Absolutely, Speaker.

Good morning, everyone. It’s a great pleasure for me to rise for third reading of our government’s proposed Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act. At the start, Speaker, I want to note that I’ll be sharing the government’s time with the Associate Minister of Housing and the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Speaker, before I get into the meat of Bill 3, I want to take this opportunity, on behalf of the government, to express to all of the candidates for municipal office, who are vying for office on October 24, the government’s most sincere thanks for putting your name on the ballot. This is a tremendous time, and I want to thank each and every person for being a candidate in this year’s municipal election.

I also, Speaker—because in addition to being a former mayor, I’m a former CAO—want to take this time to thank all of the municipal staff. An election time is an incredibly busy time at municipal halls right across Ontario, and I know that the staff in all 444 municipalities have been working very diligently to ensure that October 24 goes off without a hitch. I want to thank them as well for their great work in making sure the election takes place.

If passed, our proposed legislation, Bill 3, along with the associated regulations, would give more tools to the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa to move provincial priority projects forward.

Speaker, I just want to say, it’s great to see you in the chair this morning. Thank you so much for the work that you do. Congratulations.

Foremost, Bill 3—among these priorities is our government’s commitment to build 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. This bill is both timely and necessary. Ontarians re-elected our government at a time when they are facing rising costs of living and a shortage of homes. They sent us back to work with a strong mandate because we promised to get more housing built faster, and also because they knew we could get the job done.

It’s no secret—and I think all my colleagues agree that it’s no secret—that Ontario is in the middle of a housing supply crisis. People are desperately looking for housing that meets both their needs and their budget, yet too many Ontarians are frozen out of the housing market. Young people are searching for their first home—a home where they’ll have room to have children, to grow their family, while being close to schools, work and essential services. It’s so very important.

Newcomers to Ontario are looking for a home that meets their needs as they strive to build a new life in this growing, vibrant province of Ontario. Seniors are looking to downsize, and they want homes that meet their needs as they age. Everyone is looking for something different, and that’s why we’re here today: because we believe this legislation is a piece of a larger puzzle that will help get more housing built faster for Ontarians.

We aren’t alone in thinking this legislation is a step in the right direction. I’d like to take a moment to highlight what we’ve heard about this proposal at committee. Before I remind my colleagues of the details of this proposed legislation, I think we have to have a conversation about how we got here. Since introduction just a few weeks ago, we’ve had some very clear support for this proposal.

Mayor John Tory, who has long supported a strong mayor system, noted that: “I always want to make sure city hall is working more efficiently and effectively for Toronto residents and businesses and that we make it as easy as possible to get things done....” I believe this proposed legislation does exactly that.

The Ontario Real Estate Association called this proposed legislation a “critical and an overdue step toward solving the housing affordability and supply crisis.” They go on to agree that the Strong Mayors Buildings Homes Act would “help cut red tape and speed up the local planning process by giving municipal leaders new tools and powers to help reduce timelines for development, standardize processes and address local barriers to increasing housing supply.”

Speaking to the committee of this House last week, the association’s vice-chair concluded that, “These new municipal powers will go a long way in addressing affordability, getting more shovels in the ground, incentivizing developers” to come and build in Ontario’s largest cities.

Meanwhile the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario said in written submission, “The proposed legislation provides a solid foundation to ensure that mayors have tools to combat the systemic barriers that exist at the municipal level that prevent housing from being built.”

I’d like to also share a quote, colleagues, from the Toronto Region Board of Trade from the summer: “Toronto faces numerous urgent city-wide challenges, from housing, land use, transit, transportation, budget, economic development and climate.... Effective, timely solutions require a city chief executive with clear authority to set an agenda, appoint senior city staff, and bring forward policy solutions to council....”

The board of trade goes on to say that for almost two decades, they’ve advocated for stronger powers for Toronto’s mayor, and they say, “Now is the time to act.”

Someone I don’t quote too often in this House—though I have played hockey with him from time to time; he’s a natural left-winger—is Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star. He wrote that this government “got it right” with our proposed legislation, noting “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....” That’s why we’re putting our trust in local leadership in Toronto and Ottawa. We’re proposing to give these mayors more responsibility to help deliver on our shared provincial-municipal priorities. Our government believes that a strong-mayor system would help address the housing supply crisis in these cities, and by highlighting just a few examples of the support that we have received on this matter, it is clear that we are not alone in our belief.

Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the Premier. He said again and again—and I’m using a direct quote: Mayors are “accountable for everything, but they have the same single vote as a single councillor.” That means that mayors, who have been elected by voters across an entire city, often have no more say on an issue than a lone councillor representing just one ward. Yet Ontarians want their mayors to be able to do more. They want their mayors to cut red tape, to get shovels in the ground and end the housing supply crisis. They expect them to be responsible for all of the other major projects and priorities in their city. They’re counting on their mayors to get the job done.

What is concerning is that we’re seeing too many priority projects fall behind. Some of them have been decided to be cancelled altogether. To be truly effective for their communities, mayors need our support. They need specific tools to bring these priority projects to the forefront and to get them complete. That’s why I’m proud to lead off third reading debate on our proposed Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act. The changes included here would, if passed, give the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa the ability to drive policy changes. It would give them the power to select municipal department heads and, perhaps most importantly, the power to present a budget. These abilities would help our municipal partners deliver on our shared priorities such as housing.

