Myer Siemiatycki
Department of Politics
Ryerson Polytechnic University
Toronto, Canada
msiemiat@acs.ryerson.ca

Introduction

Few cities have become so multicultural so quickly. Within almost a single generation, global migration has transformed Toronto into a remarkably diverse ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious metropolis. Consider the lived experience of Toronto’s urban affairs reporter John Barber. Writing in The Globe and Mail, Barber contrasted the two ‘Torontos’ he has known: "I grew up in a tidy, prosperous, narrow-minded town where Catholicism was considered exotic; my children are growing up in the most cosmopolitan city on Earth. The same place" (Barber 1998: A8). Yet few places, few cities, could have been less prepared for immigrant diversity than Toronto. From its founding in the late 18th century until the middle of the 20th century, Toronto was an overwhelmingly British, Protestant community. For much of its history the city was commonly described as ‘Belfast of the North’; today the city’s newly adopted motto is ‘Diversity Our Strength’. This is not a vision earlier generations of Toronto civic leaders would have embraced.

In 1931 for instance, 81% of Toronto’s population claimed British origin, prompting one local historian of the day to conclude that "no other city of comparable size...is as homogeneous" (Lemon 1985: 50). Nor was Toronto’s civic culture in the past notable for the respect or tolerance exhibited toward minority, newcomer identities. The experience of Jews in Toronto was indicative of the times. During the first half of this century, Jews were the largest non-British ethnic group in Toronto. This made them a primary -- though by no means exclusive -- target of the conformist, xenophobic attitudes of the day. Jews in these years were barred from public swimming areas, could not build synagogues in some areas, and faced a city crackdown on the use of Yiddish in retail store signs. As city Alderman John Cowan argued in 1920: "If foreigners who came here to make a living could not conform to English ways and customs they could return to their native countries" (Ibid: 53). Seventy five years later a storm of controversy would erupt over similar comments from a Toronto area municipal politician directed against the use of Chinese in commercial signs. Clearly Toronto has had to struggle with the politics of difference.

Earlier in this century, leading opinion in Canada routinely opposed granting equal political citizenship to certain immigrant groups. The country’s leading public affairs magazine Saturday Night expressed the commonly held view during the 1920s that Canada and its cities should not become the "dumping ground for the ‘scum of Europe’ "; and referring specifically to Jews, the magazine cautioned, "Imagine a gang with names like that running a white man’s country!" (Ibid: 53). Today Mel Lastman, a Jew, is the mayor of Toronto -- Canada’s largest city and the fifth largest municipality in North America.

This paper explores the distance Toronto has travelled towards ‘cosmopolis’: to becoming not only home to people of many national, ethnic and cultural origins, but to emerging in Leonie Sandercock’s words, as a "city/region in which there is genuine connection with, and respect and space for, the cultural Other, and the possibility of working together on matters of common destiny, a recognition of intertwined fates" (Sandercock 1998: 125). Toronto is keen to promote itself today as home to the world, a city containing the peoples and cultures of the world. Yet as we shall see, many newcomers still feel like outsiders.

Immigration and Diversity in Toronto

Toronto is an urban place with multiple geo-political identities. Like most large metropolises, there are several different incarnations of Toronto which need to be distinguished. All are captured in Figure 1. Toronto as a municipal government now refers to the recently amalgamated (effective January 1st 1998) City, providing a single mayor and council for the six previously federated municipalities of Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, York, East York and Toronto. This new City of Toronto has a population of some 2.4 million people. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA), represents the Toronto city region as designated by the Province of Ontario, taking in the 25 municipalities from Burlington and Milton in the west to Scugog and Clarington in the east up to the northern-most Georgina and Brock. The GTA is marked by the bolded borderlines of Figure 1, and presently contains a population of some 4.6 million. Lastly, there is the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), which is largely, but not wholly overlapping with the GTA. Excluded from Toronto’s CMA are Burlington to the west and five municipalities to the east, most notably Whitby and Oshawa. The Toronto CMA’s population is 4.2 million. Toronto, then, exists in three different guises and boundaries: as a municipality; as a provincially-conceived city region now groping towards common municipal governance; and as a census area conceived by the federal government. Such is a taste of the complexities of Canadian federalism.

Toronto’s immigrant, ethnic and racial diversity is indeed extraordinary. In 1996 immigrants represented 17.4% of Canada’s population, with by far the greatest concentration residing in the Toronto city region. Almost half the residents of the amalgamated City of Toronto (47.6%) are immigrants. Home to almost 1,125,000 immigrants, one in every 4 immigrants in Canada now lives in the City of Toronto. By the year 2000, the majority of City residents will be immigrants and it is not too far a stretch to suggest that all Torontonians now share the immigrant experience because both newcomers and life-long residents are living in a new, different urban place. Data from the latest 1996 census confirms the Toronto area’s allure to immigrants, and how newcomers are reconstituting the city region’s population. Since 1991, 42% of all immigrants to Canada have settled in the Toronto CMA; 1 in 10 CMA residents immigrated to Canada between 1991 and 1996; more than 1 in 5 arrived since 1981 (Statistics Canada 1997a: 5-7).

