– The C.D. Howe Institute is an independent not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to raise living standards by fostering economically sound public policies through research that is nonpartisan, evidence-based and subject to definitive expert review.
CANADA – For cities across Canada, amalgamation has produced few economies of scale and greatly undermined local autonomy, according to a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Thinking Regionally: How to Improve Service Delivery in Canada’s Cities,” authors Zachary Spicer and Adam Found provide a blueprint for better service delivery in city-regions faced by expanding demands for shared services.
“As city-regions across Canada continue to grow, the need for some municipal services, such as mass transit, is shifting from a local to a regional basis,” commented Spicer. “However, provinces forcing amalgamation on cities is the wrong way to promote coordinated and streamlined services across municipal boundaries.”
The authors argue that provinces need to shift their focus from imposing centralized local government to creating frameworks that promote cooperative and flexible local governance. More specifically, their recommendations include the following:
- City-regions across Canada should be looking to the regional district governance model in British Columbia, where regional districts are “regional coordinators,” rather than “regional authorities” with top-down powers. The distinction matters greatly for regional governance.
- The Alberta government has been engaged in a series of changes to the Municipal Government Act, with a particular focus on mandating how municipalities are to work together. Instead of this authoritative approach, similar to efforts that have failed in Ontario, Alberta should focus more on the conditions that facilitate voluntary cooperation and create the kind of regional governance framework in which municipalities will want to work and cooperate.
- TransLink in British Columbia and Metrolinx in Ontario should include more local policymakers and stakeholders on their boards more than they do currently. This would result in transit services being better tailored to the municipalities served and would improve accountability and transparency.
Found concluded: “Intermunicipal cooperation offers municipalities an effective means to strike an efficient balance between the need to meet regional interests on the one hand and to maintain local autonomy on the other.”
