Healthy Cities

Trade Policy and Canadian Cities: An Overview

The traditional relative higher quality-of-life in Canadian cities, in comparison to American cities, has been fostered by the ability of levels of government in Canada create an urban planning regime which is able to do the following:

(i) Protect green conservation areas and parkland;

(ii) Plan for attractive model cities which are provided with adequate public transportation infrastructure, and other amenities that contribute to their social vitality;

(iii) Legislate against urban sprawl, from indiscriminate private development schemes, that have been evaluated as adversely effecting urban quality-of-life; and also

(iv) Protect home grown Canadian companies in our cities, from being indiscriminately taken-over by trans-national corporations. Such take-overs have created social dislocation via job lay-offs. These lay-offs are designed to increase short-sighted commercial profit margins, in a manner that leads to increased urban poverty that generates conditions for crime.

So-called "Free Trade" denies the ability of government in Canada to act in a co-extensive sovereign and representative democratic manner, in behalf of Canadian citizens. In so going, "Free Trade" subverts the ability of levels of government in Canada, to protect our cities from the undesirable effects, and consequences of market capitalism. So-called "Free Trade", requires government in Canada to turn a blind eye to the documented harmful effects of this 'trade arrangement', on the quality-of-living in Canadian cities.

"Free Trade", appears to have also dysfunctionally inspired the creation of unwieldly mega-cities in parts of Canada. Created "mega-cities" in Canada, like Toronto and Montréal, have destroyed smaller scale municipal governments, which were more responsive to the needs of local communities. Do we want the New York City "mega-city" experiment, which has dysfunctionally helped to spawn areas of pervasive alienation, poverty, and crime, like the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, to be repeated in Canada? The result of "Free Trade" and such apparent "spin-offs" on the municipal level, have been the broadened undermining of Canada's urban social fabric.

The CBC News reported in about Spring 2004, that in 1981, Toronto had about 30 documented poor neighbourhoods in a pre-"Free Trade" milieu. In 2001, since the passing of the North American Free Trade (NAFTA), there has been the proliferation more than 120 poor neighbourhoods. It has been well-documented that "Free Trade" in the context of "Economic Globalization", has been a catalyst of economic disparity, poverty including homelessness, in conjunction with destroyed urban social fabrics.

"Free Trade" imports American urban social problems into Canada

By legally denying the ability of government in Canada to continue to nurture and to protect the urban social fabric of Canadian cities, "Free Trade" is dysfunctionally importing American inner-city social problems. These problems, have extended to include the urban blight of its ill-advised sprawling suburban "mega-malls".
Such American-style "mega-malls", have contributed to the devastation of the tax-base of America's inner-city downtown areas.

"Free Trade" has supported the execution of un-regulated development choices by foreign private commercial interests, which do not operate in the overall Canadian public interest of promoting the quality-of-living of our cities.

These inner-city social problems foremost include urban social economic despair and hopelessness. This despair and hopelessness manifest in the face of a stipulated reduced government options to promote and to protect the national public interest from foreign commercial profit seeking private interests.

Re-evaluating "Free Trade": De-amalgamating Canadian cities

Protecting, rejuvenating and promoting the quality-of-living of Canadian cities, clearly requires the re-evaluation of trade policies which undermine the fabric our cities. The need is to de-amalgamate cities in Canada, like Toronto, Ottawa, and Montréal to their former sensitized metropolitan municipal government structures; and that would support an overall framework of responsible government in Canada.

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