Why Your City Probably Sucks

Toronto's rotting from the inside, Montreal's dying of laziness, and Vancouver's mayor has a bad case of spendicitis.

Just in case you thought life in Canada’s three major cities is a bowl of cherries…

Toronto is in trouble because although it “seems to have weathered the recession fairly well … beneath that surface appearance of strength lies an inner frailty,” according to a Toronto Star editorial. The city has a growing economy but an unemployment rate of 9.5 per cent, above the national average of 8 per cent. Torontonians who are employed are increasingly forced into low-paying or part-time work, and 90,000 of the city’s citizens are on welfare. Things are only going to get worse despite Rob Ford’s money-saving, gravy-train derailing measures because the city’s growth is expected to slow, “especially with government stimulus spending coming to an end and the U.S. economy continuing to sputter.”

Montreal is in trouble because Montreal is not Calgary, according to the Montreal Gazette’s Andrew White. While Calgary’s just elected the enlightened Naheed Nenshi for mayor, “Montreal's 2009 mayoral election pitted a two-term mayor who seemed relaxed about corruption against a man who hasn't dismissed the notion that the U.S. government perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks and a separatist.” So, pick your poison. The city suffers from “overtaxation, a crumbling infrastructure, an aging population, and an enormous civil service prone striking to prevent the slightest changes to its cushy work situations.” The main reason the city’s “fallen behind is because many Quebecers simply do not work very hard.” He said it, not us!

Vancouver is in trouble because its spending is out of control, according to the Vancouver Sun. Try these numbers on for size: the city has annual spending increases of 20 per cent or more, raised spending this year by “$60.2 million … of which $34.9 million will fund a four-per-cent increase in salary and benefits for the city's 6,000 workers,” had to spend $48 million to find office space for all the new municipal workers it just hired, forked over $55,000 to refurbish the mayor’s office, and the now spends more on its debt than it does on libraries.