We know that empowered mayors could better help the province and municipalities to work together on housing and other initiatives that are critical for their communities. It’s something we need as we face record growth in the province of Ontario. Our population is going to continue to increase, and housing needs to keep up with demand. And what’s more, growth isn’t slowing down. In a way, Ontario is grappling with its own success. The high quality of life here and our future prospects have drawn many, many people to the province of Ontario. As our province continues to flourish and as we welcome more newcomers in search of economic opportunity, there will be even more pressure on our housing system. That’s why we need to take bold action, and we need to take it now.

Forecasts show that over one third of Ontario’s growth in the next decade is going to take place in Toronto and Ottawa. The good news is that these cities have shown us they’re shovel-ready for increased population and they’re committed to cutting red tape.

Madam Speaker, before I go further and explain the details of our proposed legislation, I want to answer an important question: How did Ontario get here? How did our province get to a point where we now have to make these steps as a government? Well, there was, and there still is, glaring evidence that municipal planning approvals, including appropriate zoning, have often delayed or hindered opposition from some members of local councils. Some projects have even been abandoned. Even if the project finally gets the go-ahead, a lot of damage has already been done in communities across this province.

The C.D. Howe Institute found restrictions and extra costs on building new housing has dramatically increased the price of housing. These restrictions include delays on project approvals. The institute found these barriers add approximately $168,000, or 22%, to the average cost of a single detached home in Toronto.

The Ontario Association of Architects also looked into the cost of delays. Taking a 100-unit condominium building in Toronto as an example, the association concluded that delayed approvals cost home builders approximately $2,000 per unit, per month.

In 2020, the Building Industry and Land Development Association, or BILD, reported that each month of delay—and this is just in permit approvals—adds $1.46 per square foot to the price of a low-rise project—$1.46 per square foot, and an additional $2.21 per square foot at the end cost of a high-rise development. That kind of cost increase, caused by unnecessary delays, has a significant impact on the lifetime of a project.

These delays are not just felt by developers. They’re felt by homebuyers, new condo owners and renters who are forced to push back move-in plans and, at the very worst, find temporary housing to fill in the gap between the previous lease and the new one. These are not problems that hard-working Ontarians should face, especially when the delays are avoidable.

RESCON, which is Ontario’s leading association of residential builders, also looked into the cost of delays. RESCON says we are now under-producing housing by 12,000 units per year here in Ontario because of delays.

Clearly the evidence and the alarms are there. We need to do everything we can to reduce delays and help ensure that new homes get built as quickly as possible.

I’d like to take a few moments, Madam Speaker, to explain specific ways in which our proposed legislation would support this growth in both Toronto and Ottawa. Our bill proposes changes to the Municipal Act, to the City of Toronto Act and to the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. If passed, these changes, along with the associated regulations, would provide the heads of council in both the city of Toronto and the city of Ottawa with additional governance tools and increased powers to align municipal decision-making with provincial priorities.

The increased executive powers proposed under this legislation would allow the mayors of these two cities to better organize city hall. These mayors would be able to hire and fire a chief administrative officer as well as certain department heads. This would exclude, however, statutory positions like the clerk, the treasurer, the chief of police, the chief building official, the medical officer of health—there are a number of others that are used as examples. But they would be able to create or reorganize departments. Madam Speaker, they would also have the authority to appoint chairs or vice-chairs for committees and local boards, which we could identify in the regulations, and they would have the power to establish certain new committees.

The mayors would also be able to introduce items for council’s consideration if the item, in the mayor’s opinion, would advance a provincial priority. That means, if passed, these changes would enable the mayors of Ottawa and Toronto to direct items related to provincial priorities, as identified in regulation, for council consideration. This includes the ability for the mayor to direct staff to prepare proposals for council’s consideration.

I want to take this opportunity to pause and stress that the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa could support priority items, as well as their vision for their communities, through the ability to develop their municipality budget and then table it for council consideration.

Now, I know some on the other side are going to argue that this limits the role of city councillors. I want to stress to you, Madam Speaker, that there is still a lot of room to debate the budget on the council floor, something that I think we all feel is a very positive step. Council would be able to propose amendments to the budget; those amendments could be subject to a mayor’s veto. Again, Speaker, we believe the changes that we’re proposing still maintain a solid working relationship between council and the mayor.

Our proposed changes would also give those two mayors the ability to veto bylaws passed by council. However, and this is a very important point, the mayors could use their veto power on these bylaws only if—and I want to stress only if—all or part of the bylaw could potentially interfere with a provincial priority as identified by a regulation. So at the same time, mayors would still have just one vote at council.

Of course, Speaker, there has to be a system of checks and balances, and my parliamentary assistant, PA Holland, will speak to these checks and balances in more detail a little later on.

I wanted to share my time with my two colleagues, so I’m going to take this opportunity to pass the torch over to the Associate Minister of Housing. I look forward to both of my colleagues providing more details on this particular bill.

I’m just very pleased that we’re here today. This is critical for our government’s priority of building 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. It’s also critical that we work with the mayors of our two largest cities. As I said, over the next 10 years, we believe that over a third of Ontario’s growth will take place in Ottawa and Toronto. We need to give the mayors the tools to get the job done. This is something that the Premier and I heard loud and clear from the big city mayors when we met with them in January. They indicated that it wasn’t just municipal processes; the province needed to give them the tools to get the job done. This is one tool that our government is working on to ensure that that happens.

Madam Speaker, again, it’s great to see you in the chair this morning. I’ll turn it over now to the Associate Minister of Housing.

