READINGS Free Toronto, Free the World?

21st century governance is a conundrum worthy of Kafka: cities are expected to solve humanity’s most pressing global crises (climate change, disease, migration, housing, inequality) yet they are structurally denied the sovereign legal authority and fiscal tools required to do so. Figuring how to free local governments to solve the world’s problems is the great challenge of our time.

Fortunately, a strategy for doing that has emerged from Canada’s largest metropolis. In late spring, the Report by the Program Advisory Body on Municipal Autonomy and Effective Local Governance was submitted to Toronto’s City Manager. It drew little notice outside the 6ix (the hip-hop-flavored city nickname, noting the six municipalities that merged into Toronto in 1998).

It deserves more. Commissioned by the Toronto City Council, this landmark report does more than just diagnose the bureaucratic ailments of a single Canadian city. It meticulously outlines a legal, political, and deeply democratic process for establishing a constitutionally protected City Charter. And in so doing, the report could help municipalities around the world think through how to emancipate themselves from archaic systems of regional and national subordination.

Whether you’re in Turin or Tokyo or Timbuktu, you should consider its structural arguments, its legal solutions, and its uncompromising demand for public participation.

The Toronto report is divided into four distinct parts, beginning with an unsparing diagnosis in in the first two parts (“Defining the Problem” and “Current State of Municipal Autonomy.”)

In Canada, as in many constitutional democracies, local governments are entirely absent from the nation’s founding documents. Because of this omission, Canadian municipalities are legally considered “creatures of their province,” in the report’s phrase. As a result, even one of the world’s great cities, Toronto, is “fully subject to provincial control”—in its case, control of the Ontario provincial government— “which allows provinces to alter or override local governments without consent.”

While the report acknowledges that Toronto enjoys relatively high political and fiscal autonomy compared to other Canadian cities, it notes that the city falls remarkably short by international standards. And Toronto’s relationship with the Province of Ontario is not a healthy one. Ontario makes frequent (and often thoughtless) interventions, and limits Toronto’s revenue tools. The fiscal straitjacket leaves Toronto dangerously over-reliant on property taxes.

More broadly, provincial control both hampers efficient service delivery and undermines local democracy in Toronto The report points directly to “Interference in deliberative democratic practices,” citing the traumatic example of provincial Bill 5. In 2018, the Ontario provincial government used its constitutional authority to unilaterally slash the size of Toronto City Council in half during an active election campaign, without any public consultation.

For many local governments around the world, such attacks will sound familiar. Whether it is a U.S. state legislature preempting a city’s progressive minimum wage ordinance, or a European national government systematically defunding an opposition-led capital (hello Hungary), the structural vulnerability of cities is an ugly fact of 21^st century life. When higher levels of government can arbitrarily override local decisions, it reduces political representation, fragments decision-making, and deepens civic cynicism.

What’s the way forward? The central challenge, the report notes perhaps too diplomatically, is
“finding the right balance between local control and intergovernmental collaboration, ensuring that city responsibilities are matched with the resources needed to govern effectively.”

If the problem is a lack of constitutional standing, how can a city realistically acquire it? National constitutional amendments are notoriously impossible to achieve in deeply divided federal systems. The Toronto report, in “Part 3: Legal Issues,” argues for looking for aggressively looking for holes in the anti-municipal constitutional structure—and then exploiting them.

The report, authored by an advisory board of experts, wisely rejects conventional tactics—seeking provincial legislation, or pursuing a national constitutional amendment—as impractical, politically onerous, and wasteful of time. Even in the unlikely event that your city can convince a higher level of government to free it, any change made now can be repealed by the next provincial or national government. No, your city needs to exert its own constitutional power, and use them to enforce autonomy and local control.

In Toronto’s case, the report recommends a lesser-known, local legal pathway: Section 43 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Section 43 allows for an amendment to the Constitution of Canada in relation to a provision that applies to one or more, but not all, provinces. This one-off sort of amendment is not without challenges, but the requirements seem attainable. Rather than a law or full-scale constitutional amendment, a Section 43 amendment requires only authorizing resolutions of the federal Parliament and the legislative assembly of the specific province involved. There’s no need for Toronto to achieve a natoinal consensus.

