Bureau of Municipal Research

The availability of adequate, affordable housing was of great concern to the Bureau of Municipal Research. Through the decades, it advocated for both political leadership and better planning to meet the housing needs of a growing city.

In the 1910s, the Bureau drew attention to the city’s slum living conditions, overcrowded lodging houses, and general lack of new housing stock. In a 1918 publication on the city’s most notorious slum, The Ward, the Bureau noted that skyrocketing rents and a lack of decent housing forced more and more people into rundown dwellings. The Bureau suggested that the city expropriate land, remove dangerous buildings, and establish a city planning commission to advise municipal government on how best to assure good living and working conditions for Toronto residents.

In the mid-1940s, the Bureau noted that the city had made progress in its slum clearance programs to relocate low income residents, but it had done little to build decent housing for citizens of other income levels. As soldiers returned to the city from WWII, the Bureau published a pamphlet stressing the need for a master housing plan and financial subsidy program. When the Bureau followed up on the topic, in an open letter published in 1955, it found that many of the emergency housing units built as temporary accommodations on municipal park lands were still in use a decade later.

In the 1960s, the Bureau began investigating social housing projects, including the development of Moss Park, Alexandra Park, and Regent Park. In a 1963 report entitled “New Hope For Public Housing”, the Bureau found that many of Toronto’s low-income residents still lived in substandard and overcrowded dwellings, and thus encouraged politicians at all levels to take action to continue to increase the supply of public housing.

Later, in the 1970s, the Bureau highlighted the lack of affordable rental housing, and raised concerns that a large of proportion of renters’ incomes went to paying rent. In one 1977 report, the Bureau cautioned that “if there is not enough housing of the right size, condition, cost or tenure in the City, then effectively there are controls on who can and cannot live in the City” -- a conclusion which still resonates in Toronto’s increasingly unaffordable housing market.

To learn more, search the catalogue for “housing” or “public housing”, or the reports listed below.

• What is “The Ward” Going to Do With Toronto? (1918)
• Housing Story No. 1 (1946)
• Information on Regent Park (1952)
• Open Letter: Emergency Housing (1955)
• New Hope For Public Housing (1963)
• Be it Ever So Humble: The Need for Rental Housing the City of Toronto (1977)

From the beginning, the Bureau of Municipal Research displayed a keen interest in studying Toronto’s ongoing difficulties with transit planning and funding.

In 1919, the Bureau published a research pamphlet, entitled “The Civic Car Lines,” investigating the financial sustainability of five streetcar lines run by Toronto Street Railway. The Bureau found that the lines were operating at a significant deficit, with fares barely covering maintenance costs. To remedy this, it suggested raising fares and running transit on a “service-at-cost” model in order to shift the financial burden of transit from taxpayers to riders, as well as creating a new body to efficiently administer and set fares for the expanding transit system. The Toronto Transportation Commission was established in 1921 to do just that, and operated Toronto's transit system entirely out of the fare box until the 1950s.

In 1945, during the leadup to that year’s municipal election, the Bureau published an open letter lamenting the “piecemeal” nature of transit construction in Toronto and the lack of a rapid transit master plan. The Bureau argued that even if federal funds were not forthcoming, “something drastic needs to be done about rapid transit,” echoing the modern-day frustration of many Torontonians. Later, in the 1950s, the Bureau published a series of “bulletins” commenting on separate proposals for new diagonal subway routes at Queen and Yonge Sts., and an East-West subway along Bloor St., and the governance conflicts between TTC planners and the Metro Planning Board. “The more important issue,” concluded the Bureau, “is not the route for a subway but the proper method of conducting public business under our particular structure of local government.”

