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One:
Main Street
Since
1867, Ottawa policies have
helped to create two Canadas.
One is economically diverse,
stable, populous and prosperous
and exists within Inner
Canada. The other is characterized
by small populations (often
shrinking further through
out-migration), resource-dependent
economies, low political
clout and various degrees
of regional discontent.
This is Outer Canada. Large
portions of both Ontario
and Québec lie within Outer
Canada; each of the two
provinces accordingly have
partial membership among
the officially disfavoured
regions of our country.
Although the focus of this
volume is Outer Canada,
a brief overview of Inner
Canada as the heartland
of the country seems necessary
as a point of reference.
It should provide evidence
that the division between
"Outer" and "Inner" Canada
is not a mere state of mind.
Various
contrasting terms are used
to describe the economic,
political, societal and
cultural structures which
characterize Canada: core
vs. periphery, inner vs.
outer, metropolis vs. hinterland,
centre vs. margin, heartland
vs. hinterland. The two-tier
model is both more enduring
and more deeply entrenched
in Canada than in most nations.
In the United States, for
example, the Boston-Washington
corridor has, over a long
period, lost its former
national dominance in many
spheres. More than half
of the American population
today lives west of the
Mississippi River. Taking
Winnipeg to be the approximate
mid-point of Canada, there
is little likelihood of
ever duplicating this phenomenon
in our own country.
In
Canada, the communities
which lie within the trading
and transportation systems
of the "Commercial Empire"
of the St. Lawrence River
have become more dominant
in every sphere almost continuously
over the decades. The late
Toronto historian Donald
Creighton and many of his
followers have made it almost
a heresy to approach our
national experience in other
than Laurentian terms. To
the Creighton school, whatever
enhances the quality of
life along the axis is good;
whatever does not is essentially
"un-Canadian." Central to
it all is the notion of
Toronto and Montréal as
the main creators, directors
and beneficiaries of peripheral
development. As Maurice
Careless, another essentially
heartland historian, puts
it, Paris and London reached
across the Atlantic to create
Montréal and Toronto as
"bases, garrisons, or entrepots
on the frontiers of commerce
and resources." By the close
of the eighteenth century,
he goes on, the hegemony
of Montréal through the
fur trade reached as far
as the Pacific Ocean. Its
rival Toronto would rise
to dominance in the national
order only later in the
cycle.
Central
domination has gradually
weakened the sense of partnership
and provincial equality
that allowed Confederation
to occur and to flourish
in the hearts and minds
of Canadians everywhere.
One manifestation of the
hinterland anguish was a
comment made by Newfoundland
premier Clyde Wells in the
early spring of 1990 that
the earnings of Newfoundlanders
(then only fifty-six per
cent of the national average)
had risen only three percentage
points in twenty-six years.
"At that rate," he complained,
"it would take us six hundred
years to reach the national
average." A Gallup poll
released in November, 1989
indicated that only four
per cent of Canadians felt
all regions of our country
had benefited equally from
Confederation whereas 38
per cent thought Ontario
had done best; 23 per cent
said Québec; six per cent,
Atlantic Canada; and nine
per cent, Western Canada
(Fig. 1).
Who
Benefited Most From Confederation
Opinions in a Gallup Poll
1989
Figure
1
As
the twentieth century draws
to a close, most residents
of Outer Canada continue
to be denied equal opportunities
and first-class memberships
in our national family.
By indicators such as personal
income, types of economic
activity, settlement patterns
and political clout, our
country can now readily
be divided into two distinct
regions. The centre, the
industrial heartland of
southern Ontario and southern Québec, has remained the
privileged core of Confederation
for most of twelve decades.
Except for the rapid economic
growth of Alberta’s energy
boom in the 1970s and to
a lesser degree by British
Columbia’s impressive population
growth to about three million
residents since 1945, the
hegemony of the centre has,
if anything, increased during
the second half of the twentieth
century. Inner Canada’s
initial advantage of location
along our Great Lakes-St.
Lawrence River drainage
systems was complemented
by a good natural resource
base and the best access
to foreign markets for both
staples and manufactured
products. Other strengths
were added as time went
by: a large and growing
regional population, control
of Western Canadian development,
strong financial institutions,
and unchallenged political
dominance in Ottawa.
