FOREWORD .T OR ALMOST TWO DECADES, Metropolitan Toronto has been enviously called the only "truly metropolitan government" in North America. Furthermore, Americans south of the Canadian border also consider it something of a "sport"-a reform that could be accomplished only under a parliamentary system, without plebiscites and other home-rule vetoes. The combination of curiosity and adulation from this side of the international boundary has not produced a sophisticated understanding of what

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... has and has not accomplished. Instead, for several reasons, we tend to overlook the vitality, the variety, and the significance of Canadian adjustments to urbanization and metropolitanization since World War II. First, observers in the United States have tended to ignore all other relevant Canadian governmental policies and reforms, and have concentrated on the establishment of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. Passing references have occasionally been made to Metropolitan Winnipeg. But there is little awareness and no discussion of other significant Canadian experiences: British Columbia's regional district, especially as it is evolving in Vancouver and Victoria, the newer regional governments in Ontario, and the regional urban communities in Quebec. Second, the creation in the United States of a "truly metropolitan government," as exemplified by Toronto, we have held to be "unattainable." Thus we have not persevered in a close examination of the complexities of "metropolitan governance" as it involves multitudes of governments in a two-tier structure. Third, we have all too readily condoned our failure to create "truly metropolitan governments" like Toronto, because of the presumed "innate" incapacity vii