By the 1970s, Metro had gained control of strategic planning, while the TTC concentrated on operations. But the Bureau argued that this had not fixed deeper funding issues, presaging some of today’s most controversial transit debates. In a 1970 report entitled “Transportation Who Plans Who Pays?”, the Bureau recommended that motorists be charged a “significant toll” on badly congested routes to subsidize the TTC, including free off-peak transit use for all. Later, in a 1979 report entitled “Understanding Metro’s Transit Problems”, the Bureau cautioned that the planned Scarborough RT was virtually guaranteed to run at a deficit due to a lack of density along the route.

To learn more, search the catalogue for “transit”, or the reports listed below.

• The Civic Car Lines (1919)
• Street Railway Operation: Other Cities and the so called Service-at-Cost Plan (1919)
• Open Letter to Electors of the City of Toronto (1945)
• Open Letter: Proposal for Two Diagonal Subway Routes (1955)
• Bulletin: Behind the Headlines: A Statement on the Subway Controversy (1958)
• Transportation Who Plans Who Pays (1970)
• Understanding Metro’s Transit Problems (1979)

Over the years, the Bureau of Municipal Research pressured policy makers to improve air quality, advocated for more transparency regarding pesticide use, and recommended that governments set concrete goals and realistic timelines to reduce waste and encourage recycling.

The Bureau began paying close attention to air quality in the 1940s. In a 1946 white paper entitled The Smoke Evil, the Bureau called attention to the harmful effects of coal smoke “belching forth” from the city’s smokestacks, and urged Toronto’s mayor at the time, Robert Hood Saunders, to introduce a smoke control by-law. Three years later, in 1949, after Pennsylvania’s deadly “Donora Smog” incident, city council passed a smoke abatement bylaw.

As public awareness of environmental issues grew in the 50s and 60s, the Bureau took a closer look at pesticides. In 1969, ten dead ducks were pulled from the water near Ward’s Island. Initially, it was alleged that the ducks had been poisoned by exposure to a pesticide called diazinon. Two local environmental groups -- Pollution Probe, and Group Action to Stop Pollution -- launched a citizens inquiry into pesticide use by the Metro Toronto Parks Department to investigate the matter. ¹

The Commissioner of the Parks Department, Tommy Thompson, initially reported that his staff had indeed used diazinon. But at the inquiry, Thompson changed his story, insisting that the pesticide used on the island was not diazinon, but rather a safer substance known as methoxychlor. Thompson then refused to disclose any further information regarding how the Parks Department used pesticides. The Bureau considered the Commissioner’s secretiveness as a breach of public trust contrary to the principles of transparency and accountability, and raised these concerns in a 1969 news brief entitled The Public’s Right to Know. It found that the release of information by municipal governments in Ontario was entirely at the discretion of local authorities, and called for a review of policies related to the release of government information -- some twenty years before the passing of Ontario’s Municipal Freedom of Information Act.

In the 1970s, the Bureau became sensitive to the need to reduce, re-use, and recycle. In a 1975 study entitled The Politics of Waste Management, the Bureau tackled Toronto’s growing garbage problem. Not only was landfill space running out, there was a growing awareness that waste disposal contributed to land and water pollution, and that trash incinerators contributed to air pollution. Something needed to be done.

In the report, the Bureau concluded that Toronto’s efforts at waste prevention and recycling were mixed, but showed promise. It recommended that even more be done to incentivize participation in recycling programs, and that the city should set clear goals and timelines for waste diversion. Today, the City of Toronto has an official waste reduction target of 70%, with more than half its waste currently diverted via recycling and composting programs.

To learn more, search the catalogue for “pollution”, “parks”, and “waste”, or the reports listed below.

• The Smoke Evil (1946)
• The Citizen’s Right to Know (1969)
• The Politics of Waste Management (1975)

From its founding through the interwar years, the Bureau of Municipal Research paid close attention to the financial state of Toronto's public schools and the health and well-being of the city’s schoolchildren.

In a 1914 bulletin, the Bureau noted that roughly one-third of Toronto annual tax revenues was spent on education and schools. Yet it expressed concerns that these funds were largely being mismanaged.

