Some days, you wish that Ontario premier Doug Ford knew what he is doing. As premier, he is busy rearranging Ontario’s municipal politics. It shows how much harm a little knowledge can cause. He is trying to create a strong mayor system for Ontario’s larger cities without much understanding of what is needed.
The simplest way to explain the problem is that for a strong mayor system to work, you have to have political party support. It is the very rare situation where a really strong mayor can hold together a council without either a political party endorsement or a personal popularity that is equivalent to a strong party endorsement.
Toronto has had a quasi-political system for years. We have had mayors from all major parties. Most progressive mayor’s have had the support of other progressives. The current mayor, John Tory has been effective at pulling together support from the suburban right wing. Despite nobody wearing party name tags, Toronto has moved along—sluggishly—but with persuasion.
The least effective example of Toronto mayors was Doug Ford’s younger brother Rob. A right-wing populist, Rob was a loose cannon. As a background to Doug Ford’s strong mayor plan, Rob was the last person who could have made it work.
The person who could have made it work was David Crombie, Toronto’s ‘Tiny, Perfect Mayor.’ David won the mayoralty as head of a bunch of reformers in 1972. I had always enjoyed arguing politics with him until his little mob in city hall tried to stifle development, rather than to control it properly. What helped David win the mayoralty was the liberal party being honest about its participation in municipal politics. A lot of liberals lost that year. David was elected as a federal conservative MP in 1978 and I have not spoken to him since.
To elect a strong mayor, such as Ford envisages, will not work unless the mayor can get a majority of the council behind him or her. The easiest way to make that work is to invite the major political parties to run candidates for the mayor and councillor seats on city council. And that is about to happen?
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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