders. I cannot imagine any business that would choose to treat its shareholders as this government has done in this debate about local governance. The CEO would be dismissed. This behaviour is not consistent with best business practice.

The Brundtland report states, "The pursuit of sustainable development requires a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making...and an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction."

In 1990, approximately 50 business leaders established themselves as the Business Council for Sustainable Development. These leaders came from the international business community, including chairmen and presidents from Chevron, Volkswagen, 3M, Ciba-Geigy, Nissan, Nippon Steel, Mitsubishi, TransAlta and Northern Telecom, to name a few. They advocate a new partnership with stakeholders.

In their report, Changing Course, they define stakeholders to include "customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, government, neighbours, citizen groups and the public. Involving these people, with all their differing views and concerns, usually leads to better decisions and more universal support for their implementation."

The report further states: "Stakeholder involvement requires more effort than traditional public relations or information-sharing responses. New forms of collaboration are needed."

In this case, a stakeholder involvement process could have addressed whether there is a need for municipal government restructuring and what it might be comprised of. An involvement process could have given adequate attention to developing an implementation plan. Consultation could have contributed to a socioeconomic impact assessment to ensure that all externalities -- that is, social costs -- were fully understood and incorporated into the decision-making process. However, no citizen involvement was undertaken and no credible impact studies were completed.

Further, there does not seem to be a realistic plan to reconcile over 116,000 existing bylaws in Toronto alone, 60 collective agreements, the various operations procedures for six utilities etc, and there's no sound information about the real cumulative financial impacts on local government.

Finally, by not having meaningful citizen involvement in the design of this bill and appearing to ram the bill through the Legislature, the government has caused more concerns and opposition, even from those who voted for them. While it may be true that there is some natural resistance to change, it is more true that there is real resistance to changes imposed on people without their consent.

Competitiveness: Minister Leach has stated that his proposed amalgamation will make Toronto more competitive. However, as Michael Porter indicated in his study, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, there is no accepted definition of "competitiveness." The minister has used this concept without conveying a clear understanding of what it takes for a city to be competitive. Cities can be attractive for business investment and for living conditions. We know from Fortune magazine that Toronto is now a desirable location in which to live and work. Porter also discusses the important role of "social and political history and values in influencing competitive success." These cultural aspects "cannot be separated from economic outcomes." However, it appears that Bill 103 and the associated downloading of social program costs would irrevocably change the very conditions that have already proven successful.

The minister seems to suggest that greater competitiveness would derive from reduced costs resulting from an amalgamation. However, expert research indicates that there are no cost savings as a result of amalgamation; more likely, higher costs would result. Even KPMG, the author of the minister's only study, has no confidence that savings would occur.

Studies indicate that cities with over one million people cost 20% to 40% more to run because they have bigger and more expensive bureaucracy. Coupled with the amalgamation is the associated proposal to download provincial costs for social and health services to Toronto property owners. Increased taxes on businesses could lead to business and industry leaving Toronto and possible future municipal fiscal crises. These conditions are hardly conducive to improving competitiveness.

There is no evidence to support the minister's claim that Toronto would be more competitive. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite.

In summary, I recommend that Bill 103 be withdrawn and that a planning process for possible government restructuring be commenced which fully involves all those stakeholders potentially affected by the decision.

Mr Colle: Thank you very much for a very thought-provoking presentation. I appreciated your reference to Brundtland. I think you're the first presenter to make a reference to Brundtland in terms of the viability of cities as living organisms, so that's really added another dimension. It's interesting that she agrees with the municipal governance experts, who are saying the same thing Brundtland is saying, that for cities to work they have to be flexible and competitive. Would you like to comment on that?

Ms Smith: There's quite a lot of discussion about what it takes for cities to be effective. The local model seems to not jibe with the amalgamated city because of its size. There's a lot of discussion in the report about the need for flexibility, to be close to the needs of the citizens, to be able to respond, to be innovative, to be able to experiment, to do tailored solutions that are more beneficial for everyone.

Mr Colle: As a shareholder in Toronto, what message are you giving the CEO of Toronto or of Ontario?

Ms Smith: In this case, the CEO is operating outside of his mandate. He's being totally irresponsible and not reflecting the will and the needs and the wants of the shareholders and he should be dismissed.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Smith, for coming forward and making your presentation.

PHYLLIS CREIGHTON

The Chair: Would Phyllis Creighton please come forward. Good afternoon and welcome to the committee.

Mrs Phyllis Creighton: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I appreciate this opportunity to come before you.

I am angry. The city of Toronto -- my city -- has enjoyed democratic government since 1834. There is no crisis requiring it to be dismantled in a rush and put under the boot of the provincial government. Creating one huge amalgamated city, wiping out our six diverse municipalities and investing governance in trustees and a transition team, with the Minister of Municipal Affairs as king overall, will put us on the road back to despotism. From my 67 years living and belonging in Toronto, I utterly oppose Bill 103 as the destruction of local democracy, the epitome of bad planning and an outrage to citizens.

I was born in Toronto, grew up in Forest Hill Village and have chosen to live in the city of Toronto for the past 42 years. I love my city. Toronto is neighbourhoods people identify with; mine is Lawrence Park. I lived in Paris for a year and found that dazzling metropolis too vast to identify with. Toronto has a human scale. Scale matters, and neighbourhoods, for loyalty, safety, quality of life. I want the local identity of my city to be sustained: No American megalopolis, please.

Our city is rich in diversity and its close and responsive city council has fostered meaningful citizen participation. With globalization, dizzying technological change and unsettling market uncertainties, the local matters much more for grounding and participation. From my long years of contributing to this city's life, of belonging, I say to you: Do not amalgamate us into a vast, amorphous agglomeration stretching across very different, now self-governing, functioning communities.

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This bill has many outrageous provisions. Give our more than two million residents only 44 councillors? What a betrayal of democracy. In wards with over 50,000 constituents, there can be no real access to one's councillor or effective vigilance to ensure responsibility and accountability. Remote, opaque government we don't need.

I am outraged that a board of trustees, already appointed by the provincial government and functioning without any legislative warrant, gets duties and powers by section 9 that turn our democratically elected municipal councils into puppets. We elected these councils. We hold them accountable. They have conducted themselves responsibly. There is no fiscal or structural crisis in our municipal governance, yet they are, in mid-term, to be but the "old councils," disempowered, irrelevant. Since according to (4)(c) the trustees "shall...amend and approve" 1997 operating and capital budgets as they "consider...appropriate," they will freely reach into our pockets and no doubt into our $1 billion worth of reserves.

As a taxpayer, I am outraged that under section 12, judicial review or questioning of their decisions is prohibited. Just as outrageous is section 18, which exempts from court review and questioning the appointed transition team, with its vast dictatorial powers to determine the new city's administration, municipal rates, spending, neighbourhood councils and integration of municipal services. As if all this arbitrary power were not enough, by section 24 the Minister of Municipal Affairs is made local despot, empowered to impose any conditions he pleases on "old councils," prescribing duties for trustees and transition team and determining transitional matters as he pleases.

As a historian with an MA and some grasp of our British parliamentary heritage, I am especially incensed at the absolute powers this bill gives to the minister. When absolute power was wrested from the monarch, it was not to give arbitrary authority to other men, to give equally unfettered power to ministers, but rather to empower the citizenry. Breaking the unwritten limits that convention sets in our parliamentary democracy, as you will do if you pass Bill 103, undoes the social contract between governed and government. Citizens will owe you loyalty no more.

You stand on very shaky ground with Bill 103. The government has no popular mandate for amalgamation; the Tories did not seek one in their election campaign. It has no expert mandate either. No report published by any government in Ontario in the past 40 years recommended amalgamation of these municipalities. Amalgamation entails vast changes, doubtless years of chaos. Why the rush? Why have we not been given serious plans, with careful costing? What has the government given us? Insulting propaganda, at our expense, declared by the Speaker to be in contempt of the Legislative Assembly itself; and faxes without even a fax number on them.

The alleged savings cited by the lightning KPMG study? Suddenly they became possibly no savings or even significant costs when KPMG spoke to the press at the study's launch. My management consultant husband says they backpedalled out the door pretty fast. In their best-case scenario, you would destroy local democracy to save each of our households 50 cents a week. But amalgamation experts such as UWO Professor Andrew Sancton say that, worldwide, amalgamations always come with heavy extra costs. Tax savings with amalgamation are a myth, a lie. The insulting process the government has subjected us to -- propaganda, no reasoned plans, trustees insinuating themselves into our city's operations -- mirrors the arrogance shown citizens in Bill 103. And the announced downloading of the costs of welfare, health and assisted housing will cripple the new city, rob women and children of badly needed services and create hardship. Women are very angry. We won't take it.

To conclude, a couple of lines from our Raging Grannies song:

We tell you now no mega-taxes,

no mega-dumping, no megacity.

We don't want trustees or transition team,

it's no go, no go.

Take our voices seriously,

no megacity.

Mr Silipo: Mrs Creighton, some of the government members have been known to say: "What's the concern really all about? The neighbourhoods will still be there, they'll still maintain their identity, so what's all this big concern about" -- as they put it -- "artificial boundaries?" What would your response be?

Mrs Creighton: I don't believe we have any reason to think the neighbourhood councils that will be established by the process in the bill will afford free, voluntary participation. That's what my city is all about. It's about flexibility. It's about being able to go down and put an idea before your councillor and get some support, and to feel close. I don't believe, by the time you're down to 44 councillors, that having an appointed neighbourhood council -- when you're in a ward that's going to be enormous and will include all kinds of different neighbourhoods.

I have lived in Forest Hill, I've lived in Moore Park, I've lived in Rosedale, I've lived in the Bathurst-St Clair area and I've lived in Lawrence Park, and they are all very different. When it ain't broke, you shouldn't try to fix it.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mrs Creighton, for coming forward.

JIM NEFF

The Chair: Would Jim Neff please come forward. Good afternoon, Mr Neff. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Jim Neff: Thank you so much. I must apologize for not having written notes and for a bit of shakiness. I was awakened this morning about 6 am with a very problematic stomach and have had sweating and chills all morning from a salmon sandwich I had at midnight last night. It appears the toxins are getting into our salmon more than we expected. I do have these rough, handwritten notes.

I certainly want to thank you for this opportunity. I understand that many more have been denied than have been appointed to speak here. I must say I can't speak for anyone but myself, as I trust no one else can without that power being assigned. It is the loss by the many, the majority, that they've been denied their right.

We are a society, I've been led to believe, that is based on the concept of contracts and agreements about what we do, that in normal, healthy relations we do what we individually think is right and decent to do. It's said that only two people can make you do what you don't want to do in this world of ours: One is a judge in a court of justice and the other is your mother.

Now, Mike Harris is neither of these, so a third concept emerges. We must ask, what is the reason given to deny a community their rights? Has the War Measures Act been enacted? Is it because there's a segment of our population that's been disruptive, deceitful, harmful? Well, many would say that this act is being disruptive, deceitful and harmful to society itself.

How this comes about: One reason given is that Al Leach, it appears, has great expertise in the boardrooms of business and he's bringing that expertise to his job here. We have the good, solid business concepts of downsizing, rationalizing, combining departments under supermanagers and many sound business strategies being applied, but being applied to the normal associations of people, and thus we're disrupting centuries of evolution, possibly back to the Magna Carta.

We are not a business. We are a society of people. I wonder who among your colleagues cheered when the cutting down of the golden spruce in BC occurred. Do they get excited about that? This was renowned, for over 200 years, as a place where people came, and it had an ability to be spiritually uplifting. Is Toronto not the same today?

Why take a healthy system and replace it with a weak one? Soon there will be signs of illness. The majority of new businesses don't survive beyond two years. If this ill-thought-out, quickly initiated procedure fails, what then? This bill is a draconian measure. As David Crombie says, it's wrong in principle and disastrous in practice.

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I'll try not to bore you. A little item, "We're Killing the Planet Even Faster than Feared," from the United Nations:

"Humankind is extinguishing life on earth faster than even the alarmists had foretold.

"A United Nations report released yesterday warns that the planet is experiencing an unprecedented mass extinction.

"The report, called Taking Action, says the overall quality of the world environment is deteriorating in nearly every category -- from the water we drink and air we breathe to the oceans and forests that sustain us.

"Elizabeth Dowdeswell, a Canadian who heads the UN environment program, said it's estimated that between 150 and 200 species of life become extinct every 24 hours -- a mass annihilation caused by humankind's unsustainable method of production and consumption.

"With so much being lost, Dowdeswell said it's an open question whether the human species can survive.

"`We have many examples of episodes of disease, for example, that have started lower down in the food chain and worked their way up.

"`We know that if the pollution we're dumping into the water and the atmosphere around us is affecting insects, birds and animals -- can humans be very far behind?'"

I must say, it is well known that Mike Harris is clever; that goes without saying. Bully for him. Al Leach is clever, and bully for him. Janet Ecker is clever, and bully for her. They're clever to invent a process to circumvent democracy. They're bullying everybody to try and get their way. As David Crombie said, "This is a mistake in principle and it's not a risk worth taking."

As with all governments that go through a life cycle, this government is in its adolescent stage. We need to give it time to mature, enough time to start to be intelligent instead of the cleverness of adolescence, and they are very clever indeed, these bullies.

It's apparent that little, if any, consideration has been given to the impact of changes being proposed or the ability of the system to serve the public and the right of the public to have access to the courts and to those who are in charge of operating and fine-tuning the system.

I urge you to seek a moratorium on proceedings with Bill 103. It is part of a package, and until a proper analysis of changes to the administration and the impact of the proposed cuts can be made -- proper analysis would make good business sense, and until this is done, the results may well be chaotic.

May I leave it at that? Thank you very much.

Mrs Julia Munro (Durham-York): Thank you very much for bringing forward some of your ideas today for us. When you were concluding, you were talking about some kind of time line that you felt was really important that we needed to add to this process. I just wonder whether you are suggesting here that you agree there have to be some changes in terms of the way in which municipal government in Toronto is organized currently.

Mr Neff: I think everyone has agreed to that. I think possibly the one thing which has a consistency is electricity. It seems Faraday's laws from a century ago are still being applied very well today by all electricians and electrical companies, and maybe a combination of the amalgamation of the electrical services might make good business sense. I'm not experienced enough in the background of these commissions to know whether it would be a practical thing to do but it seems rational, anyway.

I just think that in good old conservative Ontario tradition we should go slow, we should take our time, we should do it right.

Mrs Munro: Do you have any comments on the studies that have been made in the past few years that look at the way in which the city should be structured?

Mr Neff: I'm not an expert. I understand all the experts that have been asked have advised: "Don't rush into it. Don't make vast, large mistakes." This morning I heard, while I was shaking in bed, a radio interview of a person from Mexico, where they had a great amalgamation disaster, and his analysis was: "We used to all go out and gather a few eggs. Now somebody goes out with a great big basket, they gather some eggs, and they gather some more eggs. If they trip, we've got one hell of a mess."

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Neff. I hope you feel better later on today.

BOARD OF TRADE OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO

The Chair: Would members from the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto please come forward. Welcome, gentlemen. Before you begin, I'd appreciate if you would each introduce yourselves for the benefit of Hansard.

Mr George Fierheller: Mr Chairman, thank you very much. I'm George Fierheller, the president of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto. With me are Mike Lauber, the chairman of our local governance committee, and John Bech-Hansen, one of our senior economists.

I appreciate the opportunity of appearing before you. Having listened to the last couple of speakers, it looks as though I might be singing a slightly different song than they did and I certainly won't attempt to match the voice we heard.

What I'd like to do is perhaps just stand back from this for a few moments. There is a written piece of paper that we have sent around that has some facts and figures and thoughts in it. I don't really want to read that. I'd just rather talk with you for a few moments and then my colleagues may want to make their own comments.

When you look at what's really happened in Metropolitan Toronto over the last number of years, this has been an evolving situation. In fact, since 1953 there has always been a move towards unification. When you think of it, over the years the Metro government, initially responsible only for transit, roads, some piped services and so on, gradually assumed responsibility for police, licensing, social services, ambulance and waste disposal, among many other things. The responsibilities assigned to today's Metro government, as it exists, are such that its budget is nearly three times larger than the combined budgets of the six area municipalities.

In this context, if you think of it, amalgamation as is currently proposed is just the next logical step in an evolutionary process that already sees nearly 80% of the Metro property tax bill supporting unified municipal and school finance services. What I'm saying is that the fiscal and economic reality is that Toronto is already an amalgamated city and in fact is amalgamated at this point far more than almost any other city-region I can think of that ever contemplated the unification of its constituent municipalities. I think that's an important thing to remember.

There's another important thing to remember, as well. When you take a look at the map of Toronto, you very quickly see that what you are looking at is not something that was designed to protect neighbourhoods, not something that was designed with any thought of the cultural or regional or racial or ethnic mix that we have that's so wonderful and diverse in this city. It's a very arbitrary set of borders. To try to protect that current system and claim that is the only thing that will protect these neighbourhoods doesn't seem to make very much sense to us.

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I was very interested in the previous speaker, who spoke of having lived in Rosedale and Forest Hill and Moore Park and other places like that. A lot of us have done that around the city we all love. Those are the places that people identify with and they are not the sorts of things that are protected by the current municipal boundaries.

I happen to live in North York, for example. I happen to work in the core of the city and I have a lot of difficulty identifying with North York. I find that North York is something that was created in the early 1950s, primarily by drawing a line across Hoggs Hollow -- and I might add that everybody still refers to it as Hoggs Hollow, not North York -- and I have never really found that is an entity to which I could relate very easily. I do happen to live in the Don Mills area, and I find that I can relate very well to Don Mills. I'm very concerned about what happens in the area and I don't want somebody putting a gas station on the corner and things like that. But that's quite a different thing than trying to preserve a very artificial boundary.

I think the implication was made by some of the previous speakers that these are boundaries that go back for many, many generations. As a matter of fact, they don't. They by and large are very new creations and I don't think that trying to preserve those is going to do much of anything for us. When you take a look at that map, you'd very quickly see that, and see that making a larger entity out of this would probably make a lot of sense.

Now the question is, how realistic can you be about coming up with neighbourhood councils, community councils or whatever, that will start to represent those areas as well? One of the previous speakers said, "How in heaven's name can 44 people plus a mayor represent a community of 2.3 million people?" Well, if we only have some 270 MPs representing a country of nearly 30 million people -- over 30 million, I guess now -- and somehow or other that seems to do the job, having well in excess of 100 people to represent an area that's less than one tenth of the size doesn't seem to make an awful lot of sense or seem to be necessary.

