SARS, blackouts, and even before that, amalgamation. Today's Toronto has slipped from its position as a tourist destination and desirable place to live that dominated headlines in the early ‘90s. Now that we've ousted our furniture-selling, xenophobic mayor and his neo-con cronies, Toronto's recovery is inextricably linked to the revitalization of our long neglected waterfront.

The restoration of Toronto's 47km lakefront stretch between Etobicoke and Scarborough is equal parts Chicago and Boston. Chicago was able to beautify its Lake Michigan waterfront through a program of creating new urban parks and public space paired with an uncompromising and rigorous municipal approval system for any new development. Boston is in the process of burying its city-wide system of elevated highways in order to better use the space and eliminate the psychological barriers they had become. Toronto must do both.

Toronto's waterfront neighborhoods are dominated by warehouses and factories – holdovers from a time when the city's economy was dominated by manufacturing – reflecting its position as a prominent hub in the Great Lakes system. These industrial buildings are physically removed from the rest of the city by the raised Gardener Expressway – a literal wall separating the city core from the lakefront. The eastern portion of the Expressway has already been demolished, but the rest of it remains functional while we figure out how cost-effective it is to tear it down and what exactly will replace the Gardener as the main southern artery in and out of the city.

Beyond the Gardener lies thousands of hectares of contaminated industrial lands – all but abandoned for the cheaper rents of the suburbs. The reclaiming of this land is happening slowly through gentrification – those fancy loft condos are sprouting up faster than people can buy them. (There are 15,000 unoccupied condos in Toronto) But to truly reincorporate that area into the city some serious environmental clean up must happen first. That initiative has been tied to various attention grabbing schemes over the years (most prominently Toronto's two failed Olympic bids), but has lacked any real commitment of funds without a clear goal to be cleaning up for.

In comes Bob Fung, chairman of the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation, set up in 2001 with a $1.5 billion war chest from the city, province and federal government to kick start renewal. The creation of the corporation was a genius move in co-operation between the three levels of government. What it does stipulate though, is that in order for anything to go ahead, consensus between all the players must be reached. Maybe that is why to date, the corporation has only spent $24 million and the public is either skeptical or confused about the pace of progress.

This uncertainty is only compounded when the whole agenda is hijacked for little more than crass political opportunism. Toronto-Danforth MP Denis Mills has been appointed as a one-man task force to develop the federal government's approach to the waterfront. Hardly coincidentally, Mills is running against NDP leader Jack Layton in the upcoming federal election. The scandal-plagued Liberals would love nothing more than to embarrass the NDP by defeating their leader and continuing to keep him from the Parliament floor.

So, in late February Mills presented his list of 39 “immediate deliverables” to the public. Many of them are already present in one or more of the plans being proposed by the other groups involved. Conspicuously absent from the proceedings was any representative from the provincial government. That is notable because many of those recommendations directly involve the province. That includes the construction of 6,000 mixed used housing units - on land owned by the province; streamlining of the environmental assessments necessary to begin development – which is under provincial jurisdiction; and unlocking $200 million of the federal funds for the revitalization – contingent on matching funds from the province and city. In short, without the province, nothing happens.

If Mills was actually interested in accomplishing something rather than hopping on the waterfront bandwagon for political approbation, he would have worked with his counterparts in the province and at City Hall and called for a non-partisan initiative. He could have simply said, “I'm willing to unlock $200 million of the federal funds for the waterfront and I'm encouraging you to do the same. Let's call up Bob Fung and get him to identify some projects that we can start on immediately.”

Instead, Mills has acted unilaterally and without the cooperation essential to success. Running against the leader of a federal party is no easy task. By tying the future of the waterfront to his own political fortunes, Mills risks sinking the whole thing.