I am confident that I am not alone in having concerns about Minister Calanadra’s dictum that mayors alone respond to confusion and chaos caused by Doug Ford’s apparent backing down on city boundary changes.
This recommendation was released to cities recently by the provincial government. It is contained in a publicly available announcement dated November 2, 2023, Re: Announcement Impacting Provincial Decisions on Municipal Official Plans/ Official Plan Amendments
In my opinion, Minister Calandra has doubled down on “Strong Mayor Powers”. Minister Calandra has suggested that mayors could act without consulting City Councils should they wish to put into place boundaries and other changes arbitrarily by their own will.
According to Minister Calandra: “To ensure the province receives the necessary feedback within the 45-day window, we will accept changes directly from heads of the council of single and lower-tier municipalities, including to official plans that were originally submitted with council endorsements from upper-tier municipalities. Heads of council may choose to seek a council endorsement of their proposed changes, but that is not required.”
This simple suggestion throws the principle of municipal democracy out the window – it is actually quite easy for the Council to meet and have staff assistance to review what Calandra wants. Further, Minister Calandra could extend the time frame he has imposed – he has that authority. Yet, what it seems is that he and Premier Ford want to circumvent councils.
I know that many concerned with Greenbelt advocacy are fearful of the ongoing diminishing of local municipal democracy by our provincial government.
This recent action by the province begs the following question: If mayors can act unilaterally without consulting council what is the point of having an elected council? This goes far beyond a 2/3 majority requirement as per strong mayor’s powers. It renders Councillors virtually without any capacity to have input on these most important issues.
In my opinion, the Ford government is reversing its apparent reversals on the Greenbelt, Urban Sprawl, and other actions.
In fact, the government is hoping that “Strong Mayors” will do its dirty work by keeping boundary changes proposed by developers and preserving the additional modifications to city plans that used MZOs for the same purpose. This is hardly a municipal consultative democracy. I suspect that thoughtful mayors will be reluctant to follow this advice given the dangerous path down which it leads.
It seems Mr. Ford does not like loyal and local opposition. He is still upset with the “legitimate left” on city councils. The Premier resorts to name-calling and passing the buck to Mayors to do his work for him.
Ford et al seem determined to impose their vision on Ontario despite being under a dark veil of scandal. We know from the released 7000 pages of documents that certain developers had Carte Blanche to recommend changes to provincial municipal boundaries without input of provincial or municipal staff. This is a thoughtless approach to community building further reinforced by the memo to which I refer and which is publicly available.
Phil Allt
Councillor, Ward 3
Guelph, Ontario
519 827 6579
Image credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Carlos Osorio
