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Politics and Policy-Making in Metropolitan Toronto*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Harold Kaplan
Harold Kaplan*
Affiliation:
York University
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the way in which policy decisions have been made by the government of Metropolitan Toronto during its first twelve years of operation, and to set policy-making in the broader context of interest-group and electoral politics in the Toronto area. I begin with some comments on the structure of Metro government and on the current debate over Metro’s successes and failures.

The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was a major breakthrough in the post-war drive for reorganization of local governments in metropolitan areas. As the inability of small, autonomous local governments to deal with metropolitan problems became apparent, most North American metropolitan areas began considering various devices for meeting region-wide needs. Metro Toronto, created in 1953 by an act of the Ontario legislature, is the oldest example of what has become known as the metropolitan federation plan, a device subsequently adopted for the Miami and Winnipeg metropolitan areas.

The 1953 provincial statute setting up Metro brought the City of Toronto and twelve suburbs under the umbrella of a new regional government, but did not alter any municipal boundaries in the area. A few powers were shifted to the Metro level, a few were left solely with the municipalities. A majority of powers, however, were to be shared by both levels of government. Metro was dominant in the fields of public transportation, property assessment, capital borrowing, highway construction, and the construction of water and sewer facilities; the municipalities were dominant in the fields of zoning, housing, welfare, police, fire, licensing, and traffic control. The only major change in this 1953 division of powers occurred in 1956, when policing and licensing functions were amalgamated–that is, shifted from the municipal to the Metro level.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , November 1965 , pp. 538 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1965

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Footnotes

*

Presented at the annual meetings of the Canadian Political Science Association on June 11, 1965, at Vancouver.

References

1 This paper is drawn from the author's manuscript, “The Politics of Metropolitan Government,” now being prepared for publication. The research project was financed by the Canadian Council on Urban and Regional Research and the Board of Governors of York University. My sources of information have been the local newspapers, government documents, and personal interviews with many of the participants. Most of the evidence supporting my generalizations does not appear in this article but will be presented in the larger study. I am grateful to Guy Bourassa, Lionel Feldman, and Albert Rose for their constructive criticisms of this paper.

2 The Board of Control system is briefly described in Rowat, D. C., Your Local Government (Toronto, 1955), 30–2.Google Scholar Another pioneering work is Crawford's, K. G. Canadian Municipal Government (Toronto, 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a sign of new interest in the politics of Canadian cities, see Bourassa, Guy, “Les Elites politiques de Montréal: de l'aristocratie à la démocratie,” this Journal, XXXI, no. 1 (02, 1965), 35–51.Google Scholar

3 Smallwood, F., Metro Toronto: A Decade Later (Toronto, 1963)Google Scholar; Rose, A., “A Decade of Metropolitan Government in Toronto,” Buffalo Law Review, XIII, no. 3 (Spring, 1964), 539–56.Google Scholar

4 My description of American city politics is drawn largely from: Sayre, W. and Kaufman, H., Governing New York City (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; Wilson, J., Negro Politics (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; Banfield, E., Political Influence (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Dahl, R., Who Governs? (New Haven, 1961)Google Scholar; Altshuler, Alan, “The Process of Planning in Two American Cities,” Ph.D. dissertation (unpublished), University of Chicago, 1961 Google Scholar; Martin, R. and Munger, R., Decisions in Syracuse (Bloomington, Ind., 1961)Google Scholar; Banfield, E. and Wilson, J., City Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)Google Scholar; Adrian, C. and Williams, O., Four Cities (Philadelphia, 1963).Google Scholar

5 Lockard, Duane, The Politics of State and Local Government (New York, 1963), 143.Google Scholar

6 The incumbency ratio (i.e., chances of being re-elected) for politicians in the Metro aret exceeds 90 per cent. This is a high rate in comparison to most American cities. See Gilbert, C. E. and Claque, C., “Electoral Competition and Electoral Systems in Large Cities,” Journal of Politics, XXIV, no. 2 (05, 1962), 323–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 A definition of this index and its application to the US Congress can be found in Truman, D., The Congressional Party (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

8 Canadian attitudes to authority are discussed by Clark, S. D., “The Canadian Community,” in Brown, G. W., ed., Canada (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1953)Google Scholar; and by Naegele, K. D., “Canadian Society: Some Reflections,” in Blishen, B. R., ed., Canadian Society (New York, 1961).Google Scholar