It sometimes appears that Ontario premier Ford has a long-held hate for Ontario cities. It reflects on his experiences as a councillor in Toronto during the final days of brother Rob Ford’s life and mayoralty. The crack-cocaine smoking younger brother taught brother Doug about municipal politics and turned him loose before all the lessons were learned and tested. And the oddities of fate could never again repeat the steps that took the older brother into the premier’s office at Queen’s Park.
But in that position of power, Doug Ford continues to baffle us all with his un-studied, erratic manipulations of the municipal scene in Ontario. His latest has given Peel Region of Ontario less than two years to disassemble the solutions of the last 50 years in the fastest growing region of Ontario. One commentator on provincial politics in the Toronto Star questioned recently whether Ford was acting as a divorce broker or a municipal midwife?
Peel Region has had a confused gestation and Doug Ford has more than confused its future. It is though he was the midwife who dropped the child on its head before swaddling it and dumping the problems on the three new municipalities.
Bear in mind that Peel Region is the old County of Toronto with its many sleepy small towns west of the city of Toronto. When those small towns woke to their rapid growth as parts of Peel Region, they fought back. Those were well-established and affluent towns down by the lake that were the new base of the City of Mississauga. They picked a winner when they got behind Streetsville’s Hazel McCallion. She built a unique and quickly identified downtown Mississauga as an aggressive and street-smart mayor.
Brampton was the other city of the region and it originally lived off provincial benevolence such as the Ontario Provincial Police regional facilities. The years of Brampton’s Bill Davis as premier of Ontario hardly held Brampton’s growth back. Brampton soon won the accolades as the fastest growing municipality in the fastest growing region.
While I still tend to question Doug ford’s motivation in his changing Peel Region, it is more obvious that Brampton and Mississauga combined would make a major contribution to Ontario and Canada. A Mississauga of more that 1.4 million people has more leverage and is more practical than two cities of about 700,000 each.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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