I have a bit of a love affair with New York. I also have a number of relatives living in Toronto. I have a personal dual loyalty on this, and would be very comfortable with it. There is a more important agenda for me. I wear the hat of an international, civil society, peace-building organization. What the progress study on youth, peace and security has done, largely under the radar, and through the back door, is challenge the assumptions that the UN has made for many decades about its inability to forge partnerships with civil society. I think what happened with the progress study is that we built a coalition of civil society actors who could access young people in a way that governments and the multilateral system couldn't.
If you want a centre of excellence in Toronto, my strong recommendation would be that you don't try to reproduce the UN offices in New York, but that you think very creatively about the role Canada can play in fostering the interface between the multilateral system and civil society, as non-state actors. I think this is an enormous gap to be filled; use Toronto for that.