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure today to recognize an outstanding resident and dedicated public servant from my riding of Durham. After more than 30 years of public service to the township of Scugog in my riding, Her Worship Mayor Bobbie Drew has announced that she will be retiring from public service after the October 24 municipal election.

Bobbie Drew began her elected career in 1998, when she was elected to represent Scugog as trustee on the Durham District School Board, where she served for 12 years and retired as vice-chair of that board. She was elected to Scugog council as a local councillor in 2004, later moving up to regional council in 2010 and finally to the mayor’s office in 2018.

Throughout her career, Mayor Drew sat on a variety of committees, such as the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority and the Durham region finance committee. Among her accomplishments, Mayor Drew successfully oversaw many successful initiatives like the Scugog waterfront action plan, the active transportation master plan, community improvement plans and the IT strategic plan.

Mayor Drew’s time in elected office demonstrated commitment and perseverance, associated with a warm and welcoming leadership style based on listening, learning and exercising sound judgment. On behalf of the residents of Scugog, Durham riding and all Ontarians: Thank you, Mayor Bobbie Drew, for your service.

It’s a pleasure to continue my speaking from this morning. I got about seven minutes into it, so I just had time to thank a bunch of people.

I want to start off, first of all, by mentioning my son, Jackson, who’s starting his first day of high school today. He’s a little bit nervous, as I’m sure a lot of kids across Ontario are, so I want to wish him and all the kids and parents and teachers a safe return to school today, and a great school year.

I had some time this morning to thank municipal candidates from across Ontario. I’m a former city councillor and budget chair myself, and also a mayoral candidate, so I understand how difficult it is to run for municipal office, to put your name forward. And I just want to congratulate all those people who have done that. It’s not an easy thing on your family—or on your finances, quite frankly, as many of us know. Municipally, it’s so important to be involved in your community. So congratulations to all those folks.

I named all the delegations that came for hearings last Monday—from municipal associations to groups of builders and developers. We appreciate everyone’s input, and it was great to join my colleagues from University–Rosedale and Ottawa Centre to talk with those delegations about their concerns with the bill.

I just want to give some general reflections on those comments from the delegations that appeared before I get into the actual bill. Everyone who appeared agreed that we need more homes, and I think everyone in this room, in this House, agrees that we need to build more homes. We also agreed that we need more affordable homes. Where things diverged is whether this bill will actually accomplish that. We’re suggesting that the government has really failed to show how stronger-mayors legislation will actually translate into more homes. Some of the delegations suggested and spoke about ways that it may actually slow down the ability to build more homes, and we’ll get into that shortly.

There’s also some debate about how a mayor will use those powers. No one could really answer the question, “How can you guarantee that a mayor will use the powers in the way that the province wants them to?” There’s no evidence to suggest there are more NIMBY mayors than non-NIMBY mayors. And if you have a strong NIMBY mayor, they can unilaterally hire a strong NIMBY CAO and a planner under this legislation. So the translation of how this bill will work in practice is something that the government has not fully explained—and whether those powers are appropriate and transparent. Many of the delegations raised points of view in terms of this making municipal government much less transparent, especially when it comes to the hiring practices, which I will talk about further in my presentation as well.

No one seems to understand what provincial priorities are specifically, and how they would be promoted by this strong-mayor scheme. Some real confusion on the government’s part, I feel, is in distinguishing between the Canadian and American municipal government systems, which are fundamentally different. A number of folks on the government side have talked about Chicago and other American cities, but in practice, one doesn’t translate into the other. City managers in the United States are not the same as CAOs in Canada. They’re fundamentally different systems, and to suggest that you can take an American model and put it here in Canadian cities is not practical—and many folks who have a lot of experience, such as the Ontario provincial planners and others who appeared as delegations, said as much in their presentations.

Another question is why the government has not taken action on things that will actually make a difference. Many folks have raised things like exclusionary and inclusionary zoning and the changes that need to happen there. The housing crisis has gotten worse, not better, under this government. I’ve noticed a lot of the language in the House recently—they talk about “the previous government” this and “the previous government” that, and I know that they’re referring to the Liberals, but I think they have to understand that they’re actually the previous government, and things have gotten worse, not better, especially with respect to affordable housing.

Finally, I’ve really been reflecting on what a lot of the big city mayors and other municipal associations have said in terms of needing that support, financial and otherwise, from the province.

I can remember, as a councillor, between 2006 and 2014—we went through the financial crisis in 2008, and there was a joint infrastructure spending plan that the Conservative federal government, actually, put forward. Many of you, especially if you were into municipal politics, will remember that. When the will was there and the financing was there, that infrastructure program moved forward with an incredible number of projects throughout the country.

Also, most recently, we had the Canada Summer Games in Niagara, and we appreciated the investment in our community and the great respect for the volunteers and the athletes. But, boy, was an awful lot of money ever spent on those games. A lot of my constituents said, “If we could show the same cross-party, cross-government commitment and funding to the affordable housing crisis as we do to those games, imagine what we could do for the affordable housing crisis.” I think those are legitimate questions to ask—why the government has come forward with this and not some more tangible and effective ways to deal with the affordable housing crisis.

I want to be clear about our position on the bill, which is that, once again, this Premier is demonstrating a disdain for local democracy by unilaterally interfering with municipal politics during a municipal election with absolutely no consultation. The Premier’s strong-mayor proposal has nothing to do with housing, as the Premier has already admitted; it’s about the Premier giving the mayors the power to help him bypass councils, override local bylaws and stifle consultation. The bill will make local government less transparent and less accountable while doing nothing at all to address the affordable housing crisis.

