Video by Ivan Verlaan for Chockablock Productions.

Address at Toronto's Vital Signs Launch: The world needs Toronto to succeed
by Rahul K. Bhardwaj, President & CEO, Toronto Community Foundation.

October 4, 2011
Launch of Toronto's Vital Signs Report 2011 at the Ramsay Luncheon
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I’m glad to see so many people here today, especially when you could all be out canvassing for your favourite candidates.

But while the provincial election is on all our minds, I want you to focus for the next half hour on our city, a subject that has yet to be seriously addressed in the provincial campaign. And it needs to be.

But what I want to discuss today is not just Toronto’s relationship with the province, but more importantly, with the world.

I believe strongly that the world needs Toronto to succeed.

What gives me the right to make such a brash – almost un-Canadian - claim?

Well, the facts that emerge from this year’s Vital Signs Report.

This is the Toronto Community Foundation’s 10th annual report on the quality of life of the city, and thanks again to our lead research partner George Brown College, we’ve been able to share an important – and I would also say urgent – story about Toronto, with Toronto.

It’s also the most remarkable of our Reports because it proves beyond a doubt that Toronto is on the edge.... the edge of two very different kinds of city.

The good news is that we have a choice in which direction our city will take. We aren’t by-standers in how tomorrow’s Toronto will function.

But if we don’t make that choice - deliberately, intentionally and almost immediately - it will largely be made for us – and that never leads to the best solutions.

We know this because the Toronto Community Foundation is very close to heart of the challenges facing Toronto and driving it in one direction – or the other. Let me tell you what put us there:

Our Foundation is has been in Toronto since 1981 and we’re proud to be a part of a public, philanthropic movement comprising over 175 community foundations across Canada and over 1600 in the world.

We are focused on making Toronto the best city in the world - and we do it by “connecting philanthropy with community needs and opportunities.”

We use the Vital Signs Report to identify the real needs in the city – Then we identify and, with our fundholders and many partners – both public and private – we support the solutions to those needs.

Identify the needs, support the solutions. We call it the Art of Wise Giving.

This isn’t your ‘grandfather’s philanthropy’ of cheque writing and brass plaques. We believe that today’s model of philanthropy is very different – it’s becoming the place where the public sector and the private sector come together to develop innovative solutions to wicked problems.

How we do philanthropy in Toronto is both advanced and unique – a point made to me when I’ve shared our model in places as far apart as Sao Paulo, Washington and Vancouver.

The Vital Signs Report also guides us in developing new and effective ways to make Toronto more livable. With our many partners we have launched a host of initiatives that all have their roots in the Vital Signs Report. Let me give you a sense of their scope:

• Our online Community Knowledge Centre developed with IBM. It’s our “YouTube for Philanthropy”, highlighting solutions to the issues raised in the Vital Signs Report...

• ...To another corporate partnership – with KPMG. The Vital Impact/ Vital Toronto initiative that connects their employees with community issues and organizations in Toronto...

• ...To transforming public spaces such as Museum Subway Station, through our “Arts on Track” which is still receiving international accolades...

• ...To “Recipe for Community” – with the MLSE Team Up Foundation, the City of Toronto and others, we’re helping inner city residents re- imagine and re-build their communities, both physical and social infrastructure...

• ...To a very timely initiative called “Playing for Keeps” with the YMCA, the University of Toronto, Heart & Stroke Foundation, and so many others. We all know that community development is far more than community relations, so we’re working hard to ensure that the promise of a strong social legacy is realized through the 2015 Pan Am Games. What’s more, we’re also developing pilot projects for the 2012 Ontario Summer Games that are being held right here in Toronto next August, because we’re serious about it – we’re Playing For Keeps as well.

So when I say Toronto is on the edge......that belief comes from our unique perspective on what makes this city tick.

But as Thoreau said: what’s important in life is not what you look at, but what you see.
So when the world looks at Toronto, what does it see? Well, Vital Signs tells us......

Last month, The Economist magazine declared Toronto to be the fourth most livable city in the world.

Not only that, we are among three Canadian cities, including Vancouver and Calgary, that made it into the most respected handful among the 140 cities The Economist tracked – not to mention the thousands they didn’t.

If this were sports, Canada would have three players on the First All Star Team on the planet.
This says a lot about Canada and our growing attractiveness. We are a nation that is safe, sound, civilized and.....sane.

