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The year 1965 represents a critical moment in the development and transformation of activist and student politics in the city of Toronto. This article explores the involvement of young Canadian activists with a variety of causes, such as support for African American Civil Rights, opposition to American imperialism, and the movement against the war in Vietnam. By matching their own political aspirations with those of their New Left counterparts in the United States, these activists participated in a larger transaction of radical thought, transformative strategies, protest tactics, and democratic alternatives. The adoption of this affective politics of solidarity was ultimately key to the emergence of more local, community-based activism, as well as the sharpening of an anti-imperialist critique within the emergent New Left in Canada. L'annee 1965 represente un moment critique dans le developpement et la transformation de l'ideologie politique chez les activistes et les etudiants activistes de la ville de Toronto. Le present article examine l'engagement de jeunes activistes canadiens dans diverses causes, comme l'appui aux droits civils des Afro-Americains, l'opposition a l'imperialisme americain et le mouvement contre la guerre au Vietnam. En combinant leurs propres aspirations avec celles de leurs homologues de la Nouvelle Gauche aux Etats-Unis, ces activistes ont participe a une transaction a plus grande echelle d'idees radicales, de strategies de transformation, d'options democratiques et de tactiques de manifestation. L'adoption de cette politique affective de solidarite a mene a l'apparition d'un activisme communautaire plus pousse a l'echelle locale ainsi qu'a une critique anti-imperialiste plus definie au sein de la Nouvelle Gauche emergente au Canada.

This article examines a critique of the 'diasporic nationalism' affecting the Irish in Canada through the lens of Toronto, a key destination for Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century. Situated [...]

Ethics has often been of central academic and policy concern but has also emerged as a central public and media issue in Canadian politics. In Toronto, there have been a number of scandals over the past few years that have brought the discussion of ethics in the municipal public service to the forefront as well. This article analyses some of the ethical problems that municipal public servants face and the institutional culture that allows ethics violations to occur. These are illustrated by the Toronto computer-leasing and external contracts scandals, which were the subject of an inquiry, beginning in 2002, and subsequent report by Madam Justice Denise E. Bellamy, in 2005. The author looks at the case of Wanda Liczyk to illustrate how the decision-making process can be corrupted and how this can lead to loss of public trust and inefficient and inequitable government. The challenge for urban governance is to create a municipal public service that is professional and accountable and that follows an ethical public-service model based on ethical codes, leadership and an understanding of underlying ethical principles. This would help regain public trust and maintain a public service that is efficient and therefore better able to handle the increasing challenges of local government. L'ethique a souvent ete une preoccupation fondamentale sur le plan de la theorie et de la politique, mais elle est egalement devenue une question d'interet public et une question mediatique dans la politique canadienne. A Toronto, un certain nombre de scandales survenus ces dernieres annees ont egalement porte le debat sur l'ethique dans la fonction publique municipale a l'avant-scene. Le present article analyse certains problemes d'ethique auxquels font face les fonctionnaires municipaux et la culture institutionnelle qui permet la violation de l'ethique. De tels cas sont illustres par les scandales concernant la location d'ordinateurs et les contrats externes qui sont survenus a Toronto et ont fait l'objet d'une enquete a partir de 2002, puis d'un rapport par Madame la juge Denise E. Bellamy, en 2005. L'auteur prend le cas de Wanda Liczyk pour illustrer la maniere dont le processus de prise de decision peut etre corrompu et comment cela conduit a la perte de la confiance du public et A un gouvernement inefficace et inequitable. Le defi pour la gouvernance urbaine consiste a creer une fonction publique municipale qui soit professionnelle et imputable et qui suive un modele de fonction publique ethique fonde sur des codes deontologiques, le leadership et une comprehension des principes ethiques sous-jacents. Cela aiderait a regagner la confiance du public et a maintenir une fonction publique qui soit efficace et par consequent mieux en mesure de relever les defis croissants auxquels fait face le gouvernement local., Political ethics has been an issue for academics and all those studying the public service, but it also became a major public issue at the federal level in the last [...]

The population of Toronto increased tremendously between 1940 and 1970, imposing heavy demands on its housing and environmental services such as sewer, water supply and transportation systems. Several forms of expertise emerged to guide these demands within the political and economical contexts that demonstrated how a city's expert and political expertise were constitutive of each other and helped to evolve urban development by the private sector.