The board of trade believes, and we believe this in conjunction with the provincial government, that amalgamating Metro does serve a couple of purposes. It certainly serves the purpose of achieving single-tier governance, and that's something that everyone, including the mayors, have effectively said they would like to do. They have quite different ways of proposing that, but nevertheless that is the sort of thing they would like to do. It also preserves the Metro-wide delivery of the services that are already there. The mayors' proposal, as I briefly read it, looks as though each of the cities would pick up some of these services that are already amalgamated across the whole Metropolitan area. What that would accomplish is beyond me.

Let's take a look at a few of the things that I think could be benefits from an amalgamated city. First, I think it would restore strength at the centre. This is something which I believe is very important. The Metro Toronto area's capacity to influence decision-making at the GTA level is critically important, particularly in an era when property tax is going to play a much larger role in funding urban services than it ever did before. We should bear in mind that Metro still possesses over half the assessment base of the GTA and nearly two thirds of the commercial assessment. So it's going to be very important that Metro in its new form have a very major, strong voice in the Greater Toronto Services Board, as it's proposed. I think that is important.

Second, it will enhance the capacity of the Metro area to speak with a single voice when dealing with provincial governments. There has been a lot of concern about whether the Premier is becoming too strong in some of the things he's doing. Well, having a very strong, amalgamated Metro will in fact help. As a matter of fact, it won't matter whether it's a PC, Liberal, NDP or even Reform -- that's the only government we haven't tried recently, as I recall -- it doesn't matter what the government is, that strong voice is going to be helpful. I'm not actually sure why the province wants that. That's a very interesting question that maybe some of the members here could ask, because I would suspect that the new mayor of the new Toronto is going to be one of the most important politicians in the province. However, I do think it will provide a useful and strong counterbalance to provincial power, and that's something which obviously the current, very divisive Metro area does not provide.

There's been a lot of talk about whether taxes can be reduced in this amalgamation, and you've seen figures of all kinds from all sources. I can only say that I believe there is an opportunity to reduce taxes, but I don't think anyone has said there's a guarantee of that; at least I don't think we would claim that at this point. We can only say that reducing duplication and overlap, doing all the things that have been pointed out -- reducing six fire departments to one, reducing seven planning departments to one, reducing seven roads departments to one and so on -- must surely create some opportunities for some economies. Also, that way I think there are much better opportunities to do some things that might reduce the costs by either contracting out or doing something else that would make a more sensible way of delivering a lot of these local services. Really, there are an awful lot of things, whether it's snowplowing, sidewalk maintenance, garbage collection, whatever these things are, that could likely be done better purchasing those services when you've got a much larger operation to deal with.

One of the things that I think is most compelling about this from the board of trade's standpoint is the enhanced visibility that a new central city of this size would have with the public, with the media, with the business community, and very importantly, with foreign investors. We are obviously, as a board with 10,000 members, very concerned about investment in the city, the ability to promote the city. We're doing the best we can with the GTA marketing alliance for both the 905 and 416 areas, but a very strong core city will certainly help that. There's no question in my mind about that.

I also think that when you integrate a lot of services in a broader area there could be some benefits that would come from allied services. Police and ambulance, for example, might be amalgamated, and some services with local fire. Things like that could become very important. Metro community services, local public health and so on, solid waste disposal, recycling and things like that could probably be combined in a much better way in a much larger operation.

Just a comment on the real cost and tax implications, and I'll be very brief on this. Obviously there are going to be transitional costs, and I think everybody has acknowledged that: severance, renegotiation of collective agreements and so on. That's why we have been careful about saying that there are going to be any immediate cost savings, although we believe there are abilities to do that in the longer run.

But I don't think that some of the examples that have been used as to why Metro shouldn't amalgamate necessarily apply here. In a number of cases, like Halifax, for example, or Winnipeg, the amalgamations were often between a strong core and a relatively underdeveloped, almost greenfield area outside. It was this kind of thing that tended to up the costs, because of course the greenfields wanted the same level of services as were in the major core area. This is something which would not occur here because what you're talking about is only the amalgamation of already very mature areas. The services are essentially there, the infrastructure is in, and I don't think you would see that same upward pressure that you see in some of the other amalgamations that have been talked about.

I think it's also important to bear in mind that a lot of the services we're talking about are already amalgamated. That's very unusual. You don't usually find that when an amalgamation is talked about. Usually these things are starting from scratch. You also have, of course, an infrastructure there already, which is helpful. Obviously Metro and the current city governments would be done away with, but it isn't as though these municipalities have not been used to working together on a great many things; they most certainly have, and I think therefore you're starting from a much stronger base than you might otherwise start from.

In conclusion, the board of trade is supportive of the amalgamation and we think it is just the next logical step in something that's been going on for decades. Ultimately perhaps the extension may go even farther. If you go back to looking at my map that I talked about earlier, you'd realize there are also some very arbitrary lines that are drawn between Etobicoke and Mississauga, or wherever the other areas are, and maybe ultimately there could be some further amalgamations take place.

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But at least this is a logical next step, and we do believe it's essential to have this strong city, able to promote itself internationally and attract more jobs and more opportunities to the city. We do think there is an opportunity to reduce costs, although, as everyone says, that may not happen initially.

We certainly like to see at least the proposal for the protection of real communities as they exist within the city through the community councils and the neighbourhood councils.

Finally, if this does proceed, we would be most willing to work with the transition team to try to make sure these realities are realized.

The Chair: Sorry to do this, Mr Colle, but we have about one minute to comment or question.

Mr Colle: I want to thank you and the board of trade for adding to our understanding of this, and your intervention in terms of the concern about downloading I think is appreciated by people universally.

The one comment I have is that I really think the board of trade is underestimating the human potential and investment people made in the downtown core and in the individual cities, in East York, Toronto. The proof of that is the continual reference you make and the government makes to 72%: Because 72% of the expenditures are already amalgamated, "Therefore do the rest." In other words, you're forgetting that the rest is the human investment. That 72%, if you were to take out the pass-through from the province to Metro, would be about equal or less because Metro is only an agent, like under social welfare. It wouldn't be 72%; it would be less than 50%, probably, if you took away the pass-through.

I just caution you to recognize the human investment that people are concerned about. This anti-democratic sledgehammer of a bill is going to dispossess people of some rights and some contributions they've made and will make. I'd ask you to continue to appreciate that.

Mr Fierheller: We share everyone's concern about the protection of the amount of human effort, the sweat equity, that's gone into the various neighbourhoods. I really do think that what people relate to is very much the Rosedale or the Moore Park or the Leaside or the Don Mills or whatever it happens to be, and it's trying to make sure that sort of thing is protected that's going to either make or break this.

The Chair: Thank you, gentlemen, for coming forward to make your presentation today.

WENDELL COX

The Chair: Would Wendell Cox please come forward. Good afternoon, sir, and welcome to the committee.

Mr Wendell Cox: Thank you very much, members of the committee, Mr Chair. First of all let me express my great gratitude, as an American, at being given the opportunity to offer my views in front of you today. I am a consultant, an international public policy consultant, and I am serving as a consultant on the megacity issue for the city of Toronto.

Just to give you a bit of background, I was a three-term member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. My specialties as a consultant are competitive tendering, public employment, government efficiency. I have performed a performance audit for the British Columbia transit system. I wrote the rules for the conversion of the transit systems in New Zealand to competitive tendering, and I served for three years as the policy director of the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is the conservative organization of state legislators in the United States.

What I'd like to do today is just quickly run through three basic issues that I think are important to consider with respect to Bill 103. First is the issue of costs, and my belief from the research is that indeed costs are not going to go down; they're going to go up; second, some issues with respect to democracy; and third, issues with respect to retention of what you have among the six cities at this point, Toronto being considered by many, rightly so, one of the best places to live in the world.

I'll start off, first of all, with the issue of efficiency and cost. Bigger is not better. Virtually all the evidence indicates that larger municipalities tend to be more costly on a per capita basis than smaller municipalities. In the United States, where we have a large number of virtually all levels of municipalities, our cities of more than a million people are on average 20% more expensive per capita than our cities of below a million. Our counties of more than a million are about 40% more expensive than our counties of less than a million. Our transit districts and our school districts went through major amalgamation movements from the 1940s through the 1970s, and during that period of time we saw the cost of education per child more than double in inflation-adjusted terms and the cost of public transit double at a rate that was even greater than the increase in health care costs, which I'm sure all of you are aware of because of the debates we had just a few years ago in the United States over health care.

The board I served upon, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, was, at the behest of conservative politicians in my community, amalgamated with another major board, and it has been nothing short of a disaster -- major scandals with respect to the building of the local subway, not to mention cost escalation that has been very significant.

I should also remind you of the testimony of Mayor Hall to you recently in which she pointed out, at least in her attachments, that the cost per capita of Metro government is about 60% higher than the cost per capita of the four regional governments in the 905 area. That's after taking out the social welfare costs, which of course burden Metro even more.

In the Trimmer report that was prepared for the Conservative Party during the election, they indicated that we need to be very careful about what the committee referred to as false economies of scale, and I think you do have to be careful about that. You saw the same kind of concern raised in the Golden report as well.

There are really five reasons you can expect to see the costs of government within Metro go up as a result of amalgamation.

First of all, there will be the issue of service harmonization; that is, virtually all communities will be required essentially to have the same level of service, and service levels tend to migrate upward.

Even more sure than that is labour contract migration. You are not going to find your public employee unions seeking to get the average wage or the average benefits or the lowest; they're going to seek the highest, as I would if I led them, which of course I wouldn't.

You are going to see more bureaucrats, because as government gets bigger you need more bureaucrats. It is not a mathematical progression; it is a geometric progression. Those bureaucrats are going to be paid more on average, because in the public sector, as you know, remuneration is largely a function of the size of staff and the size of budget.

But much more important, what you will do, and this may surprise at least you on the Conservative side, is that you are going to incredibly strengthen municipal trade unions. You are going to put the new government at great risk, at great disadvantage in negotiating labour contracts. In larger governmental circumstances, public employee unions are much stronger than they are in smaller governmental circumstances, which will tip the balance against the citizens and against the taxpayers.

Just as an example from my own experience, happening shortly after my having left the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, our board in a labour negotiation gave away to the transit union $70 million of money it had promised was going to be given each year to the expansion and construction of a rail system. That $70 million is gone forever.

I urge you also to think about what you're being told by people like Jane Jacobs here, who tell you that larger government is less innovative, less open to new ways of doing things. From the experience in the United States -- and I am one who believes you can significantly improve public services through competitive tendering -- I can tell you that the larger municipal governments, in which employee trade unions are stronger, and they are in those kinds of government, are absolutely death to competitive tendering. There is very little competitive tendering going on in the United States in large municipal governments. It is going on in smaller.

That brings me to a reminder that during the mid-1980s, remember that Maggie Thatcher and the Conservative government broke up the Greater London Council and left London with I think 32 boroughs, the largest of which is half the size of the city of Toronto at this point. The reason they did that was because labour had obtained such control over the Greater London Council that costs were completely out of control and service levels were going down very significantly.

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Just as an aside, if one of the things you are trying to do is reduce the costs of local government, I really urge you to look at what the Victoria government is doing in Australia, where they are basically requiring municipal authorities to competitively tender 50% of their budgets. They are getting cost savings beyond anything that any of the most radical studies have suggested for amalgamation.

My point is that amalgamation is not going to get you any savings at all, because these other costs, these five categories I've described, are going to far more than compensate for the very minor savings that are estimated by some at a maximum of 2%.

Now let me speak just a little bit about democracy. A city of 2.4 million people is too large. It's larger than six Canadian provinces, it's larger than more than 15 American states, it's larger than Slovenia and larger than a number of countries.

Sydney, which is by no means a laggard in international competition and is the scene of the next Olympics, has a population of 7,400[sic]. It has 36 municipalities in an urban area of three million people. Melbourne has 39; London has 32. The big problem with going to megacity is you are going to dilute democracy very significantly. The person's voice will be, in the case of York, changed from one in 150,000 to one in 2.5 million. That is very, very important.

The kinds of cost escalation and service retardation that occur with large governments are being manifested or have brought forward in the States a significant municipal secession movement that is going on right now. We expect that by the turn of the century, Staten Island, one of the boroughs of New York City, will be gone from New York City. It's hung up in the courts now, but it is expected that an advisory referendum that passed two to one to have Staten Island secede from New York will in the long run bring secession for Staten Island.

The San Fernando Valley, where I used to live, which has about a million of the 3.5 million people in LA, is now undertaking a process to try to secede from the city of Los Angeles. Legislation came close to passing last year in the California Legislature that would set up a process to do that. It will be pursued again this next year.

Now let me just speak briefly about the city of Toronto, the six cities, the municipalities and how proud you should be of how wonderful a place it is to live. You should be aware that there is virtually no other central city in the western world, save Vancouver, where the population is not declining. Central London's population is down more than 50% over the last 40 to 50 years. Paris is down about 30%. The city of Toronto has the same population as it had in 1950.

What I'm saying is, you have something very special here, a city of neighbourhoods and so on, and if you impose some new governmental structures that cause taxes to rise significantly, and I think megacity will, and in the long run begin to retard services, you're going to start driving people out. That is the kind of thing that could cause Toronto to follow, unfortunately, the direction some other cities have followed, which is not good.

I think you have some answers. The Conservative government has talked about establishment of a Greater Toronto Services Board that would oversee services on a truly metropolitan level where they are regional services. I think that makes all the sense in the world. That should be supported by a system of strong municipalities. But I sincerely caution you. I believe that Bill 103 will give you a less competitive Metro, a less competitive Toronto and a less competitive Ontario.

The Chair: Thank you. There's time for Mr Silipo, three and a half minutes.

Mr Silipo: Mr Chair, I would be more than happy if the government caucus was interested in asking Mr Wendell Cox some questions. I'd be happy to give the time over to them.

The Chair: It's up to you; you can give up your time.

Mr Gilchrist: Thank you, Mr Cox, for your presentation before us here today. It's always interesting having someone like you, who makes as a profession the consulting to municipalities on topics such as this, but we have articles from people such as Neil Pierce, who suggests -- he calls them city-states, and basically goes on to say that urban centres a lot like Metro Toronto are absolutely essential in the future if a city like Toronto is going to be competitive on the world stage, if it's going to be able to attract investment and jobs.

Clearly, you've formed an opinion based on what you've seen, but so have experts formed one that's totally contrary. Even Jane Jacobs, who is a well-renowned urban planner, continues to say half a million's the threshold. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I believe you've said up to a million is the threshold before there are diseconomies. Clearly, the experts don't agree on what the final shape should be.

Would you not at least concede that given the fact that the six mayors could not put together a plan with any unanimity, their own vision on how to achieve those savings, that at some point the provincial government had a responsibility to act?

Mr Cox: No, not at all. A couple of thoughts. One, with respect to Mr Pierce, he has done no research whatsoever on the subject of amalgamation. He is operating from a philosophical position that he believes amalgamation is a good thing, the typical city planning, regional planning kind of view that it is a good thing. The fact is that Atlanta is not an amalgamated city and got the last Olympics. Sydney is not an amalgamation and got the next. I don't buy the theories of Mr Pierce, whom I know, at all.

Andrew Sancton, at the University of Western Ontario, has done a good deal of research and shown convincingly that there is not a shred of evidence anywhere that cost savings accrue from amalgamation.

Forgive me for being quite so strong, but if I were a member of your government interested in reducing the costs of municipal government, I would impose mandatory competitive tendering, as the Victoria government has done and as the English government has done. These are things that save real money and save amounts of money that are far beyond the maximum 2% saving you could achieve assuming that none of these other dynamics I'm talking about would occur.

Mr Gilchrist: It's interesting, and just for the record I agree with you. We've had the opposition parties and many other critics dismiss that portion of the KPMG report. Whatever its other flaws or successes, it does say that one of the areas in which the new city could find tremendous savings is to do just that. At least we've got some common ground there.

On the flip side -- let me continue on the earlier point -- you suggest that Mr Pierce may not have looked at things from the purview of whether the cities themselves were amalgamated. Have you any evidence to show that the reverse is true, that by amalgamating you lose all those advantages that he says accrue to an urban centre that focuses as a core to develop a particular industry or to exploit a particular geographical reality? This, by the way, is the case here in Toronto. It's as much our location as anything else that has accrued to the historical expansion here in Metro Toronto. Where is the evidence that shows that by amalgamating we lose?

Mr Cox: There is no evidence because nobody has done any serious amalgamating in recent years. Maggie Thatcher broke up London. They dismantled regional government in Copenhagen. I think there's a general feeling that amalgamation is not necessary for the kinds of international competitiveness issues that you raise.

Let me also suggest with respect to the issue of competitive tendering -- no argument with you whatsoever on competitive tendering. You're absolutely right. The fact is that competitive tendering can be done in the current governance structure or by a future governance structure. My point is that when you get to a city of 2.4 million people with strong labour unions, which you have here, there is no chance that you are ever going to see significant competitive tendering occur.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr Cox, for coming forward and making a presentation.

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DOUG BREWER

The Chair: Would Doug Brewer please come forward. Good afternoon, Mr Brewer. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Doug Brewer: Good afternoon, Chair, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very pleased to have the opportunity today to address this committee on Bill 103, the City of Toronto Act. This is the first time I've ever felt motivated to speak before a committee of the Ontario Legislature, and I only do so now because of the great importance of this act and the ramifications for our great city.

I care greatly about the kind of city my children will grow up in, the quality of their schools, the libraries, the hockey arenas, the parks and the services offered by my municipality. I worry about whether the city is safe and whether it will be in the future. I worry about the homeless I pass on my way to work, and since I have employment, I wonder whether my job will last and if there will be enough left of my paycheque to pay all my bills after taxes.

Toronto city council, Metro council and the provincial government are spending my hard-earned tax dollars telling me how important Bill 103 is, and I've decided to educate myself. I have attended public meetings on amalgamation and listened carefully to the debates. I've read the literature handed out at these meetings, including the piece printed by NDP caucus services, and I have read the material available from the government. I have visited the Web sites of all three levels of government and I have downloaded the myriad of information available. I've even read the three daily newspapers on the issue, although there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus found there.

I've spoken to city of Toronto councillors and Metro councillors in an attempt to better understand this issue, but the only thing I'm sure of, after listening to all these people, is that none of them speak for me or my family.

