Defining a Canadian approach to municipal consolidation in major city-regions

Where there is a central government with an exclusive mandate over municipalities, along with a state executive structure using the Westminster model, then the consolidation of squabbling municipalities within metropolitan boundaries becomes a distinct possibility A general model of municipal restructuring for the Canadian metropolis is more widespread than the superficially unique circumstances of each case might suggest. The thinking here is informed by Clarence Stone’s urban regime model, which helps to clarify what influences constituted the political tipping point for central government action. The paper focuses primarily on the Toronto and Montreal city-regional municipal consolidations at the end of the last century. It is argued that the decisive element in setting the stage for significant change lay in the pervasive influence of corporate Canada in generally shaping provincial political discourse. What has not previously been of much interest for investigators is the matter of direct consequences for the low politics of city-regional governance. As will be seen, they were both tangible and considerable

A Test for Institutional Innovation: Winnipeg's Unicity

Report: 26 pp., digital file.This short paper is a broad look at Winnipeg’s political landscape in the years immediately following Unicity, and its impact on electoral politics, citizen engagement, planning, and administration. There is a brief historical background of Winnipeg’s political culture and public attitudes toward municipal government, Winnipeg’s economic position, the creation of Metro government, and the various proposals for municipal reform leading up to the implementation of Unicity in 1972. It looks for changes in the civic political structure by examining parties and coalitions, election results, and voter turnouts. While suburban interests quickly came to dominate Winnipeg politics after the formation of Unicity, the new structure had clearly made taxation more equitable by raising property tax mill rates in former suburban municipalities to rates comparable to those in the central city. The paper finds that the new Unicity government’s Resident Advisory Groups were becoming increasingly marginalized by council, in spite of showing some signs of being an effective and useful part of the planning and governing process. Unicity created increased efficiency in the area of downtown planning, though this raised the concern that not enough long-term planning and careful consideration of development proposals occur. Regional planning, meanwhile, continued to be met by conflict and opposition from the new Unicity government. This paper also raises concerns over what seemed to be a growing concentration of power at the administrative level, and a lack of local control when it comes to the provision of services

Structure and function of the complex formed by the tuberculosis virulence factors CFP-10 and ESAT-6

The secreted Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex proteins CFP-10 and ESAT-6 have recently been shown to play an essential role in tuberculosis pathogenesis. We have determined the solution structure of the tight, 1:1 complex formed by CFP-10 and ESAT-6, and employed fluorescence microscopy to demonstrate specific binding of the complex to the surface of macrophage and monocyte cells. A striking feature of the complex is the long flexible arm formed by the C-terminus of CFP-10, which was found to be essential for binding to the surface of cells. The surface features of the CFP-10.ESAT-6 complex, together with observed binding to specific host cells, strongly suggest a key signalling role for the complex, in which binding to cell surface receptors leads to modulation of host cell behaviour to the advantage of the pathogen