Yet these statistics alone fail to convey the demographic impact of immigration on Toronto. As Daiva Stasiulis has observed, Canadian immigration policy until the 1960s was designed to develop the country as a "white settler" society (Stasiulis 1995: 198). Until then Britain, Europe and the United States were virtually Canada’s sole sources of immigration. Others were effectively barred in keeping with the prevalent view expressed 50 years ago by Canada’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, that "careful selection" must be a hallmark of Canadian immigration policy. As King declared, "The people of Canada do not wish, as a result of mass immigration, to make a fundamental alteration in the character of the population" (Ramcharan 1982: 13). Historically this meant favouring the admission of immigrants from Britain, northern and western Europe. The arrival of large numbers of immigrants from Italy, Greece, Portugal and Eastern Europe after the Second World War marked the limit of post-war Canada’s willingness to accept newcomers from non-traditional areas. Then, during the 1960s, for a variety of both principled and pragmatic reasons, Canada for the first time truly opened its immigration doors to the world by establishing an admission ‘points system’ based on occupation, education, language, skills and age. This was followed by an explicit prohibition of discrimination against immigrants based on race, religion, national or ethnic origin. Immigration to Canada immediately became globalized. During the 1970s many newcomers arrived from the Caribbean, followed by considerably larger numbers arriving from Asia, Africa and Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s.

The impact of changing immigration patterns over these years has been particularly dramatic for Toronto. Until 1961, 9 of every 10 immigrants to its CMA came from Britain and Europe; since then fewer than 2 of 10 have followed the same route. Instead, most recent arrivals have come from Asia, accounting for 60% of newcomers from 1991 to 1996 (Statistics Canada 1997a: 5). The City of Toronto is home to immigrants from 169 countries of origin, over 100 of which have at least 1000 ex-patriots in the city region. (Toronto’s diversity is evident in many facets of public life, but rarely as exuberantly as during the World Cup of Soccer, when massive numbers of residents take to the streets to celebrate their ancestral homeland’s performance. Not even a threatened police crack-down could prevent spontaneous street shut-downs during the 1998 games. As The Toronto Star noted, the city was "one of the few cities in the world that [could] boast supporters of every one of the 16 teams in the second round of soccer’s World Cup" [Carey 1998a: A1, A10]) As Table 1 reveals, eight of the twelve largest immigrant groups in both the Greater Toronto Area and City of Toronto came from Asia and the Caribbean. Indeed, with the reunification of Hong Kong and China, their combined totals establish the Chinese community as the Toronto’s largest immigrant group (Toronto Profile 1998: 1,3).

This globalization of immigration has of course changed the face of Toronto. In 1961 non-whites, now typically referred to as ‘visible minorities’, made up 3% of Toronto’s population. By 1996 census figures showed that visible minorities comprise 31.6% of the Toronto CMA population, and 37.3% of the new City of Toronto population. Four out of every ten non-whites now living in Canada reside in the Toronto CMA. Three groups in particular predominate: 25% of CMA Toronto’s visible minority population are Chinese, 24.7% are South Asian, and 20.5% are Black (Statistics Canada 1998; Doucet 1998: 58; Carey 1998b: A1, A16).

Toronto’s ethnic composition has also been reconstituted in the process. While 81% of Torontonians claimed British origin in 1931, by 1996 only 16% of Toronto CMA residents self-identified as exclusively British. At the same time fully 56% of the Toronto CMA’s population declared itself non-British/French/or Aboriginal in ethnic origin. Still, residents of British origin are the single largest ethnic group in all but one of the city region’s 29 municipalities (the stunning exception being Vaughan, north of Toronto with over 40% of its population Italian and barely 5% British). Yet this British plurality should not be exaggerated: in most of the region’s larger municipalities fewer than 1 in 5 residents is British. Interestingly too, hybrid identities are now a significant characteristic of Toronto’s ethnic make-up. Based on the 1996 census, 69.6% of the CMA’s 4.2 million population self-identified with a single ethnic origin, while 30.4% declared multiple origins. As Table 2 reveals, Chinese and Italians are the two largest non-British, single-ethnic origin communities in the City at 12.1% and 9.2% of single respondents respectively; 9.9% and 8.6% of all residents respectively when single and multiple responses are combined.

Immigrant settlement patterns across the Toronto area have been particularly significant in framing relations with local governments. Where newcomers choose and are able to live says a great deal about the status of immigrants and the outlook of the host society. City regions inevitably contain a distinct variety of urban forms: typically including a core central city, outlying suburbs, once-autonomous older towns now drawn into the metropolitan orbit, and even rural municipalities. Scholarly judgement to date is divided in explaining the prevailing pattern of immigrant and ethnocultural community settlement in city regions. Saskia Sassen contends that the dominant trend in American cities continues to point "toward concentration of immigrants and ethnic populations in the center," as third world immigrants occupy the core cities vacated by white flight to the suburbs (Sassen 1994: 103). By contrast, Peter Muller contends that suburbs and edge cities predominate as immigrant settlement areas as "foreign-settler communities are on the rise in metropolitan rings from Los Angeles to New York to Miami" (Muller 1997: 57). Toronto’s experience is characterized by substantial immigrant settlement in both the urban core and periphery, with greatest concentrations in the latter.