Toronto being named one of the Top 5 cities in the world also speaks directly to our position as a role model for how other cities can achieve the enviable livability that we do.
The Economist’s kudos are only the start.

PricewaterhouseCoopers recently ranked Toronto second only to New York among 26 world cities in intellectual capital and innovation as well as “health, safety and security.”
We’re also doing well economically. The Toronto Region placed first on the CIBC economic activity index of 25 major Canadian metropolitan areas.

Most telling is the degree to which Torontonians feel we have a stake in our city – economically, socially and emotionally. As the Vital Signs Report reveals, the most important factor by far is emotion, our feelings for and connection to our city. Our sense of belonging.

This strong sense of connection is seen in everything from our declining crime rate, which fell again in 2010 for the fourth year in a row, to the fact that last year city-funded and programmed events attracted 17.4 million people.

Now that’s community!

We also see our connection to our city in Toronto’s high placing – third highest in the world – in the British Council’s OPEN Cities Project. This project tracks the ability of 26 cities to attract and benefit from international populations on indicators like diversity policies and the number of international students.

But where do we stand when it comes to attracting visitors? Well, in terms of being the most preferred destination for international travelers to North America, Toronto, among dozens of cities like Chicago, Miami, Vancouver, San Francisco....Toronto came.........second..... only to New York. Last year, nearly 10 million overnight visitors stayed in Greater Toronto and produced $4.3 million in direct taxes to its municipalities.

True, American tourism is down a little today, mainly because of our rising dollar (at the time) and their skittish economy. But we have clearly grown into the greatest European City in North America. Why?

It turns out that, like New York, our big attractions aren’t sports, but culture. Where we express ourselves and what we value account for four times as many visitors as sporting events. They also generate a ton of volunteers. Those 460 arts organizations that received city funding through the Toronto Arts Council produced 26,000 performances, exhibitions and festivals in the year. These generated $46 million in ticket sales – and involved over 20,000 volunteers. Now that’s emotional connection and civic involvement all in one.

Another measure of our health is the pace of our construction. It is, in a word, unprecedented. As of March this year, we’re constructing 50% more high rise buildings than either New York City or Mexico City. 50 per cent!

That figure of 127 high-rise condos and offices is 8 times more than in Chicago or Miami, and 40 times more than in Houston or Atlanta. Yes, America’s in a building slump, but those comparisons are astounding.

But building means more than buildings. It means creating deep connections across different communities. Last month, the Toronto International Film Festival celebrated its 36th year and its most internationally-acclaimed event. Not just because of Madonna and Brad and George, but also the two films rooted in Arab culture that won the most prominent prizes at TIFF. But think back to 1976:

TIFF was founded on the back of a couple of American Express cards, at a time when Canada had no film industry to speak of.

Last week, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 90th anniversary. Its first broadcast on CBC was aired from this very Arcadian Court.

But we should never forget that 10 years ago the TSO almost went broke. Think how much poorer our city would be without what is now one of North America’s most acclaimed orchestras.

Both the TSO and TIFF were built by visionaries, one in 1922 and the other in 1976 and they have risen to greatness because they are run by visionaries who doggedly pursue greatness, in good times and in bad.

But all of this said, Toronto is not Shangri-La. We have a raft of big-time economic, social and structural problems. They are not as bad as some cities we continue to envy. But if we don’t work hard and together to solve them, they can sink us. We are on the edge here too...

Not too long ago, we saw Paris plagued by youth riots. This summer parts of London were burning and a sociopathic killer devastated Oslo to make a statement about the changing face of society in Norway.

People come from all over the world to live in these cities. They all have proud histories and storied cultures. Yet over the years, their social and economic systems have been eroding. People are disconnected from their communities and each other – they’re experiencing a deficit – a ‘trust’ deficit.

Could this be our fate as well? We’d be naïve to think it couldn’t.

In Toronto, newcomers especially, still find it hard to get jobs, housing, respect, power, even basic fairness. There are too many seniors living alone in Toronto, and too many families with just one parent. Our highways and subways are too old to handle the load. Toronto has some of the longest commuting times on the continent.

We have too many potholes and too few child-care centres; city services are being cut back; we’re talking about selling off city assets as if we are in liquidation.

I spoke earlier about the strong emotional connection we have for our city. In fact, 66% of Torontonians have a strong or somewhat strong sense of belonging with Toronto. That may sound good, but don’t forget, one in three doesn’t. And if one in three of our residents were unemployed, homeless or hungry, that would be a crisis. So we have work to do.

