Legal challenge possible, but difficult: experts,
Fight would be uphill battle because the city is a creation of the provincial government Councillor Mike Layton shouts at the mayor during Friday’s debate.
It is possible to challenge in court Premier Doug Ford’s legislation to dissolve Toronto’s in-process 47-ward civic election, but winning would be an uphill battle, legal experts say.
The question was raised Friday as councillors and candidates, some of whom have been campaigning since May 1, debated how to fight a premier with a majority government hell-bent on cutting Toronto council to 25 seats.
In response to councillors’ questions, city solicitor Wendy Walberg said, generally speaking, a challenge could be made on the basis of effective representation — do province-imposed wards conform with a Supreme Court ruling that, among other things, says electors’ votes should have as close to equal weight as possible.
Also, whatever legislation is unveiled Monday could potentially be challenged on the basis that it makes the election process impractical, concerns echoed by city clerk Ulli Watkiss. But the city’s legal team can’t give concrete advice to council until they see the legislation, Walberg added.
She said an injunction — an emergency court order to at least temporarily prevent the change from taking place — is not feasible.
Chris Tzekas, a municipal affairs ex- pert at Toronto firm WeirFoulds, told the Star: “It would be extremely difficult for a municipality to resist this.
“The province created the city of Toronto through the City of Toronto Act. It is without question the legislative body that structures that act and on stuff like this the ultimate and final say I think will rest with the province.”
A court may have concerns about the process of imposing new wards, or how quickly it was done, Tzekas said, “but I think at the end of the day it is the province that gets to decide this kind of thing.”
John Mascarin, another lawyer who argues municipal issues, said Ford’s move appears “undemocratic” but it is unclear what grounds exist for a legal challenge.
Candidates “filed their nomination papers and they’ve already started campaigning ... (Friday’s) the final day to do that and you just go and overturn that with a stroke of a pen on Monday?” Mascarin said.
“Perhaps (city lawyers) could say, administratively, this (25-ward election) would be such a fundamentally drastic change that it would potentially jeopardize their ability to just put things in motion.”
City clerk Watkiss told council there are many challenges to scrapping the current election and holding a new one — with completely different boundaries — on Oct. 22.
“We cannot run an election with a nomination day that ends on Sept. 14 and be ready to have an advance vote on Oct. 6” for people away or unable to vote on Oct. 22, Watkiss said. “It won’t give staff time to test tabulators with ballots and run systems test — that can’t be done in that amount of time.
“In fact, I can’t even print ballots in three weeks ... In my 30-odd years as a city clerk, I have never been in a situation where I’ve been provided with legislation that has not had extensive review with the clerks’ offices in the province that they impact. Ever.”
City staff said they normally begin preparing for fall elections in January. Watkiss said she has authority to make some changes to the election process.