Inner
Canada has been at different
times, identified with Ontario,
Québec or both. It is only
a narrow southern band of
each province, three hundred
kilometres wide and one
thousand long, extending
from Windsor to Québec City.
This core is larger than
England and Wales combined
and is about two-thirds
the size of France. It was
termed "Main Street" by
Maurice Yeates, an authority
on Canadian urban and regional
geography. Its centre today
is clearly Metropolitan
Toronto and to a lesser
extent Greater Montréal.
Standing astride these two
dominant centres are the
neighbourhoods of Toronto’s
Bridle Path, Old Forest
Hill Village and upper Rosedale
and Montréal’s Upper Westmount
and parts of Outremont.
According to 1987 figures
released by Revenue Canada
on the average income of
individuals filing income
tax returns, seventeen of
Canada’s twenty wealthiest
communities are found in
this Inner Canadian core.
The
concentration of so much
of Canada’s population,
political clout, manufacturing
industry, service sector,
and research and development
has created growing problems
for both Outer and Inner
Canada. Outer Canadians
are increasingly alienated
by what they see as major
and ongoing national injustices
and inequalities, justified
by what has been seen until
now as "the Canadian way."
Inner Canadians, on the
other hand, face the social,
housing, transportation,
pollution and other problems
associated with overpopulation
everywhere.
Maurice
Careless’s view of Canada’s
metropolis-frontier experience
is that our metropolitan
areas have been essential
to the development of all
our frontiers through history
and down to the present
day. "As a prime focus of
trade, wealth, leadership,
and enterprise," he contends,
"the metropolis could effectively
dominate wide economic hinterlands,
whether in territories adjacent
or lying far remote." What
he doesn’t stress is that
a long series of policy
initiatives in Ottawa have
provided our two core cities
with an additional "leg
up," something rarely offered
by the national government
to the rest of the country.
A
Western Canadian historian,
the late William Morton,
effectively attacked this
metropolitan view. He charged
Careless with presenting
a Central Canadian imperial
perspective, neglecting
most regional history, and
attempting to impose a centralist
mind-set on Outer Canadians.
Like Outer Canadians generally,
Morton felt strongly that
Ottawa -- having pursued
policies which strengthened
Inner Canada at the expense
of Outer Canadians for decades
-- should adopt a strategy
designed to strengthen the
peripheries as well.
Domineering
Heartland
Often
erroneously perceived as
a single political entity,
Inner Canada in fact remains
sharply differentiated along
linguistic and cultural
lines. Two communities,
predominantly French-speaking
in Lower Canada and English-speaking
in Upper Canada, worked
together over several generations
for political and economic
reasons, while maintaining
what Hugh MacLennan called
"two solitudes," socially
and culturally. This partnership
of convenience began with
the export of furs, and
later timber and wheat,
to Western Europe. All three
products left Canada primarily
through the Great Lakes-St.
Lawrence waterways. Shrewd
and aggressive merchants
in Montréal took charge
of the movement of commerce
in and out of the St. Lawrence
basin, first by exchanging
our staples for foreign
manufactured products. During
their golden age in the
eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, Montréalers also
perfected transportation
systems, business contacts,
and linking mechanisms for
both Lower and Upper Canada.
Because
of their dependence on the
St. Lawrence and Great Lakes
transportation systems,
ports were the most dynamic
early urban centres in both
Ontario and Québec. The
development of canals, railways,
roads, telegraph and telephone
lines later improved domestic
and foreign trade significantly.
It also prompted a host
of new manufacturing centres
to appear away from the
St. Lawrence River and Great
Lakes. By the 1 850s, the
southern portions of Upper
and Lower Canada had both
achieved national importance.
The development of manufacturing
and financial institutions
was accompanied by the building
of numerous Inner Canadian
railways, which further
strengthened the regional
economy. After Confederation,
many businesses in the heartland
expanded into Outer Canada,
both east and west. Using
their greater financial
clout and their better access
to credit, they absorbed
or otherwise eliminated
numerous manufacturing rivals
in Atlantic Canada.
Because
of John A. Macdonald’s 1879
National Policy, with its
high protective tariffs
on most agricultural machinery,
farm producers in Prairie
Canada eventually found
themselves able to buy tractors
and other machinery only
from the Canadian core.
