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Ontario government bureaucrats began working on reducing the size of Toronto City Council less than 24 hours after Premier Doug Ford won the provincial election last year, despite his Progressive Conservative Party not raising the idea during the campaign.
Documents obtained by The Globe and Mail reveal that bureaucrats quickly started researching cutting the number of Toronto city councillors – timing that suggests the move was an undisclosed top priority for the newly elected Premier.
Mr. Ford made the bombshell announcement that the province was halving the number of Toronto’s wards in the middle of the subsequent municipal election campaign in late July, 2018. Toronto launched a legal challenge, which it lost on appeal last month but plans to ask the Supreme Court of Canada for permission to appeal the decision.
Don Peat, a spokesman for Mayor John Tory, said the mayor continues to oppose the provincial government’s actions, calling them “unfair, unnecessary and unprecedented.”
Julie O’Driscoll, a spokeswoman for Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark, did not address questions related to the timing of work to cut Toronto city council.
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See Also:
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(2) Adam Vaughan goes off the rails with transit talk
(3) Scenes from a gridlock city. Federal leaders have little to say on traffic relief for GTA
