Another Take On Municipal Amalgamation … NIAGARA – A TWO COUNTY SOLUTION

By Chris Wojnarowski

Much has been said of late about Niagara Region, its structure, optimizing services, hospitals, water rates, and that scary monster, the “One Niagara” Godzilla Monster, destined to eat small communities.

Buzz phrases like “efficiency”, “parochialism” and “stubborn rural politicians” are being thrown around as a way to polarize the debate and guilt people into agreeing with the “smarter” bureaucrat.

When did parochialism stop meaning accountability to local needs? Are we being asked to believe that merging Grimsby with Fort Erie is no more difficult than slapping together some adjacent ‘burbs and yelling “bingo”?

SHAME

Ever since the hatching of the regional system in the 1970s, voters from Southern Niagara have been looking at their options when they realized they were removed from decision making process. As they see a “deer caught in the head-lights” lack of vision from their elected officials, they feel in their gut that the rights of their families acquired over generations are being eroded away. In a self-fulfilling spiral of rural abandonment and systemic impoverishment created by the power elites, they have been gradually forced to vote with their feet.

It should never have come to this. Political expediency and willful disrespect for rural and working-class communities has seldom been more blatant than in Niagara.

As Fig 1 shows, prior to the forming of Niagara Region out of the Lincoln and Welland Counties, there were two distinct and sustainable communities that co-existed since the 1800s. In the South, there was one logical hub, captured in the motto “Where Rails and Water Meet”. It was a bustling city with incredible geographic gifts and a great skilled workforce. Located smack-dab in the middle of Welland County, it was an engine of growth. For 100 years it was a major commercial depot on the T H & B Railway, running from Hamilton to Fort Erie & Buffalo.

So what went wrong? The answer to “what” is as long as a phone book. Asking “why” Niagara Region doesn’t work is the right question. The simple answer to that “why”, my friends, is the 800-pound gorilla, politics … raw, brass-knuckled politics. Politics stripped Southern Niagara of its birthright, disenfranchised it provincially, and severed it from the means of self-determined sustainability.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Lincoln County has its natural focus in St. Catharines. It has been the beneficiary of billions in subsidies – massive expansion of the QEW, the 406 to Brock, Provincial Ministry of Transportation Headquarters, regional Land Registry Office, regional Passport Office, the trophy Robert S.K. Welch Courthouse, Niagara Regional Police headquarters (since 1971 and for now), a shiny new $1.5 Billion hospital, via-rail, go-bus service and so on. The “Regional” Water treatment plant was put in Grimsby. Even the “Regional” Chamber of Commerce is consolidating its empire in St. Catharines.

There is no evidence any of these directly benefiting the former Welland County.

 Welland County has been on the short end of all this, as Fig 2 shows, with key industrial centers like Welland and Port Colborne mostly bypassed by the QEW. Even the 406 was for years just a North-end short-cut to the Pen Center. Not coincidentally, Fig 3 shows that the QEW bypasses all of the Welland Riding.

• St. Catharines built its fancy new hospital by looting the trust funds of the hospitals in Welland County.
• Go Bus Service is useless for Welland County. Try catching a Go-bus from Wainfleet or Stevensville on a bad weather day in winter. The City of Welland, the natural hub of Welland County still has rail track, but no passenger service. The last passenger to Welland stepped off the train 50 years ago.
• And as for government subsidies? Well, we get some landscaping at Niagara College and an unnecessary soccer field near a dump that will continue to lose money for generations.

POWER POLITICS 

What about power politics and jobs? When Lincoln County’s GM runs into trouble, there’s always lots of bail out money. But when Welland County’s Atlas, Page, Deere, Cyanamid, Exolon and others … not so much. And just as Welland was close to getting a container port that could have protected industrial jobs, political mismanagement showed up.

St. Catharines and Toronto elites sanctioned paving over thousands of acres of Lincoln County, some of the best agricultural land in Ontario outside of Holland Marsh. But to keep us peasants in Welland County from getting uppity, these same elites wax oh-so politically correct. They have the gall to wag their finger disapprovingly when Welland wants to build a highway in an existing 100 year old rail corridor. That rail line, located on land best used for growing goldenrod and cow corn, never ran through agricultural or environmentally sensitive areas. Talk about double standards!

Power politics works that way. Electoral district boundaries kept being fiddled to where they are now – away from the QEW. The new hospital never had a chance to be located in Welland County. The political elites at Queens Park rewarded St Catharines, the center of the former Lincoln County for voting the right way. It’s facile to ask – why didn’t we vote for someone with their snout in the trough that could bail us out? Is that how we should view the democratic process? Vote the right way or starve?

When someone tells me that Welland was just a part of the “rust belt” and victim of globalization, I want to hurl abuse at them for mindlessly repeating the lame excuses of failed bureaucrats. Canada is not the Northern States.

 We needlessly created our own little hell that devastated our heavy industry. In 1974, Welland County got the shaft when the politicians in Toronto figured that they could get re-elected by creating province-wide unified hydro rates – cheap rates for vote-rich residential Toronto, plant closures for Welland, Thorold, Niagara Falls and Port Colborne. Labor costs in the type of industries that closed in these communities were not generally the issue. It was Hydro costs, and the plant closures were political.

As to Lincoln County, sure they had some issues at GM, Port Weller Dry Dock, Foster Wheeler, and a host of support shops. But these were labor intensive. Their problems were truly caused by global issues. (Note: This trend is reversing as the combination of global wage & shipping costs are beginning to converge.)

A SOLUTION – THE HALDIMAND-NORFOLK MODEL 

In the 1970s, there was this great push to rationalize services by creating Regions. Some have worked out quite well. Others like Haldimand-Norfolk realized that Haldimand and Norfolk Counties were like grapefruit juice and kerosene – not a good match. In 2001 that regional government was dissolved and two single-tier municipalities were formed. Maybe it’s time to build a case for a Haldimand-Norfolk option and adopt that two single tier municipal model. 

All politics is local. When it stops being local, politicians lose sight of their primary mandate – represent the interests of those who elected them. Welland County has endured the shabby spectacle of elected representatives turning their backs on the voters once in office. Instead of commanding respect, these self-serving careerists unctuously try to curry favor with the power elites in Toronto and St. Catharines. They check their public service at the door in exchange for cronyism, forgetting that their only legitimacy comes from the ballot-box. And the results are painfully obvious. If you’re not outraged, you’re just not paying attention.

The Region of Niagara, amalgamated or otherwise, is so deeply invested in a St Catharines-centric political model, it has absolutely no reason to do the right thing for Welland County. Lacking that incentive, it will never seek the means. And people in Southern Niagara are sick of hearing “If you don’t like it, move”.

Fellow editorialist John Finley proclaimed recently that restructuring is coming whether we like it or not, and he was right. The end result however may not be what he expected. There is a human reality that goes beyond pocket book issues and bureaucratic efficiency. It’s called dignity. 

The military has a saying – “We’re going out one way or another. It’s up to us whether it’s on our knees or on our feet.” The pointy question that needs to be asked is whether we voters of South Niagara are willing to stay on our knees, gratefully taking handouts from elites that think they are better at running our lives than we are, or stand up for ourselves, split the region in two, and take back our own community.

Chris Wojnarowski is a resident of South Niagara in the former Welland County and has been a contributor of columns to news venues in Niagara, Ontario for many years. Niagara At Large thanks him for his permission to post this column here.

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