The headlines, in the print media, stating Toronto is at risk of becoming a “suburb” to its prosperous suburbs, should have come at no surprise to anyone who has been alert and observant over the past few decades. It takes no more than a look at the Don Valley Parkway/Hwy 404 to see that outbound traffic from the city each morning, and inbound each afternoon, is close to equalling the traditional flow into and out of the city centre. For at least a decade it has been obvious that a huge number of Toronto residents are having to leave the city for employment while reports have been kicking around that state the flow to jobs in the suburbs exceeds the flow into the city.
The Star had the largest “end of the world” headline to announce Toronto as a suburb. The Globe and Mail version, reporting on a study commissioned for and relleased by the Toronto Board of Trade, describes the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) as the place to grow. The National Post carried a similar message of alarm.
Toronto’s loss of jobs and high business taxes, leading to the flight to the GTA began in the 1970s when John Sewell held sway over city council and served as mayor. Sewell believed things were best when people lived in medieval villages and walked to their jobs. He and his colleagues set the city on a path that is distinctly unfriendly to employers and employment. The tone he set has been followed by every civic administration since, including that of the infamous Mel Lastman. Roads and traffic policies have made it difficult to manufacture or ship goods from the city, tax policies have made it uneconomical to do so. The glut of high rise condominiums and big box stores in the King St West area, The Distillery District, Longbranch or Leaside occupy the brown fields left by departing businesses and jobs. No argument that residential development beats brown fields, but a mixed economy would have been preferable. Now the city centre (aka the “old” city of Toronto) is almost entirely dependent on the financial (whither that?) and MUSH (municipal, university, school and hospital) sector jobs. While the current guru of urban planning, Prof Richard Florida, touts the creative economy as the city’s salvation, how much easier it would have been if Toronto had not set the seeds of its own demise by adopting an anti-business, anti-jobs strategy a few decades ago. To paraphrase Bruce Srpingsteen, the jobs are gone and they are not coming back.
Toronto’s current council purports to favour a reformed tax strategy that will favour business at the expense of home owners, but the target date for implementation is always somewhere out past the next election. Meanwhile the council engages in such anti-business practices as this week’s decision to become a partner in Filmport, the giant movie and TV studio built on the lakefront. Other studios note that it was the city that pushed for construction of the new soundstage - now known not to be viable - and the city that is going into tax-payer subsidised competition. How long before the city imposes its union-boosting labour policies on the film industry ad cripples another industry?
How long before the only jobs left in the downtown area are in the minimum wage retail and restaurant fields or for financial analysts designing their golden parachutes on Bay Street? Well that and a few legions of CUPE/PSAC/OPSEU functionaires employed in MUSH.
The best hope is that Toronto can adapt so that its bedrooms are a nice place to call home. Makes me glad not to have children to inherit the mess.
