The Rob Ford mayoralty situation in Toronto is just like trying to get rid of a Condo Commando. These are tenacious troublemakers for condominium boards. They are the bane of property managers and boards because they use the Ontario Condominium Act to terrorize the condo to get their way. Whether they are right or wrong is irrelevant as little else gets done while the war continues. Rob Ford is just like a condo commando on a much larger scale and even more difficult to control.
And the fault for both situations can be laid with the Ontario government. The laws governing the Corporation of the City of Toronto are cluttered, confusing, contradictory, and created by and for lawyers. They enrich the legal profession and beggar the rest of us. And if Rob Ford takes the city council to court, he just might be a bigger fool than we thought. It is a conflict that nobody can win.
The same Ontario Legislature wrote the Ontario Condominium Act. If people in Ontario had to pass an examination on the Condominium Act before they were allowed to buy a condominium apartment or town house, there would be very few condominium homes in this province.
And it never has been who is right or wrong. City Council in Toronto has just trampled over the power of the mayor. They have created a precedent that can now be used by any council against any mayor in the province. It is a threat. It crushes what little authority mayors previously had. They never really had much other than what custom allowed. Now they can be second-guessed at any time.
The province will have more and more civic conflicts. The Legislature will have to take the blame for more and more conflicted councils. And when the councils become conflicted, the civil servants will play. It all becomes an anti-democratic shambles.
The province has a responsibility to fix this. In the same way that it is looking at fixing the Condominium Act, it needs to look at how municipalities are supposed to function as opposed to how they really function—or not.
And in a city the size of Toronto, the citizens have to have responsible government. The city’s governance can no longer be left to a haphazard resemblance of democratic action. The people elected by citizens of the city must choose their own mayor. It must be a fellow councillor who can garner the most support. Sure it can cause party politics. It will enable the voters to know what they are voting for. It will create stability. It could even be honest government.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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