The Relevance of Toronto's New Governmental Structure for the 21st Century
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Ontario Conservative government of 1995 to 2003 made a number of major changes in the way that municipalities were governed and financed. Some municipalities were forced to amalgamate despite the opposition of their residents. The government also redistributed the responsibilities of the province and the municipalities through the Local Service Realignment Program (LSR). This program is referred to as downloading. The previous P.Q. government of Quebec merged the adjacent municipalities of Montreal, Quebec City and Longueuil into three large cities on January 1, 2002, despite the objections of the residents in local referenda. In June 2004, referenda were held in many of the amalgamated cities, and several voted to demerge. This paper is concerned with two questions. The first is whether megacities are less costly to operate than many small municipalities in a large urban area. The recent amalgamations of Toronto and of the cities in Quebec are used to examine this question. The second question is concerned with the impact of downloading on the municipalities. Because downloading did not take place in Quebec, the experience of the City of Toronto is used to examine this question. Combining amalgamation and downloading has produced an untenable financial situation for the new city of Toronto. The city is not financially self-sufficient. The province currently restricts the city to the property tax and to user fees for additional revenue. Other revenue sources are needed to help the city meet its financial requirements. The lack of funds, other than borrowing, to maintain and add to its infrastructure, means that the city's infrastructure is deteriorating and that borrowing costs will place an additional future burden on the city's operating costs. The inability to maintain and add to the city's and the Greater Toronto Area's (GTA) infrastructure will increase urban sprawl and place additional costs on the city and on the GTA's businesses and residents. ********** The 1995 to 2003 Ontario Conservative government made a number of major changes in the way that municipalities were governed and financed. Some municipalities were forced to amalgamate despite the opposition of the residents. The government also redistributed the responsibilities of the province and the municipalities through the Local Service Realignment Program (LSR). This program is referred to as downloading. Other major changes included the use of market value for property tax assessment and the transfer of education funding to the province from the local school boards. The previous P.Q. government of Quebec merged the adjacent municipalities of Montreal, Quebec City and Longueuil into three large cities on January 1, 2002. This was also pursued despite the objections of the residents in local referendums. This paper is concerned with two questions about the changes. The first is whether megacities are less costly to operate than many small municipalities in a large urban area. The recent amalgamations of Toronto and of the cities in Quebec are used to examine this question. Since the Toronto amalgamation occurred in 1998, the new city is still adjusting to the change, and only preliminary conclusions can be drawn at this time. This comment also applies to the cities in Quebec since they were merged in 2002. The second question is concerned with the impact of downloading on the municipalities. Because downloading did not take place in Quebec, the experience of the City of Toronto is used to examine this question) The Organization of Local Government Municipalities, their residents, the provincial governments and academics have been concerned with the costs and benefits of a megacity compared with many small and diverse municipalities within a large metropolitan area. Local governments can take different forms. In British Columbia and Alberta, the Municipal Acts give residents the right to incorporate, dissolve and amalgamate municipal governments. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".