We are besieged with conflicting opinions on amalgamation. Some fear it will cause the deterioration of our city; some point to a brighter future. The issue becomes one of trust.

When I vote, and I always vote, I look for three important qualities in the politicians I will vote for. My representatives must be able to demonstrate vision; they must be able to think long term and to plan for the future. I've seen the results of living for today, and we can't afford it. We always end up cleaning up the messes we've left.

I also look for integrity in politicians. They must believe in what they're doing and they must convince me that they will try to fulfil the promises they have made. They must do what they think is right and steadfastly stick to their guns even when the opposition is great.

Finally, I took for performance. Great promises, even if politicians believe them personally, are meaningless if they can't make them happen once they're elected.

Vision, guts and trust are the key ingredients I look for, and all too often I find that I have to rely on these qualities to make decisions on issues.

It's impossible to know for sure what will happen to our great city after amalgamation. My first instinct was to support the government on this issue because I found their arguments persuasive. My taxes are too high, and it made sense to me that restructuring and eliminating a level of bureaucracy would save money. "Moving from seven governments to one will remove unnecessary duplication and overlaps." That made sense to me. I have seen the benefits to the bottom line when businesses consolidate.

But some Toronto and Metro councillors were telling me this was going to cost me more money in taxes. I spoke to some of them and got completely different answers about how and why my taxes were going to go up. Not convinced, I asked a Metro councillor to explain why her numbers were completely at odds with the numbers I had retrieved from the Metro Toronto Web site.

There was a very interesting analysis to be found on the Web site entitled "Estimated Savings from Service Integration in a Unified Toronto." This analysis suggested in detail where savings could come from. Metro's study suggested savings could come from fire services, public health, library boards, building inspections, public works, transportation, parks and recreation, planning and the consolidation of general government services. It also stated that all these savings were possible without reducing service. Then their analysis stated the overall savings would be in excess of $200 million per year.

The Metro councillor I spoke with wasn't even aware of this study or this information and had no rational explanation as to why I shouldn't believe it. I wondered, therefore, why she would be speaking on amalgamation at public meetings without taking the time to better inform herself about the study done by her own level of government.

I then looked at the mayors' proposal, which suggested eliminating duplication of services, cutting the number of politicians, improving cooperation throughout the GTA, and that it would save $240 million per year. Once again I was struck by the similarity in their estimates of how much money could be saved by consolidating. Their plan probably would have been better than the status quo, but I think that one municipal government would be able to work together much better than six. Besides, how much can you trust those who had no plan for integrating to save tax dollars until their own jobs were on the line?

I have read that Allan Lamport, a former mayor of Toronto, suggested the same thing when he said: "I have the greatest respect for our elected officials and I can't blame the people in office trying to stay in office. But the fact is that Metro is one city, but it has seven city halls, six mayors and a chairman, and seven huge administrations that are costly. This shows how things have gotten out of hand."

I decided to accept the province's savings estimates because all three levels had numbers that were comparable and it made sense that consolidating would save money. But there's more to municipal governance than saving money. Opponents of Bill 103 have suggested many other potential pitfalls on the amalgamation road. Unfortunately, the issue they talk about most is actual value assessment, or market value assessment, and the possible increase in property taxes as a result.

I was appalled at the lack of understanding of the tax issue by elected representatives; and worse, Bill 103 isn't about AVA or MVA or privatizing the Beer Store. There are a lot of things it's not about. It is about one unified Toronto. The property tax issue is an important one, and perhaps I'll come back to talk to this committee again in the future about AVA or MVA. These hearings are about amalgamation, and virtually everyone concedes that amalgamation will save money, quite a lot of it, and that will lower property taxes.

Another issue that comes up frequently is that of community spirit and neighbourhoods. I thought about that, but when I started thinking about the distinctive nature of Toronto's neighbourhoods, I couldn't see that they followed any existing political boundaries. Yorkville or Chinatown are distinctive, but they are made distinctive by the people who live there. They don't need to be cities or boroughs to remain that way.

The issues that concern my family are the ones that relate to the potential decay of our inner city. I don't want to live in New York or Chicago, although their hockey teams are better. Toronto is the best large city in the world to work in and to raise a family, and I want to keep it that way. But we can't allow it to stagnate. We must focus on the important issues if we are to keep Toronto vibrant.

Transit, welfare, housing and health care are the issues that are important, and these issues are featured heavily in the anti-amalgamation material available. All of them suggest that higher taxes will put these things at risk. I can understand that. Higher taxes will put my family at risk. But since amalgamation will save dollars, doesn't it then follow that we will be better able to afford the services that help make Toronto a caring place? You can't help the poor by bankrupting everyone. A prosperous, strong, unified Toronto that provides opportunity will continue to reach out to help those in society who need the help, and the integrating of services Metro-wide should make delivery more efficient.

In short, I found that most of the opposition to Bill 103 is from people with a vested interest in the status quo, like CUPE, or councillors who wouldn't stand a chance of being elected under the new boundaries, and from naysayers, people who said that the tax cut last year would decrease revenue and cost jobs. We have seen that the government was right, that lowering taxes increases revenues, spurs growth and creates jobs.

I also discovered throughout this process how confusing the current political system is in Metro. Most of my friends don't have the faintest idea which level of government picks up their garbage, which plows their streets, which ward they live in or who their local or Metro councillors are. Many are unsure about the various federal and provincial riding boundaries.

Opponents of this bill suggest that a loss of representation and a loss of accountability will result from these changes. To be held accountable, as these municipal politicians suggest, the political system must be easily understood by the electorate, who are very busy trying to earn enough money to pay their taxes.

The Chair: Mr Brewer, I'm going to have to ask you to wind up to maintain your allotted time.

Mr Brewer: It is impossible to know for sure what will happen to our great city after amalgamation. The future is always unknown. You have two options: You can support the opponents of this plan, who have no plan, no vision and no credibility; or you can support the government, who have a plan, have the guts to follow through because they believe in it and have maintained, through fulfilling their promises, the trust of the electorate. As for me and my house, we support Bill 103.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Brewer, for coming forward and making your presentation to the committee today.

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KAREN VAUX

The Chair: Would Karen Vaux please come forward. Welcome to the committee.

Ms Karen Vaux: My name is Karen Vaux. I have lived in North York for 18 years, and in the past two years I've lived in the city of Toronto. I went to university at Ryerson, which is in downtown Toronto, and I studied economics and geography.

I just want to begin by saying that I'm in total support of Bill 103, as I believe many other people are. A lot of these other people aren't going to come to these hearings because they're probably working hard and they believe it's going to be passed, so there's no reason for them to dispute this.

In Canada the British North America Act of 1867 states explicitly that provincial legislatures have sovereignty over municipal institutions and since the 1950s, as the country has become more urbanized, the provincial governments have been paying more attention to municipalities and their problems.

Provincial legislatures can implement new forms of local government and change the functions of local government through the actions of provincial parliaments and, although we may not want to antagonize too many voters in a local area, the majority party is responsible to the province as a whole, not just to a particular municipality.

Since 1970, Toronto has become suburbanized to an extent that was rarely thought of even in the mid-1950s, although it is tempting to consider these suburban areas as outer cities with characteristics somewhat independent from those in the inner city. A corollary to the major theme of decentralization is that the suburbs are linked to the central city and the future of Toronto depends on a more coordinated management of all its parts, suburbs included.

Local government issues impinge directly upon everybody's daily life. It is one of the main tasks of urban government to ensure that all services and opportunities which have jurisdiction are available to all the inhabitants of an urban area. For the past 43 years, a Metro-wide government has propelled our growth, providing emergency services, an expanding network of community and social services, and has done so smoothly and accurately, so well that there is an inherent misconception which exists in Toronto that citizens think it is their local cities and mayors that provide many of these services. In reality, Metro regional government already delivers almost three quarters of the services on an amalgamated basis right now. Bill 103 and one unified city will be able to fulfil delivery of the other quarter of services.

With respect to neighbourhoods, we cannot forget that culture and ethnicity are profound factors that went into shaping Toronto. The Toronto experience is the product of mobility, with people coming from many different parts of the world and bringing with them a variety of cultural backgrounds. When people settle they move into a neighbourhood, not a ward or a municipality. Hence, we have Little Italy, Little Portugal, Chinatown, Greektown, to name a few. If you haven't already noticed, these neighbourhoods generally transcend municipal boundaries. Most social spaces within urban areas arise from a wide variety of cultural and economic attributes of individuals and households.

In this proposed system it will be important to ensure that planning reflects community needs. Bill 103 will provide consultation under the direction of the transition team on how the incorporation of community needs and the planning process can best be accomplished. The new city of Toronto will have community councils whereby each councillor will establish volunteer neighbourhood committees that will let citizens get directly involved with the municipal government.

These types of committees work well across Canada and the United States and they will be effective in keeping city council aware of local needs, local issues and local priorities. These volunteer neighbourhood committees are a way that local government remains in touch with the needs and desires of local residents, a way that local neighbourhood identity is preserved, a way that everyone can contribute to the future of their city, a way that local representation, participation and decision-making are possible.

In the context of the Metro government, what is needed to address many disparities between all the municipal governments is policies. The extent to which these policies are possible depends not only on the willingness of the governments to implement corrective policies but also on their ability to do so. This government has that mandate and it is about time that democratically elected government makes these needed changes.

With respect to taxes, a unified Toronto will be able to look at the physical and social structures of the entire area and make tax decisions that make sense for property owners and small businesses across the city. Taxes levied on property are a good and sound measure of taxation as long as the value of the property is fairly assessed and the property itself is a true measure of an individual's or a family's wealth.

This provincial government is making changes to the current outdated and inconsistent tax system. This will bring fairness and equity across the Metro area, putting residents throughout the unified city on a level playing field. As part of the changes, municipalities will be able to offer special consideration for certain sectors, including small commercial properties. In 1986, there were approximately 4,835 units of general government and special districts existing in the 10 provinces and this figure does not include the many subordinate agencies of local government that often act as if they were governmental units, for example, school boards.

The profusion of local governments in the Toronto area is enormous. Although Metropolitan Toronto consists of a federation of five municipalities and one central city, there are also 94 special-body governments that are variously concerned with providing services, management, regulation and utilities. This confusing and highly fragmented pattern of local government here in Toronto is considered by other cities and countries as a numerical nightmare and almost impossible to comprehend.

Let's take a look at those figures for a moment. Currently 106 politicians make $5.9 million per year, which is a low-ball figure, given their staff and office perks. In the new structure, 44 councillors plus a mayor will save $3.6 million a year on salaries alone and will do the job just as effectively.

The shortcomings of the various ways local governments raise funds, even the regressive nature of the property tax itself, will be less pronounced if only the taxes are applied on a uniform basis throughout the metropolitan area. The fact that they are not is due in large part to the proliferation and fragmentation of local government areas.

One of the problems that stems from these disparities is the fact that in order to raise funds, local governments are often found to pursue conflicting rather than cooperative policies in service provision. In fact, far from cooperating with each other, local governments within the Toronto area compete for acceptable tax-yielding economic activities.

If you combined the planning departments of Metro and Toronto, you would save almost $16 million. Moving from seven governments to one will remove unnecessary duplication and overlap. It will save about $100 million a year beginning in 1998.

The very nature of many urban problems is such that they cannot be handled effectively by a large number of small local governments acting in isolation. Although this high degree of political fragmentation may be defended on the grounds of continuing the democratic tradition of home rule, it can also be deplored as being hopelessly unsuited to the realities of modern Toronto life. Because of this, many urgent problems have remained difficult to solve and will inevitably continue to do so unless Bill 103 gets passed.

For the first time in Metropolitan Toronto, how services are delivered and where facilities are located will be based on what makes sense from the perspective of cost and local service needs. Decisions won't be constrained by the present artificial municipal boundaries. The new municipality will be able to start with a clean slate and take full advantage of the best ideas in government innovation on how to do better with less.

From what I understand, services that need to be delivered closest to the community will continue to be delivered locally. These include such things as planning approvals, day care, libraries, building permits and recreation. In fact, we will more than likely notice very little change. The big change will be that the system will be more than likely less confusing.

Clearly, in addition to the problems of coordination and economic efficiency, public awareness and control of public bodies are vitally significant. There is little doubt that the public is generally unaware of how many different units of local government influence their daily lives. Obviously, this is evident by the very low voter turnout for local elections for representatives of such boards. The dilemma of local finance and the fragmentation of local government units is at the heart of problems facing Toronto today. Bill 103 will address many of these problems and provide many of their solutions.

One of the bill's clauses involves the transfer of the responsibilities to or from the provincial level to or from the local level. This general proposal is based upon the fact that local government has accepted social responsibilities that are handled by other levels of government elsewhere and that many of the social responsibilities yield benefits for the wider area beyond that under the jurisdiction of the local government involved. Good examples of responsibilities that are increasingly being administered and funded by the province are education and the hospitals.

The Chair: Ms Vaux, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we're getting towards the end of your time, and I'd appreciate it if you'd try to wrap up at some point.

Ms Vaux: I can think of a few good reasons why this unified Toronto will help us evolve and propel us into the global future. It will save us money. It will reduce duplication and overlap. It will be a simpler, more accountable, less confusing system of local government. Communities will have more influence over local decisions. It will reduce the physical size of government. A new council will be able to make better decisions. A unified Toronto will have more clout internationally. It builds on already excellent infrastructure. Opportunities such as the Olympics will no longer be lost. Lastly, Toronto is definitely the best place on earth to live.

In conclusion, this government, through Bill 103, will be creating a more cost-effective and accountable government, and we will enjoy indirect benefits through economic growth resulting from a more competitive Toronto.

The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation to the committee tonight. Would Emilia Valentini please come forward. No.

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HOTEL ASSOCIATION OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO

The Chair: I know Mr Seiling's here from the Hotel Association of Metropolitan Toronto. Good afternoon, Mr Seiling. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Rod Seiling: I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today on Bill 103 on behalf of the hotel and hospitality industry. As you know, my name is Rod Seiling. I'm the president of the Hotel Association of Metropolitan Toronto, or HAMT, as it is more often called. I should add that I'm a resident and taxpayer of Etobicoke, and of course Mr Ford here is my MPP.

As an aside, I should say that I am not pleased, as a taxpayer, at the unsophisticated, undemocratic method that is currently being put in place to, should I say, take the temperature of citizens as we approach March 3 as to whether they're in favour or not in favour of Bill 103. I think it is unfair and is certainly not a democratic process the way it has been undertaken.

HAMT's members operate approximately 32,000 rooms, employ over 18,000 people on a full-time basis and generate around $1.22 billion annually in economic activity. Hotels are a subsector of the tourism industry, Toronto's second-largest industry. Tourism represents 100,000 jobs, $5 billion in economic activity and attracts some 22 million visitors annually. A great amount of this activity is classed as export as it represents sales outside of this country.

Bill 103 deals specifically, and I want to emphasize specifically, with the amalgamation of seven municipalities into one. It is not about property tax reform, it is not about education reform, it is not about other reforms the government of the day has proposed, as some people would like others to believe. HAMT, on behalf of its members, supports this legislation as we believe it is the appropriate decision at the appropriate time. It is a natural evolution flowing from the 1953 decision to create Metropolitan Toronto. The 1953 system of government has served us well. It's broke. Even the city of Toronto and its residents in a 1991 plebiscite are on record to this fact. Delay and further study will only exacerbate the current problems, not move us any further to a better solution.

This bill confers a number of benefits from our perspective, including increased efficiencies. The public sector must, just as hotels have been forced to do, learn to operate in the most efficient and effective manner reasonably possible. Increased efficiency will help to ensure that we're able to provide the services necessary to maintain the qualities identified with our city that makes it the number one place to live according to Fortune magazine.

Much has been made that with the new uni-city we will lose our identity and accountability. A number of our members have asked their employees if they knew who their municipal councillors were and who was responsible for what. The vast majority could not name their councillor or were not aware of what level of government was responsible for the various services.

I might add that having been involved in municipal elections in the region, I can personally attest to this fact. People generally do not understand the current system as to what level of local government does what or who their respective councillor is. Given this level of awareness, we only see improvement in this area once the legislation is passed. We suggest that with increased awareness comes increased accountability and with increased accountability comes increased responsiveness.

It is interesting to note people are suggesting that this legislation will cause a loss of identity and community. This is déjà vu, say those individuals who remember the previous amalgamation debates. Swansea, Forest Hill, Rosedale, Islington, just to name a few, still exist quite nicely as communities within. The facts do not support this logic of opponents. Neighbourhoods are created by people, not politicians. The ability to create communities, we suggest, is not related to the ability to govern. Livable communities are a byproduct of good government of course. It's the people who elect politicians. They are responsible and must hold accountable the politicians they elect. Under Bill 103, they still maintain that right and responsibility.

If tourism is one thing, it is economic development. It is universally recognized that this activity is best delivered by a common body acting on behalf of one economic, homogeneous city. You will note that I have only referenced Toronto as a single entity because from a tourism perspective, that is how we operate. Our customers don't come to visit Etobicoke, North York, York, East York or Scarborough; they come to Toronto.

Tourism has prospered because it has been supported and operated on a region-wide basis. Metropolitan Toronto has been a major supporter and deserves a great deal of the credit for the successes to date, even though it is now cutting back on that support. The alternative to having to depend on individual cities for this critical support, especially based on past performance, does not bode well for the industry or for the thousands of people who depend on our industry for their livelihood. The respective cities' financial support, which generates millions of dollars for their respective treasuries, has, with the exception of the city of Toronto, been conspicuous by their absence in their support for the tourism industry.

The city's visitors and convention marketing arm, Tourism Toronto, recognized that tourism was a Toronto phenomenon two years ago when it dropped its former name, the Metropolitan Toronto Convention and Visitors Association. You might say our marketing organization, which comprises people from all across this city, was a leader in recognizing the benefits of operating in a unified and amalgamated manner.

Based on past experience, hotels see other benefits emanating from Bill 103. From a competitive perspective, we see it as essential that with property tax reform and variable tax rates coming for 1998, we have one city. Hotels have been discriminated against by an unfair property tax system for over 25 years. This discrimination was exacerbated by the inability of the respective municipalities to agree on a method of property tax reform. They were held hostage. The result was an industry that became economically non-viable because of the discriminatory property tax system.

