The phrase is so often applied to Pierre Trudeau to describe his effect on Canada — official bilingualism, patriating the constitution, empowering the Supreme Court and creating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But applied to Mike Harris, it was also the theme of an EYE WEEKLY editorial a few months ago.

And, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the amalgamation of Toronto, it is an apt sentiment, for nothing has defined our city, for bad and for worse, like the ongoing damage inflicted by Premier Mike Harris and his so-called “Common Sense Revolution.” Harris and his ministers always took an obscene amount of pride in sticking it to the poor, but they also had a great fondness for aggressively screwing cities. To Toronto, he gave the gift that just keeps on taking.

Amalgamation is the most obvious of his legacies — the forced creation of Canada’s fifth-largest government, an unwieldy body that has proven ill-suited to responding to local constituent’s concerns. And this, too, at great monetary cost: the hundreds of millions of dollars that were expected to be saved have turned into hundreds of millions of dollars of extra costs — the municipal government employs over 4,000 more people today than its predecessors did a decade ago.
And in many ways, amalgamation was simply a smokescreen, or an enabling principle, behind which to change funding formulas. Costs for social services were downloaded to cities, creating an ongoing fiscal disaster at the municipal level that still exists today, and which Premier Dalton McGuinty has only now started to reverse.

Of course, Mike Harris also forcibly merged the school boards, and made them an area of provincial jurisdiction. In seizing them for the province, he implemented a funding formula that disregarded the need for building maintenance and support staff, and that left little or no room for special needs programs. Today, Kathleen Wynne, who had been one of his most vocal critics, is education minister, and she has yet to even really begin to undo the damage.

Speaking of funding formulas, Mike Harris’ government changed the TTC’s long-standing funding arrangement that had seen it thrive and expand, so that for most of the past decade the transit system received no funding at all from the provincial or federal governments. In the meantime, even as ridership has risen, subway expansion projects were cancelled, regular maintenance fell by the wayside and the system started crumbling.

We may also thank Harris for the embarrassment of Mel Lastman’s term as mayor.
So look around at the city: when your local councillor takes weeks to return a call, that’s Mike Harris’ legacy. When politicians battle at City Hall about introducing new taxes to fix the forever-enduring cash shortfall, that’s his legacy. When teachers buy textbooks with their own money, or when kids get beat up in hallways that have no monitors, that’s his legacy. When one wonders why the TTC has failed to maintain its streetcar tracks and service deteriorates while fares rise, that’s his legacy. He haunts us still. Even after a decade, it appears the exorcism will take a long time. Today, even more so than when he was premier, this is Mike Harris’ Toronto. The rest of us only live in it.

MORE ON THE MEGACITY:

Megacity ever after: a brief history of amalgamation

Where are they now: an update on amalgamation's key players