Many of the comments we’ve heard from right across the province have to do with the really incredible lack of consultation around this bill. Especially if you’re going to put a bill forward in the middle of a municipal election, you would think that you’d consult, even on short notice, with AMO and other municipal organizations. But we heard nothing about this bill or strong mayors for the entire last term of government. We heard nothing about strong mayors through two housing bills that this government brought forward in the last term. We heard absolutely nothing about it during the Housing Affordability Task Force and all of those recommendations that came forward. We heard nothing about it during the election. If this was planned to happen immediately after the election—bringing us back in the middle of summer, and an emergency session to pass legislation—you would have thought they’d be aware of that during the election and put that out there.

There was no consultation with the big city mayors, and there was no consultation with the mayor of Ottawa, which is one of the first two cities that this legislation is supposed to affect. As a matter of fact, the mayor of Ottawa said he found out about it in the media, which is incredible.

The bill is supposed to be about building homes. That’s what the government says. But apart from the bill’s title, there’s literally nothing in the bill that has to do with building homes. There’s nothing that implements, as I mentioned, even a single recommendation of the government’s own Housing Affordability Task Force, such as ending exclusionary zoning and enabling more missing middle housing, both of which were debated during the election. My friend from University–Rosedale, as the housing critic, has been raising this endlessly for years, to no avail, with this government. There’s also nothing that establishes a public home builder or ensures the construction of new affordable or non-market homes. There’s nothing that ensures the construction of new basement apartments, laneway homes, granny flats—all the things that have been talked about for years and years. There’s nothing that expands inclusionary zoning, incredibly. That’s something that could happen.

And it’s not clear to many what problem the bill is trying to solve. For example, Toronto mayor John Tory has not lost a single significant vote at council, and there’s no evidence that a mayoral veto would have changed any of the significant council outcomes.

The minister has claimed that the bill is necessary because some municipalities are blocking progress on housing. We heard from the big city mayors chair, Cam Guthrie, about some of the big city mayors’ frustrations with being blamed for the housing crisis, which this government has done quite aggressively, both within its legislation and in its public comments—blaming the slow progress of housing, that it’s all the fault of municipalities. The minister has also failed to explain how giving more power to the mayor would address this issue.

The bill links veto powers to provincial priorities, and the minister has not explained why any mayor elected to serve municipal voters would willingly overturn a council vote to serve the Premier. The province already has perfectly legitimate ways of identifying provincial interests and requiring municipal consistency with provincial policies, especially with respect to housing and development. If the problem is that municipalities are not complying with provincial laws and policies, then how does a mayoral veto help? Why doesn’t the province just use its existing powers?

The bill gives the mayor control over both raising taxes and spending them through the new budget process. I’ll be mentioning that a little bit later on as well. Instead of being required to secure the support of the majority of council, the mayor requires only the approval of one third. There’s no requirement that the mayor receive recommendations from a budget committee or a public consultation process. The mayor could ask a lobbyist to write the budget behind closed doors if they wanted. I find that particularly troubling as a former budget chair who—I was the chair of the St. Catharines budget committee, which is a large urban municipality. I had a lot of respect for the process that that municipality used—having department heads, councillors who were elected from council, the mayor and the media sitting in the room as the budget process unfolded. It was a transparent process that I had a lot of respect for. It’s really shocking where this bill takes that process.

I’d like to talk briefly about what’s referred to as the weak-mayor system versus the strong-mayor system. I don’t like the term “weak-mayor system.” I don’t think the system we have produces weak mayors; if you think about people like Hazel McCallion and others who are held up as examples of a strong mayor, I think it clearly depends on the quality of the mayor who people elect.

While councils wield the powers of the municipality, the mayor’s statutory role includes providing leadership to council, representing the council at ceremonial functions and promoting the purposes of the city. Something we don’t discuss at great length in this House is the role that informal powers play in governance. I was fortunate enough to serve under a very strong mayor who did things by consensus, and we got an awful lot done in Niagara. The member from St. Catharines actually served on that council with me, and we’re very proud of the work we did—a mayor who led by consultation and character and strength.

A council may also delegate some of its formal authority to the mayor, and we saw that in Toronto when Toronto city council delegated to Mayor David Miller the power to appoint the executive committee and chairs of standing committees, which grants the mayor additional formal powers. Because executive committee roles are desirable by councillors, the power to appoint committee members tends to ensure that the mayor can usually count on close to a majority of council votes. We saw powers also taken away from a former mayor of Toronto as well, and many would argue that that’s a very important check and balance in the system.

With the strong-mayor system, we can ask why this is being brought forward now. We know that in 2011, over a decade ago, the Premier was quoted as saying, “I believe in a strong-mayor system, like they have in the States. The mayor should have veto power ... so he has enough power to stop council.... The mayor should be the mayor. At the end of the day ... the mayor’s responsible for everything.” That comment in that article gives us a lot of insight into the legislation that’s before us. The Premier—at the time, a councillor—outlined that it was a challenge to get legislation passed with 23 votes to woo on council.

