CambridgeToday received the following letter to the editor from former mayor of Cambridge Doug Craig on an upcoming facilitator review of Waterloo Region.
It certainly has been the summer of our discontent.
The ever increasing problems in our region can be seen daily outside our doorsteps in encampments, drug overdoses, increased crime rates and climbing food and gas prices.
These problems have all but crippled local government’s ability to cope because of the lack of proper funding and the absence of legislative powers to support remedial action.
Yet, the calls for assistance to the upper orders of government have consistently fallen on deaf ears.
Former Minster Stephen Clark seemingly unaware of the seriousness of the problems in our communities was not to be outdone by past political theatre.
He announced that the province would be sending in a facilitator not to help with the on the ground issues plaguing local communities but to, “improve how government works and how to make better use of taxpayers dollars”.
This waste of resources is simply a missed opportunity that will end up not succeeding in any of its goals because the policymakers at Queens Park do not have the current expertise on how to institute a proper review of local governments.
Secondly, they are solely driven by political ideology that has resulted in the past with amalgamated communities across the province.
On the sidelines in the Region of the Waterloo, there have been numerous comments from local cheerleaders.
Local media sources along with the emergence of two business groups have all announced their support for amalgamation.
One of these business groups finds its home in Kitchener-Waterloo and the other in Cambridge.
Together, they both share a shocking lack of awareness on how our two tier system of governance operates and together they seemingly are not familiar with any of the empirical studies done by the leading academics in Canada who have concluded that in Ontario amalgamations haven’t saved taxpayers any money.
Yet, undaunted and unmoored from these previous missteps they go on to declare, “that Waterloo needs to be one major player” because seemingly “no major business leaders in Frankfurt, Tokyo, New York or London know where Cambridge or Hespeler Ontario is”.
Admittedly, we can assume that no business leaders from these same cities would know where Cupertino California, Bentonville Arkansas or Mountain View California are either. They are in fact the corporate headquarters for Apple, Walmart and Google.
Waterloo region is a very successful metropolitan area that is a leading economic force in Canada with a number of world class industries that have settled here even though we are not an amalgamated community.
Yet, once again we are challenged to get things right even though our economic successes have proven otherwise.
The issue before us is not that a facilitator is coming into the Region of Waterloo. The issue before us is how the review will be done and what kind of academic vigour along with public input will be employed to get the best outcomes.
In 1979, a well respected provincial review of Waterloo Region was undertaken by the Palmer Commission and it remains today as the gold-plated example on how to do a proper analysis.
Palmer took 18 months to complete his review. He was accompanied by a number of leading academics who studied all aspects of local governments in the region from finance to transportation to social services and then they published their findings.
In total, there were 21 publications released for public scrutiny. There were 15 public meetings held across the region over a year in both the townships and the three cities.
Over a hundred elected and appointed officials at the time were individually interviewed along with numerous members of the public. In the end, Palmer issued a 311 page report with 132 recommendations.
Some of Palmer’s recommendations were notable. He did not recommend that Cambridge separate from the region.
He dismissed Kitchener’s desire to annex 1,100 acres of Cambridge’s prime industrial lands and he made no argument in favour of an amalgamated government.
In conclusion, Palmer has left us with a superb legacy and he has left it in our own backyard. He has shown us the proper approach for a regional review.
As a community of 640,000 people, we shouldn’t be fearful of a facilitator landing on the doorstep of Waterloo Region. However, we must be vigilante.
Nothing less than the thoroughness of a Palmer Commission review will suffice unless of course, we want to end up with an unsubstantiated political opinion from a provincially appointed facilitator.
Doug Craig