At the time, many immigrant children and children with special needs were struggling to keep up. Hunger and malnutrition, ill health, and poor dental hygiene were rampant. Worse, school facilities seemed to exacerbate these issues; dark, poorly-ventilated classrooms made learning more difficult.

Rooted in Progressive Era ideals, the Bureau’s early leaders believed that more efficient school administration -- the elimination of “preventable school waste,” as one 1920 report put it -- would lead to better student performance and lower dropout rates.

Many of the Bureau’s recommendations during this era would be familiar to modern-day education observers: implementing standardized testing to monitor student progress; conducting surveys of school facilities to ensure a state of good repair; streaming classes into “slow” and “rapid progress” groups; creating “open air” classrooms, or “forest schools”, to help children with respiratory illnesses; introducing dental health and school nutrition programs; and providing after-school programming, such as drama, dance, and sport, for children as well as their adult relatives to better integrate (read: assimilate) into their local communities.

Not all the Bureau’s suggestions, however, would today be seen in positive light. In one report, entitled “Are All Children Alike?”, the Bureau proposed that children with special needs be completely removed from the general student population, segregated either into special classes and training schools, or in some cases, sent to “industrial farm colonies.”

To learn more, search the catalogue for “education” or “schools”, or the reports listed below.

• Toronto Spends 33% Of Her Taxes Or 22% Of Her Total Revenue On Education In Schools (1914)
• Some Facts About Our School in 1913 (1915)
• Are All Children Alike? (1915)
• School Story No. 9 (1916)
• Toronto’s Children are Her Greatest Asset (1920)
• Interim Reports of the Toronto School Survey (The Physical Plant of the Toronto Public Schools) (1920)
• City Budget Story No. 4 - The City As School Master (1921)
• Interim Reports of the Toronto School Survey (1921)
• A Twelve Hour Working Day for School Buildings Story No. 1 (1921)
• The Toronto Bureau of Municipal Research 1914-1922: Eight Years of Service to the Community (1922)

Over the years, the Bureau of Municipal Research produced several reports chronicling the evolution of Toronto’s waterfront as a transportation corridor, industrial port, and residential community.

The first was a short white paper, published in 1922, on Toronto’s new Union Station. Construction of the new station commenced in 1914, and was largely complete by 1920. But the station was not officially opened to the public until 1927. The Bureau expressed concern at the “strangulation” of the waterfront due to railway development, specifically the waterfront viaduct, and lamented the fact that Union Station had become “a source of exasperation to the travelling public who can see it but who can’t use it.”

In the 1930s and 1950s, the Bureau’s attention turned to industrial development and the role of the Toronto Harbour Commission. Its 1932 annual report declared that Toronto’s port operations had “turned the corner,” buoyed by the prospective completion of the Welland Canal and St. Lawrence seaway. Yet several years later, as Metro council debated the merits of the lakefront Gardiner Expressway, the Bureau raised concerns about the Toronto Harbour Commission’s land reclamation activities in areas we now call the Port Lands and the Leslie St. Spit. In an open letter, the Bureau suggested that “an increasing case” could be made to transfer the Commission’s responsibilities to Metro as a matter of economic necessity.

In the 1970s, the Bureau began to reconsider the most appropriate use of waterfront lands in light of new plans to build housing and park spaces in the area, such as the federal government’s proposed Harbourfront development. In a 1977 report entitled Should the Island be an Airport?, the Bureau questioned the suitability of aviation uses in an area used increasingly for recreation and residential uses, and reviewed various non-aviation alternatives for the site. Ultimately, the Bureau recommended that the airport should continue operating for general aviation purposes, despite the allure of new housing and recreational opportunities.

To learn more, search the catalogue for “waterfront”, or the reports listed below.

• Mañana, Zaftra, To-Morrow The Day After To-day, Any Day But This, Never (1922)
• Open Letter Harbour Operations (1954)
• On the Waterfront (1972)
• Should the Island be an Airport? (1977)