Ford extended service plan

Premier Doug Ford is promising municipal leaders across the province that their powers “will be expanded” in line with the new strong-mayor authority for Toronto and Ottawa.

Speaking to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa, Ford touted his bill that is designed to expedite housing construction in the province’s two largest cities.

“Like most of Canada, Ontario is facing a housing crisis decades in the making. Previous governments refused to build the housing we needed and the dream of home ownership slipped away from a generation of Ontarians,” the premier said Monday.

“We’re working with municipalities to crack down on land speculation and protect home buyers from those who are trying to take advantage of them. (Municipal Affairs) Minister (Steve) Clark introduced legislation that goes even further,” he said.

“The Strong Mayors Building Homes Act will provide Toronto and Ottawa with the additional tools needed to advance provincial priorities. Building more homes is at the top of the list.”

But Ford emphasized other municipalities would soon be granted similar powers.

“In the coming months, we’ll have more information on how these tools will be expanded to other municipalities so more municipal leaders like yourselves can help build Ontario,” he said.

As first disclosed by the Star last month, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are extending the powers in time for the Oct. 24 municipal elections .

Under legislation introduced last week, the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa would have authority over municipal budgets and the hiring and firing of senior city staff.

The mayor could veto any bylaw passed by councillors if it “could potentially interfere with a prescribed provincial priority.”

That includes bylaws affecting housing developments, highways, roads and public transit.

It would take a two-thirds majority vote of council to overturn the mayor’s veto.

Ford said the measures are necessary for the recently re-elected Progressive Conservatives to keep their campaign promise to build 1.5 million new homes over the next decade.

“In 2021, this province saw more than 100,000 new housing starts, the highest level since 1987. As well, the highest level of new rental starts since 1991, but that is just the beginning,” he said.

“The real solution to the housing crisis is to increase supply, full stop. And together, we can get more shovels in the ground with an all hands-on deck effort from all levels of government to build more attainable homes.”

Amid ongoing concerns about staffing shortages in hospitals that have temporarily closed some emergency rooms, Ford assured civic leaders changes are looming.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones “has been actively engaging with our front-line partners to identify concrete solutions,” he said. “I know she’ll have more to say on Wednesday.”

Last Friday, the premier made headlines by hinting that health-care reforms were coming.

“Guys, we can’t continue doing the same thing and pouring billions, which we’ll continue doing, and expecting a different result,” he said. “Something has to give. It’s not a money issue. We have to do things differently, so we’re going to get the best ideas from the professionals and we’re going to implement those ideas.”

That triggered concerns from opposition parties that further privatization was being threatened.

Interim NDP leader Peter Tabuns told AMO delegates that Ford is “focused on changing councils to a strong-mayor system” instead of dealing with health-care challenges.

“I know you’re worried about what will happen when COVID public health subsidies end,” said Tabuns.

“And I know you’re worried that the cut from 35 to just 10 public health units could still go ahead. Public health units have been leaders in rolling out vaccines and boosters,” he said.

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Flexing his strength as premier, Doug Ford is imposing a “strong mayor” system upon Toronto.

He’s not wrong.

The alternative is to perpetuate the “weak mayor” system that has paralyzed the mighty megacity ever since another tough-minded premier, Mike Harris, strong-armed Toronto into amalgamation decades ago.

Whatever you think of them as “strong premiers,” Harris just did the right thing back then, just as Ford is doing it right today. This is the logical next step, long overdue.

A weak mayor system keeps Toronto weak. That’s because municipal amalgamation, paired with mayoral emasculation, equals political gridlock.

By restoring balance to the equation, Ontario can help Toronto balance its budgets, sparing us the annual fiscal crisis on council. But it will not be easy, for in our partisan times the temptation is to conflate political personalities with political realities.

Yes, this plan has Ford’s fingerprints on it, but rather than making it personal or partisan, consider its provenance: Dalton McGuinty, a former Liberal premier, first proposed the strong mayor system for Toronto, inspired by a similar configuration in cities around the world.

A blue-ribbon panel created by Toronto also endorsed the idea, and then-mayor David Miller, hobbled by budgetary standoffs, backed it — until he backed down. History tells us that Miller’s grip on council continued to erode as a weak mayor, and the resulting voter dissatisfaction led to the election of the late Rob Ford as mayor — with all the disruption that came with it.

Today, Miller has joined the chorus of reflexive criticism from opponents who still cling to the weak mayor system as the epitome of municipal democracy.

In fact, most people never vote in municipal elections. Even those who do likely have no idea just how underpowered the mayoralty is.

Lest we forget, Toronto’s mayor is elected directly by the citizens of the city. Yet he is chief magistrate in name only.

In practice, Mayor John Tory wields but one of 25 votes on council. In effect, a mayor with a personal mandate from nearly 500,000 voters — who won every single ward in the city — has no more say or sway than any local councillor who typically wins election with fewer than 25,000 (and as low as 5,500) votes in wards with low turnouts.

