Strong Mayors in Brighton?

Brighton is one of 169 municipalities in Ontario that were just given Strong Mayor powers. I have some serious concerns about that, and have seconded a Notice of Motion expressing opposition to it. As I sit down to write this, Consider This released an interview with Mayor Brian Ostrander on the subject, you can listen here.

What are Strong Mayor Powers?

Usually, Canadian mayors serve as the chair and official representative of their council, but otherwise have the same power as any other member of council: one vote. They have other duties, like signing cheques and contracts, but they do so in accordance with the will of council as a whole.

A “Strong Mayor” has the power to:

• Appoint the Chief Administrative Officer, something normally done through a hiring process with council as the hiring committee;
• Hire department heads, except for those whose hiring is already regulated by the province;
• Re-organize the municipal structure, something council would ordinarily do at the request of the CAO;
• Create new committees of council;
• Appoint committee chairs, something the committee itself would normally do;
• “Bring forward matters for council consideration related to provincial priority,” something any member of council can already do through a Notice of Motion;
• Propose by-laws that they believe support a provincial priority, again something they could already do;
• Veto a by-law passed by council, whether or not the mayor was there to vote against it; council may override the veto, but it requires a 2/3 majority vote;
• Direct staff, something ordinarily ONLY done by council as a whole;
• Propose the budget, something ordinarily done by council as a whole;

You can see the province’s description of these powers here.

Some of these powers hearken back to the days when a municipal council had no administrative staff, and the mayor was responsible for all administration. As municipalities grew in size and responsibility, they hired staff, whose roles have steadily professionalized over time. In the US, mayors have retained these kinds of powers; in Canada, they have not. Our structures evolved differently from American municipalities, with systems, norms, and ethical requirements that were not designed for any member of council to have these kinds of powers.

Giving Up on Democracy

While the Ford government’s language around Strong Mayor powers is about “cutting red tape,” it’s part of a long series of moves that undermine the spirit and function of democracy in Ontario, including:

• Numerous bills that give provincial officials veto power over municipal decisions;
• Removal of appeal rights for things like planning decisions (including removing the appeal rights of Conservation Authorities);
• Changing the makeup of Toronto City Council in the middle of a municipal election;
• Tabling a big bill that drastically changed municipal governance on the day after a municipal election, when no municipal governments yet had sitting councils to respond to them;
• Reducing the oversight powers of watchdogs and regulatory agencies (including Premier Ford’s recent rant against the Judicial branch of government);
• Making big changes against good advice, or asking forgiveness instead of permission, and then having to walk things back (e.g., opening the Green Belt);
• Breaking contract numerous times (e.g., the Beer Store and LCBO contracts);
• Threatening to invoke the Notwithstanding clause to bypass the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in order to pass legislation requiring the mistreatment of people experiencing homelessness.

You may wonder why breaking contract or changing regulatory powers are considered anti-democratic, but the thing that ties all of these actions together is the way that they undermine trust, which is the basis of our society. We elect our leaders because it allows us to invest our trust in them; but we are able to put our trust in them at least in part because there are systems that can check their power. When those systems are weakened, bypassed, or simply disregarded, we lose trust not just in this government, but in government itself.

To be fair, I get some of the frustrations Premier Ford and his party are expressing. There are some regulations that are more onerous, time consuming, and expensive than they need to be. The Planning process, when applied inflexibly, can take over a year to complete a relatively simple severance; it’s no wonder major development is expensive and slow. And when existing residents are in opposition to development of any kind, the system for allowing them an opportunity to make comment can sometimes drag things out further, or stall them altogether when municipal politicians prioritize the feelings of neighbours against the rights of land owners and the long-term benefit to the community. It would all move a lot faster if there was less oversight and community engagement, and some reductions in these things are warranted and possible to do without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The baby, in this case, is that other core ingredient of democracy alongside trust: persuasion. A key requirement of every council member is that we must be open to persuasion at every single meeting. Even when I feel something is straightforward and I have the right of it, even when I feel passionately about something, I need to suspend my feelings and hear the facts with an openness to changing my mind. That takes time and effort, sometimes, but it’s in that process that council proves its worth. We’re supposed to debate and deliberate so that we make decisions that are truly in our community’s interest. A divided council is one that has not taken adequate time and effort to persuade one another, or been adequately open to changing their minds.

What the Ford government is doing, with Strong Mayor powers and all of the other things I’ve listed above, is provide a shortcut. When the going gets tough, just skip the tough part. Things like veto powers seem to leave the system intact–council still goes through all of the same procedures–but it changes the relationships and incentives on the council. Yes, we all still have one vote; but tomorrow the mayor could decide to override the rest of us, so do we actually have a vote? Will I have to plan ahead for a veto, and then attempting to override that veto with a vote of council? Will there be the same level of trust in one another, and in the institution we represent?

