Amalgamation of Winnipeg

The City of Winnipeg, several surrounding municipalities and the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg were subject to a municipal amalgamation on January 1, 1972, that created a unicity or unified city.[1] The creation of the current City of Winnipeg as a unicity was an ambitious experiment[2] in local government reform. From 1960 to 1971, the Greater Winnipeg local government system comprised 12 municipalities under a single metropolitan government, in a "two-tier" system.

"Unicity" redirects here. For other uses, see Unicity (disambiguation).

The 1971 City of Winnipeg Act amalgamated the rural municipalities of Charleswood, Fort Garry, North Kildonan, and Old Kildonan, the Town of Tuxedo, the cities of East Kildonan, West Kildonan, St. Vital, Transcona, St. Boniface, and St. James-Assiniboia, the city of Winnipeg, and the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg into one city. The unicity system replaced the two-tier metropolitan system established in 1960. Under that system, councillors were elected through Single transferable vote.

Starting in 1972, Winnipeg City Council consisted of 50 councillors elected on the basis of one from each of 50 wards through First past the post, and a mayor elected by voters in the city at large.

The unicity reforms were originally proposed by the New Democratic Party (NDP) government elected in 1969. The NDP's goals included greater citizen participation in government,[3] "financial equity, the elimination of conflict and stalemate between the Metro and municipal levels, greater efficiency in the delivery of services, and a greater degree of involvement by the public at large in local politics".[4] However, the unicity reforms as actually enacted were far from those laid out in the NDP's original "White Paper" on the subject (Proposals for Urban Reorganization in the Greater Winnipeg Area, December 1970).

While the unicity amalgamation has been widely regarded as a failure in that it did not achieve many of its lofty goals,[5] it had some success in equalizing property tax rates across the city, eliminating the suburban "property tax havens" which had coupled low tax rates with a high level of services provided by the city[6] at the cost of higher tax rates overall.

A government review in 1986 concluded "that the unicity structure, with its many suburban councillors and large tax base, facilitated the building of suburban infrastructure, to the detriment of inner-city investment."[7] This may have been inevitable, since the incorporation of so many large suburban areas into a unicity naturally increased the political clout of the suburbs at the expense of the old city.

In 1980 the council was reduced to 29 councillors.

In 1992, the council was reduced to 15 councillors.

See also

References
  1. "Metro Years". Pathways to Winnipeg History. Archived from the original on 2012-06-03. Retrieved October 24, 2011.
  2. "The Winnipeg experiments in metropolitan government have been nothing if not ambitious." Stuart Proudfoot, in Making Cities Work, ed. David Morley, Stuart Proudfoot, Thomas Burns; 1980. ISBN 0-85664-924-4, ISBN 978-0-85664-924-0. Page 178.
  3. "Thus a key goal was to reduce citizen alienation through electoral distribution and political decentralization..." Brownstone and Plunkett, "Metropolitan Winnipeg: politics and reform of local government". University of California Press: 1983. Quoted in Mary Louise McAllister, Governing Ourselves? The Politics of Canadian Communities. UBC Press: 2005. ISBN 0-7748-1063-7, ISBN 978-0-7748-1063-0. Page 104.
  4. Stuart Proudfoot, Making Cities Work, ed. David Morley, Stuart Proudfoot, Thomas Burns; 1980. ISBN 0-85664-924-4, ISBN 978-0-85664-924-0. Page 178.
  5. Lloyd Axworthy, "The Perils of Reform: The Winnipeg 'Unicity' Experience". In Making Cities Work, ed. David Morley, Stuart Proudfoot, Thomas Burns; 1980. ISBN 0-85664-924-4, ISBN 978-0-85664-924-0.
  6. Mary Louise McAllister, Governing Ourselves? The Politics of Canadian Communities. UBC Press: 2005. ISBN 0-7748-1063-7, ISBN 978-0-7748-1063-0. Page 104.
  7. Andrew Sancton, Governing Canada's City-Regions: Adapting Form to Function. IRPP. ISBN 0-88645-156-6. Sancton is summarizing the City of Winnipeg Act Review Committee's Final Report 1986.
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