Disappearing Middle Class, CBC The Current, national radio panel discussion
David Hulchanski, Frank Cunningham, Linda Gerber, John Ralston Saul
CBC radio’s The Current hosted a panel discussion on the findings of the Three Cities research. “For the purposes of the study, David Hulchanski has defined the middle class in economic terms. But for a lot of people, the idea of middle class extends much more broadly than that. For their thoughts on what it means to be middle class and what role the idea of middle class plays in our society, we were joined by three people. Frank Cunningham is a professor emeritus of philosophy and political science at the University of Toronto’s Cities Centre; Linda Gerber is a Sociology professor at the University of Guelph. And John Ralston Saul is … well, John Ralston Everything. Philosopher, essayist, activist and novelist. He is also the president of International PEN, co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, and author whose latest book is a biography of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin.
Matt Galloway, host of CBC Toronto’s Metro Morning, interviewed David Hulchanski on the morning of the release of the report, The Three Cities Within Toronto (15 December 2011). 6 minutes.
Research Report, Cites Centre, December 2010, 32 pages.
The City of Toronto is becoming increasingly divided by income and socio-economic status. No longer a city of neighbourhoods, modern-day Toronto is a city of disparities. In fact, Toronto is now so polarized it could be described as three geographically distinct cities. This study analyzed income and other data from the 1971 to the 2006 censuses, and grouped the city’s neighbourhoods based on whether average income in each one had increased, decreased, or stayed the same over that 35-year period. It found that the city’s neighbourhoods have become polarized by income and ethno-cultural characteristics and that wealth and poverty are increasingly concentrated.
