Fix Governance 1: Municipal Amalgamation Didn't Really Work. Here are 3 Responses.

Merged municipalities didn't produce the efficiencies politicians hoped for. Instead, it disempowered local communities. Cities can fix that.

Montreal’s borough system provides more local decision making over local issues. This map shows Montreal’s 19 boroughs plus another 8 municipalities that de-amalgamated in 2004. Photo: Wikipedia

Promise of amalgamation

The provincial governments in Ontario and Quebec decided to merge, or amalgamated, small municipalities into larger ones in the late 1980s and early 2000s.

Toronto merged in 1998. Ottawa and others in Ontario in 2001. Montreal and others in Quebec in 2002.

The premise was that small municipalities were inefficient and not large enough to provide services efficiently on their own.

Amalgamation, it was promised, would allow for lower costs and streamlined services.

With the exception of the 1996 merger of Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford in Nova Scotia, few other Canadian municipalities have amalgamated.

Track record

A quarter century later, the track record of amalgamation in Ontario and Quebec is not great.

Cost savings never materialized

Amalgamation did not generally result in cost savings or streamlined services in amalgamated cities in Ontario or Quebec. See, for example, analysis from the Institute of Municipal Finance and Governance or the Fraser Institute.

This doesn’t come as a great surprise. A large part of municipal expenditures is salary.

Amalgamations had little impact on total staffing numbers. Public sector organizations, for better or for worse, don’t have the flexibility to restructure their workforce as might be the case with a private sector merger.

Loss of local control

Amalgamation took local control over local issues, and shifted that up to a larger super-city. When urban, suburban and even rural residents within a single city have different priorities, this can result in a majority overruling local communities on local issues. It can also lead to a pattern of suburban sprawl subsidized by more compact and efficient neighbourhoods.

Quebec backlash

There was sufficient backlash to amalgamation in Quebec that the provincial government allowed local referenda on de-amalgamation in 2004. Several former municipalities voted to de-amalgamate and re-establish themselves as independent municipalities.

This happened most notably in Montreal, with the super-city broken up.

Systemic challenge

Amalgamations have largely failed because urban and suburban parts of the city increasingly have different priorities and values, leading to competing visions for the city.

To grossly over-simplify, one group tends to prioritizes housing affordability, transit and climate action. The other group tends to prioritizes neighbourhood stability, driving and low taxes. This can result in tensions between these different set of priorities.

But municipal issues get hyper-local very quickly. They happen in our neighbourhoods, on our streets, in our backyards.

The systemic tension of amalgamation is that it provides one group with the ability to thwart the ambitions of another group, even when the ambitions of that second group are specific to its immediate neighbourhoods.

Amalgamation can take away the ability of communities to control their own destiny.

Regional services

There are some large scale municipal services — like transit or sewer pipes — for which regional cooperation makes sense.

Pre-amalgamation, these were often provided through a regional municipality. Or through a regional transit agency. There are perfectly good options for delivering these services on a regional basis, without having to move to full amalgamation. For example, the 20+ municipalities in Metro Vancouver are all served by TransLink, the single transit authority for the region.

3 responses to the challenges of amalgamation

Municipalities in Ontario and Quebec have had a quarter century to understand amalgamation and its shortcomings. Here are 3 responses to addressing the challenges of amalgamation.

1. Borough system

One response is to create a borough system. Boroughs are essentially a fourth level of government, dealing with local land uses issues.

Montreal has 19 boroughs with responsibility for local parks, streets and other land uses. Boroughs in Montreal have local decision making powers, and lead the annual participatory budgeting exercise for the borough.

People have a knee jerk reaction to the prospect of another level of government. But local boroughs are modest in cost. And they are focused largely on community engagement and solving local community concerns. They provide strong value for money, and given their closeness to the community, likely demonstrate how taxes can provide a clear benefit to the community.

New York City has 59 community boards. These are similar to boroughs but have an advisory role rather than a decision making one. The New York community boards are composed of volunteers supported by a skeleton staff.

Public engagement is a significant shortcoming for some cities, but this is where local boroughs excel. They are composed of community members and serve as the frontline for engaging the public.

2. Local planning committees

City Council committees are designed to do the heavy lifting of the municipal government, reviewing proposals and voting on whether something should go to Council.

Since the urban and suburban regions of a city may have different priorities, an urban planning committee could address urban proposals, and a suburban planning committee could address suburban ones. Final decisions on proposals that go forward would still be decided by full council.

These committees can be established within existing municipal structures. They provide a platform for more localized decision-making and representation without the need for restructuring the entire municipality.

3. De-amalgamation

Not all marriages work out. In Quebec, a number of municipalities, given the choice, chose to break off from their forced marriage.

Ontario was proposing the same in 2023, allowing half a dozen merged municipalities in southern Ontario to break up, prompted largely by Premier Ford’s deathbed promise to former Mississauga mayor, Hazel McCallion. That all changed when Bonnie Crombie, McCallion’s successor, became the main political challenger to Ford. The Premier soon took de-amalgamation off the table for all.

So while the current Ontario government is not currently in support of de-amalgamation, governments change. The Overton window for de-amalgamation in Ontario has been opened.

The de-amalgamation process is straightforward. Not simple, but clearly outlined in the Ontario Municipal Act, section 182.

Conclusion

Amalgamation was an experiment tried in Ontario and Quebec. It has largely failed on its promise to cut costs and streamline services. It also contributed to a land use pattern that saw cities sprawl out, rather build efficiently where infrastructure already existed. That development pattern pushes everyone’s tax bill up.

There are responses — some modest, some more ambitious — to fix the issues amalgamation created. Those fixes won’t come immediately.

But given the deficiencies in the current system, reform to the problems created by amalgamation seems inevitable.