Memo To Gregor Robertson: Toronto Can’t Be Allowed To Get Away With This

Time To Force Toronto’s Hand

“Planning rules will be updated to allow increased heights and densities on major streets (low-rise apartments up to 6 storeys) and avenues (mid-rise buildings up to 11 storeys), as well as four storey multiplexes in neighbourhoods across Toronto.”

That (emphasis mine) is currently on the CMHC’s website about the Housing Accelerator Fund deal with the city of Toronto. Not that Toronto will maybe implement some of these things at some point in the future in some parts of the city. This is what we committed to, and that’s what those dollars - nearly a half billion dollars! - were granted on the condition of. And now Toronto, in an act of cowardice, has caved to the grand compromises of mediocrity and the dreariness of impotency. And so, given the failure of Olivia Chow’s leadership in Toronto, it is now incumbent on Gregor Robertson to take the torch and lead on this issue.

It’s time for Minister Robertson to claw back the Housing Accelerator Fund dollars, freeze all Infrastructure dollars under his purview, and force Toronto to honour their commitments. Because if we don’t, we will have allowed cities to lie to us, take our money, and fail to deliver on the promises they’ve made. And we will all suffer the consequences of not standing up.

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We mustn’t let this disaster from Olivia Chow and the merry band of cowards that is Toronto Council stop us from remembering that Doug Ford could literally solve this problem himself across Ontario. The Housing Accelerator Fund having to negotiate with cities in Ontario is a failure of the Ontario government to effectively do their jobs, and the fact that the Feds are having to manage city level zoning (and Development Charges, though that’s a different matter) for provinces is a fucking joke. But it’s the reality right now that the power lies in the hands of the city.

Olivia Chow and the city of Toronto willingly entered into an agreement to get federal dollars with strings attached to it, and have subsequently decided that they don’t want the obligations those strings impose on them. It’s the governmental equivalent of a buying binge on Amazon and then not paying the credit card bill when it comes due. Council has to fulfill its obligations. And Wednesday, they decided not to.

It was often dressed up in the language of community respect, but at the end of the day what the Council majority wanted - or what we believe the Council majority wanted, since they never put the original sixplex motion to the floor unamended - was a community veto on what individual people do with their lands. The fact many of these same people call themselves freedom loving, small government conservatives who nevertheless want to stop any person adding a couple stories to their property and making it a multiplex without a whole bureaucratic ordeal being dropped on their heads is besides the point.

The reaction to this would be hilarious if it wasn’t so fucking depressing. Olivia Chow never spoke at any point during the debate on the Council floor, because apparently we’ve found the one issue Chow doesn’t have an opinion on. There was no effort made in public to whip the votes for this, no effort made to convince either council or the public that this kind of upzoning is essential. Put another way, there was no attempt at anything resembling leadership, merely crass capitulation.

I will encourage you to find others who can more articulately describe the policy horrors of this, and focus on what I can do well, which is the politics. If Toronto is allowed to break its deal then every deal this government signs for the rest of human history is going to be abused. We will never be able to leverage federal dollars to achieve outcomes again if we let Toronto prove to everybody that the achieving outcomes part is an optional extra and not a mandatory part of getting the money. We will be unilaterally surrendering our biggest source of leverage, or expecting the rest of the country to let us cut Toronto a sweetheart deal because it elects 23/24 Liberals.

(To the Liberal MPs that Gord Perks claimed were telling their Councillors that the money will flow either way - know that there is a special layer in hell for those who undermine their governments without having the testicular fortitude of putting their name to it. You want to undermine Carney, and the entire concept of your government’s housing strategy? Put your fucking name on it or fuck off.)

Before those claim that this would be “punishing” Toronto, yes, cutting every dime and dollar would be, but let’s be clear - they’re not actually entitled to the Housing Accelerator Fund dollars. They’ve taken this money on a false premise, and if they fail to live up to their promises then they need to suffer the consequences. This is basic - we cannot give a green light to anybody who tries to get away with taking the money and running away without fulfilling their obligations.

This isn’t just about Housing, this is about Health Care and Child Care and Pharma Care and every other policy we now or might in the future need provincial cooperation with. The nature of our Confederation means we sometimes need to entice people to work with us, and if we dangle a carrot to get them to help us we can’t let them think they can get the carrot and not do what they’ve agreed. It will ensure that Danielle Smith and Scott Moe get to bank ever more federal dollars, use the money to cut taxes or bail out their energy sector buddies, and then blame the Feds for shitty services. If you think that’s unlikely, that’s literally what Jean Charest did with the mid-00s health transfer escalator because Stephen Harper unshackled the money from any form of requirement for the provinces to actually spend it on health care.

There cannot be any other response to this cowardice from Toronto Council. Fulfill your duty, call an emergency meeting, and pass the deal you’re legally required to, or we will make your lives a living hell. Olivia Chow had no problem publicly saying that on top of a 10.5% property tax rise, she was going to hike them an additional 6% if Justin Trudeau didn’t write a cheque. Why, exactly, the Feds needed to - beyond “if you don’t, I’ll ensure you’ll lose a shitload of seats” - is still unclear, but Chow had no problem going for the jugular. So let’s go for it back. Let’s see how Toronto does if all their federal transfers suddenly dry up.

If this comes off as vindictive, it’s not. I have no desire to see this happen, but I also have no desire to see us get rolled in every subsequent negotiation ever by provinces and cities that can promise the moon and then renege when they need to follow through. Unless it is going to be official government policy that you only have to honour your commitments if you govern places that don’t elect Liberals, which would create a national unity crisis the likes we’ve avoided this century. Imagine if we try and tell Danielle Smith that she must follow through on every condition we agree to so that there’s a pipeline approval, but we don’t Olivia Chow. How the fuck do you think it’s going to go down in Alberta which is already looking for any grievance, no matter how small?

This is about housing policy, because the City of Toronto did just fuck their own housing policy, but this is about ensuring that the Federal Government isn’t steamrolled in every single negotiation for the rest of Mark Carney’s time in government. We have the fiscal levers to make Toronto honour their commitments and pass broad, sweeping as of right zoning across the city. We need to use them. Gregor, don’t let Toronto out of their commitments - if they do, we’ll lose all ability to get anything outside of Federal jurisdiction done.

This is a hill worth dying on, because if we let Toronto get away with this we will be living with the consequences of our failure for decades to come, on housing and on every other issue that might ever need cooperation. The stakes couldn’t be higher.