There was no way the peace would last. Surely the late Hazel McCallion must have warned her replacement, Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie, about that pissant Patrick Brown in Brampton. Mayor Brown of Brampton gave fair warning at the opening of the province’s plan for Peel that he would contest any nickel Brampton might potentially lose in dividing up Peel County assets.
The sneaky Brampton mayor went for the jugular of premier Ford’s promise of 113,000 homes in the area in the next eight years. At Brown’s timely called news conference, he claimed he doesn’t know who is going to pay for the upgrading of the sewage capacity. He added that he has 9,000 housing units already on hold because of the lack of clarity on the sewage funding.
Brown’s point in this, and it seems a fair point, is that the so-called Hazel McCallion Act makes no mention of who is paying for what in the new arrangement of Peel County. These decisions are supposed to be made by the five-person transition team that has yet to be appointed by the province.
For mayor Bonnie Crombie in Mississauga, Brown is creating all kinds of headaches. Crombie has long been a cheerleader for the different components of Peel going their own way. As it stands at present, each of the three municipalities and the county have their own responsibilities and taxation structure. What is supposed to emerge in less than two years is three new free-standing municipalities, each happily doing their own thing.
That is not so simple when the Peel Police look after Brampton and Mississauga, Water being supplied to Brampton by Mississauga and the list of confused services goes on.
If I thought for a moment that premier Ford was devious, I would have guessed he did this to keep Bonnie Crombie in municipal politics instead of contesting the Ontario liberal leadership and going after his job. I think he is afraid of her.
But he could have saved the province a lot of headaches and combined costs by simply amalgamating Brampton with Mississauga. Instead of two cities with all the costs that implies and about three-quarters of a million population each, Ontario could have one new city of one and a half million. That might change Bonnie Crombie’s direction.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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