Toronto city council’s battle with Doug Ford wages on.
After the premier made good on his threat to tear out three major bike lanes, some councillors want to study how the province’s biggest city can push back on provincial control.
“Toronto needs a new arrangement with senior levels of government that ensures we have the independence necessary for 21st-century cities to thrive and achieve results for residents,” Coun. Josh Matlow wrote in a motion to be debated at next week’s council meeting.
Cities are governed by the province, meaning they do not have constitutionally protected rights of their own — though they are responsible for overseeing services to millions of people.
“Large cities like Toronto are now responsible for delivering, and funding a large share of, transit, roads, social housing, recreation, and other services residents rely on every day,” Matlow wrote. “Yet the province can overturn any of our considered and debated decisions on a whim.”
Matlow’s motion contemplates a kind of “Charter city.”
“Common in the United States and elsewhere, Charter cities have supreme authority over ‘municipal affairs.’ Also referred to as ‘home rule,’ a Charter city’s law concerning a municipal affair will trump a state law governing the same topic,” the motion said.
Technically, Toronto is already a Charter city because it’s governed by the City of Toronto Act, whereas other Ontario municipalities fall under the Municipal Act.
Matlow’s motion is arguing for “something different,” said Zachary Taylor, a political science professor at Western University specializing in urban politics.
He likened the move to “creating a kind of firewall around the city that the province can't invade,” Taylor said.
“In the American context, it’s called home rule. In Canada, home rule is constitutionally impossible unless we amend the national constitution,” Taylor said.
Constitutional amendments are a tough go. The amendment would have to be passed by the House of Commons, the Senate and at least seven provinces whose population accounts for more than half of Canada.
Since the change would only affect Toronto and not the rest of the country, there’s another way to go about it but it’s just as difficult, Taylor said.
A “bilateral amendment” would require the federal parliament and the province to sign off.
“That has been used in the past to do things like get rid of separate Catholic and public school systems in Newfoundland, for example,” Taylor said.
However, he questioned why the province would take this step if “it has no interest in doing so.”
Matlow is well aware of how difficult an amendment would be.
“No one can be under any illusion that a Charter is possible at present given such a move would require support from the provincial government,” he wrote in the motion.
Even still, studying the idea is worth the effort, he wrote.
“It is important to start work on how greater independence could be structured and communicate the benefits to Torontonians, other municipalities, and senior levels of government.”
If passed, the motion would set up an advisory body to study different ways Toronto could gain the independence Matlow and other local politicians have long desired.
Just last year, Coun. Jamaal Myers (who seconded Matlow’s current effort) put forward a similar motion to explore making Toronto a Charter city.
Last month, Julie Dabrusin, Liberal MP for Toronto—Danforth, tabled a petition in the House of Commons urging the federal government to review the idea.
For Taylor, making Toronto a Charter city might not be a panacea for the city’s problems. America’s long history with Charter cities and home rule “should teach us that you can do that all you want, but state governments have always found creative ways to get around home rule when it suits them,” he said.
For example, state governments regularly overturn municipal efforts to ban handguns or become sanctuary cities for immigrants, he said.
Taylor said the recent surge in interest is tied to the premier — and making a more permanent change in reaction to the latest examples of provincial strong-arming is a dangerous game.
“Doug Ford, I think, just wants to be premier of the province and mayor of Toronto at the same time,” he said. “I think most premiers of the province don't want to be mayors of cities in Ontario. So I think the idea of a systemic fix for something that's actually a short-run, idiosyncratic problem, however painful, is probably a bad idea.”