To get there, the report cleverly proposes negotiating a “Charter City Agreement” between Toronto and Ontario, and then enshrining it in the national Constitution by adding a proposed Section 92B. This amendment would give constitutionally protected status to the City Charter, rendering it immune from unilateral provincial change.

One problem Democracy Local found with this proposed charter agreement was its inclusion of a provision saying that altering the charter in the future would legally require the mutual consent of both the province and the city. This is understandable as a political concession, but long-term, it could undermine autonomy. If Toronto wishes to be autonomous, it shouldn’t have to ask Ontario’s permission to change its charter.

Despite that drawback, the report’s strategy does demonstrate how a city might find and exploit targeted legal mechanisms to carve out permanent, protected jurisdictional space for local governments.

Part 4 of the report, titled “A Democratic Path Forward: Public Participation and Charter Stewardship,” is perhaps its most vital contribution. It argues that creating a Toronto City Charter must be a “deeply democratic process, with strong public participation at every stage as it derives legitimacy from the people.” After all, if a City Charter is drafted by a closed circle of lawyers and career politicians, it merely replaces provincial elitism with municipal elitism.

The report lays out a comprehensive, seven-step framework for an inclusive, efficient, and accountable charter process that cities globally should look to emulate:

1. Authorization and Mandate: Establishing clear, legally binding parameters for the commission.

2. Commission Composition and Selection: Ensuring the drafting body is genuinely representative of the city’s demographic makeup, prioritizing equity and diversity.

3. Orientation and Learning: Equipping commission members and the public with the necessary civic and legal education to participate meaningfully.

4. Public Engagement and Listening: Going beyond traditional town halls by utilizing broad, accessible, and equity-focused listening exercises, especially prioritizing marginalized voices.

5. Deliberation and Drafting: Conducting the actual drafting process in a highly transparent, iterative manner that allows for continuous public feedback loops.

6. Recommendation and Adoption: Ensuring the final document goes to voter ratification, supported by clear public education campaigns.

7. Post-Process Review and Institutional Learning: Building in mechanisms to review how the charter is working and how the process itself can inform future democratic innovations.

The report notes the risks of getting this wrong: “Ultimately, a well-designed charter must draw upon democracy innovations to strengthen public trust and civic engagement, while a poorly executed one risks deepening cynicism.”

One could be a little cynical about the slow pace that the report advises for moving forward with this autonomy project. Documents show that this push on autonomy began three years ago. And yet, the report advises Toronto’s city council to direct the City Manager to establish a subsequent public advisory body to advance these ideas, build public support, and “learn from experts and officials in other jurisdictions.” They also recommend leveraging existing tools, like the “Listening to Toronto” survey, to solicit residents’ perspectives. The timeline for all this would delay legal action until late 2027 or early 2028. Can’t Toronto move faster?

For those of us not lucky enough to live in Toronto, there are three big takeaways from this report.

• The Illusion of Statutory Autonomy: Local autonomy granted by standard legislation is merely power on loan. True local democracy requires foundational, structural, and ideally constitutional protections. Until the legal relationship between cities and senior governments is one of mutual consent rather than domination, cities will remain stuck in that 21^st governance conundrum.

• The Necessity of Creative Constitutionalism: National gridlock should not be the death knell for local reform. Cities must employ creative constitutionalism—using their own charter-making and constitution-making powers, and exploiting loopholes to achieve sovereignty when national reform is politically impossible.

• Democratic Stewardship as Strategy. The pursuit of autonomy is itself an opportunity for democratic renewal. By centering public engagement, equity, and transparent deliberation in the creation of a City Charter, a municipality can combat civic cynicism and foster a deeply engaged electorate.

Toronto’s Report on Municipal Autonomy and Effective Local Governance should be read as a call to challenge to fight aggressively, cleverly and democratically to undo the 19th century structures that constrain the 21st-century city.