An important dimension of urban citizenship in the GTA is the fact that the highest concentrations of immigrants are no longer located in the traditional immigrant settlement area of the central city, but in the post-World War II suburbs (North York, Scarborough and Etobicoke), and more recent edge cities (Markham, Mississauga, and Richmond Hill) of the city region.Thus the top 10 concentrations of immigrant population by Toronto area municipality (then in existence) at the time of the most recent 1996 census, as shown in Table 3 were: North York (53.71%), Scarborough (51.97%), York (51.73%), Markham (48.55%), Etobicoke (44.38%), Mississauga (43.78%), Toronto (42.88%), East York (42.24%), Richmond Hill (42.19%), and Vaughan (42.05%).

Several comments flow from these figures and rankings. Beginning in a comparative vein, the Toronto city region’s status as one of the world’s major immigrant concentration places is reflected in the fact that the top 10 immigrant settlement municipalities in its CMA all had higher proportions of foreign-born residents than New York City -- the classic symbol of the immigrant city, with its 35% (officially documented) foreign-born population in 1995. Toronto’s Big Sprawl, its suburbs and edge cities, have higher proportions of immigrants than the Big Apple, Within the Toronto city region it is striking that the core, former City of Toronto (pre-amalgamation) -- for generations the primary site of immigrant neighbourhoods -- ranked 7th in immigrant concentration in 1996 behind 3 post-World War II suburbs, 2 edge cities and 1 early 20th century industrial city. This leads to the final and most significant conclusion from this data. A powerful expression of urban citizenship among immigrants to Toronto over the past two decades is their determination to select their residential location of choice rather than be confined to traditional zones of immigrant settlement. This has seen newcomers from Hong Kong settle directly in Scarborough, Markham and Richmond Hill subdivisions; immigrants from India locating in Brampton; and upwardly mobile Italian immigrants pulling up inner city stakes for homes in Vaughan. To be sure as well, the concentrated settlement of less affluent immigrants in high-rise apartment buildings in Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and Mississauga is less a reflection of pure locational preference than of their limited financial resources and options.

One of Toronto’s pioneer scholars of immigration, Robert Harney, once observed that "No great North American city can be understood without being studied as a city of immigrants, of newcomers and their children, as a destination of myriad group and individual migration projects" (Harney 1990: 229). There is much work to be done pursuing Harney’s injunction across Toronto’s many spaces of transnational migration. A starting point is recognizing the defining characteristics of Toronto as an immigrant metropolis: 1) its high proportion of foreign-born residents; 2) the many homelands and countries of origin represented in immigrant Toronto; 3) the population’s ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious diversity; and 4) the settlement of immigrants across many of the city region’s municipalities, most notably its suburbs and edge cities.

Immigrant & Minority Political Participation

Diversity challenges citizenship. As Sharon Zukin has observed, the task confronting ethnoculturally diverse societies is "whether [they] can create an inclusive political culture" (Zukin 1995: 44). There are many potential indicators of an individual or group’s political participation. My own research has followed three pathways: 1) immigrant and minority community involvement in the mass, urban movement which arose in 1997 to oppose the Province of Ontario’s plan to create an amalgamated megacity of Toronto; 2) the results of the 1997 municipal elections in the Greater Toronto Area; and 3) immigrant and diverse ethnocultural community claims on urban space. Taken together, these three domains of civic participation permit a multi-dimensional assessment of immigrant and ethnocultural citizenship in Toronto. They also reveal some of the city’s shortcomings in equitably engaging and serving its diverse population.

During 1997 Toronto’s largest citizens’ movement in history rallied to resist the provincially-imposed amalgamation of the six federated Metro municipalities of Toronto, York, East York, Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough. The prospect of accessible local governments giving way to a remote megacity burdened with a massive downloading of additional service costs, galvanized a mass movement into opposition. Journalist Joe Chidley captured the city’s ensuing passion- play well. "The city is in the grip of Mega-Madness," he wrote in March 1997, "and a riveting drama is being played out on the civic stage" (Chidley 1997: 46). As we shall see, immigrants and diverse ethnocultural communities were completely missing from this movement but eventually would launch their own, autonomous intervention into megacity politics in Toronto.

First a quick overview of the scale of citizen mobilization is helpful. The megacity protest was organized around a non-partisan organization called Citizens For Local Democracy, typically revered or reviled under its acronym C4LD. The group held weekly meetings that routinely attracted between 800-1200 citizens. The group’s largest rally was a full-house of 2600 at the venerable concert venue, Massey Hall. February 1997 conveniently brought the 160th anniversary of the Rebellion of Upper Canada, and a crowd variously estimated at between 10 and 15 thousand people re-enacted the march down Yonge Street of an earlier generation of dissidents. Then came provincial hearings into the megacity legislation, which drew over 600 deputants—most speaking passionately against the proposed legislation. And finally, a referendum campaign in March across the 6 Metro Toronto municipalities resulted in considerably higher voter-turnout than typically marks a municipal election. And 76% of the voters rejected the Megacity.

