Social Policy in Ontario

Vital Signs report challenges Toronto to do better

Posted on October 4, 2016 in Inclusion Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – The annual Vital Signs report is a call to action for politicians and community leaders alike to make Toronto even better.
Oct. 4, 2016.   Editorial

First, the good news.

We’re fortunate enough to live in a city that’s been ranked as the best place to live among 50 global cities. Toronto and its surrounding region — 6.6 million people strong — are growing fast. The overall crime rate is way down and the vast majority of people feel safe in their community. Employment is back up to pre-recession levels; more students than ever are graduating high school; we have one of the best-educated populations in the world; and we’re even starting to break our addiction to commuting by car.

All this comes courtesy of the Toronto Foundation and its annual Vital Signs report, detailed elsewhere in today’s Star. It’s the most comprehensive snapshot of life in the Greater Toronto Area and it shows, in the words of the foundation’s new president and CEO, Sharon Avery, that we can stop going on about being “world class” because “we so clearly are among the world’s top cities that we don’t have to incessantly claim it.”

But among all the rah-rah there’s a lot of not-so-good news, and some findings that are downright shameful:

 – One child in four in Toronto is being raised in poverty, a number that has hardly budged in 20 years. Five of the 15 federal ridings in the country with the highest rates of child poverty are here, and the city has the highest poverty rate of all large Canadian cities. The stark truth, says the report, is that “Toronto is the child poverty capital of Canada.” It’s a sobering reality that, as Avery says in a speech to be delivered this week, “deserves our shock, our anger and our action.”

 – There are other troubling signs that as Toronto becomes richer it has also become a much more unequal place, a disturbing trend that Vital Signs reports have documented for the past 15 years. The number of people relying on food banks keeps growing, and the need is moving from the central core to the inner suburbs. Demand there is up almost 50 per cent in the past eight years.

 – Housing is at a crisis point. Even for those with money, as we all know, houses in Toronto are getting out of reach. For those at the lower end, it’s clearly much worse. Fewer rental units are being built and almost 85,000 households are on waiting lists for social housing, while governments can’t manage even to keep existing units in decent repair. This is a disaster that’s been building for years, and now cries out for urgent solutions. Governments must take the lead, but the Toronto Foundation says we should also look to the private sector for fresh thinking.

 – Some kinds of crime are actually rising after falling for years; stabbings, for example, are at a four-year high. The Muslim community is experiencing more hate crimes and there’s widespread mistrust of police. Half of those surveyed in one poll believe there is systemic racism in Toronto, and more than half support the Black Lives Matter movement. This is evidence of a worrisome gap between police and important segments of the community.

 – Our transportation networks are straining to keep up with the growth we’ve seen over the past couple of decades. Torontonians have the longest commutes in the country, aside from those in even more congested Vancouver. The number of people who walk or bike to work is going up, but outside the City of Toronto 90 per cent of commuters still rely on the car.

There’s much more in this dense report that sheds light on how the city is changing. We’re getting older, for one thing. Within 20 years one person in four will be a senior citizen (it’s about one in seven now). Our health is pretty good, but obesity and diabetes are on the rise, while drug overdoses are claiming more lives (they’re up 82 per cent in a decade).

The Vital Signs report is a call to action for politicians and community leaders alike. As Avery notes, all three levels of government seem more inclined now than they have been in years to actually work together on solutions to the challenges the report lays out. They should seize the moment.

< https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2016/10/04/vital-signs-report-challenges-toronto-to-do-better-editorial.html >

Tags: economy, housing, participation, poverty, standard of living

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