Democracy, Citizenship and the Global City (Routledge Studies in Governance and Change in the Global Era) by Engin F. Isin

Author:Engin F. Isin [Isin, Engin F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Geografia
ISBN: 9781135123758
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

Governing Toronto: citizens for local democracy

It is against the background of these broad transformations of liberal regimes of government and the rise of advanced liberalism that the creation of the new city of Toronto must be understood. The amalgamation of the constituent municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto has sharpened and brought to the fore the main political fault-lines in the city. The inner city constituency of public sector professional-managerial groups reacted defensively, invoking a grammar of local democracy and citizenship. By contrast, immigrant groups, visible minorities and working classes largely watched the debate with relative indifference, perhaps corroborating my earlier suggestion that modern city government is increasingly like an empty shell whose territory marks out the once-meaningful boundaries of the political. These groups remained on the sidelines during the opposition against amalgamation, and during the subsequent election in November 1997 they actively forged ahead with a different agenda - new voices for the new city - which saw amalgamation as an opportunity to secure rights for immigrant groups. This was a major defeat for the public sector professional-managerial groups that coalesced under the banner of Citizens for Local Democracy - affectionately known as C4LD coming at the end of an arduous fight to stop amalgamation.

At first C4LD appeared to be heading for success, There were two reasons for this. First, when the proposed amalgamation of the constituent municipalities of Metropolitan Toronto was announced in October 1996, the opposition against the Harris government had been building in Ontario for more than sixteen months. Beginning with the swearing-in ceremony on 26 June 1995, the Harris government had been greeted with protests by various social justice groups such as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and Metro Network for Social Justice. These protests were widened by the labour movement via a series of 'days of action' in Ontario cities such as London, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Peterborough and, finally, Toronto. Massive one-day demonstrations and strikes in these cities were unprecedented in Ontario history. Although downplayed by the government, as expected, the impact of these demonstrations and strikes was beyond doubt, at least in raising the profile of opposition in the media. Although organized labour remained sceptical of municipal politics and kept its distance from C4LD, when C4LD began its agitation to organize, it was addressing already-politicized Torontonians.

Second was the class composition of C4LD. Like its counterparts in other Anglo-American states, particularly in Britain, the Harris government was conceived right from the beginning as a movement against public sector professionals, social interest groups, public sector unions who staffed provincial and municipal bureaucracies, and professionals in education, the arts, media and government - essentially groups that are concentrated in the large cities of the province. Toronto is the largest and the most concentrated city of the new class.4 The Harris government targeted the public sector segment of the new class from the day it gained power. Not only did it pass legislation to reduce dramatically the provincial government workforce, which led to the first-ever strike by the union of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.