So: would you rather live in Saskatoon than Toronto? “Is Toronto In Decline?” — a recent study produced by the Fraser Institute, a conservative think-tank — details an apparently growing fear among Toronto citizens that the city is “losing its edge” in comparison with other national business centres.

Anyone who witnessed some of the more daring behaviour during this past weekend’s Pride Parade will assume edge is something Toronto lords over Edmonton in spades. And yet, the Fraser Institute says that 2006 census data reveals median income slumping to 96 per cent of the national average, while an opinion poll of 653 residents conducted by COMPAS shows 63 per cent of citizens blame government tax policies for their harmful effect on local business.
Senior Fellows Mike Harris and Preston Manning — who authored the report — justify their intentions in a confusing forward: “[The report] is meant as an alert to Torontonians of negative trends affecting their city. We are not interested in pointing a finger of blame, but we do believe we should get on with solutions.…” Interestingly enough, the study does not propose any.

It’s easy to dismiss the Fraser Institute’s findings as “Let’s All Hate Toronto 2: Electric Boogaloo.” After all, Harris’ legacy as the premier of Ontario was his “Common Sense Revolution” — the common sense being to slash social assistance rates by 22 per cent, eliminate provincial funding for public transit, try to bust public-sector unions and force the amalgamation of cities that has produced a decade of rising costs and bureaucratic confusion.
So now Harris is back to say Toronto is in decline. How is Mayor David Miller’s office taking the news?

According to the mayor’s Deputy Director of Communications Stuart Green, he isn’t taking the news at all. When asked if the mayor had read the study, Green flippantly replied, “We don’t have time, we’re too busy doing work.” But Green questions the source: “Mike Harris has already done quite enough for Toronto.... [Harris] has left his mark in a great number of ways, and work is underway to repair some of the damage that his government has done. It’s a bit amusing to say, after all he’s done to mark Toronto, that Toronto is already marked.”

Ward 33 Councillor and Toronto Budget Chief Shelley Carroll defined this palpable irony more clearly. “So it turns out we’re falling behind as a result of everything Mike Harris did. Everything he did, in term of the redistribution of services, of education, of welfare, was actually a bad idea? That was just the highlight of my day.”

Carroll, a school board trustee in Toronto during Harris’ tenure, admitted she would have said Toronto was “falling behind” in 2005 “if you had asked me in my kitchen.”

But she says that, since then, governments have been moving away from the Harris-era policies she felt created that lag effect. “Cities can turn around, and we’re enacting the kinds of strategies you need to build, slow-moving policies. One million square feet of [central] office space has been leased out, with businesses either expanding, or new owners moving into them. Toronto businesses have paid a much higher ratio [business] education tax, and the province is now reversing that. This must be the only city that has managed to lease that amount of space. The struggle is trying to spend the whole budget that I’m allotted.”

Matthew Blackett, founder of Spacing magazine, is critical of the report, deeming the findings “fundamentally wrong.” By analyzing cities by borders as opposed to regions, Blackett maintains, it ignores both business and housing opportunities in the sub-regions of Peel and Vaughan that complement Toronto. Commuters who live in Mississauga and York region and who work managerial jobs in Toronto aren’t represented either, disregarding the fact that property taxes in those places are “quite low” for residents, high for businesses.

But even if there were a problem, he wouldn’t look to the report’s authors for advice. “The policies they espouse are the same reasons Toronto is in this mess,” says Blackett. “There’s a political agenda to this report that only goes to further harm Toronto’s reputation — modus operandi for Mike Harris and the Conservative government.” 

Jonny Dovercourt, co-editor of Coach House Books’ uTOpia series and founding director of the Wavelength music series, suggests it’s better to “laugh it off.”

“It’s kind of like the expelled bully returning back to your school to make fun of the fact that you can’t spend what’s left of your lunch money. The problems that the city is facing aren’t entirely due to Mike Harris, but a lot of them are his fault. It’s deeply ironic that he’s the one pointing them out.”

Still, Dovercourt maintains that blaming city hall for our financial problems is not fair. Provincial initiatives have “plateaued” since 2004, while per capita spending on the arts is “just embarrassing.” Says Dovercourt, “So much that is going on here is getting by with relatively little support. I’m obviously not speaking the language of the Fraser Institute but [they’re looking at it] from a purely quantitative value of life….

“If I wanted to move to Calgary to make some money in an oil patch, sure I’d be better off financially but I don’t think my quality of life would improve. I still think [Toronto] is the best city in Canada, one of the best cities in the world in which to live.”

Still, other reports from less controversial quarters have pointed to problems in Toronto’s urban landscape. “The Three Cities Within Toronto,” a University of Toronto study published in Dec. 2007, examined 30 years of census data to trace the changing demographics of local neighbourhoods and their class structure between 1970 and 2000. Professor David Hulchanski, lead author of the study and director of U of T’s Centre for Urban and Community Studies, labelled these results saddening. As Toronto’s middle class shrunk to 32 per cent of the census tracts by 2000, the population of high-income areas grew from 15 to 18 per cent of the city, as the poor neighbourhoods’ population increased from 19 to 50 per cent. Middle (or mixed) income neighbourhoods appeared to be disappearing.

The culprit, said urban-studies superstar and Toronto cheerleader Richard Florida in a Globe and Mail column, is gentrification. In order for the city to fulfill our “creative capabilities,” it is necessary to bridge “class warfare.”

A press release from the Centre for Urban and Community Studies suggested federal and provincial income-support programs — based on the cost of living, housing assistance and inclusionary zoning with mandatory affordable housing for 15 to 20 per cent of larger residential developments — would ease the problem.

The Fraser Institute may or may not be aware of this well-publicized study, claiming that they will examine the causes and solutions to the city’s problems in further publications. They could not be reached for comment.

Mayor Miller’s office seems cavalier about the city’s reported decline. “They did not send us a copy of the report for the Mayor to review. Will the Mayor get around to reading it? It’s possible, but it’s been a long time since the Mayor read anything that came out of the Fraser Institute,” Stuart Green says. “And I think you can read the lines between that.”