March 4, 2004

Remarks to the Toronto Board of Trade
by David Caplan, Minister of Public Infrastructure Renewal

Check Against Delivery

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to join you for breakfast.

I appreciate the opportunity to highlight the ways in which the McGuinty government is bringing real, positive change to Ontario and specifically, the GTA.

I’m going to keep my remarks to the point this morning, because I want to make sure we have lots of time for the question and answer session that Ben Chin is going to moderate.

I think you will find it much more interesting to ask questions about the topics that interest you…

And I will find it more informative to learn what those questions are. My purpose today is to listen, more than to talk.

The City of Toronto is now 170 years old. It was incorporated in 1834, with a population of about 9,000 people.

It was founded in circumstances that are similar to our recent history. The population doubled three times in the generation before the city was incorporated, mainly because of a huge influx of immigrants following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

And then, as now, the principal issues were building and maintaining public infrastructure – especially roads and housing – to accommodate that unprecedented growth.

In the 170 years from then to now, the Greater Toronto Area has become one of the most heavily urbanized regions in North America.

In many ways it has become a victim of its own success.

• This is North America’s second-largest financial center. Almost 400 hundred thousand people work in the financial services industry;
   
• We have, in Southern Ontario, the biggest automobile manufacturing industry on the continent, after Detroit;
   
• We have the largest bio-medical and bio-technological research cluster in North America.
   
• And our information technology and telecommunications sector is one of the top three in North America bigger than New York or Los Angeles.

Toronto is a powerhouse. It is the engine that pulls Ontario and Canada.

And yet, we are still facing the same issues we faced when this was Muddy York: how do we house people; how do we move them around; how do we provide the public infrastructure that allows people to enjoy a quality life, and help our economy to prosper?

These are the same issues you raise in your “Enough of Not Enough” campaign.

These are the same issues we address, in cooperation with our federal colleagues, in our New Deal for Cities program. And they are issues; I am pleased to tell you today, where real progress is being made.

I’m going to spend most of my time this morning describing that progress, and placing it in the context of the larger public policy issues that affect public infrastructure.

We will measure our achievements in decades, perhaps in generations, and we are just at the beginning.

The Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal has been in existence for only 133 days, and I have no miracles to share with you this morning.

But we have made progress on some of the issues that are most important to you, and I think you will be encouraged by the things that are happening.

Let’s start with the Toronto waterfront.

All three levels of government have committed money for the waterfront renewal – $1.5 billion dollars in total – and that money is beginning to translate into projects on the ground.

There has been excellent cooperation among the three levels of government, and we have a list of 16 projects that will be completed or substantially completed over the next five years.

We are analyzing the Dennis Mills report to determine how the proposed federal plans can build on the current tri-government partnership approach to waterfront revitalization.

I believe it will lead to the kind of success we have seen in cities like New York and Chicago. There, brownfield redevelopment on the waterfront has revitalized downtown areas.

The McGuinty government is committed to delivering real, positive change to create safe, clean, livable communities.

The Toronto Waterfront renewal is something we will all point to with pride, far into the future.

Transit and transportation systems are another item on your agenda and on ours.

Our city will fail if we are not able to control traffic congestion, and if we do not find ways to move goods and people efficiently. The Board of Trade has estimated that gridlock costs the city about $2 billion dollars a year, in wasted time and lost opportunity. I think it may be higher.

Clearly we need to invest, plan and manage betterand we will.

Looking specifically at the transit needs of the City of Toronto, the government wants to be sure the TTC has the financial resources it needs to maintain efficiency and increase ridership.

We intend to work with the federal government to make this a priority.

As you may know, the McGuinty government has pledged the sharing of gas tax revenue to support local transit at the municipal government level across Ontario.

As we meet this commitment, additional dollars will be available to support transit needs in Toronto and the GTA. But money isn’t the only issue.

Every large city in North America has recognized the need for cross-boundary coordination of transit investments.

The Greater Toronto Area is the only major metropolitan area without a regional transit coordinating authority.

The McGuinty government will establish a Greater Toronto Transportation Authority to co-ordinate and integrate public transit and roads across the region.