It’s tempting to think that if only Toronto had more money, many of these problems would be solved. But it’s clear now that after several external reviews City Hall doesn’t have a spending problem, at least not nearly the one that was advertised. But it certainly has a revenue problem.

That absolutely needs to be fixed if we’re to keep the extraordinary social fabric that’s placed us in the top rank of world cities.

One way to boost our revenues is to raise taxes, something politicians abhor but posterity adores.

Comparing Toronto’s average residential property taxes to those in the six cities that surround it – Mississauga, Brampton, Markham, Vaughan, Oshawa and Oakville – we have the lowest tax rate of them all.

I repeat: Toronto is taxed the least of all. In 2009, it was $2,400 per year on a $427,000 house compared to the highest, Oakville, with almost $3,500.

On that basis, today Torontonians pay $30 in taxes a month for the TTC; $4 a month for children’s services; $10 a month for the world’s largest public library system; $50 a month for police services; $20 a month to service debt; and less than $1 a month for planning services.

Looking at it from another perspective, if you add up what we pay for police, fire, ambulance, the TTC and provincially-mandated programs like public health, they account for 80% of all the taxes collected by the city. So while nobody likes to pay more taxes, we shouldn’t complain too much. As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it: “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.”

But we shouldn’t even think of accepting higher taxes until we resolve the city’s structural financial deficit of at least $145 million a year for the next 10 years – not including any capital investment – that can only be solved if the City gets a better deal from the province. It’s simple – settle the bill on amalgamation and downloading from the province during the 90s.

It’s not often that figures alone can shock us. But I actually hope this one will. Remember when I said that Toronto’s municipalities get $4.3 million in direct taxes based on tourism? What I didn’t mention is that the taxes generated from that tourism were over one billion dollars. How much of that did Queen’s Park get? $515 million in direct taxes. Ottawa? $560 million in direct taxes. And what did Toronto and its surrounding municipalities get again? $4.3 million.

The largely unknown reality is that Queen’s Park and Ottawa siphon off 90 cents of every tax dollar created in this city and all we can do now is beg for it back. This just can’t go on.

This is both a structural issue and a governance issue: as such, it’s complex and thoroughly unsexy and so politicians have successfully avoided it for years. But like all relationships, this one will not flourish when no one’s talking to each other. That conversation has to happen soon if we’re to avoid the kind of futile budget discussions we’ve seen over the past year.

But there’s another money issue that could also turn our envied livability into a liability.
It’s the fact that Toronto is becoming a city of the rich and of the poor.

The middle class is shrinking and if current demographics hold up, they will all but disappear from within our boundaries.

The story I’m about to tell you summarizes some brilliant research from the University of Toronto’s ‘Cities Centre’. And although it’s a story about the growing income disparity in Toronto leading to the Gap Between Rich and Poor – we would all be mistaken if we did not recognize that although the ‘symptom’ may be income, in many ways the ‘cause’ is the growing opportunity gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ – an even more troubling trend.

Over the 35-year period 1970-2005, which was a time of great economic growth in Toronto:
- The number of very high income neighbourhoods, City 1, doubled as a percentage from 7-15%
- The number of middle income neighbourhoods, City 2, were more than cut in half, from 66% to 29% AND low or very low income neighbourhoods went from 20% of all Toronto neighbourhoods in 1970 to over 50% in 2005.
- This City 3 now makes up 43% of Torontonians. That’s over 1 million people out of 2.7 million and 2/3 of them are visible minorities.

Can you imagine what that number will be in 2025? I’ll give you an idea – it’s projected that City 3 will cover 60% of Toronto by 2025. That’s too big by any standards.

That is not the picture of a successful city, a livable one, let alone a great one.

We are on the edge but it’s certainly not too late for us. Indeed, we have a luxury few cities enjoy – we have a choice.

But we need to exercise it. To do that, we have to understand what our fundamental challenge really is.

For me Toronto’s critical issue really isn’t a spending problem. It’s not even so much a revenue problem.

It’s an allocation problem. We need to figure out what we’re going to have our taxes pay for and what we aren’t.

And the answer to that question can only emerge from solving the most important challenge of all.

Toronto has a vision problem. To be frank, we don’t have any.

I don’t want to suggest there’s no vision in the city; there’s just no vision for the city.

Amidst all the international applause, no one is really talking about the one vision that will bring us lasting greatness.