Ottawa’s Bank Act of 1871,
which opted for branch banking
rather than following the
American model of state-regulated
and usually locally-owned
banks, resulted in the rapid
rise of large banks controlled
from their head offices
in Montréal and Toronto.
Low postal rates, another
Ottawa policy, assisted
Inner Canadian retailers
with catalogues, such as
Eaton’s, to effectively
challenge local retailers
and regional wholesalers
throughout Outer Canada. Limp-wristed antitrust laws
enacted by our national
Parliament also encouraged
heartland companies in various
sectors to absorb their
competition, initially in
Atlantic Canada, later throughout
Western Canada as well.
In short, Inner Canada,
with the help of the "national"
government, eventually came
to control most wholesale
and retail prices, interest
and insurance rates, electronic
communications, trading
and investment policies,
from St. John’s to Nanaimo
to Yellowknife. This essentially
colonial economic pattern
persists to the present
day.
A
few sectors in Outer Canada
matured quite independently
of Central Canada, including
the British Columbia and
New Brunswick forest industries,
the Alberta and Saskatchewan
oil and natural gas industries,
and fisheries on both coasts.
The disproportionate concentration
of economic clout at the
centre remains, however,
a distinct feature of Canada.
It is all the more conspicuous
among industrial democracies,
given the diversity of the
country and its mammoth
size.
In
general terms, with good
incomes derived from a rich
agricultural economy and
foreign trade in staples,
early Inner Canadians made
use of the tariff, railway-building
and other features of the
National Policy to establish
their regional dominance
everywhere in manufacturing,
transportation and financial
spheres. Their successors,
entering the twentieth century,
had the additional advantages
of large local markets,
ready access to prosperous
and huge American markets,
proximity to transportation
routes, and above all the
political and administrative
muscle in Ottawa necessary
to enhance the heartland
role of Central Canada.
Managers in fast-growing
cities located within southern
Ontario and southern Québec,
themselves products of an
industry-led civilization
process, became in many
areas the effective managers
of Atlantic, Northern and
Western Canadians.
Numerous
indicators of Inner Canada’s
economic and political dominance
underscore the continuing
pivotal role of the Windsor-Québec
City corridor in modern
Canada. In 1986, it was
estimated that 13.9 million
people -- over fifty-five
per cent of the population
of the country -- lived
within the core, an area
which constitutes about
fourteen per cent of the
populated area of the country.
More than half of the population
of this axis lives in the
metropolitan areas of Montréal,
Ottawa and Toronto.
Using
data from 1982, the geographer
Maurice Yeates demonstrates
that the core/periphery
division is readily apparent
in the character of Canada’s
international trade. The
figures for 1989 confirm
the continuation of this
pattern. Staples and food
products constitute a large
share of exports; Outer
Canada is the source of
most of them. Inner Canada
dominates both the export
and import of manufactured
products. The periphery
dominates national trade
in crude oil, forest products,
and natural gas, most of
which go to the United States.
Other materials are partially
fabricated in our heartland,
and then exported primarily
to the United States. Manufactured
end products, such as auto
parts, are produced virtually
only in the core and are
usually exported to the
United States.
An
ongoing feature of the axis
is its dominance in the
industrial field. Seven
Out of every ten manufacturing
jobs in Canada are located
within the core (Fig. 2),
with the bulk of employment
in manufacturing being in
a few major central cities:
Toronto, Montréal, Hamilton,
Kitchener. Among our twenty-two
metropolitan areas, fifty-seven
per cent of the national
employment in manufacturing
is located in Toronto and
Montréal. This manufacturing
region contains all types
of industry, particularly
those which involve a high
level of processing, such
as machinery and transportation
equipment, metal fabricating
and chemical products.
Manufacturing
Sector Employment
1985
Figure
2
There
are various types of manufacturing:
industries are often divided
into so-called "low and
high value-added industries."
The former entail relatively
low wages; the latter just
the opposite. In Inner Canada
they tend to be concentrated
in different locations.
Our high value industries
(machinery, petroleum and
coal products, chemicals,
transport, metal fabricating)
are prone to cluster in
our largest metropolitan
centres -- Toronto and Montréal
-- and in particular within
the "golden horseshoe" around
western Lake Ontario from
Oshawa-Whitby to Hamilton.