Fortunately, this inequity will be eliminated once the property tax reform legislation, Bill 106, is passed. With municipalities' ability to have variable tax rates, formerly called mill rates, that long-sought-after fairness and level playing field could be negated. With that, owners' ability to finally commence needed capital reinvestment in their properties, including the creation of new jobs, would disappear as well.

One city will benefit our industry and many other businesses by ensuring we operate under one set of regulations that are applied fairly and evenly to everyone within the city. Currently speaking, that is not the case. For example, one city benefits the hotel industry as it relates to fire safety inspections. Fire safety is a major concern for all hoteliers. The responsibility for these inspections resides with the respective municipality; therefore, it is important that they be both thorough and consistent.

Hotels compete with one another, so it is important they all be treated equally from this regulatory perspective. Given that a problem with one in an area like this is a problem for them all from a public relations perspective, it is vital that these inspections be both professional and fair for every hotel across the city. One city will be able to fulfil this mandate better than a number of individual fire departments and do it in a more cost-effective manner.

Currently speaking, we have six different smoking bylaws in Metropolitan Toronto. My purpose in raising this issue is not to argue the rationale for freedom of choice, but to point out the negative impacts flowing from an uncoordinated set of regulations. It is an example that is current and top of mind.

The individual cities have demonstrated that they cannot or will not work together to ensure their regulatory structures are in sync with one another. The net result is an unlevel playing field where winners and losers are determined by a superficial set of rules imposed without consideration for the economic viability of the businesses across the city involved or the jobs that may be at risk. Lost in all of this uncoordinated regulatory activity is the potential negative impact on businesses, and in our specific case, tourism and hospitality.

I referenced earlier the unfair property tax system that hotels within Metro were forced to endure. It took HAMT over one year to see the respective councils as part of this process the association undertook to try and achieve a fair property tax system. To their credit, I might add, the respective municipalities were all supportive. However, the real issue here is the lost time this exercise took. If we had been able to secure this local support in a timely manner, one could speculate the previous government may have acted positively on this matter as per the recommendation of their own Fair Tax Commission report. As it was, the election came along and the industry was forced to wait.

The fallout from this unnecessary delay was more bankruptcies, lost jobs and postponed needed capital reinvestment. Seven different levels of government add to the red tape and delay that businesses and individuals must wade through in their dealing with local government. One level will allow us all a better utilization of our resources, and this is the perfect case in point.

A unified city will make us a stronger, more effective city able to better hold its own in the global marketplace. As much as we may want to wish for the good old days and to maintain the status quo, we cannot. If we want to ensure that we can create the jobs and produce the resources that will be required to grow and prosper as a community, we need to get our house in order, and this bill is a good start. We cannot accept a structure of local government which has proved itself incapable of meeting these basic objectives.

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We need to get on with the job at hand now. We cannot afford to wait for more studies. The issues are there and have been before us for some time. Now is the time for action. "More study" and "extra time" are only code words to kill this legislation by slow death. The respective cities have had time to come up with a better solution. This issue has not suddenly come from nowhere. Let us get on with building a better community for all of us to live and work in, one that we will continue to be proud of, and one that tourists will want to visit again and again. Thank you very much.

Mr Hastings: Thank you, Mr Seiling, for coming in today. You reference quite a bit in your presentation about the new proposed unified city as an opportunity for job creation. I've contended that some of the barriers in the existing bylaws of the seven different governments that we have in Metro Toronto are blockages to job creation. Can you cite other specific examples of how some degree of harmonization of bylaws over time -- because it's going to take considerable time to bring that about -- could increase the climate for job creation in the tourism industry in Metro?

Mr Seiling: Certainly, Mr Hastings. There are a number of things we can talk about: controls on the airport, for one, one you'd be very familiar with; controls over building codes; inspections, whether they be property inspections or fire inspections. As I related earlier, we have examples where in one part of the city your garbage has to be in a totally enclosed, sprinkled enclosure attached to your building. They are examples of unfair competition.

Hotels want to compete on a level playing field. They all compete for tourists, for those customers, but to be truly competitive over the long term, it makes no sense for one to have an advantage that's been given to them by a regulation or a bylaw that favours one over the other, because ultimately it hampers investment in the industry, it hampers job creation. We're an industry that, if you create demand, we hire people immediately. There is no time lag. We certainly have proven that worldwide this is a destination that people want to come to. It's simply getting our message out. The infrastructure is here, the supply is here, so it's getting back to reinvesting in our properties, and part of that has been hampered by the inefficiency.

Of course, I've left out the prime example, the smoking bylaw. It's had a detrimental impact and North York, after three weeks, had to do something about it. It's proven in other jurisdictions -- and I'm not here to debate the ethics of the bylaw itself, just to point out that six different bylaws in one city doesn't make any sense.

Mr Hastings: We have a lot of people come into these hearings and point out that Toronto is a mecca for tourism, for job creation, the new economy. They quote back to us the Fortune magazine article in their own particular context. Could you inform us, under the existing property tax system, without any reform, how many bankruptcies we've had in the hotel industry throughout Metropolitan Toronto in the last, say, three years?

Mr Seiling: We don't have enough time. You'll cut me off before I get through them. But in very recent memory, 15 or 20 easily, and these are major hotels. There have been millions and millions of dollars of investment income forced out, lost totally, thousands of jobs lost. We're ready, willing and able to proceed onward, and hoteliers have had the wherewithal to move forward.

Mr Marchese: Were you talking about the Island Airport before? Which airport were you talking about?

Mr Seiling: I didn't reference either airport, I just said airports in general.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. Is there one quick question here?

Mr Ford: Mr Seiling, you're convinced that contacting one central source in all these unified cities would be much better and you could have better communication, better access and better PR work for the tourist industry?

Mr Seiling: Much so. Tourism in Toronto has already proven that. The industry has moved to that already and it's proven to be very successful, so we have a model in place that's working and it's recognized as one of the better convention/visitors bureaus in North America and in the world.

Mr Ford: Yours is probably one of the biggest industries in Toronto, isn't it?

Mr Seiling: We're the second-largest industry in Toronto.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Seiling, for being here today with us.

I'd just like to see if Emilia Valentini is here. Okay.

TORONTO-CENTRAL ONTARIO BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION TRADES COUNCIL

The Vice-Chair: Could we move on, then, to the Toronto-Central Ontario Building and Construction Trades Council, please. Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome to the standing committee.

Mr John Cartwright: My name is John Cartwright. I'm the business manager/financial secretary of the Toronto-Central Ontario Building and Construction Trades Council, and with me is Mr James Love, who is the president of the council.

The Toronto-Central Ontario Building and Construction Trades Council represents 40,000 skilled tradesmen and women in the greater Toronto area. We are making this presentation because of our strong concerns about the impact of amalgamation as envisaged in Bill 103. We are also concerned about the process imposed by the bill and the apparent unwillingness of the government to alter the direction of this legislation. Nevertheless, in the hope that our views may be at least listened to by the committee, we offer the following comments.

Over the past five years our council has been actively involved in numerous discussions and deliberations about the nature of the greater Toronto area, its governance and its ability to deliver the services for both its residents and businesses that operate in the region. We came to this as a result of our involvement in the Metro Jobstart Coalition, a construction industry lobby that represented management and labour in attempting to kickstart construction investment in Toronto. During this time we have examined a variety of studies and proposals for ensuring healthy growth patterns in the region, while providing adequate financial resources for infrastructure.

The crucial issue that seemed to hang over all of the discussion was the differential in commercial tax rates between Metro and the surrounding municipalities in the GTA. The fear of the hole-in-the-doughnut scenario -- and I assume people in the committee are familiar with that expression -- was highlighted by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto and the development industry in talks about business and industry leaving the downtown core, and also North York, in order to go north of Steeles or west of 27, where there's a lower commercial tax rate. That was the issue that bedevilled policymakers and planners over the last five to six years, since the recession came into Toronto.

Clearly the solution involved some form of equalization of tax burden of the services provided by Metro that benefit the entire region. As well, some form of coordination of transit and other services was desirable. Everyone, from the GTA mayors to the Golden commission to David Crombie, emphasized that the problem is a region-wide issue. It's not a Metro issue; it is a region- and GTA-wide issue.

For us, what is most striking about Bill 103 then is that nowhere in any of these numerous studies was a megacity, as in Bill 103, put forward as the solution. Even Metro council has not suggested this design that's in front of you and that we have, up to this date, still heard from the government and the minister involved they're not willing to move off of.

So the first question that needs answering before we feel it's proper to embark on this massive restructuring exercise is, where did the plan come from? How has the government concluded that this reshaping of Canada's largest urban centre is appropriate and on what studies -- particular studies, not hunches, but on what studies -- did it base its conclusion?

We are not trying to score cheap political points in asking these questions. The fact is that by and large Toronto works remarkably well, regardless of the endorsement of Fortune magazine. It is the most multicultural city in the world and has managed to draw strength from dozens of different cultures, in contrast to the fractious experience of many other large cities. All of us must be very wary of the impact that dramatic change will have on such a finely balanced community of communities.

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For us this is not an abstract issue. The people we represent, the construction trades that have built all of Metropolitan Toronto and the greater Toronto area, are a tremendously diverse workforce. Most of our members have chosen to come to this land with their skills and put their lives on the line day in and day out to build what's around them, and they work beside people who have come from every other part of the world, as well as Canadian-born, to do that. We are keenly aware of the difficulties that were faced over the years by each wave of workers who chose to bring their skills here and build the cities.

What is remarkable about Toronto -- I'm not talking about the city of Toronto, I'm talking about Metro Toronto -- is that as each wave of immigrants came here, because local government was small enough, they were able to find political, economic and social space within the communities here and have a sense of being able to influence governance and influence what happened in their cities. That's a tremendously important thing that I worry people haven't given enough thought to. That meant that everybody had a buy-in. With the multicultural cities that we find in Metro Toronto we have a balance, where everybody has had a buy-in because they've had a political way to express what's important to them. The Irish wave of immigrants, the Italian, the West Indian, the Chinese, the Portuguese have all, with a local government, found a way to have their issues, their interests and their concerns addressed.

The traditions of governance that have developed cannot be swept aside in favour of a simplistic blueprint that may fall far short of its designers' best intentions. Regardless of how well your intentions are, I need to caution you that we may be in for something we don't understand, how it will unravel if we move into a megacity and destroy the very fragile balance of governance that we've developed.

It is for this reason that we are particularly concerned with the obsessive haste with which the government is pursuing its vision. Mistakes made in the design of a structure governing a population larger than six of Canada's provinces will have significant consequences. To rush the process in order to satisfy an arbitrary time line is not, I'm afraid, the mark of mature governance, and I worry about that. I hope that you would also share our concerns about that.

Furthermore, it's clear that Bill 103 cannot be viewed in isolation. The downloading of service obligations is part, in our opinion, of the same package. It may not be the same bill but it's certainly part of the same restructuring package, including the school boards. To date, estimates of extra costs to the people of Metro start at half a billion dollars and they go up from there. Even if the government were to amend its most contentious proposals, drawing money from the Metro tax base is an integral part of the restructuring goal of this province.

In analysing the announcements of mega-week, we come to the conclusion that Bill 103 and its companion pieces are about two things: The first is money and the second is power.

Issue one, money: Since day one of this debate, many observers have identified the downloading of costs as a key objective of the province. This has now become clear. Through cutbacks in transfers and unilateral reduction of shared costs, millions of dollars of service obligations have been dumped on to municipalities. The claim by some that the savings in efficiencies will balance the new costs is simply not credible.

I want to talk about our experience in the last couple of years in trying to get the Sheppard subway built and also the subway to the airport. The previous speaker talked about the importance of tourism and convention business to this area, and rapid transit to the airport is an integral part of that. As we in the construction industry tried for the last four and five years to persuade Metropolitan Toronto and its councillors to fund those, we were always faced with the notion of a tax crunch, that in the last year and a half they were constantly afraid of further downloading from the province. They could not possibly afford to build a subway, let alone two subways, because of the unknown future.

What is guaranteed out of the downloading, even if we remove welfare, is an uncertainty that will bedevil a new governance structure, that will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to undertake major infrastructure investments, particularly that our members rely on, as we develop the future of this area.

The new burden will have to be borne by someone, most likely the homeowner, through increased property taxes. Given the inequity in commercial tax levels between Metro and the surrounding GTA cities, it is unthinkable that this difference would be allowed to increase even further. But Bill 103 does nothing to fix this particular crisis, which is the one that started the entire discussion and was supposed to have been the motivator for all of the reform.

The second issue is about power. The drastic reduction in elected representatives who are accountable to residents will do far more than just save a few salaries. Anne Golden, I think in a piece in the Star, talked about the total salary costs of governance in Metro of all elected officials being less than one half of 1%, so I don't think that's an issue that people should honestly discuss. I think we need to talk about the much larger impacts.

The new structure would be less accessible to ordinary citizens and it would be much more influenced by wealthy power brokers in our society. The cost of running for office will increase significantly to the point that elections will increasingly be financed by corporate interests. You'll have to raise well over $1 million to run for mayor of the new megacity. You'll have to raise a significant amount of money to run for any council and also the school board.

We have to ask ourselves, why is it in the interest of the overall citizenry that we move to a US style of politic where every elected official is reliant on bagmen who represent special interest groups and lobbyists, be they for the tobacco industry -- regardless of the costs of cancer -- the development industry or the privatization interests who want to come in and take the spoils of public services? We don't think it's a healthy process to move away from the current level of accessible councillors to ones who will only be accessible by people who have a significant amount of money and power.

The pressure to contract out or privatize public services due to budget pressures will be augmented by the political pressure of corporate donors who expect to be rewarded with new business opportunities. Is that crying wolf? We don't think so. It's clear, in the direction that this government has talked about and some others have talked about, that there is an expectation by major mostly transnational corporations to come in and take over public services and to add that as part of their business assets and the bottom line in their own corporations.

The KPMG report, commissioned by the province to support its proposals, identifies at least 4,500 jobs that will be lost. That may not be an issue to the accountant putting that report together -- he only had a couple of weeks to do it and he was already given his instructions on what he had to come up with -- but to the 4,500 people, they are being thrown out into an unemployment level in the job market of still 9.4%, and that's not going down. That's not a solution we relish even though that won't be our members, but we don't think working people deserve to be thrown on the scrapheap as part of a grand design by the bean counters when at the same time there's less and less accountability by politicians to those same working people where they live.

To us the most disturbing element of the bill is the power handed over to the trustees and the transition team. It is completely inappropriate to have provincially appointed officials vested with the authority to override our elected municipal representatives. The influence they will have through the hiring of key personnel and determining policies is quite staggering. I know that's a dialogue taking place between the minister and a number of mayors and other councillors, but that's a concern that is enunciated even by those people on Metro council who may prefer to see some form of amalgamation. There is not a single municipal politician I'm aware of who welcomes interference by the transition team and trustees, particularly in hiring, in contracts that cannot be undone and particularly in making decisions that cannot be reviewed by any court.

To conclude, it is the position of our council that Bill 103 should be withdrawn and a meaningful process of consultation entered into with the municipalities in the greater Toronto area. That doesn't mean years and years of more studies. It means there has to be a responsive process that has some integrity, that's seen by all the major stakeholders in this piece as having integrity and where the ears are actually open.

Of greatest concern to us is that it seems the minister has decided on a particular model and there has not been, for whatever reason, whether it be caucus solidarity or the sense of urgency of time, a genuine openness to changing the direction, to looking at different models, to looking at the studies I see listed in the back of this, which was put in my door -- all of those studies -- and at what those studies say. It's a real concern to us that we're moving on this thing without the ability to have a proper consultation process.

The goal for us at that consultation would be to establish a useful region-wide structure that can coordinate key services, such as transit and utilities, while maintaining the main local municipalities. I want to be clear about one thing. Our council is not in favour of scrapping Metro, nor are we in favour of scrapping the cities. We think both are still valuable and that the balance that has played between the responsibilities has allowed us to maintain a healthy civic government in the Metropolitan Toronto area.

We need to involve the GTA in coordination and we need to involve the GTA in levelling the commercial tax.

For us this model that I've just outlined at the very end would enable Toronto to maintain its enviable record as one of the best communities in the world in which to live and work. We urge the committee to please give very serious thought and consideration to exactly the immensity of the exercise they're involved in.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. That concludes this sitting. We will be adjourned until 7 pm.

The committee recessed from 1752 to 1901.

OLIVIA CHOW

The Vice-Chair: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the standing committee on general government. We're going to begin our evening deputations. I'd like to call on Olivia Chow, please, to come forward. Good evening, Ms Chow. You have 10 minutes in which to make your presentation.

Ms Olivia Chow: It will be shorter than 10 minutes. I just spent since yesterday at 2 o'clock debating Bill 103 at Metro council. We just voted. We've talked a lot about it already.

Before I tell you about Metro's position -- maybe I'll leave the chairman to do that -- let me tell you what's going to happen to the life of a senior post the downloading and how unpleasant a life it's going to be.

Imagine a senior who's living at present in a Metro-run seniors home. This senior will come home one day and notice the fridge is not working. She will call the superintendent to come and get it fixed. The superintendent will say: "We really don't have any money to fix your fridge. Your fridge is really old. You actually need a new fridge, but we've had cutbacks so we'll tinker at it and maybe it'll take another few days to get it fixed." Then a few days later, she'll notice that the elevator is not working and call the superintendent again. The superintendent will say, "Sorry, we had cutbacks, and it'll take another few days to fix." A few days later, the elevators are not fixed and she'll have to walk up the stairs all the time, unfortunately.

She'll also notice that the home visitors, the homemakers that help her out in her home are gone, the Meals on Wheels program has gone and the social worker who's assigned to her building is gone. As a result, the exercise program that's run in the recreation room and the bingo game that's there are no longer there any more because the social worker is gone and no one else is organizing them. That too is gone.

She starts wondering why. She tries to call her councillor and finds out that she can't get through because the local councillor's too busy dealing with parking and zoning a few streets over, and the noise bylaw takes a lot of time, so she can't get through.

When she gets through, the councillor tells her that there's not much he can do for her because there is a transition team that was appointed, and this transition team appointed the commissioner of housing and commissioner of community services, and really there's not much he can do for her.

She starts asking why. Megacity comes with downloading, and this new city of Toronto has found itself saddled with an additional 37,000 units of publicly owned housing, an extra $365 million worth of housing that it has no money to deal with, another $230 million worth of repairs to some of these housing units. There's only two words for it. There's no money -- no money to fix anything, no money for social housing, no money to allow this senior to live with some dignity.