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00483.x Byline: RAlan Walks (*) Keywords: contextual neighborhood effects; electoral geography; political parties; Toronto; voting behavior Abstract: Recent research conducted in both the United States and Canada has found that residents of inner cities and suburbs are diverging in their voting behavior and political attitudes. The mechanisms producing such a divergence, however, have remained unclear. After identifying a set of distinct hypotheses for why one might expect residents of inner cities and suburbs to differ in their political views, this article draws on a survey undertaken by the author in one electoral district in the Toronto region to empirically test the relative contribution of each of the hypothesized mechanisms in explaining the geography of party preferences. This study suggests there is no single explanation for the city-suburban cleavage, and that the mechanisms producing it are complex. Spatial segregation (based on individual attributes such as race, ethnicity, and class) is clearly important; however neighborhood self-selection, local experience, and, to a lesser extent, mode of consumption all have significant independent effects. Particularly important is the self-selection of supporters of political parties on the left into the inner city, stemming either from a search for a 'sense of community' or the desire to link their lifestyle choices to their political convictions, whereas supporters of parties farther to the right are more likely to choose postwar suburban neighborhoods out of a preference for private space. In contrast, there is little evidence that housing tenure or the sharing of political information between neighbors are factors independently producing city-suburban political differences within the study district. Author Affiliation: (*)Department of Geography, University of Toronto Article History: Initial submission, January 2005; revised submission, June 2005; final acceptance September 2005 Article note: Correspondence: Department of Geography, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, Ontario, L5L 1C6, Canada, e-mail: awalks@utm.utoronto.ca.

This article presents an analysis of the relationship between urban governance restructuring, and global, national, and local action through a case study of the Toronto city-region. The Toronto city-region recently underwent a massive reorganization of its governance structures, functions, and jurisdictional boundaries. This restructuring raises questions about why these changes occurred at this particular juncture in the region's history. Why did the city that had always been known in the academic and political discourse as the 'city that works' stop 'working'? What global and national forces might have accounted for such a radical restructuring? And what did local action contribute? These questions are explored in both historical and contemporary contexts by drawing on insights from regulation theory, urban regime theory, and an analysis of Canada's changing fiscal federalism. This approach informs the role that institutions--regardless of their origin or territorial scope--play in sustaining a local accumulation system, and how this 'local' accumulation grounds a national regulatory mode and regime of accumulation. The approach also explores the relationship between regime and regulation theories in the context of policy formation and institution building. The study concludes that the current policy set is incapable of resolving the region crisis tendencies. Notwithstanding external forces, the current policy set is not inevitable. Globalization does not predetermine all spatial-economic outcomes. Key Words: economic geography, political geography, Toronto.

This article traces the history of Toronto's experience with metropolitan government. Toronto's experience holds discouraging lessons for those who look to senior governments to solve regional problems. The policy lessons derived from the Toronto case are identified and critically evaluated.

An essential factor in the ethical management of a diverse workforce is an active involvement in promoting equity in employment. Evidence shows that governments are not committed to developing workforce diversity and managing the workforce in an ethical manner. The City of Toronto, Canada, has implemented an Equal Opportunity Program that is a model of promoting equity in public sector employment. There are seven components to the program, including research, technical support, and the handling of complaints. Governments must be role models for businesses in the ethical management of a diverse workforce.

The creation of new, effective, and significant political spaces through spatial imaginaries, practices, and tools is studied. The study of the case of Toronto, Canada, indicates that new political spaces allow political exchange, but do not ensure democracy, emancipation, and justice.

Towards the end of the 1990s, a perplexing situation occurred in two large North American cities. In Toronto, Ontario, and Los Angeles, California, conservative political forces undertook to restructure the system of urban governance. While initiated by conservatives in both cases, in Toronto the result was consolidation; in Los Angeles secessionism is rampant. In both cases the political debate on amalgamation and secession is tied in with discourses on size, efficiency and form of urban government. In both cases, also, the shift from government to governance has been a central theme. This article investigates how local governance has changed in these two cities by comparing historical traditions of governance. Each city has a specific set of external relationships with other geographical and political scales and a set of characteristic internal contradictions. Internally, Los Angeles' tradition of splintered governance stands in contrast to Toronto's metropolitan governance model. Amalgamation and secession have been introduced as strategic options of governance restructuring in both cities in the late 1990s. Both (projected and realized) scalar changes of governance processes and institutions have been accompanied and characterized by social struggles and widespread political debate. The article outlines these debates and discusses the respective political alliances which have formed in both urban regions on the issue of amalgamation/secession.

In the 1997 municipal election, Mel Lastman defeated Barbara Hall to become the first mayor of the new megacity of Toronto. The two candidates had distinctly different styles and platforms, and each appealed to a particular demographic. Multiple regression techniques are used to determine the impact of voter turnout, incumbency and various socio-economic factors on Lastman's and Hall's success rates across Toronto's 28 wards. Turnout, incumbency, the relative size of the immigrant population and the tenancy rate in each ward are found to be significant determinants of their respective vote shares. Some evidence is found to suggest that education level was also a factor.