Town & Country Prospects Part 6: The “S” Word

Original Kitchener, Grand River Country, Ontario, Canada - June 12, 2023

Jun 12, 2023

The “S” Word and the Big Boys

When I embarked on this train of thought back in February, it looked like we were going to put the “A” word – amalgamation – back into daily use, despite the fact that the mindset it exemplifies is 50 years out of date. This was shortly before Regional Councillor Rob Deutschmann’s second “Virtual Town Hall” on March 16, which presented a wide range of views on the subject in a way that seemed to leave it exhausted. Since then, following the impending dissolution of Peel County/Region in the Greater Toronto Area, the “S” word –-- separation, which on first glance looks like the antithesis of unification – has emerged as an alternative possibility.

Last week six regional councillors, including Deutschmann, all from Kitchener and Waterloo, came forward with a joint declaration of support for a single tier order, to which some South Waterloo and Waterloo countryside voices immediately responded with a resounding “No!”

Meanwhile, we’ve been hit with a chorus of “One Big City; One Voice” pronouncements. “One Voice,” of course, means their voice: a coterie of KW “players” who like to speak authoritatively. Waterloo Region Record editorials generally follow this line of thinking. Usually utterances from this quarter are full of “Toronto-Waterloo Innovation Corridor” bravado, so it was disconcerting to see some Poilievrian “Waterloo Region is broken” fear mongering in recent messaging. The way they tell it,

Maple Leaf Meats swallowed up Schneiders and chose to set up shop in Hamilton because it’s One Big City and we’re a confused mess;
The province ignores us because we’re too small;
We don’t have a top rank teaching hospital like Hamilton and London because we’re a hyphenated brand;
We’re falling behind; we’re losing the race.

The idea that Volkswagen, the German car maker that runs manufacturing and assembly facilities in Mexico, the United States, Slovakia, China, India, Russia, Malaysia, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya and South Africa, chose St Thomas over Waterloo because they were nervous about having to deal with a municipal order with three mayors and a chair struck me as particularly absurd.*

I first wrote “ludicrous” but that seemed a bit harsh. Then I looked up Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, headquarters for that vast Volkswagen empire on which the sun never sets that our KW BIG players are so eager to impress, and laughed out loud to learn that this is a meticulously planned city of 124,000 – about the size of Waterloo or Cambridge, half the size of Kitchener. And get this: Wolfsburg is “organized into 40 districts. One or more districts make up one of the total of 16 localities which are represented by their own councils. Every council has a local official as its mayor.” There’s also a city-wide council, with 47 elected representatives, led by both a chair and – Doug Ford (and former Kitchener Mayor Richard Christie) should enjoy this – an Oberbürgermeister, which is translated as “Lord Mayor” of Wolfsburg.**

Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, and some of its 16 “localities,” each with its own council and a mayor.

We could also, given our one and only daily newspaper’s own aggrandizing adventures, make fun of the Record editorial team dutifully voicing the One Big City line of argument. This from a corporate entity that amalgamated (meaning annexed) first Waterloo, then Cambridge, and then started absorbing content from the weeklies, including Guelph. But instead of growing big and mighty, the newspaper saw diminishing levels of revenue, readership and relevance every step of the way, only to get handed over, in the end, to the Hamilton branch of the Torstar behemoth.

It might be wise to take this as a cautionary tale, because it could be an indication of where a Toronto-Waterloo Corridor is leading us: The once-proud cities of Waterloo and Wellington are becoming, in effect, Mississauga West. Wait, no, that’s Hamilton. Here in Galt-Waterloo-Kitchener, these Big City / One Voice players seem bent on taking us down the road to becoming the new Brampton-Bramalea.

We Can Do Better

I don’t mean to disparage the communities of Peel Region, especially not on the eve of their separation and its dissolution. The fact is, we have a lot in common, not just with upper, middle and lower Peel, but with the entire 905 area: relative prosperity, efficient basic services, access to all the desirable names and brands, growing diversity, inflation, housing crisis, condo mania, labour shortages, poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, alcoholism, drug addiction, automobile addiction, traffic congestion, hospitals strained to the breaking point, beleaguered educators, out of control police budgets, ageing population, culture wars, Yankee-Rebel hooting and hollering about taxes and liberty, anemic arts&culture, NIMBY obstinacy, bureaucratic tangles, regulatory deadlock, neglected heritage, environmental degradation, general boredom, apathy, ignorance, decimation of local news coverage, dismal voter turnout … .