As she gets older, she probably will need to find a nursing home because she can't live independently any more. She will find that the few homes that she thought were available have been privatized and that the few remaining are too expensive. There will be probably two or three left run by the city of Toronto, but it has a very long waiting list. Nursing home standards will have deteriorated dramatically, partly because of privatization. It's dragging the standards down. Also, the social workers are gone, the nutritionists are gone; they've all been laid off because there's really no money.

What could this poor senior do? This senior will remember that there was a promise of lower taxes but will find herself or maybe her daughter paying higher property taxes, despite the fact that the service level has gone down, and will remember this report that was issued at that time by the Ontario government, the KPMG report, saying, "You will save money." But if you look seriously at this report, and let's look at the sections that seniors are very interested in, primarily policing, for example, the report said, "You could save $50 million." However, the police chief said there was no way he could save $50 million. No councillor said you could save $50 million. No one. Even the Metro auditor at that time said: "You can't save $50 million. How would you save $50 million?" Well, lay off 500 officers. That's one way to do it, and that's usually the way the chief and the police services board chair would recommend. This report really, even though it promises a lot, has very little substance in it.

This senior will probably very fondly remember that there was a dental clinic that was run by the public health nurse, and there was a very close relationship with her local councillor and her local mayor. She probably has no idea who the new mayor -- oh, she probably knows who the new mayor is, but probably never has met this new mayor, and probably has only seen her on TV. She probably has never met her local councillor either, because like most of Metro councillors in the past, her councillor probably is acclaimed, not elected; well, elected, but acclaimed, because most people by that time are so alienated from their local government that they're not going to participate very much in the election process.

That is the picture I want to paint to you of what's going to happen to our seniors, and I do not believe it's an exaggeration, because if you look at what comes with megacity, it is an entire $530 million worth of downloading, plus the TTC capital budget in a few years' time and all the social housing repair costs.

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As a result of those concerns, Metro council, about an hour ago, passed a motion saying: "We would support megacity" -- that's not a position I support myself -- "but subject to the provincial government demonstrating its commitment that the transfer of financial and service responsibility will be revenue-neutral in Metro; and further, that the province of Ontario enter into negotiations with Metro to ensure that a revenue-neutral solution is achieved." Also, it has recommended, "That the province of Ontario be requested to postpone Bill 103 until January 1, 1999, and that the municipal elections scheduled for November 1997 be postponed until November 1998."

It's interesting that some Metro councillors, especially our chairman, are slightly confused about what is happening. Let me give you an example: Exactly a week ago, at corporate administration committee, a standing committee of Metro Toronto, the chairman and the majority of the councillors on the committee supported Metro's position -- it's called No Turning Back -- basically advocating for a GTA council, a directly elected, local municipality, two-tier-level government. That was our position last Thursday.

Today our chairman, after three or four working days, has said: "Well, we're not sure now. We've changed our minds. So no, maybe we don't like two-tier government any more. Maybe we'll say yes to a unified city, but it may be the first step towards something else. However, let's postpone it. However, let's work out the revenue-neutral." So Metro's position is quite confused.

The Vice-Chair: I must tell you that you have come to the end of your time, if you could just wrap up.

Ms Chow: I think I've said enough. Just one more motion that was very interesting was passed. It said, "If the provincial government intends to proceed with the amalgamation, that the local governments be simply amalgamated into the municipality of Metro Toronto in order to minimize transition costs," because after all, you don't need to get rid of Metro. You are in fact incorporating all city councils into Metro. It's seen as a power grab. Anyway, those are the motions that were passed,

I hope you dislike the picture I painted of the seniors because I suspect that's what's going to happen to a lot of seniors.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for appearing this evening.

DAVID COLLISTER

The Vice-Chair: I'd like to call on David Collister, please. Good evening, Mr Collister.

Mr David Collister: I would like to thank the committee for allowing me to speak today on Bill 103, the megacity bill. I'm here today to ask that the committee stop the passage of this bill, that it not allow it to go on to third reading and that it instead let it die the death it deserves. I believe this bill is inherently flawed and no amount of tinkering will correct its failings. I believe this bill goes wrong in at least two ways: (1) It targets the wrong level of government and (2) it is contrary in spirit to democracy.

First, I'd like to speak on how Bill 103 targets the wrong level of government. In section 27(2), a municipality, a number of cities and one borough are dissolved. I'd like to read that section now:

"27(2) The following municipalities are dissolved:

"1. The municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.

"2. The borough of East York.

"3. The city of Etobicoke.

"4. The city of North York.

"5. The city of Scarborough.

"6. The city of Toronto....

"7. The city of York."

Seven municipalities are dissolved under the auspices of reducing duplication.

I'd like to bring the committee's attention to, for example, the city of Etobicoke and the borough of East York. The jurisdictions of these two municipalities do not overlap. East York is responsible for East York and Etobicoke is responsible for Etobicoke. The same holds for North York, Scarborough, Toronto and York. None of the jurisdictions of these cities overlap; there's no duplication between these cities.

However, the jurisdictions of each of these cities do overlap with one other, and I'd like to bring your attention to item 1, the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. This municipality overlaps with each of the prior-mentioned ones. If the government is intent on removing duplication of jurisdiction, Metropolitan Toronto must be the most likely candidate. Which do you think will be more costly: removing a single municipality or trying to consolidate seven of them?

Add on top of that the increased costs of larger amalgamated cities which are indicated by study after study and what we have is not less expense but more -- much more. What do the cities of Metropolitan Toronto get in return? Less representation at, less access to and fewer services from local government. Bill 103 destroys local government and saddles the citizens with greater expenses in return. Bill 103 gives the citizens of Metropolitan Toronto less for more.

I would like to make it clear that I'm not against the Metro level of government per se. I think coordinating bodies have a useful role to play, but they should be just that, coordinating, not governing, bodies. The role of Metro and whether its representatives should be elected or selected from local councils, whether it should have enforceable or advisory powers, whether it should be replaced by a GTA-wide body, these questions should be the focus of any legislation that restructures the relations between municipalities. Such questions may be difficult to answer. It may take a great deal of time and consultations. However, to do it right, the time must be taken. Eliminating local councils is not the appropriate answer to these questions.

The second point I'd like to make about Bill 103, the megacity bill is that it defies, in spirit, democracy. Even if permissible by law, this bill (a) attacks democratically elected councils, the representatives of the people; (b) appoints individuals into positions of power over the city, individuals who are not elected and who are answerable neither to the citizens nor to the courts; and (c) is in contempt of the legislative process. I will address each of these issues in turn.

First, the megacity bill attacks the citizens' democratically elected representatives. Section 27 dissolves the elected councils of the municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto. The citizens who elected them have no say. Commonsense notions of democracy are that it is the citizens who elect their representatives in and elect them out, not the provincial government. The province may have the legal authority to destroy the councils of Ontario at will, but commonsense notions of democracy deny it the moral authority.

Second, the megacity bill puts unelected individuals who are not accountable to the citizens in charge of them and their cities. Section 9 places trustees in control of duly elected councils and section 11 empowers them with final approval of all budget items. Section 16 establishes a transition team to determine the structure of the new city. Sections 16(5) and (6) grant the transition team certain powers over the duly elected councils, such as access to information and the imposition of deadlines for compliance. Where is the accountability? These individuals are not elected. They are not answerable to citizens. Instead, they are answerable to the provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Sections 12, 15, 18 and 21 place the trustees, the transition team and any of their decisions outside the jurisdiction of the courts. I ask again, where is the accountability?

Section 24 gives the provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs sweeping and loosely defined powers that are outside of local democratic processes and accountability, including the unchecked ability to limit any activity of the duly elected councils or boards in Metropolitan Toronto, to prescribe the duties of the trustees and transition team and to define at will any of his powers not already defined. This is not how democracy is meant to work.

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Finally, in addition to demonstrating contempt for democratic processes, I firmly believe that this bill demonstrates a telling contempt of the legislative process. Section 10 establishes the powers of the trustees over the financial affairs of the municipal governments effective December 17, 1996, the date of the bill's introduction and not the date of its passage. I ask this committee, what if this bill does not pass? By what authority would these individuals have control of citizens' finances? None. They would have no authority. Section 10 assumes the passage of the bill. First reading, second reading, third reading, this very committee are trivialized by this bill. The legislative process becomes a formality, not a means of governing. We are left with rule by decree.

In summary, this bill will increase expenses and worsen services for the citizens of Metropolitan Toronto because it targets and destroys the wrong levels of governance. In addition, it undermines and even blatantly dismisses the democratic processes available to these same citizens. For both reasons, I implore that this committee not permit the further passage of this bill. Thank you.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): David, I want to thank you for your presentation. I've got three questions and I'll try to go through them fairly quickly. In the last election it was fairly clear, by the words spoken by the then leader of the third party, Mike Harris, that he favoured local government versus where we're going now. Did you think in the last election, given those words by Mike Harris and others, that the Tories were going to go ahead with such a proposal as they are putting forward today?

Mr Collister: No, I didn't. I was quite surprised.

Mr Bisson: Following from that then, I guess the next question: Do you think, given that in the last election they didn't run on this, there was no indication on the part of the Tories that they were going to move to megacity, that they have a mandate during this term to do what they're doing now?

Mr Collister: I don't believe any government has a mandate. If they are elected in with a number of different promises, some of which people approve, some of which they don't, each bill that's introduced into the government has to be fully debated and fully argued and have full input from the citizens. I don't think mandates are a proper thing for a government to have.

Mr Bisson: But specifically on something like this, as it's a fairly large departure from tradition here in Ontario -- Toronto is being changed in a big way -- if they didn't run on this in the last election, do you think they've got the mandate in between to be able to do it?

Mr Collister: No, I don't think they do.

Mr Bisson: Now we've got a referendum going on. The quick question is, there's a referendum happening and if at the end of that referendum people in the Metropolitan area say no by more than 50%, do you think the government should go forward? Do they have a mandate to go forward or should they stop?

Mr Collister: They definitely wouldn't have the mandate to go forward and I believe they should stop.

Mr Bisson: What happens if they say: "We're going to go forward. We're not going to listen to the people of the Metropolitan cities of Toronto"?

Mr Collister: Then I will have to do my best to make sure that this legislation does not go through.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much for presenting to us tonight.

CHRIS HOOK

The Vice-Chair: Chris Hook? Good evening and welcome to the committee. You have 10 minutes in which to make your presentation, and if there is time within that 10 minutes for questions, they'll come from the government caucus.

Mr Chris Hook: Wonderful. Thank you very much.

Mr Bisson: Lucky you.

Mr Hook: Looking forward to it.

My name is Chris Hook. I'm a student at McMaster University. I live in Richmond Hill, and I'm here to speak in favour of Bill 103. Indeed, I was going to start with something a little bit different, but to begin with I'd like to comment on some comments that the gentleman who spoke before me made.

I think Mr Collister was saying that somehow Bill 103 is going to dismantle democracy in Toronto. I must say that is, in my opinion, a spectacularly naïve point of view which I don't think is believed or reflected in the opinions of any students I know personally. I think exactly the opposite. I think Bill 103 is very much a testament to democracy and to improving it, and I'm just going to outline why.

The megacity proposal is, as I guess Yogi Berra would say, déja vu all over again. What we're seeing is the municipalities, the cities of Metropolitan Toronto amalgamated, just as when, for example, the city of North York came together from the borough of North York, we saw a group of smaller cities come together, cities such as -- obviously not in North York, but cities like Parkdale and Leaside, small villages, which were amalgamated into a larger municipal body. In that process smaller town councils or administrative local governments were amalgamated into a larger one, but what's happening here is that that power is being returned to the villages through neighbourhood councils.

We're seeing community councils to replace the existing city governments. Neighbourhood councils are going to be going back and allowing citizens in small municipalities, smaller areas of the cities, to again have a voice. This is a wonderful sort of municipal government because it doesn't cost the taxpayer anything and it allows more taxpayers or representatives from the villages to come in and represent their own point of view. That's very important. We need to make politics more user-friendly. We need to allow more people to come back and play a role in the political process. We need to return the do-it-yourself aspect to politics. Neighbourhood councils and community councils are going to do that.

The next issue I'd like to bring up is the whole issue of jobs. I think the number one issue for students nowadays is jobs rather than education. You can obtain an education with the great big credit card called OSAP, but when it comes to going out and getting a job, jobs for young people today are scarce. I think this streamlining of municipal government is going to accomplish a number of different things.

First of all, you're going to see less red tape. People will know more instinctively where to go to access government, to deal with zoning changes and to get permission for building adjustments and so on and so forth. I think it's going to allow freer competition, so if I've got a restaurant across the street from another restaurant and smoking is allowed in his facility and not in my own, this will give me a chance to compete fairly without having to have my customers go across the street because they want to smoke.

Third, I think this is going to put a lot of money back into the economy. We're dealing with somewhere in the neighbourhood over $1 billion over the next four years and $300 million the year after that. That's money that's going to go back into the economy and spur jobs.

The next thing I'd like to talk about are international opportunities. International opportunities, opportunities that we've missed out on in the past, such as Expos and Olympic events, are great big jobfests. I was at the Atlanta Olympic Games and I spoke to a student who was standing on the street selling flags. He did over $10,000 worth of business during the Olympics. If we brought festivities like this to Toronto, although that may be a bit of an extreme example, students could then go and get jobs and pay for their tuition, whereas summer jobs right now are to some degree scarce. This is a matter of putting money back into the economy.

Finally, we have to look at the different sorts of plans that are available, that have been put forward. The Harris government has downsized itself first. They've done first by example and then they've set forth to go and downsize other levels of government. The mayors' plan, curiously enough, keeps all six mayors and the Metro plan still keeps the Metro level of government. I think you're looking at rather self-serving bodies putting forth plans to counter this plan that I think have no legitimacy whatsoever.

I'd just like to conclude by saying that we live in the best city in the world but we can't rest on our laurels. We have to continue to make it better for future generations. Thank you.

Mr Terence Young: Thank you, Mr Hook. I appreciated your presentation. I'd like to ask you about how you would view a democratic vote or a plebiscite that operated in this fashion: One group controls the question on the ballot and the same group controls actually who gets a ballot. That ballot could go only to property owners, like in ancient Greece, not to everyone; it could be distributed in a newspaper that could easily be thrown out; or perhaps three ballots could go to each house regardless of how many adult citizens live there. You could have cats or dogs voting, frankly. There's no enumeration done. The system is totally open to fraud. You could have people voting twice, three times, four times, five times or more. The same group takes money from everyone and funds the campaign of their side only. They supply free workers, who are paid for by everyone, to help their side. What kind of democratic vote is that?

Mr Hook: I think you're absolutely right, that's not a democratic vote. You also have to bear in mind, just to add to your point, that people like Mel Lastman are trying to save their jobs. They have access to very large budgets and they're willing to spend it all to save that, simply because they won't exist if they don't. They're in it to save themselves. They're not in it to save the taxpayer anything. They're in it to save themselves and they will spend, spend, spend taxpayers' money.

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Mr Terence Young: Mr Hook, isn't that the kind of vote that's held in a totalitarian country?

Mr Hook: I believe it is.

Laughter.

The Vice-Chair: Order, please.

Mr Hastings: Mr Hook, if you had been here for the last two weeks, the general theme has been that Bill 103, the whole idea of amalgamation, is going to destroy just about everything when and if this bill gets passed as of, say, midnight March 31. Lake Ontario is going to swallow up the city of Toronto. I haven't quite heard that yet but I'm sure we will. The whole new unified city idea has suggested that probably everything is responsible for the destruction of the environment, toxic real estate, global -- I haven't heard the global warming argument yet but I'm sure that one will be presented somehow or other.

Interjections.

Mr Hook: Excuse me for a moment. Could the Chair ask the members of the room to keep their comments quiet, please, because I'm having some trouble hearing Mr Hastings.

The Vice-Chair: Yes. I did ask, and I would ask all of you to make sure we have that respect here in the room.

Mr Hastings: My point is this, Mr Hook: Ever since the city of Toronto was joined with the other municipalities in the Metro federation since 1953, all the mayors of the city of Toronto, with the exception of the existing mayor and possibly Mr Sewell, have promoted in one way or another amalgamation. In fact the "mayor of all the people," Nate Phillips back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, actually proposed at city council that they be the amalgamationist movement -- right up to Phil Givens as mayor.

Can you explain to me and the members of this committee how that past history -- it is history and it can be checked out on the record -- has been completely abandoned for the existing city of Toronto position not only officially but by a lot of the folks who are coming in here, which is the reverse, an anti-amalgamationist position?

Mr Hook: I'm having some trouble understanding that point of view, not yours but the point of view I think you're talking about, this abandonment. I think the steps taken by the Mike Harris government to solve and rectify some of the problems of the past are going to make Toronto and the greater Toronto area a lot more prosperous in the future.

Mr Hastings: Why do you think --

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Hastings and Mr Hook. Our time is up.

RACHEL SINGER

The Vice-Chair: I'd like to call on Rachel Singer. Good evening, Ms Singer.

Ms Rachel Singer: Good evening. My name is Rachel Singer and I'm a first-year student at York University. I have come before you tonight to speak from the heart about my concerns over Bill 103 and the downloading of social services on to the cities.

Presently I am already in debt at the ripe old age of 19. However, this is the case for many university students who cannot afford to attend university without financial assistance.

The effects of Bill 103 and the downloading of social services will be drastic and affect every individual and family in Metropolitan Toronto. Property taxes will go up. I'm not a business or math major. However, I can figure out that increased taxes will destroy our cities in the following ways: Businesses and homeowners who will not be able to afford the increased taxes will move to somewhere cheaper. This will result in an empty downtown core. Presently I feel relatively safe to walk home at night. This is due to a lively downtown area and a great transportation system. However, with a dead downtown as a result of high taxes, this will change.

Increased property taxes will also mean that unemployment and homelessness will increase as government employees are laid off. Businesses will go bankrupt and other publicly funded services will be forced to lay off staff to save money.

What does this mean? Apart from the quality of life, education, health care and transportation services decreasing, there are other factors to consider when an increase in unemployment occurs.

First of all, crime will most likely rise as it will be harder and harder to make a living legally.

It is also a known fact that wife battering increases in hard economic times. The Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women reported in their film Without Fear that 20% of women admitted to hospital through the emergency department are victims of family violence; 62% of all reported assaults are from women experiencing violence within their homes.