With remarkably few exceptions, the anti-megacity movement represented a mobilization of white, British-stock Toronto. This is a point self-critically acknowledged by the leaders of C4LD. Kathleen Wynne is a member of C4LD’s steering committee, and she chaired the group’s mass weekly meetings. Reviewing the movement’s campaign, she acknowledges that "we have not reached out, we have not succeeded in bringing in people from other ethnic communities. We are an Anglo group, white Anglo. It was mostly an Anglo WASP or WASC, (there were Catholics too!), community that rose up against the megacity" (Wynne 1997).

A variety of factors account for the movement’s ethnocultural homogeneity in this remarkably diverse city. There is a strong civic culture of citizenship and participatory governance in Toronto. Rooted in Toronto’s distinctive constellation of long-standing, stable and affluent central city residential neighbourhoods, there has always been a powerful ethos of enshrining citizens’ voice in urban affairs. The 1995 election of a stridently neo-conservative provincial government beholden to small town and suburban Ontario did not augur well for Toronto. Within Canadian federalism, provinces have sweeping powers over municipalities, and one of the Conservative government’s most dramatic initiatives has been amalgamating municipal government in Toronto, and downloading close to $400 million per year in additional costs to the new City of Toronto. A mass movement spontaneously erupted condemning the planned municipal merger for eradicating accessible, democratic local government and leading inevitably to hikes in taxes and cuts to services. According to Kathleen Wynne, Torontonians of British descent were "a constituency that felt comfortable coming into the halls of power and then felt entitled to organize this citizen’s movement...Nobody had the authority to stop them" (Wynne 1997).

The anti-megacity movement proved inaccessible and scarcely relevant to the large immigrant and ethnocultural communities across the 6 municipalities targeted for amalgamation. Ever scrambling to respond to a bulldozing and blustering provincial government, C4LD did little to mobilize the city’s diverse communities. Except for a short-lived initial attempt, materials were not translated into other languages. The group’s regular downtown meeting location in a church was both a geographic and religious mismatch for many newcomer communities. No effort was made to identify amalgamation’s threat to issues of concern to immigrant and minority communities such as service access, employment equity and policing. To be fair however, it needs to be acknowledged that C4LD was an under-resourced, citizens movement desperately trying to raise its voice against a provinicial government determined to enact drastic measures at great speed.

The anti-megacity movement never spoke to the city’s diversity. Some believe this stemmed from Toronto’s own experience of two solitudes. The coordinator of the Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations in the former city of Toronto, Augusto Mathias observes that "C4LD was very mainstream, Canadian-born, white European. We’ve (visible minorities) always been in isolation from the mainstream" (Mathias 1997). This view is echoed by a leader from the South Asian, lawyer Viresh Fernando, who would subsequently be instrumental in mobilizing a distinctive immigrant and visible minority presence in the debate over Toronto’s political future. Fernando contends that immigrants didn’t participate in C4LD "because they feel powerless... They feel that it’s all decided elsewhere" (Fernando 1997). Nor did immigrants and visible minorities share the same sense of attachment and ownership to the targeted local governments that older, white Torontonians did. City Hall had not been as accessible or reflective of their communities. The ethnocultural profile of municipal politicians elected in the former city of Toronto is suggestive. Fully 16 (64%) of the 25 councillors sitting on the city of Toronto council or representing its residents on the regional Metro council were of British ethnic origin. Only 1 was a visible minority. The former city of Toronto’s British origin professional and managerial classes dominated the political life of the city and C4LD perpetuated this pattern. Immigrants too were far less attached to parochial municipal identities, and more likely to regard themselves as residents of Toronto, the metropolitan destination of their transnational migration. To this point then the struggle against the megacity may be seen as the old Toronto -- remnants of its "white settler" urban society -- rising to defend its familiar and trusted system of municipal government, while newer Torontonians stood on the sidelines.

But political participation and citizenship are not static phenomena. As the debate over Toronto’s restructuring reached its provincially-imposed conclusion, immigrant and visible minority groups mobilized on two fronts: first, through the formation of a new coalition called New Voices For The New City (discussed in this section); and second, through an assertive campaign to promote the continued commitment to access, equity and anti-racism work in the new megacity (examined in the paper’s final section).

New Voices For The New City originated from the provincial hearings into the megacity legislation. One of the few visible minority presentations was by Viresh Fernando, on behalf of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians—CASSA. Preparing the submission, it became clear to Fernando and CASSA that immigrant communities could be particularly vulnerable in a new megacity. Their brief identified a variety of risks: downloading would lead to cuts in services and funding for community agencies; increased resort to user fees for municipal services was likely, and would have an adverse impact on immigrants and minorities ; ethnocultural groups were better off dealing with seven local governments, more attuned to neighborhood needs than with a more remote centralized institution; a single large council would be harder to lobby and interest in community concerns; municipal sector job losses caused by amalgamation would hit designated equity groups hardest; and the megacity might not follow equity principles in making appointments to its assorted agencies, boards and commissions.