Part of the reason why I’m uncomfortable with the “Big City / Major Player” storyline is that it imagines cities and city-regions constantly vying with one another. According to these players, if we’re not ceaselessly preening and flexing in front of big name investors from near and far, desperately trying to impress them with how big and strong we are, we’ll stumble, fall behind, and get sent down to the minor leagues.

That’s not really how things work, of course. The cities and towns of Southern Ontario, from Kingston to Oshawa to London to Windsor, and from Niagara to Waterloo to Peterborough to Ottawa, aren’t locked in a devil-take-the-hindmost race for survival. And if it actually were a biggest-takes-all kind of game, people who care about the future integrity of Cambridge and/or any of its constituent elements would be justified in feeling spooked by One Big City amalgamation talk, and it would make sense for them to start looking at separation as an option. One Voice means no voice for any and all minority cities and towns.

There are other options. It doesn’t have to be Kitchener absorbing Waterloo, annexing Cambridge and swallowing up the townships for dessert. Contrary to what Deutschmann, Erb and the gang may imagine, it is not the manifest destiny of “Upper Tier” Waterloo to take over everything that the seven foundational municipalities do. We could just as easily, and probably more wisely, fairly and efficiently, apportion everything the Region does to ground level operations north, south, east and west. If police services can be delivered in three divisions and yet remain integrated, any municipal department can.

Who loves the Regional Municipality? Who identifies with it? Who calls it home? No one. Who really knows it? Who recognizes and respects it as a name or brand? Waterloo County, yes –-- Conestoga wagons; food that really schmecks; lion lying down with the lamb and all that. But the County was wiped off the map half a century ago.

At the 50-year mark, the way our communities are served by and connected to Waterloo Region is certainly due for a major overhaul. We may even have to replace the engine. If so, let’s look for a new, improved 21st century machinery, and not try to make do with refurbished bits and parts from 1973.

It is possible to imagine an integrated, efficient, sensible municipal order that doesn’t involve the erasure of any particular identity or the reduction of any local capacity for self-realization. If we want to become, not just big, lean and mean, but the best we can possibly be, we’re going to have to find a better storyline than survival of the fittest and look for a loftier aspiration than “Big City / Major Player.”

These recent developments – the declaration of “the Six,” the “One Big City; One Voice” pronouncements, and the predictable reaction from the “NO” side – have not moved us forward a single inch. If the tone, scope and logic of the discussion of municipal reform doesn’t change course, dramatically and immediately, we’re in danger of embarking on what to my mind is the worst possible way to decide how to guide our communities into the future: an emotion-laden “debate” that reduces an infinitely complex range of issues, considerations and possibilities down to a flat “yes or no,” “amalgamation or else” proposition.

I’m optimistic. We can do this. I honestly think the political and civic leadership we have here, backed by all the people who care about what happens in this constellation of habitations we live in, can lead the province, the nation, the continent and the world in adapting and adjusting our municipal order to suit 21st century challenges and opportunities.

Creatures Here Below

Before we go any farther there is one more factor that must be taken into consideration. We have to come to terms with the fact that, with regard to the cities, towns and countryside of Waterloo County/Region, decisions about whether to stay together or separate are ultimately not ours to make.

For example, the original City of Toronto was firmly opposed to annexing adjacent suburban communities, but Ontario under Premier Mike Harris forced them to. Twenty years later, the new city was not happy with having its ward structure subsumed under provincial and federal electoral districts, but Premier Doug Ford imposed it on Canada’s largest municipality, arbitrarily reducing local democratic representation there by almost half.

“I was elected,” the Premier declared when people who care about local democracy raised objections. Essentially, this is taking the “One Voice” principle to the extreme by claiming it as a personal mandate. He seems to fancy himself as president and commander-in-chief of some revolutionary republic.

We don’t elect premiers and prime ministers in Canada. We choose people to represent us in the House of Commons in Ottawa and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Ford had captured the leadership of the party that received a plurality of votes in 2018 and again in 2022, which was enough to win them a majority of the seats in the assembly. This, in turn, allowed them to form the government. The powers Doug Ford wields come from the office he holds and the party that backs him, not from the electorate. Our representatives are there to hold him to account. But no one really does. Posturing from the opposition is mostly ritual; backbenchers are irrelevant. The way things work, premiers and prime ministers run things as they see fit.

