Feds avoid constitutional fight over Toronto council
Experts say cities clearly in provincial control
OTTAWA — The Liberal government’s point person on urban affairs is ruling out a constitutional fight over Doug Ford’s decision to slash the size of Toronto’s city council, as experts agree the contentious move falls squarely within provincial jurisdiction.
Adam Vaughan, a two-term Toronto councillor who is now the Liberal MP for Spadina — Fort York, said Ford’s legislation to eliminate almost half of Toronto council seats less than three months before a municipal election will plunge the city into “administrative chaos,” but that Ottawa has no intention of trying to change the law to stop him.
Ford has said the move will save $25 million and make Toronto government more efficient, while critics — including Mayor John Tory — have charged the decision was undemocratic and will degrade the quality of local representation in Canada’s largest city.
“We are not going to try to rewrite the constitution because of one bad decision at Queen’s Park,” said Vaughan, who is parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development for housing and urban affairs.
Instead, Vaughan said the Liberal government is prepared to bypass the province and deliver funds for housing and other programs directly to Toronto.
“We are going to work very closely with the citizens of Toronto and the democratic institutions that are left standing,” he said. “We will not shy away from working around provinces that are quite clearly doing damage to cities.”
Joseph Magnet, a constitutional lawyer and professor at the University of Ottawa, said Canada’s Constitution Act of 1867 clearly spells out how the provinces have “complete and exclusive power over municipalities.” This includes the “power to create, amalgamate or destroy them,” he said. “A constitutional change would be necessary to change this.”
Richard Tindal, a retired professor at St. Lawrence College and co-author of the textbook “Local Government in Canada”, agreed that the federal government has “no jurisdiction whatsoever” over municipalities, which were created in the constitution as “creatures of the provinces.”
Section 92 of the Constitution Act says provincial legislatures “may exclusively make laws” that relate to “Municipal Institutions in the Province.”
“What Premier Ford is proposing is, strictly speaking, constitutional … given how clear and ironclad the language of our constitution is,” said Myer Siemiatycki, a politics professor at Ryerson University.
“There was the forced amalgamation of Toronto (in 1998), which was even a more extreme redrawing of the structure of municipal government,” he added.
“I don’t think the federal government has any cards to play.”
But despite being under the ultimate control of provincial legislatures, cities like Toronto are emerging as major centres of culture and economic activity. Tindal pointed out how, in 2006, Queen’s Park passed the City of Toronto Act to reflect this reality in the province’s biggest city. The law gave Toronto special powers to tax on things like alcohol, land transfers and vehicle registrations.
It also provides a few avenues for legal challenges to Ford’s cuts to council, such as sections that call for consultation on decisions that affect the city and recognize the city’s responsibility to govern its affairs as it considers appropriate, Siemiatycki said.