Canadian Business Wire

According to a new report entitled Mission Possible: Successful Canadian Cities, which was released today by The Conference Board of Canada, the future prosperity of Canada as a whole will rest on the success of its major cities.

With Eighty per cent of Canadians living largely in urban areas, and more than half living in ten major cities, where two-thirds of Canada's new jobs were created in the past decade, have neither the power nor the resources to compete globally against other city-regions for investment and human talent.

"For Canada to achieve sustainable prosperity in a world of fundamental and relentless change, we must ensure that our cities can realize their potential," said Anne Golden, President and CEO of the Conference Board. "Ignoring cities' needs and treating them all the same won't get us there."

Canada's major cities and their municipal governments of are caught in a kind of fiscal bind. While bearing costs of services offloaded by federal and provincial governments, they are finding that their share of overall government revenues in Canada is insufficient to meet demands. Right now municipal governments obtain less than twelve per cent of the revenue pie and this share is declining. In order for these cities to succeed, they need greater access to taxes that increase with economic growth.

The report also finds that Canada's major cities are also in need of some new ways of governing. Present systems of municipal governance fail to provide cities with the organizational structures and decision-making capacity necessary for strategic planning and regional coordination. While not directly addressing the city-regional issues, the new City of Toronto Act passed in 2006 does represent a milestone for municipal governance and can be held as an example of how provincial governments can help major cities without relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.

According to the report, of Canada's major cities, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal stand out for their sizable contributions to the national economy and equally sizable investment needs.

Strategic investment in Canada's major city-regions is then further justified by the Conference Board's research on hub cities. The research found that when the major cities like Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto prosper, their success boosts economic performance in other communities within their province or region. To amplify this, the federal and provincial governments must end their largely per-capita approach to funding, and instead allocate investments based on both distinctive needs and potential.