Quote:
Originally Posted by MonctonRad
You guys are talking about two different things.
He's saying once a CMA, always a CMA. For example, the Oshawa CMA can never get absorbed by the Toronto CMA (for statistical purposes).
You're talking about political amalgamation, which is always possible since cities and municipalities are creatures of the province, and if the province wanted to create regional municipalities at any time, it could, and without municipal consent. Such a move (especially in NB) is very risky for ethnocultural, linguistic and political reasons.
|
And I guess there’s a risk anytime you pull a bandaid off too, right Doc?
I think the risks of amalgamating the three main CMA’s in NB are entirely overblown. What’s the risk anyways? More growth? More development? When it comes down to it, why do most migrants (both internal and international) coming to NB pick Moncton over Saint John and Fredericton? They look up the cities, see Moncton has the largest population, and they make their choice.
New Brunswick needs to get over these provincial attitudes that are holding our cities back… if you look around Canada amalgamation has been the trend for decades, and there’s few CMA’s where the outlying suburbs make up close to 50% of the CMA’s population.
I’d argue the bigger risk for NB is the province not having the political courage to push through amalgamations in the big three CMAs and continuing to allow the tail to wag the dog in regions in our CMAs. Amalgamation wouldn’t wipe Rothesay, Quispamsis, Hanwell, Dieppe, and Shediac off the map, it would just make them part of regional municipalities that cooperate better and share costs more than the current way of doing things where we have CMA’s with very nice, very well funded suburban towns, with poorly funded urban centres at their core that are struggling to fund the infrastructure and investments needed to sustain both long term economic development and demographic growth.
If we want our cities to compete with the rest of Canada into the future, amalgamation not only needs to be on the table, it needs to be a priority. I’m biased, obviously, just as people are in the Saint John suburbs, but I don’t think there’s a CMA in Canada with as much disparity and discontent between a city and its outlying suburbs as there is in the Saint John Region. Imo, it’s very much a case of the tail wagging the dog, and we needn’t look any further than the HRM to understand what the prescription to this problem is: amalgamation.
Saint John is one of the oldest municipalities in Canada, so I think it’s logical why amalgamation should take place here first, but it could also make more sense to simply amalgamate all three CMA’s at the same time and rip the bandaid off all at once. If you start with Saint John and it causes a bunch of butthurt and discontent, which is likely given how stuck up our outlying suburbs are, it risks poisoning the well for future amalgamations in the Moncton and Fredericton CMA’s. However, if you amalgamate all three at the same time, there will be less of a focus on the negative aspects of amalgamation in one city, and more of an opportunity for amalgamation to be a competition between the three new regional municipalities to see who can make it work the best.
Plus, as much as many of you say “it’s not a competition”, I don’t think many in Moncton would like to see Saint John pass Moncton in city proper population simply by amalgamating. It is a competition though, between cities and between provinces. Amalgamating the three main NB CMAs into regional municipalities won’t end the competition between Saint John, Fredericton, and Moncton, but it will make NB better able to compete with other provinces to attract more of the top quality migrants to come here to NB instead of someplace else in Canada. Amalgamations and regional municipalities worked well for Nova Scotia, and would work well in NB too… people just need to get over themselves and embrace change for the bigger and better.
Prev
Linear Mode