Low value-added sectors
(clothing, furniture and
textiles), on the contrary,
tend to be dispersed in
smaller Ontario towns and
in Québec’s part of the
axis.
The
geographic concentration
of high and low value-added
industries is, of course,
explained by the availability
of capital and labour. Southern
Ontario initially offered
more abundant capital than
labour and therefore has
attracted capital-intensive,
high value-added industries.
In Québec, labour has traditionally
been more abundant than
capital; more labour-intensive
and low value-added industries
have tended to locate there.
Yet,
service industries within
the axis today provide three
times as many jobs as manufacturing.
Three major groups prevail:
wholesale trade, finance,
and business management
services. Not surprisingly,
a high percentage of labour
forces in Ottawa-Hull and
Québec City are in services
and government activities.
Metropolitan Toronto and
Montréal specialize in finance,
services to business management,
and wholesale trade. Kingston
and London are dependent
on health and education-related
services.
The
predominant role, then,
of Canada’s heartland can
be found in past and in
present patterns of manufacturing,
trade and service industries,
not to mention cultural
activities and political
clout.
The
Major Cities
The
direction and intensity
of the movement of people,
goods and information as
a result of these economic
activities point to the
high volume in the core;
they show a clear pattern
of interaction between the
core and periphery. As Yeates
demonstrated in 1985, and
as my own more recent research
confirms, Montréal and Toronto
continue to be the major
generators and destinations
of this movement. The pattern
of road traffic, for example,
indicates that the major
flows occur on highways
that are at least four lanes
and follow the corridor
from Windsor to Québec City,
with Toronto and Montréal
as the major nodes and Ottawa-Hull
and Québec City as lesser
ones. The pattern of interaction
as measured by airline passengers
points to a direction of
flows involving both business
and politics. The figures
for 1987 and 1988 (the most
recent available from Statistics
Canada) on air passenger
origin and destination demonstrate
that the largest volume
of traffic is between Montréal
and Toronto. Ottawa-Toronto
ranks third, after Toronto-Vancouver.
Montréal
and Québec City
Careless
sees both Québec City and
Montréal as leaving deep
imprints on all Québeckers
for more than three centuries.
During the 1760s, the British
conquest of New France transferred
effective metropolitan supremacy
over the St. Lawrence from
Paris to London, thereby
displacing French-speaking
merchants in both Canadian
cities and rendering Québeckers
more rural in outlook than
they had been before. Careless
argues that even under the
British rule Québeckers
continued to focus on Montréal
and Québec. From Confederation
onwards, Québec City remained
the political champion and
cultural centre of the province.
Montréal’s commercial network
spread into the West and
Atlantic Canada after Confederation,
and dominated both regions
well into the twentieth
century. Today Montréal
is unquestionably the economic
capital of Québec. When
comparing the two cities,
Montréal is usually referred
to as the metropolis and
Québec City as "the old
capital."
During
the summer of 1964, as a
university student working
in the largest Québec lower
town branch of the Bank
of Montreal, I experienced
Montréal’s economic domination
over Québec City in various
ways. One day, a fellow
employee asked my assistance
in composing a letter to
the bank’s head office in Montréal. Why, I wondered,
did he need my help with
a letter I presumed would
be in French? He responded
that the bank’s head office
required all communications
from employees, even ones
living in Québec City, to
be in English only.
Today,
Québec City is more than
ever the political capital
of the province. The Quiet
Revolution of the 1960s,
the Parti Québécois victory
in 1976, various measures
aimed at unilingualism,
and a host of other political
factors have given it pre-eminence
in terms of government over
the much larger city of
Montréal. In addition, Québec
City, as the seat of the
National Assembly, intervenes
directly in decisions by
Hydro Québec, the giant
provincial Crown corporation.
Metropolitan
Montréal, with almost half
the provincial population,
is Québec’s business, theatre
and communications heart.
The city dominates the southern
and western regions of Laurentian Québec, and it is a major
national business centre
with a large quantity and
variety of manufacturing.
However, it is a distant
second today to Toronto
in banking, investment and
insurance activities. Until
1977, Montréal was the country’s
premiere city. Today, it
has 2.9 million residents
compared to Toronto’s 3.4
million. During 1989, nine
to ten per cent of Montréal
residents were unemployed,
compared to less than four
per cent in Toronto.
