The race is on. As of this morning, candidates for mayor across the province can register to run in this fall’s election, and can begin raising and spending money toward their campaigns.
This brings questions: will anyone notable join Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford in the Toronto race? Will Bonnie Crombie appear to try to reclaim her old Mississauga job? Will anyone on any ballot be older than Gordon Krantz, who is running again at 89 to win his 23rd consecutive term as mayor of Milton?
But here’s another question that seems especially pointed: is the job of mayor worth having? Like, if you want to actually fix things in your city? The four years since the last province-wide municipal elections have been the dawn of the “strong mayor” era.
And yet, you’d be forgiven for thinking of it as the “strong premier” age, in which Doug Ford has consistently big-footed local governments to impose his own will on municipalities. Bike lanes, speed cameras, transit planning, homeless encampments, MZOs, the size of councils, the merging of regions, waterfront redevelopment, airport expansion — right up to this week’s news about the Brampton super-incinerator the province is pushing ahead over the region’s objections.
I wonder what you make of all this? I know there are people fed up with endless NIMBY squabbling at local meetings, who believe what we need is a big boss to take charge and just push things through. But I also know there are people who lament the loss of local democracy, in which you have a say in what happens in your own neighbourhood.
If Ford is taking the right approach in just sidelining cities on important files, why have local governments at all? But if this King-of-All-Mayors routine is overreach by the premier, what should local governments do to take power back? Let me know what you think in the comments down below.
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