We heard a lot about the mayoral system in Chicago in the Premier’s comments from 2011 and over the past few weeks. The government members like to bring up Chicago. But what’s interesting about Chicago, as I’ve raised in the past, is that it’s a charter city. An issue that we’ve tried to talk about in this House—and folks at Charter City Toronto and charter cities Ontario have approached both the government and the opposition with some pretty interesting and well-supported ideas. To complicate matters, Chicago, which the Premier touted as a great example of municipal governance, is actually a weak-mayor system under the charter. In practical terms, though, Chicago has an extremely powerful mayor, which shows how informal rules in practice are often vastly more relevant than the formal ones, and it really depends on the quality of the mayor and the quality of the council as well and their ability to work together.

I’ve raised the opinion of Ken Greenberg, the former director of urban design and architecture for the city of Toronto, who talked about the Premier’s record with development at the municipal level: “His previous government sliced the number of councillors in half just before the last municipal elections in 2018, and his cabinet has had a field day issuing ministerial zoning orders ... to let developers build sprawling projects slicing up Ontario’s ... greenbelt and unsustainable hyper-dense towers that don’t help with housing affordability” at all.

Mr. Greenberg said, “Critics also worry about what might happen if a strong mayor comes to power who is also a populist bent on crushing the careful official plans drawn up by cities for sustainable smart growth. When he was a Toronto city councillor,” the Premier “himself actually road-tested this scenario when he tried to strike a unilateral deal to undermine Waterfront Toronto and get hand-picked developers to build a luxury yacht club, megamall and Ferris wheel by the lake with little or no parkland” attached.

“An American mayor’s biggest rival for power is not the city council, it’s the city manager—an appointed bureaucrat who has vast power and can make elected councils weak or irrelevant.”

Mr. Greenberg also pointed out that “Canadian cities have chief administrative officers, but they’re not really the mayor’s rival; they’re professional civil servants who have only a fraction of the powers that many US city managers enjoy.”

Mr. Greenberg pointed out, “While it is true that a ‘good’ strong mayor may be able to accomplish more things more quickly, what happens when we elect a bad one who tries to run the city with hare-brained slogans and schemes,” as he calls it?

He said, “My concern is that under the guise of seeking to ‘get things done,’” the Premier’s “strong-mayor move to centralize power may undermine a critical virtue of Canadian cities: the need for consensual city building.

“Democracy, in cities and everywhere else, relies on hearing many voices—not just the strong one—and having a non-partisan group of civil servants who are loyal not just to a single politician, but to the city itself.”

I thought those were very wise words by Mr. Greenberg.

It’s not hard to imagine what could happen if powers were abused at the municipal level at the behest of the current Premier. The record is not good.

Shortly after the 2018 election, as I mentioned, the government tabled Bill 5, to cancel regional chair elections and cut the size of Toronto city council while the campaign was already under way and folks had already put their names forward and put money out there. When a lower court found Bill 5 to be unconstitutional and granted a stay, the government, again, passed Bill 31, which invoked the “notwithstanding” clause to bypass charter rights. After an appeal court overturned that, Bill 5 went ahead, and Bill 31 was left to die on the order paper. Bill 5 was still subject to a constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court, which—you know this government, over the last number of years, has not been shy about spending taxpayer dollars on court cases to defend itself.

In 2020, the government tabled Bill 218, a COVID recovery bill that included a clause which repealed the legislation allowing municipalities to use ranked ballots in municipal elections, which many folks considered to be extremely intrusive and undemocratic.

I want to turn to some of the testimony that we heard last Monday from delegations, and in particular some exchanges—in our first delegation, we had Dr. Myer Siemiatycki, who showed up and gave what I thought was an excellent presentation about some of the concerns with Bill 3. He’s a professor of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. I’d like to read into the record part of his presentation because I thought it really highlighted the concerns that folks on this side of the House share.

“I’m generally a ‘glass half full’ kind of person. I like to accentuate the positive. Regrettably, I don’t have positives to say about Bill 3. That’s because I don’t think it fulfills its stated objectives—and will create a host of problems. I don’t think Bill 3 meaningfully strengthens city mayors; rather, I actually think it weakens them, and it creates new risks for their city government—nor do I think the bill’s measures will make a dent in our housing problems. The province already has more than enough powers to do that, and I wish Queen’s Park would exercise them.”

Those are comments we heard from municipal associations as well. Why is the government not exercising the powers that it already has?

He went on to say, “I’m certainly not alone in my skepticism over Bill 3. Toronto’s five living past mayors have all gone on record as opposed to this bill. Interestingly, these were mayors from all political stripes—a Conservative, an NDPer, a Liberal and, in fact, an independent.

“Bill 3 is not a partisan issue. It’s a question of good governance and solving real problems; I’m sorry that Bill 3 achieves neither. Instead, it will create a host of new problems for mayors and for municipalities while generally leaving our housing problems to fester....

“Bill 3 is another example of Ontario provincial governments misusing municipalities for their own interests. It turns our mayors from local chief magistrates into provincial enforcement officers at city hall. The veto power accorded to the mayor in this legislation applies only to council decisions that are counter to ‘prescribed provincial priorities.’ Mayors will now be expected, and perhaps even pressured, to overturn majority decisions of their democratically elected councils in order to comply with provincial policy. This doesn’t strengthen mayors or local government.

“Bill 3 further mistakenly assumes that mayoral authority in Ontario is handcuffed by the other elected members of council. Mayors in Ontario have more than enough authority and soft powers to lead their council. No one ever accused Mississauga’s Hazel McCallion of being a weak mayor. And Toronto mayor John Tory ... has not lost a single significant vote on council during his eight years in office. What really weakens mayors are the limited financial resources and statutory powers that cities receive from the province”—and we heard that over and over again, Speaker. “Instead of addressing this, Bill 3 sets its sights on weakening the role of municipal councillors.