Nonetheless,
Montréal is the motor of
the province’s economy,
accounting for fifty-two
per cent of Québec’s gross
domestic product and almost
half of the work force.
The region of Montréal,
according to the 1988 Statistics
report by the Government
of Québec, contains sixty-seven
percent of the industrial
establishments of Québec
and accounts for almost
seventy per cent of the
province’s manufacturing
employment. Nearby Dorval
airport is a hub of activity;
Mirabel has yet to catch
on as an international gateway.
Montréal’s maritime shipping
remains important in Canada.
The
dominance of metropolitan
Montréal over other regions
of Québec is impressive.
An analysis of all Québec
provincial cabinet ministers
between 1867 and 1960 by
geographic origin shows
that on average half of
them came from the Montréal
region. A 1977 paper by
the provincial government’s
office of planning and development
documents that the city
contains fifty-seven per
cent of the population of
the province, sixty-nine
per cent of the industrial
employment, sixty-nine percent
of the volume of the province’s
manufacturing and sixty-one
per cent of textile employment.
It concludes, "Québec is
divided into two: Montréal
and the rest." Personal
income in 1987 for the Montréal
economic region was the
highest in the province
at $18,459 per capita, with
some communities in Greater
Montréal at $19,784. The
average per capita income
for the province was $17,256,
while some communities in
the Gaspé and the North
of Québec had average personal
incomes as low as $11,405
and $12,151 respectively.
In
his 1981 article, "Regional
disparities: the more it
changes the more it’s the
same," Michel Gailloux refers
to Montréal as "Québec’s
breast," traditionally feeding
its hinterland regions but
increasingly unable to do
so. Jean-Claude Thibodeau
and Mario Poise, the authors
of a study "The effects
of the domination of Montréal
on the other regions of Québec" bluntly state that
economic development in
Québec must pass through
the region of Montréal,
which by the weight of its
influence is the fundamental
factor in bringing growth
and economic development
to the province. It is necessary
to revitalize Montréal first,
they contend, and the whole
of Québec will benefit as
a result. This is, of course,
only another application
of the trickle-down economics
of the Reagan, Thatcher
and Mulroney governments.
Montréal
is no typical North American
city, despite its plentiful
downtown skyscrapers: it
is far more a European one.
It now covers virtually
the entire length of Montréal
Island. According to the
Québec government’s figures,
in 1982 Montréal attracted
1.3 million Canadian tourists
from other provinces, 52.2
percent of the total number
for the province. (Québec
City, the third most popular
destination after the Outaouais
region, was visited by 233,000
Canadians.) Manufacturing
plants are found almost
everywhere in Montréal,
especially along the river
banks, in Laval and along
the freeways to Dorval.
French-speaking
Quebeckers, who comprise
four-fifths of the province’s
population of 6.6 million,
claim only fifty-six per
cent of the residents on
the island of Montréal.
People of countless origins
and languages work downtown
at the foot of Mount Royal,
but upper Westmount remains
an almost exclusive preserve
of its still mostly English-speaking
captains of industry. Stone
and mahogany-filled mansions
with splendid gardens are
abundant there, a mute testimony
to the ongoing clout of
at least this part of Montréal
as a key piece in the Inner
Canadian puzzle. Most other
districts of the city, especially
the walk-up apartments in
east Montréal, are really
far more a part of the Québec
Branch of Outer Canada.
Metropolitan
Toronto
Within
Ontario, Toronto, designated
a city in 1834, outpaced
its early rivals -- Hamilton
and Kingston -- through
the natural advantage of
location on rich farm land,
and by becoming a regional
railway link and attracting
immigrants. Following Confederation,
the city added financial
and manufacturing muscle
to the transport dominance
it had already acquired
over Outer Ontario. But
only well into the twentieth
century did it finally successfully
challenge Montréal in a
number of sectors, notably
mining and lumbering, for
dominance of peripheral
regions such as the Prairies.
The whole of Outer Canada
outside Québec became its
oyster after World War II.
Entering the I 990s, Toronto
is our dominant metropolis.
Frederick Fletcher, a Toronto
political science professor,
has said Ontario is "the
spider at the centre of
the web of Confederation."
If this is the case, then
its provincial capital is
the directing head of the
creature.
