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April 14, 2011
Toronto is the centre of the universe. Let’s just admit it and move on.
Except when a federal election rolls around. Then, Toronto and the Toronto region, home to more than one in six people in Canada, seem to just fall off the political map. This year, with some potential swing ridings in play within the region, we seem to be more popular than usual. However, despite their size and number of voters, cities and their issues have garnered very little attention over the past three weeks.
The University of Toronto, along with participating universities from across Canada, recently released “Who Cares about 15 Million Urban Voters?” This report shows that 15.3 million voters, $17.5 billion in personal income, $910 billion in GDP, and more than 74 per cent of all new jobs created in the past year are in Canada’s metropolitan regions.
These regions are home to 68 per cent of the nation’s population, 90 per cent of immigrants, and 96 per cent of Canada’s visible minority population (and 67 per cent of the eligible voters). Cities are generating employment growth, GDP and tax revenues beyond their share of the population.
From December 2009 to December 2010, Statistics Canada tells us that 227,900 new jobs were created in Canada. That’s the “net” growth. Break those numbers down and you get a different story. The Toronto metro area alone was responsible for more than 58 per cent (130,000) of all new jobs created in Canada last year.
The Toronto area is home to nearly one-quarter of the country’s university graduates while the city houses more than half a million of the country’s bachelor degree holders and more than 23,000 of Canada’s 150,000 PhDs and doctorates.
But the city faces some serious challenges. In 2008, median family incomes in the Toronto CMA (census metropolitan area) were lower than the Canadian median for metro areas for the first time in years. In 2009, Citizenship and Immigration Canada reported that nearly one-third of all immigrants to Canada chose to settle in Toronto (though this represented a drop from previous years). And, according to Statistics Canada, the distance that Toronto residents commute to work is both further and longer than for any other metro area in Canada (an average of 9.4 km and 79 minutes daily).
Michael Pal and Sujit Choudhry at the University of Toronto have looked at voter dilution (the impact on individual votes that results from the unequal way in which MP seats are distributed). It turns out that a vote in Toronto or its surrounding suburbs is only worth 87 per cent of a vote in rural Ontario. Further, it takes more than three Torontonian votes to equal one rural vote from Prince Edward Island.
Some have argued that cities don’t matter. This election is going to be won or lost (or neither) by the votes in the suburbs. While the political strategizing is apparently best left to the experts, just the city of Toronto accounts for nearly 8 per cent of the country’s population, GDP, income and voters. The population of just the city of Toronto is larger than that of all the territories and Atlantic provinces combined. Toronto is also larger than the populations of the entire province of Saskatchewan or Manitoba.
Our continued growth and success disproportionately depend on the vitality and resilience of our cities and metropolitan regions. One need not look very far in a rapidly urbanizing world to see that any advantage we may have gained from our urbanized population is fast diminishing. More needs to be done to keep our central cities and their surrounding suburbs healthy and prosperous.
It is not just a question of more spending and greater funding for infrastructure. Although important, our cities urgently need some attention and recognition of their importance. Unless we recognize the value generated by our urban areas and actively work to amplify that value, we will be committing ourselves to slower growth and reduced prosperity for all.
Toronto — it’s time to put yourself back where you belong.
BY KEVIN STOLARICK, ERIC J. MILLER, SHAUNA BRAIL
This article is available online at thestar.com.