Why all Canadians should care about who becomes Toronto’s next mayor

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Mary W. Rowe is president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute.

It’s a common perception that Canadians love to trash talk Toronto, and most outside the city borders couldn’t care less about who wins the mayoral by-election on June 26. But if Canadian cities are to find a path to economic recovery in this global world, cities should care a lot about who becomes the next mayor of Toronto.

Canada is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, with more than 80 per cent of its population living in cities. The national economy is driven by these metropolitan areas, with half of the country’s national GDP coming out of the top six (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa-Gatineau). And the Toronto economy is efficient, occupying less than 1 per cent of the country’s land mass, but generating close to 20 per cent of the national economy.

GDP is far from a perfect measure, but it’s plain to see that as Toronto goes, so goes the country.

More patents registered per capita. More cutting-edge research. More startups. More professional sports teams and cultural events. And more immigrants, as nearly one-third of newcomers to Canada settle in Toronto and the region that surrounds it. They come for opportunity and hopefully stay to support Canada’s economy.

But along with its successes, Toronto has its fair share of problems, shouldering the challenges that urbanization presents to every city in the country. The percentage of people in Toronto experiencing core housing need – defined by Statistics Canada as those living in housing that is unsuitable, inadequate or unaffordable – is double the national rate. On any given night, 9,000 shelter beds are occupied, with more than half of those taken by recently arrived refugees and asylum seekers. The waiting list for public housing is unconscionable at nearly 85,000 people. Housing costs – whether renting or owning – have climbed for decades to unaffordable levels.

On top of these systemic challenges, Toronto continues to languish under myriad post-pandemic aftershocks, including a sporadically populated downtown, affecting local retail and cultural events; marked increases in mental-health service needs, especially for people experiencing homelessness; parks and public spaces taken over with encampments by people lacking supportive options; and an ailing transit system from which too many commuters have bailed.

It’s a long litany of challenges, and on top of all of them, the city is teetering on the brink financially, having “made do” for way too long with limited revenues and increasing service needs.

Most Canadians don’t realize the extent to which the public services upon which they rely are provided to them by their municipal government, which has been limping along for decades with a single revenue source ­– property tax – that has not grown with the population or economy.

Toronto’s challenges cannot be met by City Hall alone. The housing and mental-health crises don’t follow municipal boundaries: They creep across regions. Nor does the innovation ecosystem, or for that matter the impacts of climate change, which literally go where the wind blows.

Toronto is at the heart of one of the most dynamic regions in North America, spanning a crucial geography that marshals the dynamism of Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, Niagara, Mississauga, Markham, Oshawa and all points in between. The region is the crucial gateway to the northeastern United States. To address their mutually shared challenges, Toronto and its urban comrades need to muster extraordinary resolve and imagination to harness all the tacit knowledge they possess, to build the livability and resilience of their cities and collectively compete for global talent. And solutions birthed in this region provide invaluable lessons for the rest of Canada.

In addition to regional planning and co-ordination, Canada’s cities need provincial and federal governments as funding partners in addressing challenges that impede their economic, social and environmental potential. Those deals need to be driven by leaders with their ears to the ground.

Leading mayoral hopefuls push for votes in CBC Toronto debate as by-election nears

Leading a city has never been a picnic, but especially not now, with so many pressures. Toronto needs visionary leadership coupled with steely determination to get things done. For Canada to find its way to economic recovery, to reconciliation, to equity, to climate resilience and to social stability, it needs a very strong, well-led Toronto.

All Canadians should care about who is the next mayor of the city.