Toronto
is our largest national
metropolis, occupying 632
square kilometres and extending
forty kilometres along the
north shore of Lake Ontario
and inland about sixteen
kilometres. It is home to
3.4 million people, thirteen
per cent of Canada’s entire
population and thirty-five
per cent of Ontario’s. The
Greater Toronto area, which
includes adjacent communities
in Halton, Durham, Peel
and York, contains almost
four million people. It
is the national business
capital, accounting for
a quarter of our country’s
gross national product and
half of our national exports.
Forty-four per cent of the
sales of Canada’s top one
hundred industrial companies
take place in Toronto --
a yearly financial flow
of $19 billion. Equally
significant, the Greater
Toronto area today provides
half of all income taxes
paid by Ontarians to the
federal and provincial governments.
"Metro
has real manufacturing muscle
and has the highest income,
output and invested productive
capacity of any municipality
in Canada," boasts the 1987
annual report of the Municipality
of Metropolitan Toronto.
More than five thousand
separate manufacturing firms
are located within its communities
and about one third of Canada’s
retail market is located
within 200 kilometres of
Toronto’s CN Tower. The
Toronto Stock Exchange now
accounts for about three-fourths
of the activity on all Canadian
stock exchanges. Per capita
income within the city in
1987, the most recent year
for which statistics are
available, was $21,905.
During the same year, it
was $12,541 in one district
in northeastern Ontario;
$12,400 in Newfoundland;
$13,138 in PEI; $14,685
in Nova Scotia; $13,752
in New Brunswick; $17,256
in Québec; $16,709 in Manitoba;
$15,862 in Saskatchewan;
$18,176 in Alberta and $17,731
in British Columbia.
In
the film business, more
than thirty-five feature
films were produced in the
city in 1987 alone. Toronto
is also Canada’s construction
leader. Office space is
abundant and prestigious,
with the city having almost
thirty per cent of Canada’s
total urban office space,
twice the proportion of
New York City which has
only fifteen per cent of
the available American office
accommodation. 1989 was
the eighth consecutive year
of economic growth and development
for Metro Toronto. With
its diversified economic
base, Toronto led the country
in new business activity,
retail sales, manufacturing
and small business growth,
ending 1989 with a 3.7 per
cent unemployment rate and
new building permits in
excess of $3 billion.
Toronto
is home to half of Canada’s
largest five hundred companies
(Manhattan includes only
about one tenth of the U.S.
Fortune 500 companies).
Sixty per cent of our computer
firms and four out of five
foreign banks operating
in Canada are located in
Toronto.
Toronto
housing prices in early
1990 averaged $289,000 --
having approximately doubled
since 1986 alone -- when
average prices were $95,000
in Halifax and $76,000 in
Regina. Despite John Crow’s
interest rates, which have
in recent months caused
a major fall in housing
prices nation-wide, Toronto’s
home prices have made it
the most expensive city
in North America for a home-owning
family to live in.
A
survey of eighty-three of
the world’s most expensive
cities published by a Geneva-based
organization released in
May, 1990 showed that Toronto
ranks as the most expensive
on this continent, ahead
of New York, Chicago and
Washington. The study was
based on a basket of 151
products, including food
consumed at home, alcohol,
tobacco, clothing, transport,
sports and leisure, but
not including housing. Toronto
was the most expensive city
in the Western hemisphere.
During
the 1970s, almost half of
the new immigrants to Canada
were understandably attracted
to Metro by its strong industrial
base and employment opportunities.
It continues to be a magnet
for at least a quarter of
all immigrants to Canada
and in 1988, 35 per cent
of newcomers located in
Toronto. The unemployment
rate, at 4.1 per cent in
mid-1990, was among the
lowest in the country. In
the 1988 Annual Report of
the Municipality of Metropolitan
Toronto, the chairman of
its Council wrote: "It is
no secret that the very
many who flock to Metro
see us today as a safe and
vibrant community; the hub
of Ontario’s economy; the
industrial heartland of
Canada, a cultural and tourist
mecca
There
are drawbacks. An article
in the January/February
1990 issue of Saturday
Night magazine, "Welcome
to Toronto" by David Eddie,
reflects the inevitable
result of too much development.
