A Multi-Level Perspective on the Urban Governance of Multiculturalism in Toronto : A Metropolis in Motion and a Research Agenda

Like many advanced industrialized democracies, immigration has transformed the ethno-racial composition of Canada. The dominant account of ethno-cultural diversity’s impact on social cohesion and democratic life is negative. Canada’s positive experience with diversity and its approach to ethno-cultural accommodation has become a model of international success. The ways in which Canada’s diversity is manifest has important spatial dimensions that have been under-acknowledged by Canadian political scientists. Canada is both a highly ethno-culturally heterogeneous and a highly urban nation. The ethno-cultural transformation of Toronto, Canada’s largest city and most important immigrant destination, underscores the urban reality of Canada’s evolving ethno-cultural mosaic. The paper examines the role of urban governance arrangements and municipal policies in Canada’s national policy infrastructure to support ethno-cultural pluralism. It compares the core City of Toronto with three outer suburban municipalities within the Greater Toronto Area - the City of Mississauga, City of Brampton and Town of Markham. These municipal communities share a common national, provincial and city-region context, all have exceptionally high levels of immigration, yet they vary in the extent to which they have developed multiculturalism initiatives to accommodate and manage ethno-cultural diversity. The paper uses the urban regime concept to conceptualize and synthesize the different ways Canada’s national multiculturalism policy infrastructure, the city’s political economy and its changing ethno-cultural demographics influence the urban governance of immigration and multiculturalism. The paper concludes with reflections on the possibilities and limitations of city politics and governance’s contribution to an equitable and effective multicultural citizenship model in Canada. Toronto’s dramatic ethno-cultural transformation, the role of urban political processes in managing it, and the variation within the city-region ought to be seen as a call to Canadian political scientists and policy-makers to take the urban dimensions of the country’s ethno-cultural pluralism seriously