Relegating a directly-elected mayor to the role of regular councillor is a false equivalency that distorts their quite different democratic mandates. It is misplaced parity, leading to a lack of priorities and ultimately to paralysis.

“I think people right now, they think that I have the authority to do a whole lot of things, and in fact I have authority to do very little,” Tory said after winning the mayoral election in 2018, which explains his support for the current reforms.

Ontario’s big cities have always been underpowered. Legally and constitutionally, they are creatures of the province, subject to the constraints and caprices of premiers.

Without question Ford overreached in 2018, shortly after winning his first provincial election, by halving the size of Toronto council in the middle of a municipal campaign. He was wrong on process — proceeding without notice — but reducing the number of councillors was far from a radical idea.

At the time, Toronto’s mayor was merely one of 45 votes on council, which is why the expert panel had also recommended cutting councillors down to size. Unsurprisingly, most of them were unwilling to vote themselves out of a job (until Ford did it for them, four years ago — albeit in the wrong way).

The strong mayor plan unveiled this week — first revealed by the Star’s Robert Benzie last month — uses Toronto and Ottawa as test cases. If the system works well, it could be expanded to other large cities that are expanding rapidly yet remain underpowered, from Mississauga to Brampton.

Even if opponents are prone to demonizing Ford’s handiwork, the devil, as ever, is in the details. The proposal empowers the mayor to disallow council bylaws related to provincial priorities, while allowing councillors to override that veto by a two-thirds vote — hardly a heretical concept given traditions elsewhere.

More to the point, it empowers the elected mayor to put forward his or her own vision for the annual budget, rather than remaining captive to a budgetary document written by committee; councillors can still amend the budget and vote it down (or override a veto). The legislation also codifies a mayor’s right to pick their own senior staff — hardly subversive stuff.

Will this make council more adversarial than collegial? As admirable as consensus can be, voters also expect leadership from a mayor who wins a democratic mandate and deserves the chance to enact it.

“This is an issue that is independent of personalities, political leanings,” McGuinty said in 2008, referring to the outdated form of governance he wanted to reform. “I don’t think that we’ve got the model in place that allows (city council) to do that.”

If Ford as premier can now see his way to taking a page from McGuinty’s early vision on municipal governance, so much the better.

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Like most Socialist plans to spend other people’s money, Sir

At a time of extreme financial stress – soaring

But beware such gaudy baubles! In reality, Labour’s leader would be storing up a world of pain.

Leading economists warn the wheeze could cost at least £90billion if continued for 18 months – more than the Government spent on the entire furlough scheme.

Who would pay for such an eye-watering splurge? Sir Keir says it would largely be met by extending the controversial windfall tax on oil giants – who are the bogeymen to the hard-Left.

But a retrospective levy risks deterring investment – which could prevent new power sources from being developed – and leaving Britain more exposed to expensive imports at a time when we are trying to beef up energy security.

Equally, such a move would threaten jobs, clobber pensions and, ultimately, reduce tax receipts to the Treasury.

Moreover, the price freeze would benefit the wealthy, rather than simply targeting the poorest.

It would not incentivise households to reduce energy consumption.

Experts claim it would prolong rampant inflation. And it would invariably increase the nation’s debt mountain – saddling future generations with the bill.

Of course, no one doubts that struggling families need shielding from the blow of spiralling heating and lighting costs.

And Labour is trying to draw battle lines before the next election. But its big idea to revert to failed 1970s-style price controls and spend money the country simply doesn’t have would not just be a sticking plaster solution – it would deepen an already painful wound.

Degrees of cynicism

Britain’s universities have always been beacons for foreign students eager to burnish their intellectual credentials.

Over the years, however, the attraction of accepting such pupils seems to have significantly changed.

For there are mounting concerns that the award of prized academic places is increasingly about cold, hard cash.

Vice-chancellors deny reserving more and more slots for international applicants, who pay more than double the fees of UK-based students.

However, did Clare Marchant, the head of university admissions body Ucas, let the cat out of the bag yesterday by urging institutions to recruit even more lucrative students from overseas, including from Nigeria, Ghana and Vietnam?

It would be truly scandalous if talented, aspirational and determined British students were deprived places on courses by top universities thinking only of their bottom line.

Wrong rain is a joke

Despite thunderstorms (finally!) breaking the scorching weather that has left Britain bone-dry, the hosepipe bans affecting millions drag on.

Deploying the lamest excuse since leaves on the line were blamed for halting trains, experts claim that it is the ‘wrong kind’ of rain to end the drought.

The downpours will simply run off baked ground, they say, rather than soak into it.

Still, if greedy water firms had invested in mending leaky pipes and building new reservoirs instead of filling their pockets, perhaps we wouldn’t be in the preposterous predicament of being both threatened by flash floods and short of water.