Doug Ford's government gave these mayors superpowers. Here's what happened when some mayors tried to give them back

And every year, Taylor writes back with a similar sentiment: no thank you.

“I’m not trying to be adversarial,” Taylor says. “I don’t want an argument with the premier.

“I just do what I believe. And I believe that strong-mayor powers, aside from everything else, are a significantly bad idea.”

Ford’s team sold strong-mayor powers as a fix for the housing crisis. Some Ontario mayors have said the powers are a helpful tool to build homes and infrastructure and to bypass bureaucratic inertia.

But a comprehensive Toronto Star analysis found that only two per cent of more than 4,200 strong-mayor decisions issued since the law’s inception have been directly aimed at housing creation. Mayors have, however, used their authority to fire senior officials, quash legal challenges against them, and even to kill housing projects and polices they opposed, the Star found.

As the province has expanded the powers to nearly half of Ontario’s municipalities, dozens of local governments and individual mayors have written to Ford and Housing Minister Rob Flack to reject the powers or to ask the province to repeal the legislation entirely. They say it erodes democracy, risks abuse of power, and even “veers dangerously close to authoritarian governance.” 

These rejections have not been accepted, however: the strong-mayor legislation does not provide a way to opt out.

Taylor is the rare mayor who successfully avoided them — with the support of council, he stresses — by refusing to sign on to a housing pledge that was a condition of being granted the powers for an early group of municipalities. The pledge set a home-building target that he says he and town staff consider unrealistic, adding there is no evidence the legislation has helped build homes.

But his objections run much deeper. He says he believes strong mayors’ ability to override council breeds disenfranchisement, and that the ability to fire senior staff undercuts public servants’ ability to provide independent, professional advice.

The powers are “almost like a virus in the body politic of municipal democracy,” Taylor says.

“I’ve been 20 years now as deputy mayor and mayor of Newmarket. I feel deeply and strongly about municipal governance. I think there’s a lot of reasons to be proud of and to even believe that municipal governance is a better-functioning form of governance than the other levels. I see that slipping away, and it upsets me.”

Major expansion prompts pushback

The powers, first granted to Toronto and Ottawa in 2022, were met with tepid support almost as soon as they were introduced. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe of Ottawa has studiously avoided the powers, and says the city has made major progress on home construction starts without them. Since taking power in a June 2023 byelection, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has used the powers sparingly. 

Big, fast-growing cities and ones that signed a housing pledge were granted the powers next. Some of these mayors — including the leaders of Ajax, London and Brampton — have said the powers are a key tool, and applied them to major, multi-unit developments and affordable housing projects. 

But the most recent wave of expansion, which added 169 municipalities last spring, prompted a major pushback. Some councils passed resolutions asking the ministry to remove their municipalities from the list, sometimes with the mayor’s support; other mayors wrote directly to the minister to try to reject the powers. The Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario, a professional association, has collected more than four dozen of these resolutions and letters on which the organization was copied.

“I wish to formally decline the enhanced powers and duties granted under the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act,” Killarney Mayor Michael Reider wrote in one such letter addressed to Flack in June 2025, a month after the powers were granted to him.

“I firmly believe that the concentration of authority within the office of the Mayor undermines democratic governance, diminishes the role of duly elected municipal councillors, and erodes the principles of transparency, accountability, and equal representation.”

Parry Sound Mayor Jamie McGarvey joined his council in unanimously passing a resolution in April 2025 rejecting the powers and requesting the province either repeal the legislation or allow municipalities to opt out. 

“I was informed that I apparently I had (the powers). I never asked for them,” McGarvey told the Star.

“I believe a strong mayor builds by consensus.” 

No way to opt out of powers

Neither was successful. Reider says a ministry official who called him was clear: “they don’t accept opting out.”

Reider also says the ministry tried to explain the finer points of the legislation to him. He wasn’t interested.  

“I just felt this is the most undemocratic thing I’ve ever heard of, that I could override a council vote,” he says, and “the fine print just tells you more things you can get away with.”

A spokesperson for the minister said that “strong mayor powers are a tool available to local leaders and may be used at their discretion.” 

“Each mayor can choose whether or not to exercise these powers and has the authority to determine how they are used, which includes delegating them to council,” Michael Minzak said in a statement.

In practice, mayors say the way the legislation is written makes it difficult or impossible to avoid using some of the powers — especially budget-making — and that any delegation of power back to council could be immediately revoked when a new mayor is elected. 

This month, the City of Stratford took an even more drastic step: filing a court challenge that argues strong-mayor powers violate the Canadian charter, and asks a judge to strike them down. 

“Democracy, including its central premise that a majority of elected officials are required to participate in and be responsible for decision-making, and the rule of law are fundamental values of Canadian society,” the application reads.

Strong-mayor laws “erode local accountability” and bypass “the safeguards, checks and balances to ensure democratic decision making.”

Stratford Mayor Martin Ritsma has tried to avoid using the powers, and has delegated what he could back to council. He has mixed feelings about the powers, and about the lawsuit: he is worried about his small municipality shouldering the costs of what could be a drawn-out legal battle.

But, Ritsma says, “I think the option of saying thank you but no thank you … that makes sense.”