The idea of Barrie’s mayor being given undemocratic powers by the province is hilarious. In a poll to determine the least competent mayor in Ontario, our mayor might be, at least, a close runner-up. This is the guy the local conservatives sent to Ottawa as an MP by some 86 votes, and only stayed for one term. Maybe he found it difficult to find the parliament in Ottawa when the house was sitting. Maybe it was because they didn’t give him anything important to do.
It is damn lucky that this guy is permanently out-voted on city council by his conservative peers. The very thought of him having any power to do anything is frightening. This is the guy who supported Maxime Bernier to be leader of the federal conservatives. He came back to Barrie and, I guess, nobody seemed to want to rush to give him a job, so he ran for mayor. And won, because people knew his name.
He was following a mayor who actually did some hard work for the past 12 years. The mayor ran for the Ontario liberals last year and got creamed. Last I heard, he was working for the regional council up in Muskoka, probably helping them keep Muskoka for tourists.
One of the reasons you have to laugh at all this super mayor business is that the key words in the provincial announcement are “To support us.” In other words, you get to have these super powers as long as you do what you are told. Municipalities in Ontario are not only creatures of the provincial government but now they are enslaved to it. A friend, who loves chatting about politics, speculated that this might be all very well for the Tories but what if an NDP government follows them at Queen’s Park? And all those conservative mayors start rebelling.
Never forget we have this fiction in Ontario that there is no party politics at the municipal or school board levels. That is crap. All parties tend to select people who have gone through the starter stages of politics with school boards and local councils. This is to determine if they are the stuff for higher office. Even Doug Ford had to start at Toronto city council to determine if he could survive at the provincial level. Mind you, even our mayor in Barrie could pass on a few political tips to Doug Ford.
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