I wished you had gone on with that answer and explained further. Genuinely interested to hear what the differences between Peel and Metro were. Growing up in Peel, it was always explained to me that Metro and Peel were equivalent levels of government with very similar responsibilities. How different we're he roles of the tiers?
The regional municipalities (upper tiers) of the 905 fall between the role of a "Metro" and a "County" upper tier, but much closer to a County. It has to do with how much of a role the upper tier plays, and this is based on the services required by the area in question as a whole, vs the local services of its constituent lower tiers. It also has to do with the required effect and future of the upper tier area in question.
A "municipality" is the smallest political delineation (if you don't count "wards" within a city). So, having a municipality
within a municipality doesn't make much sense. In the case of Metro, its smaller bits (the boroughs) were quasi, sub-municipalites, where some of its functions resembled an independent municipality, and a lot of it didn't (liquid through the entire Metro experiment). Metro treated the whole area as one city, which was divided in Wards, as you would see in most "normal" single tier municipality.
Metro was created as a compromise between old Toronto, who didn't want outright annexation (and who had stopped doing so in 1918), and the outlying areas that did in the beginning of the post-war era. "Old" Toronto was only about 28 sq miles at the time, and far too small to act as a independent city to the urbanization attached to it, that required the same "city" services and behaved as if it were one city in every way other than legal status.
The area chosen to create Metro (the same boundaries as we have now) was intended to become one independent "city proper" of a manageable size. Any of the still semi-rural areas in the outlying parts were known to soon change, no longer requiring rural services (normally, you would never try to mix rural and urban needs or services under the same level of government) . The point was to implement
gradual or
organic annexation rather than the usual instant annexation which was the norm, with the eventual intent of one unified urban "city".
And for the most part, this is exactly what happened, and for the most part, quite successfully. By the time 1998 had rolled around, the vast majority (about 3/4) of the city services were functioning through the upper tier, meaning Metro was behaving as a single city as planned. The remaining lower tier gave us a level of locally-geared services we still enjoyed and wanted to keep. Keeping a two-tiered municipal government when it is dominated by the upper tier is an expensive way to do it, but it was a luxury we were willing to pay for. Harris felt differently, and here we are.
Actually, things started to fall apart 10 years before that, as in 1988, the province made a change that required the upper tier to be separately elected, creating the divisiveness. In the beginning, those who sat on the upper tier, also sat on their respective lower tiers as well, forcing both tiers to equally consider local and Metro-wide needs.
In the case Of Peel, the province saw the 905 areas had also become something beyond the town/village/rural County set up and needed to address these unique needs by creating yet another type of regional municipality. But in this case, it is one dominated by the lower tier, rather than the upper tier. The intent was never to create a "city" out of any of these 905 regional municipalities, but to address the needs of a suburban-rural area, with increasing urban behaviour in small parts of it.
Peel is a bit strange. It does contain Miss & Brampton, which are indeed "cities" in their own right, albeit purely of the post-war suburban design. Even with what we are seeing at MCC, too much of these two cities are of poor urban design to ever function as Toronto does (with its much lower percentage of poorly planned urban design that can actually be "fixed").
The odd man out in Peel is of course Caledon. Caledon is purely rural/village, and will always remain so. Sure, it will get some subdivisions built, but it will never be Mississauga. Because of the vast difference between Caledon and it's Peel partners of Miss & Brampton, it will never require the level of services supplied by the upper tier, past or present. This is why Caledon should be removed from Peel. Harris turned the whole area into the "City of Caledon". That's fine, but that entire area as an upper tier would basically function as a "County" would, because that's what it's land use resembles.
Harris made changes that had nothing to do with making this process better for the areas involved...he just looked at cost-cutting, and transferring things off the provincial books in the hopes of making himself look good. He failed on both counts...the
"Common Sense Revolution" left both the province as a whole, and its municipalities worse for wear.
. I was just trying to understand the differences between the Regional Municipality of Peel and the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.