Letters to the Editor
Torontonians Will Not Take Kindly to Ford's Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act
The power grab by the Ford Conservatives via the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act just before the municipal elections on October 24 cannot be accepted. The Ford government has already planned to apply this law across the province once it has been tested in Toronto and Ottawa. This is a further attempt to control political power through police powers and shut out any opposition to the "priorities of the province" which, in a nutshell, are organized pay-the-rich schemes for the biggest monopolies and financial oligarchs. This includes the critical mineral extraction from the Ring of Fire or the car battery operation being planned for Windsor and other housing and infrastructure projects. The cowardly Ford administration did not mention this during the provincial election because to do so would have resulted in their possible defeat given that only 18 per cent of the electorate voted Conservative.
Information
on this law and where things are going provided by TML Daily
informs the
discussion we need to have. One of the things it brings forward
for discussion
is that under the Canadian
constitution,
municipalities come under
provincial jurisdiction. At the time of Canada's formation and
as a Dominion of
Britain, 80 per cent of people lived in rural areas and the horse-trading between
the political
elites of that time created the provincial/federal power sharing
arrangement
that enabled a nation-building project in their image. Today the elites are
not engaged in nation-building, just nation-wrecking and
this law is an
expression of the police powers and the rule by decree that come
when the forces
of old want to hold on to power by any means necessary and
control the economy
for self-serving, anti-social ends.
Today
80 per cent of Canadians live in cities. Toronto alone, with its
population of 3 million, contributes some $200 billion or 10 per cent
of Canada's GDP. Torontonians have the right to decide how the city
operates. The constitutional arrangements need to be renewed to reflect
this reality today.
That the new law will allow the mayor much greater power over the
budget, appointments to key administrative positions etc., while giving
Torontonians less say in how the city is run does not bode well. The
people in the city, are not, for example, going to put up with a
government that tries to push them aside. In 2018, Torontonians in
their thousands opposed Bill 5 which reduced Toronto Council by half
during the municipal elections. They opposed the amalgamation of the
city by the Harris Conservatives in 1998. Seventy per cent of the
people of the Toronto municipalities at the time opposed amalgamation
and the subsequent privatization of city services in the name of
"efficiency." They now bear the brunt of the additional $300 million
per year that is spent to run the city "efficiently." Bill 3 may be
"legal" but it is not just, it is not democratic and it will not
benefit the people of Ontario or the Indigenous peoples of the province
who also will not allow their rights to be trampled underfoot despite
Ford's attempts to pull a fast one on them as well.
A Reader in Toronto
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 25 - October 4, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520255.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca