This is a news release from the Fraser Institute on studies it has done with respect to de-amalgamation. This subject has a considerable interest in Toronto. Former East York Mayor and Member of Parliament Alan Redway is campaigning for a review by the provincial government of a the amalgamation created in 1998.
(Marketwired) — 07/07/15 — Municipalities forced to amalgamate by their provincial governments can reverse the process, given the right set of circumstances, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
“Nearly every province in Canada has gone through some form of municipal restructuring over the past three decades,” said Lydia Miljan, Fraser Institute senior fellow and co-author of De-Amalgamation in Canada: Breaking Up is Hard to Do.
“In Ontario, it happened in the late 1990s in
ntreal, Quebec – to evaluate the fiscal and governance implications of reversing a municipal consolidation.
Headingley, a rural community in southern Manitoba, was forcibly amalgamated with the City of Winnipeg in 1972. For decades, community residents demanded that they be allowed to secede, arguing that they didn’t have much in common with the larger, more urban sections of the city. Finally, in 1993 the provincial government relented and legislated Headingley’s secession.
Despite some difficult separation negotiations, Headingley has now become a financially healthy community.
Headingley’s relatively smooth transition, the study notes, was aided by two key
factors: Its population base was able to absorb the cost of services transferred to it and its de-amalgamation didn’t necessitate the creation of new and complex governing structures.
Conversely, the de-amalgamation experience in Montreal may persuade some Torontonians – those who want to revert to the old governance model – to take pause.
In 2004, a new provincial government in Quebec facilitated referenda offering municipalities the opportunity to reverse the amalgamation forced upon them in 2002. In Montreal, many municipalities opted to stay but some did leave forcing the creation of yet another level of local government to coordinate local services (ie: property assessments, social housing, transit and public safety) for all communities (amalgamated and de-amalgamated) on the Island of Montreal.
“The key lesson from Montreal’s experience with de-amalgamation is that allowing certain areas to de-amalgamate and others to stay can create a costly, cumbersome and fragmented patchwork of government across the region thus complicating service delivery,” Miljan said.
“If de-amalgamation were to be pursued in Toronto, then policy makers would be best advised to avoid the Montreal model.”