Therefore it is a known trend that in tough economic times there is an increase in wife battering. The effects of this will be that more women will be assaulted and killed as a direct result of the downloading of services and Bill 103. This will mean that police and health care responses to family violence will also increase. Clearly this will end up costing Ontario more money and lives for a problem that can be prevented.

Furthermore, the very social services that help address violence against women through education and shelters have had their funding drastically reduced. This means that Metro is currently unprepared to deal with these increased social problems.

Unemployment due to Bill 103 and the downloading of services will also mean that welfare rates and homelessness will increase. It is important to remember that welfare users are not a statistic but real individuals and children who become sucked into the cycle of poverty.

However, it is not only the reduction of the quality of life, education, health care and an increase in taxes and unemployment that make me deeply concerned about Bill 103 and its impact on the city in which I was born and have lived all my life. I'm also angry at the Ontario government's attempt to restrict my democratic representation.

Each city has its own special needs. Toronto is no exception. It is inconceivable to me how appointed trustees will be able to control my life and the people who have been elected to represent the public. It is unrealistic to think that a trustee situated in, for example, Mississauga would understand the need and importance of bike paths in downtown Toronto.

I was always taught in high school that in theory no one is above the law. The three trustees the government wishes to appoint contradict this rule in that they are not accountable to anyone. I do not see any difference between appointing trustees and thus taking away my civic rights and a dictatorship.

When looking at history, the restriction of civic rights has commonly been the first step to a totalitarian government or dictatorship, yet we look at these historical tragedies and say, "Never again."

I am not a special interest group. I will not allow my democratic rights to be taken away from me. When a government is elected into power, they are to represent all citizens.

Just because I don't agree with this government's proposed megacity plan doesn't mean I can be labelled and ignored. All governments have a substantial amount of power. However, it is the power of democracy that insists that before any decision is made, permission must be granted by the people.

The people may be asked directly or through representatives they have elected. They must be asked, listened to and respected. Without consent, it's assault. I have not given my consent.

Mr Sergio: I thank you very much, Miss Singer, for coming down to make a presentation to our committee here. I'll try and have a couple of questions since we have four minutes.

Amalgamation has been used as amalgamation, megacity, disentanglement and what have you. Some of the previous speakers have said this afternoon that we don't want to talk about tax reform, downloading, we are here to talk solely about amalgamation of the six municipalities. Do you really believe even as a student, perhaps as some sit-ins are taking place as we speak now, that we can take megacity on its own without taking into consideration the effect of the downloading on to local municipalities?

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Ms Singer: I don't think anything in politics happens in a coincidental manner. I think the fact that all this has occurred at the same time means there is a great connection. It just seems to me the drastic effects that downloading will have will make this city more unprepared to deal with amalgamation. They're both huge disruptions to city life.

Mr Sergio: I have a couple of other questions, and we'll and try and indulge in asking as many questions as possible in the time we have.

You have touched on the democratic system and the process as well. We have had very recently the Crombie report, which went through a matter of months of serious study by Mr Crombie and the others on the panel. We had the Golden report. I believe we had a number of reports in the last number of years. All of them received considerable attention by the public, the politicians and those who were assigned to conduct those reports.

What we have in front of us now no one expected to come as a flash from the government -- no one. It has not received one word from anyone. We received the introduction of the bill in the House unexpectedly. Do you think this is democratic? Do you think the government should have said, "Leave alone what has been done up to now, including the Crombie report; we want to propose something else and we want to send it for public hearings at large"? We had to fight to get you here tonight, to have this public hearing.

If what the government has been proposing is so good, you'd think they would have --

Mr Terence Young: That's not true.

Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): That's not true, you know that.

Mr Terence Young: This whole session of Parliament was for this purpose.

Ms Singer: Can I listen to the end of the question, please?

The Vice-Chair: Order.

Mr Sergio: If it were true that this proposal was that good, don't you think the government would have embarked on a series of public hearings throughout Metro instead of confining them strictly to Queen's Park here?

Ms Singer: I think if this bill is so good it would have been talked about in the election, when it happened. I think the government would have said they were in favour of it when in fact they said they weren't. I don't think it's the democratic process. The fact that the government has limited the amount of debate that is discussed on this issue, the fact that the number of hours of hearings have been limited and the fact that they have refused to give a referendum -- I don't think any of that is democracy.

Mr Sergio: That was my next question.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. The time has elapsed.

PAUL YOUNG

The Vice-Chair: Is Paul Young here? Good evening, Mr Young.

Mr Paul Young: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak here tonight. I would like to make several points regarding Bill 103.

Throughout the past few months I have experienced a range of emotions in response to the work of this government. The first was confusion. I am confused by this bill. I have listened to your points in favour of amalgamation and I'm straining to understand the merits. I had hoped that when the studies were complete, the minister would weigh the evidence and make a decision that would benefit the cities in question.

This, however, was not the case. The studies were completed in an extremely short time and they reported that there may be potential savings. This is an extremely weak conclusion, especially when one considers the fact that KPMG, the consultant, was hired by this government, a government that is obviously desperate for evidence that amalgamation will save money. There is still no evidence of savings, this government's sole rationale for amalgamation. In fact, evidence seems to point in the opposite direction.

I asked myself, how then can the notion of amalgamation be pursued any further? Opponents began citing countless examples of amalgamation in other countries, cities or provinces where municipal costs went up. I understand this is the case in Halifax, where municipal services have become chaotic and unmanageable since they amalgamated a year ago. So we have no evidence of the benefits of amalgamation, nor do we have any success stories. To the contrary, there seem to be limitless examples of how amalgamation costs more and is less efficient.

My confusion grows as I struggle to understand yet another aspect of Bill 103: the downloading of financial responsibilities to the municipalities. We were assured that this transfer would be revenue-neutral, yet yesterday the front page of the Globe and Mail reported that the hastily prepared reports have actually underestimated costs to municipalities as a result of the downloading. According to the article, this bill will not be revenue-neutral, as this government reports, and the provincial costs are estimated at $866 million.

My confusion changes to fear. I fear the power that this government has to transform this city into a US-style, gutted urban core overnight. We are an award-winning city, according to Fortune magazine, yet this government is moving at an alarming pace to change the city. What does it mean to be an award-winning city? To me, it's about quality of life for all people, regardless of income, race, religion or gender. I work in the field of urban planning, where Toronto is considered a model city. All over North America people are striving to build cities like this. Recognizing that urban sprawl is forcing municipalities into economic and environmental disaster, planners are looking to models that seem to be working, models like Toronto.

The streets are relatively safe to walk on. Our neighbourhoods promote interaction, people meeting face to face, getting to know and understand different backgrounds and perspectives, and looking out for one another. Neighbourhoods built in the 1950s do not allow for this kind of interaction, where most of one's life, outside that of the home and the workplace, unfolds in the car.

It would be a grave error to believe that the success of Toronto hinges solely on its unique turn-of-the-century urban form: the streets, transit, housing mixes etc. My fear is that this government does not understand what makes this city different from those in the United States. US cities have characteristic patterns. I would urge the minister to investigate how they work. On that note, I spoke recently with a planner in the city of Baltimore. She lives in the city and enjoys the quality of life that it offers: restaurants, entertainment, proximity to work, markets, walking etc. However, she is moving to the suburbs. Why? She explained that she is having a child. She explained the other side of urban living in many US cities. These are cities that contain large populations living in intense poverty, essentially Third World conditions.

I hope the minister is familiar with the notion of the hole in the doughnut. I will explain this, but again I would urge the minister to tour some of these cities and be sure to visit all the neighbourhoods. The downtowns are drastically underserviced, while the surrounding municipalities enjoy a high quality of health care, education, policing, parks, housing -- the list goes on. These conditions are a direct result of underrepresentation in the city: the hole in the doughnut.

The suburban areas have more political clout than the inner city, so services that the city depends on become less of a priority. Affordable housing, school programs, recreation and parks, transit -- why would someone in the suburbs care about transit when their priority is commuting by car? Where do the tax dollars go? The costs of servicing and maintaining hard services, like roads and sewers, in the suburbs is substantially higher, simply because everything is more spread out. In the urban core, where it is well known that a higher level of soft services are required, we will be forced to decide between higher taxes or a reduction in already scarce services.

I believe this is the direction that Bill 103 points to for the cities in Metro. With fewer politicians to represent the current city of Toronto, the urban core will become a dumping ground for municipal waste, sewage and noxious industries, while services for the residents become overburdened.

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I am reminded of a cartoon depicting a number of doors to municipal services. All but one had locks and signs barring entry. The library, the recreation centre, the shelters and the public ice rink were closed. The only door that remained open was the prison. I find it hard to believe that any government would really want this to take place. Again, I would urge the minister to spend some time in several US cities. I think Mr Leach will agree that what we have now is far more desirable.

I was reluctant to address the points that follow for fear that I might lose my audience. I thought if I kept my comments upbeat and constructive there would be a better chance that they might be taken to heart by our elected representatives. I have never openly criticized a government in this manner but I feel compelled at this time to state my feelings.

I am suspicious. This government has not earned my trust. We were told that we can have a referendum on a casino but not on amalgamation. Now that we are having a referendum, we are told that it won't be acknowledged. What is this government afraid of? A legitimate form of public participation is under way. People are struggling to understand the impact of this legislation. What reason could a government elected to represent the people have against the voice of the people?

You have dismissed criticism in the past as the voice of special interest groups. The referendum has no affiliation; it is people just like me who feel enough urgency to give up hours, days of their time to try and get their voice heard. They include wealthy, poor, old, young, long-time Torontonians and newcomers alike, even people who voted for this government. To date, I have not heard any support for this bill, prior to the previous speaker. I believe you should carefully think about what you will do if there is a majority against this bill in the referendum.

My suspicion has turned to anger. I am tired of trying to keep up with the barrage of changes hidden within this legislation and I now believe that this is a tactic to wear down the people who take it upon themselves to understand and respond to new policy. This government is prohibiting the people of Ontario from participating in decisions that will result in unprecedented and irreversible changes in our communities.

Clearly we are not expected to respond to all this at once, and in the ensuing confusion I believe this government is pushing through some very undemocratic measures. We still have no rationale for this bill. Instead taxpayers are paying for a media blitz complete with 30 seconds of shallow reassurances that everything is all right. Other PR campaigns resulted in this government being found in contempt, the first time ever in Ontario. In my mind this is a propaganda campaign, and I find it insulting.

I believe this government is setting new precedents in undemocratic practices. This government has installed trustees prior to the legislation being passed. The trustees are not elected, yet they will control the finances of our cities. This is unacceptable and, in my opinion, a gross misuse of powers. I suspect that this government is looking for dollars to cover a promised tax break. I cannot support a bill that puts more money into the hands of the upper-income brackets at the expense of our social support services, on top of the devastating change it will bring to our city.

Ironically, I grow more and more hopeful as this charade unfolds. The emperor has no clothes. As we get closer to the March 3 date, I sense an awakening in my workplace, among my friends and family and in my neighbourhood. I fail to see the crisis that makes this bill necessary. I would urge you --

The Vice-Chair: Excuse me, Mr Young, you have exceeded the time available.

Mr Paul Young: Okay, just one sentence: I would urge you to acknowledge the overwhelming public opposition to this bill. There has been a lot of work already done on municipal restructuring. Why not continue and build on what has been done? Work with us, not on us.

As you know, Toronto is not alone in its concerns. I hear that Hamilton, with a 50% voter turnout, voted overwhelmingly against amalgamation. I look forward to your response to the referendum here in Toronto.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Young.

Mr Paul Young: Thanks for listening.

LILA LAAKSO

The Vice-Chair: Lila Laakso. Good evening, Ms Laakso, and welcome to the committee.

Ms Lila Laakso: Madam Chairman and members of the committee, Toronto is our family's home. For 35 years we have lived and worked in our city, which has helped to educate and inspire us. Multicultural Toronto is rich and diverse in libraries, universities, lectures, conferences, festivals, theatre, music, symphony, ballet, concerts, films, museums, galleries and many other things such as the waterfront, sport facilities, playgrounds, parks, rinks, swimming pools, golf courses. Everyone does not use these possibilities: Some cannot afford them, some do not have the time, some are not aware of them. My dream has always been that every Torontonian should be able to use this city to the ultimate and that it should be available to all people.

We were therefore deeply disturbed and hurt when Minister Leach, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, announced December 17 last that the seven municipal governments of Toronto would be replaced by one municipality, the city of Toronto.

Why would the Conservative government trash Toronto, which had just been named by US Fortune magazine in October as the best international city in the world to live and work, ahead of runners-up London, Paris, Singapore and Hong Kong? Ahead also of New York and Chicago. Minister Leach, in justification of Bill 103, bragged that a new, unified, strong city of Toronto will have more international clout. How can you be higher than first?

It has been found around the world that responsibility and accountability is best ensured in cities by an emphasis on the local level of governance. We have heard the many panels and experts: professors, city planners, architects, world experts on cities. All reject the one-tier megacity plan, pointing out that it creates destroyed shells of large cities. Minister Leach's plan of amalgamation will eliminate the local government tier. This stand is opposite to his position when he was a member of the Trimmer panel, just before the 1995 elections, when he called for key services to be delivered by strengthened local governments.

The logic of the call by the Golden commission of January 1996 to continue two-tiered municipal government extending or stretching beyond Toronto on a Metro-type plan to include the whole GTA is superior to Minister Leach's imposed megacity. To amalgamate only six of the some 30 GTA municipalities is no answer. The problems of growth and equity will remain. A democratic meeting, before legislation, with all concerned councils and citizens could have hammered out a better solution through consultation and consensus than the Conservative-decreed megacity.

Not only was Minister Leach's announcement unbelievable -- why replace what is not broken? -- but the draconian methods he utilized to initiate the megacity are questionable and probably illegal. The Conservatives have no mandate for a new municipal structure since Metro restructuring had not been discussed before the last election when 72% of possible voters did not vote Conservative. With no warning or, more important, no previous discussion with the citizenry, the megacity is being forced undemocratically upon us.

No credible impact studies have been revealed to show the superiority of the megacity format. Former Conservative Scarborough Mayor Joyce Trimmer called the legislation appalling and dishonest, while accusing the government of playing games that threaten to leave Metro neighbourhoods whipped to death. She continues: "I'm very concerned...the government is moving away from the grass roots. It is the grass roots who keep politicians in line. Maybe that's the idea behind it, because when you make a city so huge, the politicians can't be controlled."

2000

Not only is the megacity less democratic, but the Conservatives undemocratically placed the mandated municipalities of Toronto, Scarborough, Etobicoke, East York, North York, York and Metro under trusteeship. There was no revelation of fraud, corruption, financial mismanagement or bankruptcy, for which trusteeship is available in legislation. Contrary to this, the municipalities are financially strong, have balanced budgets and have reserves which together amount to more than a billion dollars. Is this what the Conservatives are eyeing, since they have frozen the reserves under trustee rule? What could be more undemocratic than to put elected governments under trusteeship a year before their mandate is up? In addition, Minister Leach used an illegal precedent of making his bill retroactive to December 17, 1996, a date several months before the bill has even passed the House.

A perusing of Bill 103 shows that it is supposedly about the incorporating of a new city of Toronto. But of its 23 pages, less than 20% of the total discuss the new city. The rest is taken up by the board of trustees, the transition team, and ministerial regulation and powers. The new city apparently is not under discussion. It is its installation that is.

The board of trustees and the transition team are appointed by the government. Their duties are to monitor for compliance to the bill, assist in preparing 1997 operating and capital budgets, and set up hiring and promotion guidelines. The legally elected council is to co-operate, assist and comply with trustee wishes and requests, allow examination of records and documents and follow the deadlines set by the trustees. Many restrictions on the old council are enumerated: Board-approved budgets must not be altered; the council must not buy or sell beyond $50,000; reserve funds must not be touched. Further, the bill spells out, "No proceeding for damages shall be commenced against the board of trustees...for an act done in good faith in the execution...of their duty under this act...or for any alleged neglect or default in the execution...of that duty."

The transition team duties include: producing spending and taxing limits for any year for the new council; establishing the organizational structure for the new city; hiring department heads and other employees. The bill spells out, "The new city is bound by the employment contracts" made by the transition team and "the decisions of the transition team are final and shall not be reviewed or questioned by a court." Is this democracy?

The Vice-Chair: Excuse me, Ms Laakso, we're nearly at the end of your time.

Ms Laakso: All right, I'll speed it up.

I have listed a small part only of the work and powers of the board of trustees and transition team spelled out in Bill 103. We can see how local democracy has been trampled upon. The provincial government, through its agents and its dictatorial powers, is taking over our municipal government.

I am frightened, for local democracy in Toronto has been suspended. Elected officials have been superseded by provincially appointed officials who cannot be held to account. Citizens were given no opportunity to participate in public debate. The Minister of Municipal Affairs swears he will not be swayed in his resolve. Toronto is under seige. Withdraw Bill 103.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Laakso.

Ms Laakso: I want to conclude with John Ralston Saul's quote from --

The Vice-Chair: I have let you go well beyond the time. I'm sorry.

Ms Laakso: Perhaps the rest of you can read John Ralston Saul's quote from page 168 in The Unconscious Civilization. It's quite appropriate to what is happening here.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much.

GREG DINSMORE

The Vice-Chair: I call on Greg Dinsmore. Good evening, Mr Dinsmore, and welcome to the committee.

Mr Greg Dinsmore: My name is Greg Dinsmore. I'm a university student currently doing graduate studies at York University. I have lived in Toronto pretty much all my life, and I have come here to make an argument against the proposed Bill 103 to amalgamate the six municipalities of the greater Toronto area. I'm asking that the government scrap it if a majority of the population or a majority of the municipalities vote against it in the upcoming referendum.

The primary argument given by the government in favour of amalgamation is that it will make administration of the city more efficient and therefore will save taxpayers money which can be used to cut their taxes. It is this idea of efficiency that I will be discussing tonight.

I would like to begin my argument by stating the two assumptions that underlie it. First, I assume the intention behind Bill 103 is to improve the situation of the GTA, to make it more efficient, as the government claims. If this is not the case, then it makes no sense to argue that they are wrong, which is what I am about to do.

Second, I assume the majority of the population of the major municipalities -- North York, Toronto -- is against amalgamation. Not only does this seem to be the case, according to recent polls, but I also accept that if these two municipalities endorse amalgamation the government probably has a mandate to go ahead.

