Whether it was this week or last year, Toronto has seen the moment of its greatness flicker. Though it still burns, the flame is weaker than ever.

Peter Wallace’s recent announcement that he will step down as city manager appeared to be yet another sign of Toronto’s reluctance to do take the hard steps necessary to live up to its potential. But as this year’s budget proved, residents and their elected representatives would rather keep property taxes low. We prefer to leave things the way they are and remain a second-tier city than invest in civic excellence.

Toronto’s senior bureaucrat is the latest in a steady stream of senior civic servants who have left city hall in recent months. That list includes the deputy city manager, the chief financial officer, the CEO of Toronto Community Housing CEO, the chief planner, the general manager of transportation services and the general manager of solid waste. Some are retiring, some have been replaced, others haven’t. But clearly an exodus is underway.

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Known for his plain talk about city council’s sloppy and unsustainable approach to municipal finances, Wallace spoke openly of his concerns about Toronto’s ability to pay for the services and infrastructure it desperately needs. He has called the budget process a “relentless reinforcement of the status quo” and criticized a council that “has not been willing to make difficult decisions.”

Then there’s the question of how the city spends the money it does have. The 2018 budget, for example, devotes fully 28 per cent of Toronto’s proposed 10-year, $25.7-billion capital expenditure to the discredited one-stop Scarborough subway extension ($3.3 billion) and John Tory’s highly dubious SmartTrack scheme ($3.7 billion).

Meanwhile, we have neglected the public transit on which people rely to the point where passengers’ lives were actually endangered at Bloor station last month after a series of operational and mechanical breakdowns. The system, which has no elasticity, is stretched to the breaking point. It no longer meets the needs of a fast-growing city that left it behind decades ago.

This came clear when the King St. pilot began late last year and ridership on the 504 streetcar increased by nearly 25 per cent. It was another instance of how generations of municipal politicians have failed to keep up the people who elect them.

And when the present council voted against revealing the updated cost of the Scarborough subway until after this year’s election, it continued a pattern of contempt that goes back decades. The decision is an indication of the growing gap between people and politicians. The isolation of the mayor and council lies at the heart of the city’s tragic failure to fulfil its promise.

Following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Rob Ford, who galvanized suburban resentment across the city, Tory has presided over a race to bottom that could leave Toronto another civic also-ran. We don’t like to think of it, but there’s no guarantee a community will always prosper, no matter how rich it is now. The landscape is littered with dead and dying cities.

What makes Toronto’s decline so poignant is that the causes are self-inflicted. The cowardice of the mayor and council, their refusal to look beyond boundaries to see what’s happening in the larger world can be shocking at times. Their ignorance is invincible. While cities around the globe tear down urban expressways, we are expanding the Gardiner. While other cities are busily adding bicycle lanes, we deflect and delay. After all, from the perspective of a city whose golden age was the 1970s, bikes are for kids.

The provincial government is no better. When Tory put on his short pants and went to Queen’s Park to seek approval for what was arguably his one and only progressive move since being elected in 2014, Premier Kathleen Wynne turned him down. She feared the same suburban backlash the Scarborough subway is meant to mollify — but won’t.

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No surprise, then, that the city has become so cynical about its prospects. When Waterfront Toronto chose Sidewalk Labs to develop the Quayside neighbourhood next to the Port Lands, the media responded with fear and loathing. Toronto, they screamed, has handed itself over to an American tech giant. The city was a dupe, of course, powerless even in the face of its own demise. What they chose to overlook, perhaps, was the question of whether that process hasn’t already started.

Correction – February 20, 2018: This column was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Toronto Mayor John Tory was elected in 2009.

Christopher Hume’s column appears weekly. He can be reached at jcwhume4@gmail.com

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