Potential for Abuse

I want to make it clear that I have absolutely no concern about the abuse of Strong Mayor powers by our current mayor. Since being elected in 2022, this council has been unanimous in the vast majority of votes; I can think of only one or two times in which the mayor had to cast a tie-breaking vote. On matters of supporting the development of affordable housing, which is the reason the province claims it is giving out these powers, our council has been unanimous and ambitious. We supported the Land Banking program started under the previous council, purchasing lands that are to be developed for affordable housing; we supported the formation of the Northumberland Inter-Municipal Task Force on Housing and Homelessness and participated in its events; we have formed the Brighton Homelessness Task Force; we have made significant changes to Development Charges to help facilitate development; and we hope to do much more. None of this was controversial in Brighton, so the rationale for giving us these powers in the first place is suspect. To be crystal clear, nobody here asked for this. We don’t need to suspend democracy to support housing development.

But while I’m not at all concerned about the current council, the addition of Strong Mayor powers could be disastrous in the wrong hands, and could change the incentives in our next election.

There is already a wave of anti-establishment populism around the world, and Canada is not exempt. We’ve tasted it in Brighton, on past councils that were much more divided. In the last term of council, we had an assessment of the workplace environment at the municipality that repeatedly highlighted misbehaviour by unnamed member(s) of council, citing council members giving direction to staff members inappropriately in ways that amounted to harassment and even bullying. This kind of thing is sadly common, and there are plenty of examples from other municipalities in which this extends to sexual harassment. This is such a big issue that councils have to undergo extensive ethical training, which emphasizes over and over that individual council members are NOT to give direction to staff at all; and the last act of the last Ford government was to introduce a bill that would give more power to councils to discipline their members, potentially even removing sitting members of council for ethical violations. (That bill died the moment the Premier called an election.) Knowing that there’s already a problem of members of council having insufficient checks on their power, allowing some to become a menace to their municipality by directing staff personally without adequate deterrent or consequence, now the province is giving mayors the power to direct staff? This could go so badly so quickly.

I’m also concerned about who it will incentivize to run for mayor. We know that the best person to hold power is the person who doesn’t want power; yet our electoral system already incentivizes people who can build a base of support, often on grievances and outrage, to run for office in the first place. By offering even more power to the position of mayor, I expect we’ll see more people who desire that kind of power coming forward, and running the kind of campaigns that signal the way they want to use that power. We’ve seen this happen successfully in the US and many countries around the world. Even if it isn’t successful here, I worry about how it would change the tone of our politics here. One productive and harmonious term of council hasn’t erased my memory of the discord that marked previous terms, or the nastiness that came out in our 2022 election; and with more power at stake in elections I worry that we’ll see them go even further downhill.

But even setting aside the negative effects on the tone of our politics, these powers have been linked to another kind of abuse: Ford’s threat to invoke the Notwithstanding clause in the constitution in order to authorize (and even require) the eviction of homeless encampments, something the courts have ruled to be a violation of the Charter. The courts determined that a municipality may not evict a homeless encampment on public property unless there is an alternative shelter that is adequate to meet their needs; but just in February, a strong mayor in Aurora used his veto powers to stop a men’s shelter from being built, thereby almost ensuring that there isn’t sufficient and adequate shelter in the community. The Ford government just introduced Bill 6, the Safer Municipalities Act, which allows for the arrest of anyone consuming drugs in a public place and increases penalties for trespassing on public property, both measures clearly aimed at people experiencing homelessness. I expect that if this passes it will be challenged in court, and the provincial government will be told that it is unconstitutional, at which point it will be prompted once again to use the Notwithstanding clause to nullify the Charter rights of those people. Strong Mayor powers and the Notwithstanding clause are a potent combination here, being used to ensure that some municipalities will not provide the support that their residents who are experiencing homelessness need, and that they will face no penalty for that failure.

So What Do We Do?

As a councillor, there’s nothing substantive that I can do about this. Some municipalities have passed resolutions rejecting these powers or asking the province to take a better approach. Councillor Wright and I are bringing such a motion to council on Monday. But we recognize that such motions are symbolic, expressing our concerns and asking the province to do something that they have no obligation to do. Even the mayor cannot turn these powers down. It is purely a matter of provincial legislation and regulation. Windsor’s council just passed a resolution asking the province to remove the Strong Mayor powers they’ve had since 2023, but all they can do is ask.

What the mayor can and must do is determine which of these powers he will accept and which of them he will delegate to either council or staff. He will issue a statement indicating his decisions, and based on the interview I linked above, it seems like he will delegate most of the powers to staff or council and nothing will change for us. The next mayor will need to make that determination for themselves. Any use of the powers will also need to be catalogued on our municipal website, so that everyone can see how the powers have been used, because they’re only supposed to be used for “provincial priorities” related to housing. How the mayor of Windsor justified using them to cancel a transit service, or how the mayor of Aurora used them to veto a men’s shelter, is a mystery to me, but they don’t seem to be facing any consequences for those uses other than their councils complaining to the province.

The main thing that I as a councillor, and we as a community, can do is to continue to uphold democratic norms. To engage in real deliberation, with open minds and consultation, whether or not that’s respected by the province. To hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct and collaboration than the province requires. To keep doing what is right, even when given the opportunity to take the easy way out. I’m confident that our current mayor will do so, and I have high hopes that Brighton won’t elect anyone with less respect for our democratic norms.