“The bill gives the mayor sole authority to hire and fire senior city staff. This is dangerous. It will turn a professional, neutral, high-quality senior staff into personal selections of the mayor and no one else. In such a system, senior staff will recommend and deliver what the mayor wants, regardless of council and city residents’ preferences. That’s not a public administration model designed for excellent government.”

We heard those concerns from the professional planners as well.

“Additionally, Bill 3 will give mayors super powers over the municipal budget. Not long ago, Toronto experienced a successful public and city council revolt against a previous mayor who promoted a budget making deep cuts to municipal services. Do we really want to further centralize budget powers in the mayor’s hands rather than in a majority of council backed by public input? I don’t think so.

“In considering your stance on Bill 3, I would ask committee members and all members of the Legislature to consider this”—and this is a very important question: “Are municipalities a legitimate democratic form of government? If so, is there any red line a province should not cross in imposing its will on municipalities, and is Bill 3 that red line?

“Furthermore, I would ask the members of this committee from the governing party to consider this: The day will inevitably come when another party forms government at Queen’s Park. How will you feel back in your hometowns if the next provincial government tells mayors to align your local government’s decisions with its prescribed provincial priorities? I imagine you may well be back before this committee yourselves complaining about the loss of local democracy....

“For almost 200 years, Ontario municipalities have been well served by a governance model based on mayoral-led, collegial, collaborative governance rooted in strong ties to their residents. That needs to continue.”

I think that those comments very accurately reflect what a lot of us on this side of the House feel about these changes.

Later on—it was interesting—my colleague from University–Rosedale asked a question. She said, “One of the issues that I’ve heard from constituents” in her riding “is how putting more power into the mayor’s office will limit the authority that individual councillors have in Toronto. Councillors in Toronto have upwards of 100,000 people voting for them, and there is real value in ensuring councillors have the power over the budgetary process and the power they need to represent their constituents well.” The member from University–Rosedale asked the presenter to speak on how democracy and civic engagement are limited by concentrating power in the mayor’s office.

The answer was interesting. He said, “There’s no question that if this legislation goes through, it will marginalize the input and the voice of city councillors. By doing that, who it’s really harming are local residents. Currently, the councillors have a single vote on all municipal issues. They also collectively appoint the senior staff of the city. It is currently not a unilateral decision of the head of council, the mayor. So, if we go down the path of this legislation, ward councillors will effectively be sidelined in the major decisions that a city government is making. The senior staff will see their careers as totally dependent on approval from the mayor. That means that the kind of advice that will come to city council and the recommendations that will come to city council from senior staff will, out of their own self-protectiveness, be framed by what they perceive the mayor to want, and what councillors connected to local residents advocate will be inconsequential.”

So that flags a really important issue that we heard a number of times throughout the presentations.

At one point, I asked one of the groups of builders—because we kept hearing this line, which obviously comes from the government, about taking politics out of the planning process; that somehow this bill will take the politics out of the planning process, which I find extremely puzzling. How a bill that will possibly cause mayors to be vetoing their own council and then council to be vetoing the mayor—it seems to me it injects a whole lot of politics into the process. With the budget process, the legislation actually allows the mayor to hire a CAO without going through any of the budget processes and to come up with a budget all on their own. So I don’t think anyone really thinks this is going to take the politics out of the planning process.

As a matter of fact, in my experience—and we heard this from some of the other presenters—we had a lot of difficult planning decisions that I dealt with as a councillor. Whether you’re in Toronto or a small town or a medium-sized municipality, those are issues that you deal with. And you deal with residents who are upset about developments in their neighbourhood—some of them for good reason, and some of them what we would call NIMBY, not in my backyard. It’s often the planner who actually is the voice of reason—a planner who is independent, who has been hired through a proper hiring process, and who is part of their professional association. I can remember many times the planner promoting a development that conforms to the official plan, even though the mayor and council may be leaning a different way out of political pressure, because they’re often the voice of reason. The planning department is often the objective voice, and they’re often the ones saying, “This doesn’t go against the official plan. There’s no reason for this development not to go forward.” And sometimes they actually get council off the hook, because council can then say, “We’re following the professional advice of our planner.”

So I think that people who are more experienced with the process will understand that this idea of the mayor actually hiring a planner is not such a good one.

Just on the budget process again, it is our understanding that under the new legislation, the mayor can draft a budget and present it to council, which we see as a very dangerous thing to allow a mayor to do unilaterally, without going through a public and transparent process. Council may pass amendments, but these amendments can be vetoed by the mayor.

Toronto currently has an executive committee which oversees setting strategic priorities and fiscal policy. The process of a budget committee is allowed under the bill, but it’s not required. So there’s no question that under this bill, the mayor could unilaterally put a budget together, and if they had more than a third—not a majority, but a third of council—they could pass that budget and do it in a way that’s not in any way or in any sense transparent.

With respect to the hiring of a CAO: I’ve talked at length about this in the past, from experience. As you may recall, in Niagara we had a situation where—the power to hire and fire may seem innocuous, but we had a CAO who was hired, actually, by the chair and was investigated by the Ombudsman of Ontario, Paul Dubé, who came to a number of conclusions about why a mayor or a chair should not be able to unilaterally hire a head executive officer.

When I was first elected in 2018, a tremendous amount of scrutiny was being placed on the regional chair in Niagara, and particularly on the CAO as well.