The Premier’s high-handed interference in Toronto’s affairs was challenged in the courts, which ended up ruling in his favour: Canada’s constitution gives provincial authorities near absolute power over our cities and towns. Had the decision gone the other way, Ford promised to overrule it using the “notwithstanding” clause. In sum: Canada is organized in such a way that Premier Ford’s rights, powers and prerogatives are double protected against any interference from people in the municipal sphere who care about such matters and question the way things work.

Well, so be it. We have to work with what we’ve got. At the 156 year mark, the way our communities are served by and connected to Ontario and Canada is long overdue for an overhaul, but I don’t have the years or the patience that will be required to deal with that. I’m interested in real progress, true prosperity, full reconciliation, and lasting peace. I love my city. I cherish the matchless constellation of historic cities, towns and villages within which it coexists, here in Grand/Willow River Country, Ontario, Canada. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to serve my community is to rise above (or hunker down below) the fray, muse over the situation we find ourselves in, take stock of what we have to work with, imagine possibilities, and do what I can in taking whatever steps we’re permitted to take to try to make things better.

Independence AND Interdependence

Thinking in historical terms can help put things in perspective. Decisions about whether to enjoin, separate or remain are the most fundamental of political considerations. The United States began as a separatist project; Canada began as what remained of British North America. But having separated, the rebellious colonies found that independence left them in a vulnerable and chaotic state, so they formed a relatively weak confederation, and, shortly afterwards, “a more perfect union.”

In Canada, union was built into home rule from the outset, in part to make sure that we’d be strong enough to remain separate from the secessionist states, which had recently been re-unified by force of arms after a bitter struggle against a sub-secessionist impulse that has never been completely laid to rest. The English colonies that eventually became the United States began with privateers, adventurers, refugees and radical protestant come-outers, and have therefore always been inclined towards independence. Canada has always leaned towards the loyalist, unionist and catholic side of things. But let’s not forget that separation has also been part of the Canadian way, starting with splitting New Brunswick from Nova Scotia, Upper Canada from Lower Canada, and, later, divvying up Rupert’s Land.

As an either/or proposition, amalgamation versus separation becomes a conflict that never ends. But, like being and belonging, or building and maintaining, they are both part of the ebb and flow of life. We’re talking about a dimension of human co-existence, not a binary political choice.

Birth is separation. So is growing up and leaving home. But with a birth, a parent becomes part of a family. Marriage is union, as is moving into a neighbourhood, becoming part of a congregation, joining or forming a club or association, getting hired by a company. It is worth noting, though, that these associations are also all exclusionary acts. For example, aligning with a political party or movement is simultaneously a separation (“party” means “partition”) and an affiliation: joining forces for both personal and mutual advantage.

It seems obvious to me that “and” is a better conjunction than “or” for reconciling the apparent contradiction between separation and coming or remaining together. My hope for the communities of Waterloo Country is a civic order that recognizes, encourages and celebrates differences and allows maximum personal, parochial and associational autonomy – in other words, independence – AND a municipal system that functions as an integrated community of communities, acknowledging, honouring and prioritizing the self-evident fact of our interdependence.

That’s not sitting on the fence, nor is it pretending the fence doesn’t exist. It’s not demanding that all the walls come down either. There’s a place for demarcations and separations. Keeping the cows out of the corn, for instance. Or protecting the countryside from the encroachments of the city. That doesn’t mean we can never go over, under, or put in a gate and walk through the fence. A boundary joins as well as separates. And that, fundamentally, is what the amalgamation side of the equation is all about: connecting.

At all times, and in all ways, we are better together. Always, and in every way, Galt, Hespeler, Preston, Kitchener, Ayr, New Hamburg, Wellesley, Waterloo, St Jacobs and Elmira are better remaining associated through the original County matrix. But we can’t come together, be together, put our heads together or pull together if we no longer exist as distinct entities. By the same token, we can’t sing in harmony if we’re restricted to just one voice, one tune, one refrain, and one monotonous rhythm.

The sensible alternative to the wasteful, incongruous and confusing two-tier system we’ve been doing the best we can with over the last 50 years is not a monolithic, one-tier order, but an integrated, inclusive, no-tier configuration in which the whole is neither greater than nor subservient to the various constituent elements. Instead of constructing a mighty tower of consolidated authority in order to lord it over all contenders, let’s come together as a more perfect union that is grounded in the land, the waters and the many and various threads of how our communities have developed over time, while remaining resolutely oriented towards a peaceful, prosperous, sustainable future.

The Evening Muse

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