Mississauga crosses its fingers for autonomy
Mayor Crombie hopes Ford’s review will lead to finally breaking free of Peel Region
Premier Doug Ford’s review of regional governments that is expected to usher in change across the provincial political landscape has revived a long-standing desire for one large municipality to break free.
Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie told reporters Tuesday the review process was a chance to finally get her city out of the Peel Region umbrella so it can be a single-tier government — just like other cities in the province with comparable size, budget and population. An independent Mississauga has been one of Crombie’s openly declared goals ever since coming to power.
“I have been clear for a while that it’s time to re-evaluate Mississauga’s relationship with the Region of Peel and whether or not it makes financial sense for our city,” Crombie said in a written statement this week, adding that “it’s time for Mississauga to be able to control its own destiny.”
Experts say she may not get what she wants. “My analysis is, au contraire,” said Nelson Wiseman, professor of political science at the University of Toronto. “If we have any developments (from this review), it will be more consolidation and amalgamation.”
The province announced its review Tuesday, naming Michael Fenn, a former deputy minister and CEO of Metrolinx, and Ken Seiling, the former chair of Waterloo Region, to act as special advisers. It will encompass 82 municipalities including the Halton, Peel, Durham and York Regions.
Currently the sixth largest city in Canada and third largest in Ontario with a population pushing 800,000, Mississauga’s political leadership has long advocated for a breakup from regional control. Former mayor Hazel McCallion has even called for a total dismantling of the Peel Region government, calling its existence an unnecessary “two-tier” system. Reached Wednesday for a comment about whether this was finally the time for Mississauga to be autonomous, the 97-year-old veteran politician said she didn’t want to say much about something without knowing the details.
“I know that the premier is very anxious to make governments more efficient, both locally and provincially,” McCallion said. “So I assume that is his intent to look at efficiencies, how can the cost of government be reduced. That was his platform and I assume that’s what they are after.”
Wiseman said the pursuit of more efficiencies in service delivery is exactly what could propel more cases of amalgamation. As smaller cities grow, the need to combine services, such as police, transit, firefighters and garbage collection, becomes greater and more obvious, he said.
“These services don’t end when you get to a street. Once upon a time there were trees and forests between those cities,” he said, noting cities under regional umbrellas used to be much more geographically distinct. “Now, the police from Mississauga can pursue somebody if he drives through to Brampton.”
The only thing that surprised Wiseman is the time frame. In the announcement, provincial Tories said the two special advisers will work with Queen’s Park on the review, and conduct public consultations in the spring. For a serious study such as this one, “you have to spend a lot more time, maybe a year,” he said.
Myer Siemiatycki, a political science professor at Ryerson University, said the Peel Region is most likely to receive special attention during this review process — calling it an “odd partnership” between two large urban environments, Brampton and Mississauga, and a vast rural territory, Caledon.
“I think it increases (the chance for separation),” he said, calling their grouping an anomaly. He said Brampton and Mississauga are both among the top 10 largest municipalities in this country, but they find themselves “kind of in a shotgun marriage configuration” with their adjacent territories.
Siemiatycki said it’s possible to imagine a scenario where both Brampton and Mississau- ga become free-standing municipalities, but it’s more likely that both cities are amalgamated and form the third largest municipality in Canada.
That scenario would shift and refocus people’s understanding of big cities — not just hundreds-year-old established places with old downtowns, but new and bursting suburbs, he said.
“That could be an interesting shakeup of our mental map understanding of what a large city is,” he said.
Such a consolidation would also be led by a mayor whose voice would carry a powerful political power that the province may or may not want, Siemiatycki added.
He suspects ultimately Ford’s motivation with this review is to reduce the number of politicians throughout local municipalities, the same way he did with Toronto city council this past summer.
“I think they want to be able to say ‘we have streamlined government and saved public and taxpayers money in salaries going to politicians,’ ” he said. “That’s an outcome I think the provincial government would have high on its agenda.”