SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
May 29, 2023 09:00AM

Thank you to the member for his excellent one-hour presentation on very complicated subject matter, which doesn’t have a lot of details. This debate reminds me of the time that, at that point in time, Premier Mike Harris was forcing six former municipalities to merge to now create this new mega-city that we have in the city of Toronto. Toronto today, of course, has a population of three million people. We have a GDP over—I think it’s almost $400 billion.

Interestingly enough, I remember at that time in 1997, there was a pre-amalgamation report that this House had produced talking about the potential savings of $82 million by forcing those cities into a marriage. By 1999, the city of Toronto commissioned their own report and they found that there were no promised cost-savings whatsoever. So my question to the member is: Without deep analysis and serious, robust consultation, how can we be guaranteed that the promises that the Premier is making will come true?

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