A decade later, some still criticize megacity merger

Ananniversary in the history of Toronto has passed, quietly.

Ten years ago, the six separate municipalities of Metro Toronto merged into a single megacity, an action that took place against the wishes of most citizens and local politicians.

John Sewell, a former Toronto mayor, led the charge against amalgamation in 1997. He organized meetings every week.

"Every Monday night, we regularly were getting 2,000 people. The excitement across the city was extraordinary. The only place big enough to hold the meetings were the largest churches in downtown Toronto," said Sewell.

Sewell could also count on the support of all six mayors of the old cities, including Mel Lastman, who eventually became the first mayor of the amalgamated city.

"The premier was going to get rid of North York and Scarborough," Lastman recounted. "And I said, 'What? Are you nuts? I said this is insane.'"

Some provincial legislators also appealed directly to the government at Queen's Park not to go ahead with the plan,among them former New Democrat MPP Marilyn Churley.

At the time, Churley warned the government of Tory Mike Harris that merging the smaller cities into a megacity was "a sure-fire way of turning [Toronto] into the American urban nightmare ... don't keep fooling yourself [residents] are mega-angry."

But the warnings did nothing to change Harris's plan. He said amalgamation would eliminate duplication, streamline government and save hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sewell, who organized the opposition, has never believed this was the government's real motivation. To this day, he thinks Harris had a different reason.

"I think they [Harris government] saw local government as a real threat to the agenda they were trying to carry out, which was to slice and dice government as much as they can, cut back programs for people," said Sewell.

Neil Thomlinson who teaches politics at Ryerson University, and earned his PhD by studying amalgamation agrees with Sewell. He thinks the real reason for the megacity wasn't to save money, but to shrink government.

"This was a perfectly good recipe to force a government, that they clearly viewed as a fat-cat municipal entity, to trim its sails," he said.

Thomlinson notes that some of the social services and other programs that were slashedthen have never been restored. Everything from snow clearing and garbage pickup to social housing, whichwere cut back in the megacity's early days, are still operating at reduced levels.

Critics say the predicted savings never materialized. City hall has a bigger budget 10 years later, with more employees than all the governments it replaced.