On to the question of efficiency: There are other measures of efficiency besides mere savings in dollars. In a city the size of the GTA, for government to be efficient it must be flexible. The needs of the downtown core are quite obviously different from those of the suburbs, as others have mentioned. In order to be efficient, the municipal government must be able to provide the required services to the appropriate areas. It seems clear to me that if amalgamation is put forth, hidden costs will arise as the government tries to figure out how to deliver different services to different areas. Therefore, it seems that in order to efficiently amalgamate services in Toronto, the process would have to be done from the bottom up rather than from the top down. That way, those services that are the same for all can be shared and those that are specific to certain municipalities can be locally controlled. This seems quite possible within the current setup. It goes against all common sense to say that it is efficient to centralize all services in a city the size of Toronto. If this were the case, every large city in North America would be structured in this way.

Another reason for the necessity of flexible and therefore local government is the rapidly changing nature of the city. As we speak, Toronto is getting bigger and is welcoming more and more cultural communities. Also, as communication technologies advance and as the world becomes more and more integrated, changes in the economy occur more rapidly. In order to respond to the demands of both these factors, government must have the ability to adjust quickly, to target policies to different areas of the city. As we all know, the larger the government becomes, the more difficulty it has in responding quickly to new challenges, the more it becomes bogged down by bureaucratic inertia. In that sense, maintaining local governments seems to be essential if Toronto is to remain competitive in a global economy and if it is to continue to operate as a successful cosmopolitan city.

However, what seems to be the most important point regarding the possible efficiency of an amalgamated GTA is that Toronto cannot be made efficient in spite of itself. If Bill 103 is put forth despite a decisive rejection in the referendum, the backlash created will more than eliminate any savings that might, however doubtfully, otherwise be made. If the results of the referendum are ignored, I do not believe people will simply accept the government's decision. The reforms proposed by the provincial government directly affect every single member of the GTA. It affects their homes, their communities, their families, their children. They will not just let it slide. There will be protests. There will be Days of Action. There will be court challenges and there will be a general reluctance to comply with the megacity government. This will not enhance the efficient functioning of a municipal government. A government cannot be efficient if it is not legitimate in the eyes of those it represents.

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This brings me back to my initial assumption that the intention behind Bill 103 is the improvement of the government of the GTA. If I am wrong, if this is not the case -- that is to say, if the measures are designed to bring about another objective, such as the implementation of workfare or the use of Toronto's property tax revenues to allow the provincial government to finance its promised tax cut -- the new government cannot be considered legitimate by the residents of the GTA. I would see no reason for them to recognize its authority. Thank you.

Mr Bisson: I go back to the very beginning. In the last election -- I asked this question previously, but I think it's topical to what you've presented here -- the current government did not run on a mandate to move towards what we're doing with Bill 103, making a megacity. Do you think the government has any authority to do this at this point, given that it did not run on this? This was not part of the Common Sense Revolution. They indicated at every opportunity that they wanted to do exactly the opposite: strengthen local government.

Mr Dinsmore: I don't really believe they have a mandate to do so. However, if the municipalities are going to put forth referenda to speak out against it, it seems to me that the flip side of that -- if you put forth referenda and ask the government to accept the result if they say no, the implicit argument in that is that you have to accept their decision if they say yes. My assumption is they will not, but if the government has a mandate, it is required to follow a referendum simply because it was not part of their Common Sense Revolution.

Mr Bisson: In this case, the mayor of the city of Toronto and other mayors offered to sit down with the provincial government to come up with an acceptable question, a question everybody would be comfortable with. The government said, "No, we don't want any part of a referendum," which indicates it may be worried about the outcome. In the end, my sense is that the referendum will be won by the no side, the people who are against the megacity. Where does that leave the government afterwards vis-à-vis this bill?

Mr Dinsmore: It seems quite clear that it would not be legitimate. That was the point of my presentation. It is not legitimate in that it was not part of the mandate they were elected on and it has been rejected by those it affects. Toronto may be part of the province, but that does not mean that those who live in Kingston, Sudbury and North Bay should necessarily be deciding how this city is run.

Mr Bisson: Let me move to a different area. This Tory government prides itself on trying to do away with big government, trying to make all kinds of efficiencies so government is smaller and closer to the people, that this would be a much better thing. The government is creating a huge bureaucracy in the new city that will be created.

Does that leave the government in a bit of an awkward spot? They're out there trying to say, "We're going to create more efficient government. We're going to bring it closer to the people," but what they're doing here is creating a huge bureaucracy called the city of Toronto at the end of all this.

Mr Dinsmore: That's the substance of the argument. The entire discourse from the Conservative Party, the Reform Party, that general discourse has traditionally been that government is too big, that it must be pared down, that large bureaucracies don't respond to the people. This in substance seems to be going against that, although there may be ulterior motives or other reasons to go about doing it. It does not seem efficient in order to improve the lot of the city of Toronto.

Mr Bisson: Toronto, time and time again, is chosen as the number one city in the world, the place of envy, the place everybody looks to when it comes to planning for a city. Partly a statement and partly a question: Your comment at the end maybe wraps it up. There's an old adage in the private sector that it takes money to make money. If you want to have a successful business, you have to invest, you have to make sure you have a good basis on which to run your business, which means to say, it costs money. You need to make sure you've got the infrastructure and the expertise in place in your business to go out and take advantage of every opportunity to be number one. Toronto, it seems to me, has proven itself. It's number one.

If Toronto is number one and we've done it well to this point, what is in these people's minds to try to return us to something that clearly doesn't work when you compare it to what's happened in other cities and examples of where they've done amalgamation in bigger metropolitan centres than Toronto?

Mr Dinsmore: At some level that's exactly what I'm trying to say. I don't really have anything I can add to that. That is the substance of what I'm trying to say here today.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Dinsmore, for appearing here this evening.

NORAIR YERETSIAN

The Vice-Chair: I'd like to call on Norair Yeretsian. Welcome. We appreciate your coming.

Mr Norair Yeretsian: Good evening. My name is Norair Yeretsian. I have lived in Toronto since the early 1960s. I am currently the immediate past president of the Scarborough Chamber of Commerce. I'm also a member of the board of directors of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. I have served as a chairman of the economic development committee of the Scarborough Chamber of Commerce for three years. However, I am here tonight representing only myself and my humble opinion as a citizen and ratepayer in the greater Toronto area.

As a small businessman, a realtor and an aspiring builder-developer in the greater Toronto area, I am very much aware of the enormous challenges and opportunities we face on a daily basis. Adding to this, we have the multitude of diverse rules, regulations and procedures, the differing bylaws and directions impacting the hopes of future growth and prosperity throughout the greater Toronto area.

We have had up to recently aggressive campaigns for jobs and economic development, one small city against another, at the cost of the other, and all at the taxpayers' expense. We are currently overtaxed and overgoverned in the greater Toronto area. Living in the ever-competitive global environment, we can ill afford either luxury. Our civic leaders are quick to get on a plane and go halfway around the world looking for economic development opportunities, yet fail to notice the abundant talent and local opportunities, the fat and waste in the system until they're pressured from above. We market to the world to locate their businesses here, but here again we were pressured into marketing to the world and into playing catch-up as we're trying to do recently.

On this basis we are both inefficient and ineffective. Our business people succeed in spite of their location in the greater Toronto area, not because of it, within a North American and global perspective. Our property taxes are unnecessarily high, in part attributed to the inefficient nature and current setup of local governance. An example we've forgotten, I guess, because of the latest quote about being tops in Fortune magazine, is that we're also tops in taxes in North America. Toronto tops Vancouver, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Cincinnati, Atlanta, San Diego and Seattle -- the Financial Post. We are tops.

2020

I'd also like to share with you the results of a survey recently conducted by the Scarborough Chamber of Commerce among its membership, 63% responding yes to megacity. Summarizing the results: 63% of the respondents indicated that they want the six local governments replaced with one; 51% believe they have enough understanding of the facts to make a choice at this time; 86% believe they are presently overgoverned; 77% feel that the supermayor should be elected by the ratepayers; 65% believe amalgamation of the six local governments will not have a negative impact on the quality of life in their community; 65% believe they will not lose a sense of community if a megacity is established; 56% believe they will have adequate representation on a single council; 42% don't believe their taxes will decrease as a result of the merger; and 75% don't believe the new supermayor should be elected by members of the new council.

I was pleasantly and greatly surprised when, given only one month, our six civic leaders were able to come up with savings of over $200 million in a single year of current realty taxes collected from the ratepayers of the greater Toronto area. My question as a ratepayer is, where have they been all these years, and where have all our potential savings gone over all those years? Our realty taxes are unnecessarily high, and where is the democracy in that? As homeowners, we have been held hostage and have been required to pay and pay for many small and large inefficiencies and waste. I would like to thank the Mike Harris government and Minister Al Leach for encouraging our civic leaders to search for, find and cut out the fat and waste in the current system which has impeded and slowed economic development, job creation and prosperity in the greater Toronto area over these many years.

I am confident that with five fewer city halls, with their corresponding administrations and overhead expenses, and the establishment of one civic leadership for this one great city of Toronto, there shall be even more reduction of waste, duplication, historical political positioning and infighting, and less delaying and deferring of significant projects that need to be accomplished for the general betterment of all within the greater Toronto area.

If one were for a moment removed from one's own self-interest and asked the question, "What is good for the people of the greater Toronto area?" I have no doubt the answer would be clear: one unified, amalgamated Toronto, working in harmony, with one official plan for the new city of Toronto, one marketing plan for economic development and growth, one level and attractive playing field for businesses, one level of quality services throughout the new city. United we stand and divided we fall behind the competitive global economic environment, and then fundamentally all our communities and institutions suffer. We need one clear message of a pro-business attitude attracting and keeping companies, jobs and citizens of diverse economic backgrounds here in our one Toronto.

I want to thank Minister Al Leach and the Ontario government for having the courage and the political will for proposing and working towards the amalgamation of the greater Toronto area through Bill 103, the new city of Toronto. This constructive and positive change is long overdue. It truly is a ray of hope that this Ontario government has made the creation of the new city of Toronto a priority item. I think history will reward the Harris government with positive praise for having shown timely leadership in a area of concern. My family and I live in the greater Toronto area and this shall be yet another reason to continue to live and prosper in the new city of Toronto. Thank you, good luck and God bless.

Mr Newman: Thank you, Mr Yeretsian, for an informative and excellent presentation. I'm sure you're aware, being a resident of Scarborough, that there's a referendum or a plebiscite, or some might call it an opinion poll, being conducted across the various municipalities, Scarborough included in that, with the ballots in Scarborough being delivered in the weekly Scarborough Mirror newspaper. The same number of ballots are being delivered to voters' homes regardless of the number of eligible voters in their home.

Mr Yeretsian, do you agree with the many of my constituents in Scarborough Centre who have told me they're not going to participate in the opinion poll because the vote is not secret? Each and every citizen, if you can believe it, must sign their name and address to the ballot. Is that democratic? Because of the manner in which the vote was conducted, should the result of this referendum, plebiscite or opinion poll, whatever you choose to call it, therefore be considered legitimate?

Mr Yeretsian: I'm frankly disappointed in the way the whole thing has been turning out. I think the delay-and-defer committee is behind this referendum situation. I can't believe for the life of me why these mayors, other than keeping their jobs and their own self-interest, are backing the no forces.

Not only that, I'm surprised to find that there really isn't a structured, organized yes committee, if you will. I don't see a yes committee out there per se. I see a lot of editorials from the Scarborough Mirror on down being with the no side. Not only the no side, but everyone is creating this anxiety, trying to fan the flames.

I think I'm probably speaking for the silent majority out there. There are a lot fewer individuals who have the time or inclination, unfortunately. I think the response of the small business people in Scarborough is indicative of that. They don't have the time to come out, sit down for a couple of hours, draft a statement, come down here, with all due respect, and speak to this illustrious group.

The Vice-Chair: Mr Yeretsian, our time is up. Thank you for coming.

SANJAY DHEBAR

The Vice-Chair: The next speaker is Sanjay Dhebar. Welcome to the committee.

Mr Sanjay Dhebar: Good evening. My name is Sanjay Dhebar. I'm a student at Ryerson and a member of the student council there. I live just one block south of here and I'm glad to have this opportunity to come and speak.

It clearly states in the Common Sense Revolution the government's intent to get rid of bureaucracy and red tape. It's a clear indication it's being done, with reducing politicians at two levels of government.

People are quick to condemn the current government for the fact it has put through a bill without consultation. It's funny how quickly people forget about the NDP government and their non-consultation related to the social contract. I look around and see many people having an opportunity right now to be informed and to speak, the same people who are complaining that they don't have the opportunity to be heard.

Globalization: The federal government takes all the premiers with them and goes around the world to find out how we can prosper Canada. Amalgamation is a clear indication that's going to allow Toronto to have the opportunity for greater foreign investment, more jobs and more opportunity for people to succeed.

One must not compare our city's future to another, like Halifax or those in the United States. We are a different economy and a mosaic, a highly respected community, again something people are quick to forget.

Related to the referendum, citizens are quick to demand democracy. These are the same people who demand the democratic right in court. They're in the workplace through the Canadian Constitution. This is the same Constitution that states that if a majority government takes power, that we vote in as a democratic right, it has the ability to put bills through the House without consultation.

A lot of the people coming today speak about environmental policies and different aspects of that. Unification legislation will see environmental services, such as fire, water, parks and recreation, be more efficient and in general citizens will fare better than the status quo. The current model of environmental management is not working. Unification restructuring to amalgamate environmental services into one department will make these services more efficient and save taxpayers' money without any noticeable change in services, such as fire protection.

Policies that exist now are just not working efficiently. No change for fire services except maybe a faster response time. I just can't seem to have a problem with that. The six fire departments have been working towards a common dispatch office anyway. Parks and recreation services currently rely heavily on volunteers. For example, Scarborough has 60,000 volunteers involved in recreation, and the assumption is that these volunteers will continue to exist even after unification. Let's not forget about the territorial concerns related to those individuals who are farther away from these kinds of things.

2030

Now I wish to focus on the municipal governments. We had a split in Metro Hall last night related to resolving this whole situation related to amalgamation. We have Barbara Hall and her little clique of socialists in the city hall conducting their own personal agenda to benefit themselves.

Interruption.

The Vice-Chair: Could I ask for silence here.

Mr Dhebar: We have Frances Nunziata calling her council a bunch of wackos. We have a split and controversy in Doug Holyday's Etobicoke council. Mel Lastman's flip-flop political style seems to be focusing on the trends of the time and what the public interest is. Referendums -- gee, we really got confrontation on referendums and how to do it. That's why we have six different referendums going on. I really feel that six mayors are in low profile now, so what do they need to speak for? They have John Sewell as their hired scapegoat. The funny thing is that they seem to all forget to give a real alternative. That's the biggest shame.

My parents are immigrants who have succeeded in this country without the help of the government. They have a small business that just seems to be flourishing and they told me when I came here today to take the opportunity to thank the provincial government related to non-amalgamation, things they have done to benefit small businesses.

The current government is concerned with our future and ability to compete whereas the opposition seems to focus on the trends of the time. Amalgamation will allow us to constantly compete with other cities. Fortune magazine better get ready to just clamp every year the number one city in Toronto, number one city in Toronto because that's how we're going to be. In the end, I can't wait till my children are able to volunteer, possibly take part or even work in the summer Olympics when they come here to Toronto.

I welcome your questions at this time.

Mr Sergio: Thank you very much for coming down and making a presentation. We are already number one, so we don't have to wait. Why would you go and seek change when we are already number one? We must be doing something right. The mayors of those cities must be doing something right. Every municipality has a kitty set aside with taxes paid to those local municipalities. Do you think that the real intent of this government by introducing this bill is to get to that $1 billion?

Mr Dhebar: To answer your question, if we sit around as a city and not expand ourselves, I guess that's quite similar to past governments in the last two elections. They're addressing that other cities that compete with us globally are making changes too and that's what we're doing to adapt to that.

Mr Sergio: I have a couple of other questions. A couple of Conservative organizations, such as the board of trade, independent, safeguarding the interest of the business community, especially the small business community, and including the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the United Way, speaking on behalf of small businesses in Metro especially, have said the increasing taxes are going to be in the neighbourhood of $7,800, $7,900. You, as a young man, what would it do to the existing or future businesses in Metro?

Mr Dhebar: Related to Metro with my family, we had the same consultation as you because I questioned this whole situation myself. We had a large Indian association of Toronto get together. I actually attended also an Iranian association and all different ethnic groups, as that's what I like to focus on, being an ethnic myself, and they all seem to be for it and saying how they're going to benefit because when you have globalization and you have individuals from other countries wanting to come here to compete with our benefits --

Mr Sergio: No, no, that's not the question.

Mr Dhebar: Yes, but you asked --

Mr Sergio: If you have a small business in Metro and you are hit with a $7,800 increase per year, how would you feel?

Mr Dhebar: Increase in taxes?

Mr Sergio: Yes.

Mr Dhebar: I'd totally feel at a loss with all those people coming here wanting to buy and compete in Toronto as it's such a great city and has so much to offer.

Mr Sergio: If you were a homeowner who spent your life paying for a little house and all of a sudden you have a Premier telling you, a 75-year-old senior, "If your taxes will go up and you can't afford it, go and put a negative mortgage on your house," how would you feel?

Mr Dhebar: I don't think I've ever heard that. First of all, I'm a student.

Mr Sergio: Oh, you haven't heard that?

Mr Dhebar: I've never ever heard that and I'll be honest with you, I try to be neutral as far as listening and I read the Toronto Star.

Mr Sergio: Absolutely all the way. Yes, I can appreciate that. It's very neutral.

Would you say that --

Mr Terence Young: You don't need to be rude to the delegation.

The Vice-Chair: Order.

Mr Sergio: I'm sorry. With all due respect, I think I'm being ultrakind to the attendant here. I don't think I'm being rude, and I resent that interjection, Madam Chair.

Do you believe the Premier says that if we are going to establish a casino in Ontario, we are going to have a binding referendum? Do you believe that the establishment of a casino in Ontario is more important than changing the governments in Metro, which will affect the lives of every single Ontarian for years to come, perhaps generations?

Mr Dhebar: You're asking if the referendum should be done to consult?

Mr Sergio: Yes.

Mr Dhebar: I think a referendum --

Mr Sergio: What's more important, the casino or changing the way we will be governed for years to come?

