Urbanites Unite!

Begging for their own money. That's precisely what the mayors of Canada's cities find themselves doing today. In fact, they've been at it for almost a year now, and they're getting Scrooged. Stephen Harper, a difficult target for even the most talented of beggars has predictably rebuffed their efforts. And the provincial governments have used a tactic that should be familiar, ironically, to anyone living in a city. When mayors put their hands out, provincial politicians declare they don't have any spare change on them right now, even as their pockets jingle like a Christmas carol.

Canada's urbanites, and their leaders, are going to have to adopt a new strategy if they want to get their own money back. It is time for a new political party, one dedicated to giving cities the powers they need to prosper instead of merely surviving. For now let's call it the Urban Alliance, until someone comes up with a better name.

Issues? Oh, we have issues. It's no secret that Canada's cities are being pilfered by the federal and provincial governments. From 1999 to 2002, for example, the citizens of Calgary, Edmonton, London, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax sent $51 billion more in taxes to Ottawa than they received in benefits and programs. In 2004, Toronto contributed as much total net revenue to the federal government as it was able to spend on its entire range of public services.

This might be a tolerable situation if the wealth that was being sucked out of these cities was surplus, and the cities were vibrant, prosperous, and prepared to handle any challenges the future might bring. Instead, as the taxes generated in our cities continue to fill provincial and federal treasuries, the cities themselves are buckling at the seams.

Preston would be proud

Like most sources of conflict and injustice in this country, the culprit is the 19th century constitutional division of powers. Granted, they made sense at the time, when the Canadian economy was still overwhelmingly dependent upon the extraction and transaction of natural resources. But in the 21st century, where cities produce the overwhelming majority of this country's jobs, wealth, and tax revenue, it makes no sense to continue treating them like the red-headed stepchildren of the Canadian family.

Hence the need to launch the Urban Alliance.

After all, founding a new political party to represent a geographically-rooted set of concerns isn't new to this country. From the Social Credit Party in Depression-era Alberta to the Parti Quebecois and the Reform-Alliance Party, protest parties have enjoyed a long history of success and political influence in Canada. A political party that represents the interests of urban Canadians would, like its provincial predecessors in Quebec and Western Canada, capitalize on the explosive mixture of an emergent sense of shared identity and a perception of injustice and exploitation.

Studies have shown that urban Canadians have more in common with each other than their provincial counterparts, that a resident of Vancouver has more in common with a Montrealer than someone living in Chilliwack. As The Economist wrote in September 2003, "the most visible cleavage in Canada is not between French-speaking Quebec and the English-speaking rest, but between five large urban areas (dynamic, successful, with many immigrants but with strained public services) and the rest (mainly rural, declining economies with high unemployment, kept alive by federal aid)."

Value-added votes

Urban Canadians are beginning to realize that cities are being, and have been for some time, used by federal and provincial governments as a bank account in which withdrawals vastly exceed deposits. We're justifiably angry about it. And even angrier, upon learning that our votes are worth significantly less than our rural counterparts in federal and provincial elections, by an average of 12 per cent, and by as much as 50 per cent in certain cases.

Let's imagine the Urban Alliance wins at least a few seats in the 120-odd urban ridings across the country. Even those few seats would result in media recognition, participation in political debates, and the all-important direct funding from Elections Canada. If Canada continues to be governed by a minority government, the Urban Alliance could, in speaking for the interests of urban Canadians, perhaps help tip the balance of power on key votes. At the very least, it would be better than begging.

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