CASSA’s deputation did not deter the provincial government’s amalgamationist mission, but it did convince CASSA of the need to mobilize marginalized, minority voices in megacity politics. By the summer of 1997, CASSA had pulled together an impressive coalition of 63 diverse community organizations under the banner of New Voices For The New City. Affiliated groups included the Canadian Arab Association, the Chinese Canadian National Council, the Ethiopian Association of Toronto, the Jamaican Canadian Association, the Canadian Sri Lankan Association, the Somali Canadian Association, and the Vietnamese Association of Toronto, as well as a number of women’s organizations and unions. Recent immigrant groups predominated, and most were spatially concentrated not in the former central city of Toronto but in the 3 post-war suburbs of North York, Scarborough or Etobicoke. A civic alliance on this scale was unprecedented as New Voices co-chair Viresh Fernando noted, "most of the 63 groups had never come together voluntarily on any issue." (Fernando 1997). Its founding document served notice that New Voices was intended to promote more engaged and effective forms of urban citizenship among traditionally marginalized communities: "Increasing the participation of First Nations, visible minorities, immigrant groups, socially disadvantaged persons in the political process is the main aim of this project...The purpose of this project is to strengthen civic society by ensuring that these voices are heard and that the future Mayor and Council of the Megacity will respond to these concerns." (New Voices of the New City 1997a: 1)

Specifically, and perhaps too minimally, New Voices of the New City committed itself to organizing a megacity mayoralty debate on issues of access, equity and anti-racism. Their objective was to raise these issues in the election campaign; press the candidates to take a stand; and thereby raise community participation and voter turn-out in the election. New Voices may have set a record for the longest title attached to a political forum. Its mayoralty debate was billed as "Defining the Spaces and Roles, of First Nations, Immigrants, People of Colour, Disadvantaged Women and Other Marginalized Groups in the Megacity." The two mayoralty front-runners as well as an African-Canadian candidate from a field of 17 "also-rans" were invited to participate. Several hundred people were in attendance, media coverage was strong, and Viresh Fernando of New Voices deemed the event a great success, saying: "We brought them [the candidates] face to face with diversity, and the politics of diversity" (Fernando 1997).

Few municipal elections in Toronto history generated as much interest as the 1997 vote. This was the first election of a huge 57 member council, (now enlarged to 58), to run the amalgamated "mega-city" of Toronto. A close race for the mayor’s office between two incumbent mayors of municipalities being amalgamated into the new city of Toronto added to the drama. And never before had Toronto’s ethnic communities been so actively courted by aspiring politicians. As Viresh Fernando noted: "all the candidates, or the major candidates, were spending more time at the Hindu Temples, at the Muslim Mosques and at the synagogues and so on than they were spending on main street" (Toronto 1998: 15). A voter turn-out of 45% on election day was the highest in decades, undoubtedly assisted by municipal advertisements in the 10 leading non-English ethnic newspapers providing basic information regarding municipal voter eligibility and polling locations. In the end, it was Mel Lastman’s commanding lead in the city’s most multicultural neighbourhoods of North York and Scarborough which assured him victory as the "mega-city’s" first mayor.

Elections are an important, if inherently ambiguous measure of political participation and belonging. Analysing the ethnocultural composition of elected politicians, two Canadian scholars have noted, "may index the equality of access the system provides into the corridors of power" (Black and Lakhani 1997: 2). Yet Daiva Stasiulis concludes a recent literature review of the subject by noting the "complex relationships that exist between statistical or numerical representation and substantive representation (original emphasis. Stasiulis 1997: 6). Clearly, identity representation in political office is no guarantee of state policy responsiveness; and politicians can give voice and leadership to the policy interests of groups to which they do not personally belong. Yet a group’s under-representation in elected office is likely, in the absence of other means of influence, to be reflective of its relative political marginalization.

The ethnoracial composition of Toronto city council perpetuates a pattern of inequitable political representation. Statistically, Toronto’s diversity is poorly mirrored among local politicians. A combination of self-identification surveys, biographical information and name identification have been used to establish politicians’ heritage and identities. The most striking under-representation is along racial lines. While visible minorities comprised 37.3% of the city of Toronto’s population in 1996, they hold only 12% of seats (7 of 58) on city council. This group includes three Black councillors, three of Chinese origin, and one of Korean origin. Among the barriers likely impeding the election of racial minority politicians is the huge number of non-Canadian citizens among Toronto’s permanent resident population. In 1996 as Table 2 shows 409,865 permanent residents in the city of Toronto -- over 17% of the population -- did not hold Canadian citizenship, and were therefore ineligible to vote in municipal or other elections. Undoubtedly, visible minorities are vastly over-represented among these non-citizens, primarily because they constitute most recent immigrants who have not yet fulfilled the time requirement for citizenship eligibility. Interestingly the sole visible minority mayoralty candidate in Toronto’s 1997 election launched a legal claim during the campaign under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms calling on the courts to extend the municipal franchise to all landed immigrants (permanent residents). The case was summarily dismissed in court, but represents an important attempt to assert urban citizenship rights for newcomers to Canada.

The ethnic composition of Toronto city council is considerably more diverse and reflective than its racial background, but still reveals a mis-match with the city’s demographics. (Regrettably, it will be evident that with the recent release of 1996 census data I have not been able to compile fully comprehensive and consistent demographic data). In order, the largest groups on council are: British (21), Italian (9), British & Other (7), Jewish (6), Multiple European (3), Chinese (2), Greek (2), West Indian (2), Chinese & Other (1) and 1 each of Dutch, Korean, Polish, Portuguese and Slovenian origin. Statistically three ethnic groups are significantly over-represented on Toronto Council: British Single Origin, 36.2% of council but only 16% of the CMA population; Italians who comprise 15.5% of the council, and 8.6% of the population; and Jews who make up 10.3% of the council and 4.4% of the population. Conversely while groups such as the Chinese, Blacks and Portuguese are under-represented on council, other large ethnic communities such as East Indians, Filipinos, Sri Lankans and Somalis have no members on council.

