When Premier Bob Rae asked me to chair the Task Force on the Future of the Greater Toronto Area in 1995, I accepted enthusiastically. The Task Force was created to respond to growing concerns about the health and workability of the city-region.
It was becoming apparent that the secure and satisfying quality of life that people in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) had been enjoying for the decades following the Second World War was under threat. The region’s lagging economic recovery from the post-1989 recession had revealed its vulnerability in the changing global economy. Torontonians were feeling that the systems they had relied on — from municipal finance to governance to public transit — were breaking down and no longer able to meet their needs.
Here we are 30 years after that, and concerns about Toronto’s viability are back.
No one wants to discuss white flight & the fact that diversity leads to a low trust society.