"Welcome to Toronto means,"
he wrote, "welcome to a
typical metropolis of the
late twentieth century;
grid-locked, crime saturated,
thoroughly compromised The
lack of affordable housing
and the choking traffic
top the list of big city
woes which afflict the greater
Metro Toronto area. A survey
by Goldfarb Consultants
commissioned by the Toronto
Star in the spring
of 1989 found that a huge
majority of those surveyed
--85.9 per cent-- were dissatisfied
with the lack of affordable
housing in Metro. More than
half of the residents surveyed
didn’t expect to ever own
a home within a commuting
distance of the city, and
nearly one in four families
is thinking of moving away
--a quarter of them because
housing costs in the Metro
area are too high. Some
residents say housing prices
and mortgage costs have
been the most important
topic of conversation for
many months.
Peter
Ustinov has praised Metropolitan
Toronto as "New York City,
run by the Swiss" and Canadians
everywhere have reason to
relish the thought. Many
might even share the boosterism
of a Globe and Mail editorial
published in the final days
of the 1980s: "While most
Canadian cities generally
improved their situations
(especially Montréal), Toronto
seemed to grow into another
order of urban being. Narcissistic
as the city became, it is
simply descriptive to say
that Toronto bloomed as
a national city on a wider
stage, with all the virtues
and frustrations that implies.
We dare to say it here first:
Canadians everywhere have
a right to be proud of Toronto,
Canada."
Seldom
grateful that unemployed
neighbours, friends and
family have found new opportunities
in Toronto, Outer Canadians
generally might fail to
notice that the biggest
contributor to Toronto’s
housing, rent, traffic and
other congestion problems
is our national government
itself. For example, the
single federal constituency
of Etobicoke-North in suburban
Toronto alone received $1.3
billion in federal procurement
contracts during 1987, whereas
all four western provinces
together with their 7.2
million residents, received
only $933 million in federal
contracts the same year.
I
am not arguing that the
Greater Toronto area should
be penalized for its many
successes. It is the mega-locomotive
of the national economy
and therefore what hurts
the metropolis probably
affects Outer Canada in
an even more severe way
as a result of the ripple
effect. On the other hand,
a nationalized federal government
should do what it can to
avoid the patterns of France
and Great Britain where
little of consequence is
encouraged to locate outside
the two national capitals.
Ottawa-Hull
Boarding
a plane in Ottawa for Edmonton
last year, I overheard two
Western businessmen discuss
their just-concluded visit
to the national capital.
One nodded in full agreement
when the other shook his
head and muttered, "It’s
the most subsidized city
in the country." My mind
went back to 1969 when the
$6 million cost of a special
acoustics system in Ottawa’s
recently-completed National
Arts Centre alone approximated
the entire cost of Winnipeg’s
Manitoba Theatre Centre,
which was built at about
the same time. The capital
seemed to me like a modern
Babylon then; it still does.
What, however, are the current
facts about Ottawa of special
interest to Outer Canadian
tax payers?
"Sorry,
Ottawa, but Statistics Canada
has the evidence in black
and white. Almost any way
you measure it, we look
like Fat City," wrote the
Ottawa Citizen’s Daniel
Drolet earlier this year.
The statistics are persuasive:
-
Ottawa
families have the highest
average income compared
with other cities in
the country --$48,600.
Nearly one-third of
all Ottawa households
report an annual income
of more than $50,000.
-
Ottawa-Carleton
has fewer people at
low-income levels, proportionately,
than the Canadian average.
Only 13.2 per cent of
all households in Ottawa-Carleton
reported incomes of
less than $20,000. The
Canadian average is
19 per cent.
-
The
region has the highest
proportion of university
graduates -- twenty
per cent more than anywhere
else in the country.
-
Despite
announced cuts, mostly
cosmetic, by the Mulroney
government in spending
in the area, the National
Capital Region was named
by a Toronto consulting
firm as the top economic
performer among some
twenty-seven Canadian
cities during the last
half of the decade.
Approximately three
and a half million visitors
came to Ottawa during
1988. High tech and
development sectors
accounted for a big
part of the region’s
performance. The local
economy seems to be
growing less dependent
on the federal government.
In 1980, for example,
the federal government
employed 30.2 per cent
of Ottawa-Carleton’s
work force. By the end
of the decade, the figure
was 21.8 per cent.
