Amalgamation

[ijmorlan]

I 100% disagree. The Region of Waterloo is already called Waterloo, so that would be the adopted name of Kitchener+Waterloo. Plus Waterloo is just way more widely known within Canada and worldwide. I really expect an amalgamation within the next 10 years, and ION will accelerate the process.

I don't think the "Regional" name would have anything to do with naming the city. Generally it goes by the largest city.  But who knows really. But it's not likely any of the cities will merge.

Something to keep in mind, Waterloo has zero visibility from the 401. Until BlackBerry came around, Waterloo wasn't known for a lot of things. No one outside the area referred this to as "Waterloo Region".....Kitchener-Waterloo? Sure. Even CTV is referred to as CTV-Kitchener. The CMA considers Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, not the other way round.

If anything, if the cities were to merge, most likely people outside Kitchener would not be ok with Kitchener, people in Kitchener and Cambridge would not be ok with "Waterloo", and obviously Cambridge would not even be considered. So unless it's provincial or federal government forces a change, nothing is going to happen. And not likely the government will do anything, not after the mess of Metro Toronto and Hamilton-Wentworth.

This is a major part of the reason why I don’t think amalgamation should be discussed — it opens up a huge can of completely unnecessary worms. And as already proven by Toronto and many other examples, amalgamations don’t save as much money as their boosters claim.

But if we gradually upload individual responsibilities to the Region, we get whatever gains are to be had without most of the downside. And in particular, without the need to amalgamate everything all at once. And we don’t ever need to have a discussion around “amalgamation” as such.