The former MPP for my riding worked for many years to bring accountability to the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, where the chief officer was hired into the region. It was done in a way where they received the résumés and information on other candidates, and the CAO was hired into an office and given a severance package—which was not transparent and was not even done with the permission of council—of several years that amounted to millions of dollars. This was written about extensively in the media. It was called an inside job. The Ombudsman came out with some recommendations that I think are instructive in this debate: first of all, ensuring that staff in the chair’s office do not usurp or undermine the role of professional staff, especially when those roles have been set by council or a committee; and adopting a policy setting out the process for hiring a chief administrative officer, including the appropriate roles of staff and their accountability to council or a committee of council charged with the hiring.

He recommended adopting a bylaw setting the parameters of the relationship between council and the CAO—this is something that the professional association has asked for at our delegations—including the role of council with respect to amending the CAO’s contract and salary and ensuring that staff and officials act in accordance with the direction of council and committees of council.

A CAO has incredible powers, particularly in larger municipalities, and I think it’s important that this House is thoughtful about the implications of this legislation.

As I mentioned, we talked to Susan Wiggins from the Ontario Professional Planners Institute, who gave some really serious concerns about the hiring of a CAO. She said, “Currently there is a separation between the mayor and the head of the planning department. There’s often a chief administrative officer or a city manager who reports to council and is responsible for selecting senior management, including a chief planner. This layer of separation avoids a sense of obligation and allows the chief planner to provide his or her independent advice on the planning matter of the day. This independence often serves to benefit more housing supply in certain communities. It allows elected officials,” as I mentioned, “including mayors, to defend politically challenging projects by saying, ‘The chief planner has deemed the project to align with all of our policies and plans.’” I saw this happen many times, as a city councillor. “That opinion of the chief planner is a professional opinion from highly trained professional planners and is based on data-gathering and research, as cited in the legislation.

“The heads of planning in both Ottawa and Toronto are registered professional planners ... and as such are bound by a professional code of conduct that requires recommendations in the public interest. If a mayor is seen to have direct control over the hiring and firing of the chief planner, it would remove the important separation between these two roles.

“OPPI is concerned that allowing a mayor to hire and fire the head of a planning department may actually be to the detriment of building more housing in the province. It may create more political pressure on the mayor from factions who may not support intensification where policies direct it. We therefore recommend that the chief planner be” exempt under the exempt persons in the act.

That comes from the Ontario Professional Planners Institute, which is a group that sets the standards for planners, suggesting that the head of the planning—that it may result in less homes being built, not more.

Getting to some of the reaction of mayors across Ontario: I was interested to see an article in the Hamilton Spectator from the mayor of the city of St. Catharines, where I served as a councillor. In Niagara, as I’ve mentioned in the past, all of the mayors of the three larger municipalities were pretty quick in coming out and saying they were not in support of this legislation, and they had some serious concerns about it. I thought that Mayor Sendzik from St. Catharines wrote some really interesting comments, especially about the official planning process: “The idea that giving more powers to mayors will magically lead to more housing is too simplistic. If this is all it takes to address the housing crisis, why not give more powers to end homelessness and tackle mental health issues and addictions? Add in more powers to end climate change and mayors will become superheroes”—he said sarcastically.

“But that is what Premier Ontario Doug Ford is attempting to do as a means to solve the housing crisis through his government’s new sweeping legislation.... In essence, it follows this line of thinking: We have a housing crisis; therefore if mayors had more powers, the housing crisis would be solved. The press release announcing the legislation even proclaimed it as ‘empowering mayors to build housing faster.’

“The sweeping set of new powers for mayors includes the ability to hire ... chief administrative officers and senior staff positions.” It goes on to say—to the point that I’ve already raised—about the ability, if a NIMBY mayor is elected, to hire people who support that position.

He said, “After eight years as mayor of St. Catharines, I can confidently state I didn’t need special powers to build more housing. In St. Catharines we have approved more housing developments, of all types, over the last eight years than any time in the last 30 years.” And this is the important part: “We achieved this because of a progressive city official plan, approved in 2012.”

This is where this mayor gets into what we’ve heard from many municipalities in their complaints about the Ontario Land Tribunal and actual constructive suggestions that this government could adopt to make the planning process more streamlined. He said, “Official plans are a tool developed by municipal staff who are experts in municipal land use planning. It conforms with provincial planning regulations that take into account future population growth, transportation expansion, protection of farmland, sustainability, heritage protection and other aspects that guide growth. Official plans are future forward land use planning regulations that shape communities for tomorrow and support growth to create complete communities. It’s all prescribed under the Ontario Planning Act”—it’s already there.

“If a developer proposes a housing project that meets the requirements of the city’s official plan, it should be approved by staff and council. But under the Planning Act, there is a process that provides the public with opportunities to comment on proposals in their neighbourhood and this is the part where projects become contentious, often leading to appeals to try and stop development.

“And this is where the province needs to step in.”

I’ve talked to developers I got to know as a city councillor. I represented a ward of the city that was a former industrial area, and there was all kinds of brownfield development happening. I had to work very, very closely with developers, and I’ve maintained a lot of those relationships. Whether you talk to community groups or developers, many of them will talk about how the official plan should be respected and that what needs to be cut down on is the number of appeals to the Ontario Land Tribunal. There’s quite a campaign being led across Ontario, adopted by many mayors, to actually abolish the Ontario Land Tribunal. Whether you agree with that or not, we can certainly agree, almost universally, that some major reforms need to happen. That’s something practical that this government could do in listening to municipalities and respecting official plans.