“Lasting greatness”? Us?

Hear me out.

If we just view our civic government as a place that fills potholes and collects garbage, the most we can ask of it is fewer potholes and better garbage collection. Put another way, if we want a transactional city, and tell our leaders that’s all we want from them, a strictly bottom-line approach to government, that’s exactly what we’ll get from them.

But we are citizens and not just taxpayers. The city is not our outlet mall. It . . . is ... our... home.
We need to start acting like it is. And when we do, our politicians will follow.

Today in Toronto, there is no vision of where we’ll be next year, let alone where we want to be 10, 20, 30 years from now. Do we all know where Toronto should be in 2041? Hardly. It’s not that we disagree. It’s that we don’t have a clue, because so few of us even ask the question. We’re so used to short-term managerial thinking and quick fixes that we’re losing our leadership DNA.

But if we ask our leaders to treat us not as economic units, but as citizens in a community, I believe we will get much more – from them, from ourselves, from the world.

As a Hindu who went to Catholic High School, even I recall the Proverb: “Without a vision, the people perish.”

So if our vision for Toronto is to become the world’s most livable city, how are we going to do that, aside from snuggling up to the people at The Economist?

Well, for a start, why don’t we use our great defining strength as a defining difference?

Why don’t we use our diversity to create a city the likes of which the world has never seen?

By diversity, I mean so much more than just diversity of people from different countries. I’m speaking of diversity of genders, ages, beliefs and perspectives, and a city that includes and promotes this diversity in a respectful and open dialogue about the future of our city.

We can use diversity, but I believe we have to get better at it first.

We’ve been alright at managing diversity. But I think we can do a much better job in demonstrating leadership through diversity. Let me delve into what needs to be at the core of our leadership through diversity.

First, consider the lack of women still not represented in corporate boardrooms or, just as importantly, our many newcomers to Canada. In fact, for the 80,000 skilled, well-educated immigrants who arrive here in search of opportunity, they are still twice as likely as Canadian-born workers to be unemployed. It’s said they lack Canadian experience – well, neither did the beneficiaries of all of the jobs sent offshore by Canadian businesses – and the other excuses just keep mounting.

That’s not how you lead through diversity.

But true diversity, the kind that can become Toronto’s ticket to lasting greatness because it allows us to take the best from diverse perspectives and capitalize on the full potential of every one of us ....that kind of diversity doesn’t just happen: people from different genders, ages, races and places, beliefs and viewpoints don’t just decide to join hands and sing “Kumbaya”.

Success takes a commitment to shared values, and a bigger commitment to actually share those values across all lines. That’s what leading through diversity means – and if we achieve it, we’ll be setting an example for a brighter future for cities all over the world. We shouldn’t feel uncomfortable believing this, or even hearing it. After all, the world is already calling Toronto one of its most livable cities.

Leading through diversity is the only way we are going to capture the real promise Toronto holds. Especially now when we have a choice of giving in to our Lesser Angels by making cost-cutting our civic vision, or, by capitalizing on the truly unique assets we have built for ourselves – and the example our success can set for the world. Few of the world’s cities have the luxury of such choice, and my message today is, let’s not squander it.

This is not the time to dismantle the machinery of our city, to cut back or close down our most civilizing assets.

It is the time to see ourselves as others see us: one of the most livable cities on the planet.
What Toronto needs most, what will set us in one direction instead of another, is to create a vision for ourselves to build the kind of city I believe all of us want – smarter, healthier, more inclusive, more creative, and richer in every sense of that word.

We are at a turning point in our history when many cities of the world are turning to us to provide the example of how they can become more livable.

Now that the world is taking notice, I believe we have an obligation to show them not only what we stand for, but what we are prepared to stand up for.

On this, the 100th anniversary of the birth of our own Marshall McLuhan, we would do well to remember his view on the importance of this belief.

“I wouldn’t have seen it,” said McLuhan, “if I hadn’t believed it.” And let’s not forget the two words that motivated Canada’s athletes and their millions of fans to more gold medals in Vancouver than at any other Winter Olympics.

“I......believe.”

I believe what we need to stand up for is the kind of deep, organic, home- grown, made-in-Canada diversity of perspectives and people that the world, frankly, has never seen.

And that is precisely why the world needs Toronto to succeed.

Let’s get on with it and show them how it’s done. Thank you.

More Information
Learn more in this year's Toronto's Vital Signs® Report ››