Political representation is even more skewed in Greater Toronto Area municipalities outside the City of Toronto. In the most recent 1997 municipal wlections, only 3 visible minority councillors were elected in the 212 seats in the assorted municipalities of Halton, Peel, York and Durham Regions. This was despite the huge edge city concentrations of Chinese immigrants in Markham and Richmond Hill, Blacks in Mississauga and South Asians in Brampton. In the GTA’s edge cities the vast majority of municipal council seats are held by politicians of British ethnic origin, the sole exception being the Vaughan where Italians comprise more than 4 of 10 residents, and hold 6 of 8 council seats. Indeed with the exception of Vaughan, there is a British ‘dominant culture’ on every Toronto area municipal council.

Does group representation matter? Far more analytical research is required to answer this question. Yet several signs suggest that we should anticipate a nuanced rather than definitive answer. To be sure, members of minority groups frequently point to lack of electoral representation as a significant cause of their political marginalization. A typical expression of this view came from the President of the Jamaican Canadian Association in Toronto, Herman Stewart. Reflecting on his community’s difficulty securing zoning approval for a community centre in North York, Stewart observed, "the solution is to have more Black people and more immigrants on council. And if we had one of our own on council then that lack of understanding wouldn’t be there because we had somebody there who knows exactly what we are about and would be able to talk to their colleagues and say ‘hey, they are not there to create problems, they are there to make that community a better place’" (Stewart 1998).

Yet it is clear that there is no automatic relationship between a politician’s identity, community and politics. Thus for instance, Viresh Fernando of New Voices dismisses two of Toronto council’s visible minority councillors as unauthentic on the grounds they do not advance minority community claims and were elected in predominantly white, affluent wards (Fernando 1997). It did not help that one of them was responsible for the most prejudiced outburst against the arrival of Roma immigrants to Toronto in fall of 1997. Interestingly too, only 1 of the 7 visible minority politicians elected to Toronto council had been endorsed by the Metro Network For Social Justice, the city’s leading progressive political coalition of community based organizations, suggesting that the electoral system privileges conservative over progressive voices within minority communities. It also needs to be noted that some of the most outspoken and passionate voices on council in support of immigrant and minority rights have belonged to non-immigrant or minority members.

Municipal Response To Immigration & Diversity

Municipal governments and institutions in Toronto have had a mixed record responding to immigrant diversity and minority claims. While municipalities have established an impressive number of policies and committees devoted to inclusion, access and equity the lived experience of immigrant and minority communities has often raised cries of disadvantage and discrimination. As Sheila Croucher has shown, Toronto’s rhetoric of ethno-racial harmony has not always matched its reality (Croucher 1979).

It is correct, as municipal staff working in the area of Anti-Racism, Human Rights, Access & Equity noted in a recent report, that over the past two decades Toronto area municipalities "have demonstrated commitment to and leadership in dealing with issues concerning its diverse communities" (Service Equity Team 1997: 3). Since at least 1979 when the city of North York became the first government body at any level in Canada to create an advisory committee on community race and ethnic relations, the seven municipalities now amalgamated into Toronto have established a host of policies, programs and committees aimed at advancing immigrant integration and engagement in the city. Over the past two decades then Toronto municipalities have commonly adopted policies related to multiculturalism, race relations, human rights, immigrant and refugee settlement, language translation, employment equity , contract compliance, and access to services.. Taken together such measures reflected a commitment to advance immigrant and minority participation in government decision-making; their access to municipal services; and their equitable presence in the civic workforce and among firms securing contracts from cities. Reinforcing these policy statements were both political institutions and staff resources. Municipalities typically had some form of political committee mandated to strengthen relations between diverse communities and city hall. And prior to Toronto’s recent amalgamation, its 7 municipalities budgeted over $3 million annually to staff responsible for advancing municipal commitment to diversity, human rights, race relations and equity. As we will see in the final section of this paper, a major challenge facing Toronto now is how best to advance access and equity work after municipal amalgamation.

Yet it is clear that a large body of policies and a small cadre of equity-promoting staff are insufficient to assure municipal responsiveness to immigrant and diverse communities. Over the years, tensions have arisen over a range of municipal issues and services such as policing (particularly police shootings of visible minorities) and schooling (notably academic streaming and heritage language instruction). Yet struggles over space have probably been the most recurring urban conflicts for immigrant communities in Toronto. The policy field that has frustrated more immigrant communities in more municipalities across the Greater Toronto Area has been land use planning. The centrality of urban space as a terrain of conflict for immigrant communities was highlighted in a survey conducted by the author in 1997 of senior staff in all 35 (upper and lower tier) municipalities then existing in the Greater Toronto Area, prior to amalgamation. Almost half (17) of the municipalities reported they had experienced circumstances of conflict with immigrant communities; and in 14 of the 17 instances, land use zoning was the issue in dispute. Nine municipalities experienced conflict over the location of places of worship for minority religious communities, particularly mosques; five had clashed with the Chinese community over the construction of Asian-style malls or the location of funeral homes; and two had disputes over the attempt to establish a Jamaican community centre. Conversely when asked to identify a ‘best practice’ municipal department which had been particularly responsive to immigrant communities, no respondent identified a Planning Department -- Parks and Recreation instead leading the way, with Public Health a close second.