Mr. Sendzik continued: “The province doesn’t need to give mayors special powers. It needs to reduce appeals by the public to projects they think ‘don’t fit’ in their neighbourhood. If a development conforms with the official plan—a public process reviewed every five years and updated every 10 years—staff recommend approval and a simple majority of council support it, there should be no appeal process.”

So that puts the planning emphasis on the front end, on the official plan, and cuts down on the appeals—and not just by neighbourhood groups. In Niagara, there were developments held up for an extended period of time by a developer who appealed a council decision—which conformed to the official plan—to the OLT, and that held up all developments around the city of St. Catharines for quite some time. So it happens due to developers as well.

He said, “Adding more powers to the office of the mayor will only weaken the functionality of cities. It won’t accelerate building of housing, as the roadblocks that exist due to appeals will not be curtailed by the proposed legislation.”

So what does the bill do for housing? I’ve stood up in the House many times to speak to the housing legislation, as my friend here from University–Rosedale has done. The bills have arguably made the situation worse because, as we have argued many times, they actually exacerbate the kind of speculation that’s happening in the province rather than doing anything at all to fix the affordability problem. As we’ve mentioned, all of the recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force, which this government talked about endlessly, are being ignored in favour of a bill that does nothing to promote more housing.

So if the minister is serious about housing, we have suggested many things, as have big city mayors, AMO, many other folks. We could be talking about ending exclusionary zoning. We could be talking about allowing municipalities to build missing middle homes. This legislation does nothing about that. We could open up public land for affordable housing. We could put in real rent control, something that would be really helpful here in Toronto. Clamp down on speculation—my friend, this morning, asked a question about a vacancy and speculation tax. We could fund community housing. That’s one of the big failures, both of provincial and federal government—not putting money into social housing, where the real need is. And we could expand inclusionary zoning. Instead, we have a bill that—the government cannot demonstrate that it, in any meaningful way, supports the building of homes, or especially of affordable housing.

In my area of Niagara, one city, Niagara Falls, which is the worst example—a waiting list of 18 years to get into affordable housing, through the Niagara housing board.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention AMO, who presented last Monday. AMO is careful—they have a number of members, and not everyone is opposed or in favour; they have a variety of opinions. But they did come out with three concerns that we should mention briefly:

First, they asked, “As the government considers how it may expand the new provisions in the Municipal Act to include additional municipalities, it must engage in broad consultation with the public and with both professional and political municipal organizations, including AMO.” There’s obviously frustration there that there was not appropriate consultation. And they certainly hope that if the bill moves forward—the government has a majority, so, obviously, it will—when the decision is made to expand into other municipalities, if it is, that the appropriate consultation that didn’t happen this time will happen in the future with those municipalities and with those organizations.

Secondly, they said, “The AMO board has taken note of the strong concerns expressed by municipal public administrators regarding the proposed provisions of the Municipal Act that would allow a mayor to unilaterally hire and fire a chief administrative officer, and it urges this committee to give careful consideration to those concerns as it proceeds.” They’re asking us to listen to the administrators and the professional planners who have come forward and said, “There’s a red flag here. You need to really think before you make a mistake here.”

And third, “The AMO board finds that the proposed changes to the Municipal Act which would allow a mayor to unilaterally hire and fire department heads and to reorganize a municipality’s public administration are at odds with established good practices of both private and public sector governance and administration, and should be removed from the bill.” That’s some pretty strong language about the government’s plans in that regard.

So there are some pretty strong concerns from people who have come forward—concerns that the government would have heard if they had consulted properly or at all. I want to say it’s rare, and it hasn’t been so rare for this government—but to come forward with a bill that has never been mentioned in provincial government circles for the last five years, even through an election, during a municipal election, raises some real red flags and some real concerns.

My time is almost at an end, and I want to conclude by saying that we see nothing in this bill that will achieve the minister’s stated priorities. I don’t think this government has been able to demonstrate clearly how strong-mayor powers will create housing or make it more affordable. Once again, this government has shown that in a time of a crisis, they cannot offer solutions. Municipalities have routinely articulated to the province that the housing crisis does not solely fall on their shoulders and what they need to address it is support and financial assistance. Over and over again, as I mentioned, this government has blamed municipalities for the entire housing situation.

Instead, what this government offers is sweeping new powers encouraging mayors to veto council priorities, hire and fire senior staff, and unilaterally create budgets.

This bill does not create housing or strengthen democracy. It weakens councils and entrenches the notion that mayors should be sledgehammers for provincial priorities. While we do not yet know the full detail, we know that this bill has the capacity to make municipal decision-making less transparent and less accountable.

If this government was really interested in creating housing, not just enriching their friends with high-priced development and MZOs, they would listen to and work in partnership with municipal councils and give them the legislative and financial support that they need to move forward.

With that, I would once again like to thank all of the delegations who came forward last Monday. I thought they did an excellent job on very, very short notice. I hope that the government will give some real consideration to the concerns that were raised with respect to creating a situation in councils that is less transparent and less accountable—problems, potentially, with budget processes, where a mayor can unilaterally bring a budget forward without any kind of democracy on the council—serious concerns that have been brought forward by professionals about turning objective, professional positions into hiring by friends of the mayor, and the serious situations that could result from that in planning decisions.

The housing crisis has gotten worse under this government, and it’s time that they came forward with real solutions that will bring real results.