Ford could do former opponents a favour
Mayoral candidates Horwath, Del Duca running in cities with ‘strong-mayor’ potential
The irony.
Doug Ford could do something for Andrea Horwath and Steven Del Duca that voters wouldn’t: give them power.
That’s because the Progressive Conservative premier is promising to expand “strong-mayor” authority to other cities beyond just Toronto and Ottawa.
Horwath, the former NDP leader, is seeking the mayoralty of Hamilton in the Oct. 24 municipal election.
As first disclosed by the Star on Tuesday, Del Duca, the former Liberal leader, is running to be mayor of Vaughan.
Ford trounced them both in the June 2 provincial election and they resigned within minutes of one another that night.
Much has happened in the ensuing two and a half months.
The premier has announced municipal governance reforms he never once broached on the campaign trail last spring — and his two main rivals could soon be his political beneficiaries.
Toronto and Ottawa mayors will get the enhanced authority after the fall elections and Ford told the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference on Monday that other cities will follow.
That suggests additional clout for other mayors well before the 2026 municipal elections.
Indeed, Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark reiterated to AMO delegates in Ottawa on Tuesday that “we want to empower our municipal partners to be able to get things done.”
Neither Horwath nor Del Duca is opposed to “strong-mayor” powers — including budget oversight, hiring and firing senior staff, and a veto over some council decisions — being granted to the cities they hope to run.
“If Mr. Ford … decides he’s going to extend the strong mayor situation to all of the municipalities in our province, what I can guarantee you — if I’m given the honour to serve as mayor of our city — (is) that I will always continue to collaborate,” the former New Democratic leader said at her Hamilton mayoral launch.
“I’m a collaborator, I pull people in, I listen, I create space for folks to have important conversations about where we were headed — and I will never stop doing that regardless of a strong-mayor power or not,” she said.
Del Duca was similarly openminded about Ford’s surprise gambit, saying it “is something that should be looked at.”
Stressing “council input and community input should be top of mind,” he pointed out that “delivering outcomes is what matters.”
At Queen’s Park, NDP and Liberal strategists are mindful that the tacit support for the reforms from their former party leaders could effectively neutralize the issue for Ford.
It’s also a reminder that opinions about the “strong-mayor” system do not necessarily break along partisan political lines.
There was much bemusement in provincial Tory circles after a Star piece signed by former Toronto mayors David Crombie, Barbara Hall, Art Eggleton, John Sewell, and David Miller denounced the scheme, warning it “risks ending meaningful democratic local government.”
“Such a proposal eliminates any meaningful role of city councillors and therefore the voice of the local residents who elect them,” the exmayors wrote.
One senior Conservative noted Miller was singing a decidedly different tune when he was mayor in 2008 and then-premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals looked at expanding the mayoral powers.
At the time, Miller even commissioned a blue-ribbon panel that concluded it was “unwieldy, difficult to operate, and diffuses accountability, authority and responsibility” to have the city manager report to all 45 members of council. (Ford slashed the number to 25 in 2018.)
“If you are accountable to everybody, nobody is accountable,” Miller said back then, praising his panel for having “recommended a strong-mayor system.”
But he bristled at suggestions — including from luminaries like his now-co-author Crombie — that it could be seen as a power grab.
“I’m not looking for any enhanced powers at all. It is a real abuse of the language to say I’m seeking more power,” Miller said in 2008.
He maintained he was merely seeking “discreet … structural changes” — based on the panel recommendations — to ensure more accountability and help him do his job better.
And because irony isn’t dead, that same rationale could soon be used by a Tory premier to give his former NDP and Liberal foes additional power in Hamilton and Vaughan.