"Cities give physical expression to relations of power in society", John Short has written (Short 1989: 54). Regulating land use is one of the most important powers in the hands of local government.In the Toronto area, conflicts with municipalities over the use of urban space have generated particularly strong feelings of mal-treatment and marginalization among leaders of immigrant and minority communities. Consider the following recent expressions. The President of the Islamic Society of Toronto complained after the protracted battle to establish a mosque in East York that "there are huge double standards that are preventing Muslims from having the same access to their religious freedoms as others" (Ingar 1998). His counterpart heading the Canadian Islamic Conference, Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim, came to a similar conclusion based on his attempt to establish a mosque in North York, complaining, "There is one set of laws for everyone else and then there’s another for Muslim communities. There is no fair and equal treatment for everyone" (Ibrahim 1998). Herman Stewart, President of the Jamaican Canadian Association, summarized his unhappy experience of trying to gain zoning approval for a Jamaican community centre in North York by confessing, "I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy" (Stewart 1998). Another Association official told the city’s leading Black newspaper, Share, "They [municipal council] just don’t want us up there" (Donkin 1997: 1). And finally, in response to Deputy Mayor Carole Bell’s assertion that long-time residents were moving out of the edge city of Markham because of tensions and discomfort created by a growing Chinese immigrant population, the Toronto chapter of the Chinese Canadian Council complained of the hurt inflicted on their community by "immigrants being portrayed as an alien group, invading neighbourhoods with strange cultures and way of doing things that will erode the existing fabrics of the communities" (Chinese Canadian Council 1995: 2). To leaders of the Chinese Canadian community, their right to urban space was a test of Canada’s commitment to multiculturalism. Vivian Chang, news editor of Ming Pao Daily News, pointedly asked, "Is the mainstream in Canada going to be a mix of various ethnic groups or just Anglo-Saxons?" (The Vancouver Sun 22 September 1995: 1).

In Toronto, as in other immigrant cities of the world, land use conflicts have become particularly acute flashpoints of conflict for diverse immigrant and ethnoracial groups in global cities. As Leonie Sandercock has observed, "Products of hyper-mobile capital and complex human migrations, perhaps the most visible characteristics of these cities are struggles over space...Who belongs where and with what citizenship rights, in the emerging global cities?" (Saundercock 1998:3). A full discussion of the aforecited cases and their resolution is not possible here. Yet the expressions of hurt and anger noted above remind us that good municipal intentions and diversity-positive policy statements do not always assure responsive decisions and services.

Future Directions in Policy and Research

Immigration and diversity in Toronto have come to be understood and promoted as strategic urban assets in a competitive global economy. As one recent municipal document asserts, "The diversity of Toronto provides us with unique resources into the global marketplace as well as with significant competitive advantages in this international marketplace" (Toronto 1998: 8). Accordingly, within months of Toronto’s recent amalgamation, its mayor’s first foray onto the international stage emphasized the city’s multiculturalism. Addressing a ‘Summit of the Cities’ in Birmingham in May 1998, Mayor Mel Lastman delivered a speech titled ‘Diversity in Toronto’, highlighting the city’s many immigrant streams and their contribution to the city. "We believe", Toronto’s mayor declared, "municipalities have special obligations to our diverse populations." Yet it is clear the city will face difficulties fulfilling such obligations.

It must first be noted that Toronto’s capacity to formulate policies and programs responsive to immigrant and minority communities has been substantially curtailed by the provincial government. The constitutional subordination of municipalities in Canada does disproportionate harm to immigrants, who are concentrated in large urban areas whose cities are subject at every turn to the directives of their provincial masters. As previously noted, the current Conservative provincial government has audaciously advanced provincial control over municipal affairs to new heights. Suffice to mention some measures which impact particularly on immigrant and minority communities.

First on the financial front, estimates are that with the amalgamation of Toronto, and the realignment of provincial-municipal responsibilities, some $379 million in additional costs will be downloaded to the new City (Graham 1998: 182). This represents close to a 6% raise in city government costs, and will lead to cuts in municipal staff and services. It will be difficult for immigrants and minorities to make tangible gains from local government in this context. Indeed, provincial plans (now deferred for a year) to introduce a new funding formula for schools would have forced the Toronto District school Board to close some 140 schools -- with particularly large numbers in immigrant neighbourhoods. Finally of course the province’s statutory powers have important regulatory control over municipal services. Changes made by the province to the Police Services Act in 1997, were condemned by a host of ethnoracial and immigrant groups for eroding civilian oversight of policing and essentially restoring police review of complaints against police (Urban Alliance 1997). This occurred in the context of there having been 35 police shootings of civilians in Toronto between 1990 and 1996; in over half the cases, the victim was Black (This Magazine 1997). During this period Blacks comprised 7.5% of Toronto’s population. Increasingly the, the parameters of the possible in municipal policy are being set by the province.