In general, the purpose of a Greater Toronto Transportation Authority is to achieve at least four goals:

• First, we want to make transit seamless and more reliable by improving the linkages between transit services including trains, buses, streetcars and subways;
   
• Second, we want to reduce gridlock in the GTA, which is choking our communities, reducing productivity, and diminishing the quality of family and recreation time;
   
• Third, we want to develop rider-friendly improvements such as one-fare transit passes;
   
• Finally, we want to improve the planning and coordination of our transportation systems, including transit and highways within the GTA.

In the near future, we will be asking GTA municipalities, transit stakeholders and, of course, the Board of Trade, for advice relating to the specific functions, mandate and composition of the GTTA.

The third major issue in your campaign is affordable housing. There is good progress to report in this area as well.

A week ago we announced $56 million in new funding under the Canada-Ontario Affordable Housing Program. That will create more than 2,300 units of affordable housing in communities across the province.

Almost half of the funding – $24 million – has been allocated for the creation of new projects in the City of Toronto. That will provide shelter for senior citizens, families with children, and disabled persons.

We have also changed the rules.

We’ve made it easier for municipalities to apply for federal and provincial funding for affordable housing.

And we’ve extended the deadlines to allow more projects to be brought forward.

But perhaps the most important improvement we’ve made is that we’ve ended the bickering and political grandstanding that have characterized discussions of affordable housing in the past.

The city, the federal government and the province are now talking to each other, working together, and cooperating to get the job done.

We haven’t had that for many years. And that is the most hopeful sign for the future.

I believe this new area of partnership and cooperation will yield very tangible results.

For starters, I would like to begin discussion with my federal counterpart, the Hon. Andy Scott on a new federal-provincial arrangement relating to affordable housing.

Signed by the former Ontario government, I believe the current agreement could be more flexible and help meet the different affordable housing requirements and solutions of communities.

I also believe the current federal-provincial agreement does not reflect an appropriate level of provincial contribution for affordable housing.

I believe the provincial share should gradually increase over time to match the federal contribution.

Those are the principal components of your campaign.

I support what you are doing; and I am very happy that there are specific, concrete examples that show how we are progressing toward the goals we share for this city of ours.

I want to take a moment now to place these questions in a wider context, and discuss briefly the broad issues that affect public infrastructure.

The Chinese ideogram that represents our word for “crisis” is a combination of two symbols; one signifies “danger”; the other means “opportunity.”

I don’t think we are in a time of crisis. But we do face both danger and opportunity.

The danger is that we will not be able to provide the things we need, as a society, in order to grow and prosper.

The opportunity is that we now have the possibility of shaping our future, through wise planning and careful investment.

The demands for investment in public infrastructure are huge. They come from two directions.

One relates to the investments we failed to make in the past, to repair and maintain the things we have.

The other source of demand for more investment comes from the unprecedented expansion of the GTA.

In the past decade, the Greater Toronto region was the second-fastest growing census area in North America, after Dallas – Fort Worth.

In this decade we will add more than 975 thousand people in the GTA; by the end of the next decade, we will add 715 thousand more.

In just one generation, the population of this region will increase by approximately 2.4 million people, which is about the size of the original Metro Toronto.

These new communities need housing, schools, hospitals, roads and transit systems, recreation facilities, and the public amenities we take for granted in a successful and prosperous society.

Providing them – especially providing them in a time of fiscal constraint – is a daunting challenge.

It is clear that we need to find better, more creative and innovative ways to finance and procure infrastructure.

As I announced last week, we have started a dialogue with the public and with key stakeholders to determine the best ways to do that.

And there is a real opportunity. If we plan wisely, we can use our infrastructure investments to manage that enormous growth, to create better communities.

We can make better use of existing facilities. And we can steer growth to areas that will accommodate it best, so that we protect green space, and create compact, livable, transit-supportive communities – communities that work for the people who live in them.

So I see an opportunity now to reverse that decline, an opportunity to restore the lustre to a great city.

Twenty centuries ago, the Jewish philosopher Hillel the Elder posed two questions that every moral person must confront in deciding to act. “If not here, then where?” he asked. “If not now, when?”

The questions answer themselves. If we want to build a better city, and a better society, the place to start is here. And now.

I welcome your support in that enterprise. Thank you.