Mr Dhebar: First of all, I don't see how with such a positive impact that the outcome of amalgamation is going to have that we need to consult. I agree that information needs to be had, but I think I'm having the opportunity right now to be informed by listening to other speakers and reading the papers. I believe I read in the Star yesterday that a lot of councillors want amalgamation at Metro council. They're the ones who represent us and we vote them in. I know my councillor wants amalgamation. I figure if I voted for that individual to represent me, he's good enough to make that decision. Related to the referendum, I believe referendum is a total disgusting way of telling a government they haven't done their job right.

Mr Sergio: Not according to Mr Harris.

Mr Dhebar: But you're asking me what I think, so I'm trying to --

The Vice-Chair: I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you. Time has come to an end. Thank you very much for coming here.

CITY OF TORONTO SAFE CITY COMMITTEE

The Vice-Chair: I'd like to call on the City of Toronto Safe City Committee. Good evening and welcome to the standing committee. I'd like to have you introduce yourselves for the purpose of Hansard. Then you can begin.

Ms Helen Melbourne: My name is Helen Melbourne. I'm the co-chair of the City of Toronto Safe City Committee.

Mr Patrick Au: I'm Patrick Au. I'm the volunteer rep of the safe city committee.

Mr Len Paris: I'm Len Paris, a member of the City of Toronto Safe City Committee.

Ms Melbourne: First of all, I should tell you that the safe city committee hasn't taken sides. Some of us have and some of us haven't. There are those on the committee who like some of the ideas of amalgamation, there are those of us who don't and there are a lot who say they're not decided. They haven't heard enough and they don't like the rush. Really, the report I'm presenting is about the concerns we have as a committee. The one thing we all agreed on was that we're concerned that the work of the committee will be lost. So I'm just going to read what we presented.

Mr Bisson: It's the work of your committee?

Ms Melbourne: It's the work of the safe city committee. This is our report and we have a number of things that we've done.

Since 1989, the safe city committee has worked with the city of Toronto to prevent violence and promote community safety in our homes, our workplaces and on our streets.

The safe city committee consists of the mayor, three city councillors and 20 volunteer representatives of community organizations whose mandate includes the promotion of community safety. The committee is staffed by a coordinator and assistant in the Healthy City Office. The committee meets monthly and reports to Toronto city council.

The committee has three main functions:

(1) Advocacy: We identify and increase public awareness of safety issues; we work with the city of Toronto to develop policies and programs to prevent violence.

(2) Education: We provide speakers, displays, pamphlets and advice to community groups; we create workshops and forums on community safety; we maintain an extensive resource library.

(3) Consultation: We share information and create links with other organizations in Toronto and around the world.

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The city of Toronto has developed a considerable reputation for its safe city initiatives, both locally and internationally. Our achievements include:

The publication A Working Guide for Planning and Designing Safer Urban Environments, which has gained international recognition for its innovative policies on making cities safer -- it's now out of print and we're working on a second and expanded edition.

Funding for projects under the Breaking the Cycle of Violence program, which has improved community resources for prevention of violence.

Popular programs, products and services like free self-defence courses offered at city-run community recreation centres; pamphlets and posters on safety tips, making underground garages safer etc; forums and workshops on park safety -- we've got quite a bit we've done on that, including a whole publication on actually how to do it; community success stories, and again we have a whole lot of things that we've done on that, and dealing with the media.

The recently published Building on Success: A Community Safety Strategy for the City of Toronto is the result of consultation with 125 different community organizations.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has described the City of Toronto Safe City Committee as "a good example of a local government structure which fosters community involvement in decision-making." We have worked closely with the provincial Solicitor General's office on their provincial crime prevention strategy, which stresses the importance of local government involvement in the prevention of crime and violence. Toronto's safe city initiative was the first in Canada and has been the model for many municipal initiatives, including the cities of Kitchener, Calgary and Vancouver. The United States Conference of Mayors has distributed A Working Guide to all of its member municipalities, and the Ontario Police College includes it in its training materials for police officers.

Poll after poll show crime and community safety to be the number one concern for Torontonians. Toronto's recent ranking by Fortune magazine as the best city in the world for work and family was largely due to its reputation as the safest city in North America.

We are concerned that this successful initiative, which deals with the most important concern to the citizens of Toronto, is threatened by amalgamation into a megacity, as proposed by Bill 103. This concern is based on two facts.

First, the safe city committee's success is based on aspects of the city of Toronto's corporate culture which are unique among Metro-area municipalities: a history of influential, issue-based citizen advisory committees and a willingness to consider proactive public health policies. This corporate culture, supported by the voters of the city of Toronto, is the product of over 100 years of citizen advocacy and involvement in local decision-making and is unlikely to be replicated in the proposed megacity.

The safe city committee's strength lies in its representation by community groups. A list of our membership is attached. As you can see, it includes ethnospecific organizations, residents' associations, agencies that serve homeless people, advocacy groups etc. Our members consist of citizens who, due to firsthand experience in their communities, are able to give specialized input on matters of community safety in Toronto. Despite or perhaps because of its diversity, we are able to achieve consensus on our approach. One commonality is our understanding of central city issues such as high-density housing, a concentration of homeless people and others at extreme risk of violence, and an extremely heterogenous community.

Another source of consensus is our belief that dealing with the root causes of crime, such as violence in the home and lack of economic and social opportunity, pays off in the long term. The Breaking the Cycle of Violence grants were created because we believe that local communities know their crime problems and solutions best. By reaching children with conflict resolution programs, by developing dating violence materials and providing recreation programs for teenagers, by training doctors and nurses to respond appropriately if they suspect a patient has been assaulted, we reach at-risk groups before violence escalates. We believe these small grants use public money effectively to improve public safety.

Our present local government is accessible. We spend a lot of time talking with our 16 local councillors and our mayor, both to get their perspective on local issues and to ensure that we are effective in our actions. Usually policy and program directions we suggest to city council are accepted. Local councillors participate in activities that keep them in touch with constituents' safety concerns, such as community safety audits. The reason the safe city committee was created was because a local councillor listened to neighbourhood concerns about safety and worked over the next year with politicians and community groups to create a strategy to address these concerns.

If there are 44 councillors in the proposed megacity, each with 50,000 constituents and a greatly expanded range of issues to address, how will they be able to spend that kind of time responding to community concerns? With responsibilities that previously belonged to regional government, such as public transit, policing, and welfare, added to local government duties such as urban planning, roads and rubbish, parks and community facilities, how will councillors be able to support issue-based committees, even on a topic as crucial as community safety?

Even assuming that the safe city committee was to continue, how could the safe city committee address the concerns of four times the population without either expanding the membership to the point where we become unworkable, or else leaving out crucial voices? Could we achieve the same level of consensus and effectiveness when the concerns of inner suburbs are added to the central city? Or would the power of local government, with its intimate knowledge of issues and places important to its citizens, be dissipated?

Second, other Metro-area municipalities and Metro government itself have proven by their political and spending priorities that they are unwilling to prioritize the prevention of violence and promotion of community safety. We are concerned that a merged council, especially with new spending obligations downloaded on to them, will be unlikely to consider what is for most of them a new initiative, even one with proven benefits.

Scarborough and North York have used A Working Guide as the basis for their planning guidelines. Public health units in York, East York and Etobicoke distribute our pamphlets. Community groups across Metro call us with their safety concerns. Despite benefiting from the city of Toronto's programs and policies, no other municipality has a long-term, citizen-based safe city initiative reporting directly to its council. No other municipality has a grants program whose primary purpose is the prevention of violence. No other municipality has stated in so many words that "community safety is a priority for city council," and has backed up this commitment with a corporate strategy.

For that matter, no other municipality has a grants program that responds to homelessness, drug abuse or AIDS. These issues exist in other municipalities. Perhaps these issues are more visible in the central city, or perhaps this is a case of the city of Toronto's unique emphasis on proactive public health policies. In any case, the proposed amalgamation represents at best a watering down of what makes the city of Toronto unique and at worst a loss of all that makes Toronto the best place to live and work in the world.

Even without Bill 103, the potential effects of provincial downloading of social services are ruinous to community safety in Toronto. Already tense tradeoffs between public transit and community services, between policing and health care, will be exacerbated. The imposition of social service costs could well set off a spiral of increased poverty, increased taxes, flight of business, reduced employment opportunities and increased crime that would offset any local government crime prevention efforts.

But the proposed amalgamation plunges local government into chaos just when a coherent response to these threats is needed most. Bill 103, if adopted, will erase the city of Toronto's unique perspective on social issues such as community safety. For these reasons, as well as many others which we do not have time to enumerate under the limitations of the present public consultation process, we urge you to reconsider Bill 103.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. You have actually gone past the allotted time. I appreciate your coming here this evening to bring us that.

Ms Melbourne: Thank you very much for the opportunity.

SMALL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION

The Vice-Chair: I'd like to call on the Small Business Association, John Anderson. Welcome to the committee.

Mr John Anderson: My name is John Anderson. I have operated a retail store on Yonge Street for 30 years. I have three stores in the city of Toronto. I've had three stores within three blocks of Queen's Park and I've been very directly involved with my neighbourhood, which happens to be your neighbourhood, Queen's Park.

Tonight I'd like to talk about small business. It seems like tonight is small business night because I saw three other people here talking about small business. I've been involved with small business for the last three years, mainly on a federal level, basically involved in the David and Goliath struggle between small business and the banks. It's been a very informative, educational process in that small business has become a very major economic power, not just here in Toronto but across the country.

I'd like to give you a couple of statistics, and a lot of people aren't aware of this: 50% of our employment in this country comes from small business; 45% of our GDP comes from small business; all the new growth in the last 10 years has come from the small business sector.

2050

I was doing a presentation in the west wing here about a year ago. We had a committee room up on the second floor and we just happened to be reversed. Our committee room got reversed with the Tory caucus. They were having a meeting up there and all of a sudden all the Tory caucus members were coming into our room and vice versa and it all got mixed up. They kept coming in and wondering, "Why are you here?" I said, "Well, this is the small business meeting." I had four groups come up to me in groups of four saying, "We're not into small business, we're into big business." This shocked me because small business actually is big business and I did not expect to hear that.

Interjection.

Mr Anderson: Yes, this was up in the west wing. Fortunately, one individual actually took the time to come and talk to me about, "What do you do?" So tonight I'm going to give you a little idea of what we do.

There are a lot of arguments and I'm sure you've heard the same arguments, but tonight what I'm going to do is talk about grass roots and I'm going to talk about my neighbourhood and your neighbourhood.

Yonge Street: We have a lot of visions of Yonge Street. They're not always good. It's seen better days. I'm sure that in most cases if you can avoid walking on Yonge Street, you'll do that. Our association has been dealing with local government. We've also been dealing with the provincial and federal governments over the last three years, but in most cases we've found that our problems are immediate, sitting in front of us, and we end up having to go to city hall to work out these problems.

I'm going to give you two examples, probably the biggest ones that affected us last year, 1996. Last year, district 9 regional assessment office raised the assessments of approximately 85 small businesses on Yonge Street some 300%. This had to do with the fact that certain of the locations -- and I am talking about Yonge Street from Bloor down to College. This is the area I'm talking about. This is the area of our association. In 1996, we had 80 small businesses on Yonge Street below Bloor, above College, receiving a tax increase of up to 300%. I can't tell you what sort of effect this had on all the merchants who were receiving these assessment notices.

How did our association respond to this problem? We advised the landlords to write the local Tory MPs to get some sort of explanation how they could expect them to pay a 300% increase on their taxes. Most of their properties were already leased with fixed leases, fixed incomes and they were having a hard time paying the taxes as it was.

Then we contacted the city of Toronto, the mayor's office, we contacted most of the tenants on the street and we also contacted district 9 assessment office. Sitting down, we called a meeting with those people -- and this happened within a three-week to four-week period. I did a paper, this is the paper right here, and I showed all these articles here. These are all articles from various newspapers over 1995-96, depicting Yonge Street and the problems of Yonge Street.

What we're talking about is the downtown core. We're talking about the hole in the middle of the doughnut. We're talking about a lot of problems: "Street of Shame"; "Shabby Street gets Typical Toronto Help." I said to the district commissioner for taxation assessment, "How could you be charging businesses on Yonge Street 300% more when it's quite obvious that Yonge Street is in very bad shape and in direct need of help?"

Well, we had a lot of meetings after that, and these are local government meetings. We had a lot of meetings with the assessment office and we were able to work out a solution to that problem, but it took a combined operation of several departments and councillors constantly involved in meetings to save a section of Yonge Street which is in your neighbourhood from becoming ghettoized.

A business that has a 350% tax disability is not going to be rented. It's going to get boarded up. Most of the landlords, and there were two landlords in particular, were going to lose their properties because they could not raise the taxes to cover the increase.

This is a case where what I'm trying to say tonight is, our small business association has a lot of direct involvement with local government. I've been involved with the federal government and I know how difficult that process is, but local government has been quite accessible to us. We are very concerned that if this local government becomes larger, are we going to be able, when we have a life-and-death situation such as this problem here, to get accessibility to a councillor who has to four times the workload?

I want to move on to the second one. Queen's Park is really important to us. The largest employer within my neighbourhood is sitting right here. The provincial government hires probably 15,000 people; whatever way the provincial government goes, our business goes. We've been suffering a great deal over the last two, two and a half years. We've been in sort of a state of shock. It's been like a war zone. It's been one problem after another and it reflects on our small, local businesses a lot.

One of our biggest problems was, similar to the lady who just came in here, having a safe street. We had very serious problems with drugs two blocks from where I sit right now. I don't know if you ever walk down Yonge Street, if you ever get propositioned, "Do you want to buy this or that?" This is another case where we had to deal with local government. We didn't deal with one level of local government; we dealt probably with about three or four different departments. We dealt with the parks department.

What's the parks department got to do with drugs? Well, dealing with this particular group of people selling drugs on Yonge Street, just off Yonge Street, we started probably a year and a half ago. The first thing is, we had the parks department come in and set up fences around a boulevard where they used to sit. After about eight months, we moved them from that location -- and they moved; they moved a block south. Then we had the department of works come in and we increased the lighting. So we've got a lot of people cooperating here. They moved south.

Then they moved into a park, so we had to go back to the parks department and we had to take the benches out, we had to cut the bushes down. Then we had to hold a local meeting and we had to make a dog run. We figured if we made a dog run and people brought their dogs there, then people wouldn't feel comfortable selling drugs there and people could walk through the park. I mean, if I'm trying to sell a dress to a lady, she does not want to be confronted by a drug pusher. She wants to feel comfortable. She wants to be able to buy something.

These are the sorts of problems that my association has had to deal with. That's why we call ourselves the Small Business Association. These are real problems. If we do not have accessibility to our local government, our businesses dissipate; they disappear. People don't want to come around. They don't feel comfortable. This is a very large problem in our downtown, urban main streets.

I've been fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to have a retail location at Yonge and Dundas and I watched what happened at Yonge and Dundas for 12 years. I tried to work with Metro. I tried to work with the city on it. But the biggest problem at Yonge and Dundas was, there was no group, there was no association that cared enough to get involved. I found that when an association cares enough and approaches the local government on the different levels and the different departments of local government, you get a response. If you don't care, they don't care. If you don't talk up, forget it, nothing happens.

So I found that nothing happened down at Yonge and Dundas and finally I gave up and moved out. I left a 12,000-square-foot store. I did over $1 million a year there. I was fed up. No one gave a shit. No one cared, so that it was it. I said, "No one else cares; I'm out of there." I had another store up the street. It's about 7,000 square feet. So I'm up there and all of a sudden we have a lot of problems on the street.

Local government is really important to us. We do not want to see larger government. We really feel that if we have accessibility to a local councillor -- this could disappear if we have a larger council.

These were probably two of the cases that meant the most to our association this year.

We have to remember that we're going to be creating this entirely new situation, but what's going to happen to Queen's Park? You only have to go south of the border and look at the White House. You only have to know the homicide rate, the fact that you can't walk after dark. All these sorts of things make a viable city or a city which you leave after dark. You lock your doors. You get in your cars and you go away.

I think we have a very fortunate thing happening here in this city. I do not feel at all threatened to walk up and down Yonge Street at night. It took us maybe a year and a half to create a situation where the drug dealers had finally given up. They've left. Right now, it is not happening over there. Numerous arrests, a lot of continuous effort, and it didn't happen once, it didn't happen twice, it took three times.

I'm really concerned and I'm here tonight to say a lot of small businesses don't have access to local government. At the particular moment in the downtown core we've had very good response and I'm very worried what will happen if we go into a megacity.

There are a lot of other arguments, and I'm sure you've heard them all. I don't think I want to go into that, but tonight I've come here just to talk about the fact that the downtown core of the largest city in Canada has special problems, and I don't think large government is equipped to deal with them. I don't think that you, in a lot of cases, would want to have to deal with crack dealers and dope dealers and trying to solve those problems. It takes a concerted, very local effort to do that.

I would like to probably rest there, except to say that small business is pretty practical. We have a pretty good grass-roots handle on basic economic policies. We probably pay more taxes than anybody else I can think of. We pay provincial sales tax, we pay GST, we pay business tax, we pay commercial tax. I have two commercial buildings I pay tax on. I pay residential tax. We're involved with government all the way down the line.

But what bothers me the most of what I've been watching and reading over the last month is that when I see polarized politics, I don't see the problem being dealt with. Nothing is black and white. I can probably find pros on one side and pros on the other side, but as soon as we start digging in, basically everybody suffers.

Right now, over the last three months, I can tell you for a fact, because I'm on a first-name basis with almost every merchant on Yonge Street, our business is down. We're hurting real bad. We're in a war zone. It may not be totally significant to the provincial government, but I tell you, every merchant over on Yonge Street is wondering why. Why are things so bad? We're shell-shocked. I wish we weren't. We hear about all these improvements in the economy but it's not happening on our street.

One of the good barometers is just to watch the boarded-up stores, the empty stores, the for-leases. You can take my word for it or you can go over to Yonge Street and start counting them, because I make a point of counting them. I look at, were they recent or were they a long-time merchant? How long were they here? Am I really going to miss them? Over the last three or four months, we're up to 32 in my district right now. This scares me. I talk to everybody. They had a very, very poor season. We're hanging in there. It's tough. It's been very tough, and that makes us even more apprehensive as to what's going to happen with the megacity.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Anderson. You've exceeded your time. We appreciate your coming here to present to the committee.

That is the end of our presentations for this evening, so we stand adjourned until Monday morning at 9 o'clock.

The committee adjourned at 2104.