One area where municipalities retain significant latitude however, is in their own outreach and access to diverse communities. Over the past year this has become at once a more pronounced and vulnerable sphere of local government activity. The prospect, and subsequent implementation, of municipal amalgamation in Toronto prompted concern over how past commitments to access, equity, anti-racism and human rights would be preserved in a merged megacity. Contributing to apprehensions were the province’s own abandonment of many of these concerns, the varying levels of commitment to these issues in the former municipalities being merged, and the more constrained fiscal environment of the new City. Led by a cadre of committed civic staff working in these areas, (self identified as the Service Equity/Human Rights/Race Relations Team), Toronto’s municipalities produced a brief in 1997 identifying the municipal institutions and resources required to represent diverse communities in the new City. The goal, declared the Team’s document was "enabling and empowering diverse communities to participate in civic life through: participating in political decision-making; accessing equal benefit from the services offered by municipalities; being represented in the workplace; and having their rights protected as employees and residents" (The Service Team 1997: 10). This constituted a huge agenda, though the position paper itself was focussed on a discussion of political and administrative institutional structures to carry forward this work.

The new City therefore began with a momentum of concern and mobilization around minority participation and access. As Mayor Lastman informed his Birmingham audience, one of the new City’s early initiatives was to form a Task Force on Community Access and Equity. Yet as Task Force member Pam McConnell subsequently observed, only 2 of 56 councillors then in office volunteered to serve on the Task Force.Three others presumably had to be cajoled or conscripted. To be sure the newly elected council was swamped on all fronts, yet McConnell told a public forum "we’ve got a lot of work to do" in making the Task Force’s work a priority for members of council. To date it appears the Task Force has had difficulty engaging either members of council or equity and access-seeking communities in their deliberations. As the Metro Network for Social Justice reports on the initial consultations and interim recommendations of the Task Force, its work "has not gained public attention and has barely made a ripple among city councillors" (Metro Network 1998).

Any failings cannot be attributed to the Task Force’s mandate, which is substantive enough. The goal is to develop recommendations on how council can: 1) best support communities concerned about access and equity; and 2) best integrate access and equity principles into the City’s role as a policy maker, an advocate, a provider and regulator of services, a contractor and an employer. These are critical challenges facing municipal governments in all diverse cities. The Task Force’s initial proposals do not stake out new ground on these fronts, instead promoting past political and administrative practice: a standing committee of council reinforced by community advisory groups and a civic access and equity centre Toronto, Task Force 1998). But what happens when a process intended to stimulate participation, access and equity engages little interest? The Task Force has been criticized for its overly institutional and bureaucratic framing of an access/equity agenda, and for proposals which are excessively vague and remote from the lived experience of affected communities (Metro Network 1998).

Perhaps Toronto’s current inertia in responding to diversity reflects the limits of good intentions leaning on received wisdom. The time for imagination and risk may be at hand. Participation and equity cannot be willed they need to be cultivated from the bottom up. Toronto gained acclaim for pioneering an inclusive form of metropolitan government in the 1950s. Today the challenge facing municipalities is creating political systems responsive to the diverse identities of their citizens. Both academic research and municipal policy have a role to play in getting there. Particularly helpful would be the development of institutions and programs aimed to stimulate civic engagement among marginalized communities. Learning from the experiences of other immigrant cities and gaining a clearer understanding of the stages and dynamics of diverse community participation would help. Toronto is eager to promote itself as home to the world -- as a cosmopolis containing the world’s peoples and cultures. The city is indeed unrecognizable now from its heavily mono-cultural past; yet its relatively recent immigrant, ethnic and racial diversity remains to be equitably engaged and reflected in Toronto’s body politic.

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TABLE 1: ORIGIN OF TORONTO’S IMMIGRANTS

Place of Birth	GTA	Toronto	% in Toronto
Total Population Total Immigrants United Kingdom Italy Hong Kong India Jamaica China Portugal Phillipines Poland Guyana Sri Lanka Viet Nam Other Countries	4 628 700 1 837 035 180 720 149 240 111 605 101 535 88 790 88 165 82 280 81 810 78 180 62 050 54 255 50 510 707 895	2 385 400 1 124 410 74 250 85 105 62 315 47 215 56 670 65 960 53 470 55 440 46 850 41 320 45 760 38 990 451 065	52 61 41 57 56 47 64 75 65 68 60 67 84 77 64

Source: Profile Toronto: Immigrants in Toronto, 1998

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TABLE 2: CITY OF TORONTO - POPULATION BY ETHNIC ORIGIN

Single Respondents		Multiple Respondents		Total Responses
Chinese Italian Canadian English East Indian Portuguese Jamaican Jewish Filipino Polish Other Total	209 395 158 810 133 735 133 505 107 220 79 875 65 495 64 985 54 295 49 145 661 545 1 722 005	English Scottish Irish Canadian French German Italian Jewish Polish East Indian	285 125 209 155 195 970 178 585 95 940 78 550 44 405 39 280 39 240 29 360	English Canadian Scottish Chinese Irish Italian East Indian French German Jewish	418 630 312 315 255 655 235 285 235 170 203 220 136 580 114 420 106 345 104 260

Source: Statistics Canada, 1996 Census

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