In
1893, Canada’s future prime
minister, Wilfrid Laurier,
expressed his wish to see
Ottawa become "the centre
of the intellectual development
of this country. . . the
Washington of the North."
The Ottawa Improvement Commission
founded in 1899 was the
first planning agency for
the area. With a yearly
budget of $60,000, it tried
to change the image of Ottawa’s
"sub-arctic lumber village"
past. Following a number
of name changes and enormous
increases in power and budget
the National Capital Commission
came into being in 1959.
Its primary purpose is to
develop and improve the
federal capital, "in order
that the nature and character
of the seat of the government
of Canada may be in accordance
with its national significance."
In other words, it is to
make the city look really
elegant at the expense of
Canadian taxpayers.
Contrasted
to the period when the Ottawa
Improvement Commission made
do with an annual grant
of $60,000, the National
Capital Commission’s resources
are breathtaking. Total
expenditures by the Commission
for 1988-89 were $113 million,
with the parliamentary portion
amounting to $61.5 million.
During 1988-89, the NCC
spent $8.7 million for the
development of its Confederation
Boulevard, which it wants
to make "as distinctive
to Canada’s capital as the
Mall is to Washington or
the Champs Elysées is to
Paris." It further spent
$3.3 million on landscaping
the grounds of the National
Gallery and the Canadian
Museum of Civilization.
Other
prominent features of the
federal presence in the
Ottawa area are the many
government institutions
established simply because
it is the capital. These
buildings, particularly
the Parliament Buildings,
are clearly of major importance
to regional tourism. It
is, however, Ottawa’s cultural
institutions, ostensibly
established in the interests
of Canadians generally,
which benefit most directly
and continuously the residents
of the capital region. The
National Arts Centre, the
National Library, the National
Gallery, the Canadian Museum
of Natural Sciences, the
Museum of Science and Technology,
the National War Museum,
the National Postal Museum
and the National Aviation
Museum -- all are located
in Ottawa, which demonstrates
the national government’s
efforts over the years to
enrich primarily the cultural
lives of residents of the
National Capital region.
It
is ironic that with all
the public money spent to
bring Ottawa closer to Canadians,
almost half of us are unable
to locate Ottawa on a map
of the country according
to a July 1989 Gallup poll.
It appears that our national
capital fails to evoke pride
and a sense of nationhood
and is far from a unifying
symbol for citizens everywhere.
In many countries, the capital
is a cherished national
symbol, a place around which
the population can rally
in times of uncertainty
and trouble. London and
Paris have been the seat
of government throughout
centuries of history. Ottawa,
a relatively new capital,
has largely failed to develop
this symbolic status, despite
the federal government’s
direct efforts to provide
the city with enhanced significance
through increased spending.
Douglas
Fullerton, a former NCC
chairman, noted one of the
side effects of the government’s
efforts to make Ottawa an
important national symbol.
"A capital of growing physical
appeal may have had a favourable
impact on visiting Canadians,
helping them accept special
federal spending in the
region, but the consequences
are sometimes two-edged.
‘Fat City’ is a phrase that
comes easily to Canadian
visitors from areas in economic
trouble."
Right
across the Ottawa River
and close to all this government-created
pomp and luxury lie the
three western Québec communities
of Pontiac, Gatineau Valley
and Papineau. In mid-1990,
a report by the Québec Social
Affairs Council identified
all three as among the poorest
in the province, with the
average family income being
about $25,000. Equally distressing,
the unemployment levels
in the three were dreadful.
Those who know the by-ways
of the National Capital
region should be troubled
by this public affluence
and private poverty co-existing
so close to one another.
It would be far better to
direct part of the huge
sums spent in recent years
on buildings like the Museum
of Civilization ($257
million) and National
Art Gallery ($162 million)
on improving the skills
and the lot of Western Quebeckers
and other similarly depressed
Canadians across the country.
The
millions of dollars spent
on beautifying the capital
region and on such grandiose
projects as the ceremonial
route will win neither the
affection nor the pride
of Outer Canadians. A more
caring and just federal
government associated with
the city would certainly
put "the capital into the
heart and mind of every
Canadian" -- the elusive
dream of one chairman of
the NCC -- more effectively
than will all the attempts
to concentrate value, interest
and beauty in Ottawa.
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