Homer J. Simpson
October 22nd, 2004, 05:40 AM
Toronto's poverty was no accident
CHRISTOPHER HUME
When did Toronto become so poor? When did we become so impoverished that we could no longer afford to clean the streets and take basic care of the city?
It wasn't always this way. Though it's hard to remember, there was a time when Toronto looked upon itself as one of North America's most fortunate cities. We were the "city that worked," "New York run by the Swiss." Experts visited from around the world to discover the secret of our success.
But that was then. Now we see ourselves as diminished, unable to pay for the simple civic services that are taken for granted everywhere else. Not only has public transit been hobbled, we pay more than almost any other city. Garbage collection has been reduced, and our schools and hospitals are inadequate to the demands made of them.
Yet statistics tell us that Toronto is far and away the richest city in Canada. Billions of dollars change hands here every year. Fully one-fifth of Canada's Gross Domestic Product is produced in Toronto. Forty per cent of Canadian head offices are located here, and since 1992, GDP growth and job creation in Toronto have averaged 4 per cent and 2.4 per cent respectively; that compares with 3 and 1.6 per cent nationally.
In the past decade, the Greater Toronto Area has posted the third strongest population and job growth in North America. Only Atlanta and Dallas — God help us — were better. Our stock market, the TSX, is the third largest on the continent.
Most revealing of all, perhaps, 14 per cent of all retail sales in Canada, $33 billion annually, occur in Toronto. And, as many civic advocates like to point out, the city pays $9 billion more in taxes than it keeps. As former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray has said again and again, Torontonians help pay for health care in Manitoba and agricultural subsidies in New Brunswick.
But still, Toronto has become so poor it can't halt the explosion of homelessness, of families living on the edge, food banks or litter on the streets. This habit of poverty is so ingrained now that municipal politicians have happily presided over the selling off of the public realm. We have garbage bins that double as billboards; subway stations are regularly turned into ads for some corporation or other.
The last public space built by the city, Yonge-Dundas Square, has turned out to be essentially a private operation available to the highest bidder for whatever event. The symbolism of fencing off the square to keep the public out isn't lost on citizens who increasingly find themselves strangers in their own city.
What's responsible for this bizarre condition of private wealth and public poverty? It would be easy to blame a succession of government administrations dedicated to nothing more than lowering taxes, but surely there's more to it than that. It's true Mike Harris and his yahoos inflicted enormous damage to the fabric of Toronto and the province, but the fault goes beyond even him. After all, Prime Minister Paul Martin did his bit to reduce Toronto and Canada to a state of beggary in the name of deficit reduction.
Turns out the operation was a success, although the patient appears to be dying. Thanks, Paul.
In fact, the reason we have latched on to the poverty argument in such a limpet-like fashion probably has more to do with its convenience to a society that can no longer be bothered with those tiresome demands of liberal democracy, the redistribution of wealth and the social safety net.
In a city as rich as Toronto, there's no need for people to be out on the streets. But when we're too poor to deal with it, what can be done?
Ontario is quickly becoming Canada's answer to California, a state that despite its vast riches reduced itself to public destitution through Proposition 13, which severely capped property taxes. Even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger trembles at the prospect of having to undo that legislation, though if he fails, California faces an increasingly bleak future.
Premier Dalton McGuinty is (thankfully) no Schwarzenegger, but here in Ontario, he's the man with the power. So far he has shown little inclination to use it; but when you're as poor as we are, what can you do?
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1098310213818&call_pageid=968350130169&col=969483202845&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes
No guff Hume, we all know that it was no accident and we don't need it to be rubbed in.
Anyways I think the lesson here is that all parties and their leaders are ultimately cut from the same cloth and are all responcible for the state Toronto is in today.
CHRISTOPHER HUME
When did Toronto become so poor? When did we become so impoverished that we could no longer afford to clean the streets and take basic care of the city?
It wasn't always this way. Though it's hard to remember, there was a time when Toronto looked upon itself as one of North America's most fortunate cities. We were the "city that worked," "New York run by the Swiss." Experts visited from around the world to discover the secret of our success.
But that was then. Now we see ourselves as diminished, unable to pay for the simple civic services that are taken for granted everywhere else. Not only has public transit been hobbled, we pay more than almost any other city. Garbage collection has been reduced, and our schools and hospitals are inadequate to the demands made of them.
Yet statistics tell us that Toronto is far and away the richest city in Canada. Billions of dollars change hands here every year. Fully one-fifth of Canada's Gross Domestic Product is produced in Toronto. Forty per cent of Canadian head offices are located here, and since 1992, GDP growth and job creation in Toronto have averaged 4 per cent and 2.4 per cent respectively; that compares with 3 and 1.6 per cent nationally.
In the past decade, the Greater Toronto Area has posted the third strongest population and job growth in North America. Only Atlanta and Dallas — God help us — were better. Our stock market, the TSX, is the third largest on the continent.
Most revealing of all, perhaps, 14 per cent of all retail sales in Canada, $33 billion annually, occur in Toronto. And, as many civic advocates like to point out, the city pays $9 billion more in taxes than it keeps. As former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray has said again and again, Torontonians help pay for health care in Manitoba and agricultural subsidies in New Brunswick.
But still, Toronto has become so poor it can't halt the explosion of homelessness, of families living on the edge, food banks or litter on the streets. This habit of poverty is so ingrained now that municipal politicians have happily presided over the selling off of the public realm. We have garbage bins that double as billboards; subway stations are regularly turned into ads for some corporation or other.
The last public space built by the city, Yonge-Dundas Square, has turned out to be essentially a private operation available to the highest bidder for whatever event. The symbolism of fencing off the square to keep the public out isn't lost on citizens who increasingly find themselves strangers in their own city.
What's responsible for this bizarre condition of private wealth and public poverty? It would be easy to blame a succession of government administrations dedicated to nothing more than lowering taxes, but surely there's more to it than that. It's true Mike Harris and his yahoos inflicted enormous damage to the fabric of Toronto and the province, but the fault goes beyond even him. After all, Prime Minister Paul Martin did his bit to reduce Toronto and Canada to a state of beggary in the name of deficit reduction.
Turns out the operation was a success, although the patient appears to be dying. Thanks, Paul.
In fact, the reason we have latched on to the poverty argument in such a limpet-like fashion probably has more to do with its convenience to a society that can no longer be bothered with those tiresome demands of liberal democracy, the redistribution of wealth and the social safety net.
In a city as rich as Toronto, there's no need for people to be out on the streets. But when we're too poor to deal with it, what can be done?
Ontario is quickly becoming Canada's answer to California, a state that despite its vast riches reduced itself to public destitution through Proposition 13, which severely capped property taxes. Even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger trembles at the prospect of having to undo that legislation, though if he fails, California faces an increasingly bleak future.
Premier Dalton McGuinty is (thankfully) no Schwarzenegger, but here in Ontario, he's the man with the power. So far he has shown little inclination to use it; but when you're as poor as we are, what can you do?
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1098310213818&call_pageid=968350130169&col=969483202845&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes
No guff Hume, we all know that it was no accident and we don't need it to be rubbed in.
Anyways I think the lesson here is that all parties and their leaders are ultimately cut from the same cloth and are all responcible for the state Toronto is in today.