Alan Redway wants to take Toronto back to the future. In his new book: “Governing Toronto: Bringing Back the City that Worked,” the former East York mayor, Metro Toronto councillor and MP says a review of the city’s governance is overdue. He favours return to a Metro system — small municipalities with local control linked to a citywide government responsible for regional issues.

Q: Why do you think the Metro system was better than our single-level megacity system that replaced it in 1998?

A: The joy of Metro was that there were not absolute bureaucratic rules that couldn’t be changed. You could go to your local councillor who had time to look into the issue thoroughly. They could then talk to the local bureaucrat and there would perhaps be some flexibility in the rules, which solved an awful lot of problems. Today, there are far fewer councillors and they often don’t have time to talk to people so it’s an assistant who deals with it and they say: “That’s the rule so that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Q: Has amalgamation, with harmonized citywide rules, divided Toronto?

A: There is quite clearly a difference between the concerns of suburban people and the downtown core. (Some say) people in suburbia are interested in garbage (collection) and getting to work, while the people downtown are interested in social services, culture and the homeless. It isn’t that black and white, but there are distinct differences that can be solved by a decentralization of municipal power that recognizes local priorities.

Q: Some say de-amalgamating Toronto would be like trying to unmix paint. How would it work?

A: It has been done in other places. You could go back to the six former municipalities (Etobicoke, York, North York, Toronto, East York, Scarborough) — all of their city halls are still there. It might be even better to go back to the previous 13 municipalities (adding Forest Hill, Weston, Swansea, Mimico, New Toronto, Long Branch and Leaside) or something close to that — you would give people a choice. You could do it the way Montreal de-amalgamated — to boroughs with little local councils, representatives from each sitting on the Montreal council. (In Toronto) local governments could have power over local parks, recreation, local roads, maybe local garbage collection. They could devise a separate (local) levy on your (property) tax bill if they saw fit.

Q: For you, is it de-amalgamate or the status quo?

A: The goal is a diffusion of centralized power, to take it away from one place downtown to a number of other places. An option that might help is the four community councils (Etobicoke York, North York, Toronto and East York, Scarborough, comprised of councillors from those areas). Now they have very little power but you could give them a lot more, almost turning them into little municipalities. Council has the power to increase the number of them.

Q: De-amalgamation would require provincial approval. Before entering provincial politics, Premier Kathleen Wynne was a leader of the anti-megacity forces. What do you say to her now?

A: In other places there has been a referendum with people voting for some kind of decentralization. And then, yes, we would need provincial approval. I’m hoping to have a brief meeting with Kathleen to remind her that she thought amalgamation wasn’t the way to go, that it destroyed local accessibility to government, and that a review of this process is long overdue — we used to have it every 10 years. A review wouldn’t be expensive. Let’s give it a shot.

This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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