Toronto Mayor John Tory said Wednesday he would support giving the province “strong mayoral” powers, a move Ontario Premier Doug Ford is reportedly considering.
The Toronto Star reported late Tuesday that Ford is considering legislation that would give greater powers to the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa as part of an effort to build more new housing in those cities.
“Strong mayoral powers are something I said I would support – I spoke about it before the last election,” the Tories said in a statement on Wednesday morning.
“I understand this is something the province is looking into to build more homes as quickly as possible.”
“We have to pick up the pace,” says Tori
The details of exactly what these additional powers will include remain unclear. A “strong mayor” system is typically characterized by centralization of executive power with the mayor having control over the appointments of department heads, overseeing budgets, and sometimes being granted veto power in certain circumstances.
The system is common in the United States, with the role of mayors being similar to that of a chief executive, working in conjunction with but also independently of the council.
Speaking to reporters before this morning’s council session, Tory said he had not had formal conversations with Ford about expanding City Hall’s powers, but that the topic of finding ways to speed up housing construction came up “in passing” during the last conversation the two meet in June.
“Anything we can do, for example, to build more housing – to build more housing faster – that’s what I’m interested in. Because we have a big problem to deal with,” Tory said.
“We need to pick up the pace of how we do things.”
Asked how a strong mayoral system would translate into faster decision-making and planning, Tory said it was too early to speculate because he had not seen any details of what the additional powers might look like.
Councilors want more information from the province
Currently in Toronto, the mayor’s vote is the same as that of a city councillor.
Ford did not talk about introducing a strong mayoral system during the Ontario election campaign this summer, and such a move would add new complexity to the mayoral race in the upcoming fall municipal elections.
The Ford government also made no changes to the Municipal Elections Act to address other issues, including a loophole that CBC News reported allows lobbyists to pay people to campaign for councilors without their knowledge.
During the current term, the Tories controlled the balance of power on the city council, allowing him to push through most of the policies he supports.
On Tuesday, Parkdale Coun. Gord Perks asked for any information on Ford’s plan that city or mayoral staff may need to bring to the council for debate. This week’s meeting is the last council meeting before the municipal elections in October.
“I think it would be inappropriate to end our mandate without having the opportunity to discuss a potentially very, very important change in the way the City of Toronto is governed,” Perks said.
Perks also supported a proposal from the Toronto–St. Earl of Paul. Josh Matlow, which will see the council ask the province not to pass any legislation to expand the town hall’s existing powers.
“Such a move would undermine democracy by stifling advocacy on the most important issues affecting Torontonians,” the motion said.
“Our city’s governance structure must be designed not only for what we aspire our system to be, but also must consider what guardrails are necessary to protect a healthy local democracy,” he continues.
“In the case of Toronto, we don’t have to look very far back in our own history to see how important the ability to hold the mayor’s power to account is.” In fact, it was absolutely necessary.”
The last paragraph is apparently a reference to the tumultuous mayoral tenure of Rob Ford, Doug Ford’s late brother. Rob Ford’s tenure was marred by a series of scandals that eventually led the council to strip him of certain powers, including the right to hire and fire the deputy mayor and appoint members of his executive committee.
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