A sign outside the Rideau Lakes municipal offices once advertised the township as “The daffodil capital of Ontario.”
But its mayor, Arie Hoogenboom, has suggested that Rideau Lakes now holds a more worrisome distinction.
“I’ve been told by senior people that work in Toronto that we’re the most dysfunctional council in all of Ontario,” Hoogenboom told the Brockville Recorder & Times after an explosive council meeting last October. “I’m embarrassed by that. I’ve worked in municipal government for 50 years, and this is beyond crazy.”
That council meeting included shouting matches, phone calls to police — and staff invoking their right to refuse unsafe working conditions. While relations on the Rideau Lakes council have been tense for years, some members blame a new accelerant for the intense level of discord: strong-mayor powers.
Premier Doug Ford’s government advertised these powers as a tool to build more homes. But a comprehensive Toronto Star analysis has revealed 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.
While the powers have not created a significant amount of housing across Ontario, in some of the 216 cities and towns granted the powers their use has fractured local government or inflamed the public, creating conflict that has at times affected municipal business.
In Rideau Lakes, “the personal dislikes and the anger and the distrust was enhanced by strong-mayor powers. We might not have got to the point if we didn’t have that other layer there,” said Coun. Dustin Bulloch.
How Rideau Lakes went from daffodil capital to discord capital
In Rideau Lakes, a disagreement over the township’s aging municipal offices has simmered for years. Hoogenboom and some councillors supported a plan to move the offices to a new municipal hub elsewhere. An opposing faction of councillors wanted to renovate the existing offices instead.
Then, last spring, the provincial government granted strong-mayor powers to Rideau Lakes, along with 168 other municipalities. While the powers were first extended to 47 primarily large, fast-growing cities and ones that signed a housing pledge, this group included any municipality with six or more council members. Versions of the words “homes” or “housing” appeared 20 times in a press release announcing the expansion, which included some small rural townships.
Hoogenboom quickly flexed his new-found power in the municipal property dispute, vetoing a council decision that would have moved ahead with the renovation option his opponents favoured. Over the next several months, he vetoed council decisions on the matter three more times.
Some outraged councillors passed a motion calling on the province to revoke Hoogenboom’s powers. The township’s integrity commissioner was also deluged by complaints that year, including ones involving accusations related to councillors’ or the mayor’s conduct in the ongoing dispute.
The October 2025 council meeting that devolved into chaos was set to discuss seven of these integrity commissioner reports — including one that concluded the mayor “misled council, staff and the public by incorrectly asserting that he had provincial approval and backing for a (strong-mayor) veto.”
Hoogenboom had already apologized for and clarified those assertions, the commissioner added. The integrity commissioner also upheld complaints about councillors’ misconduct. (Another major source of acrimony has been the financial penalties approved to censure them.)
Hoogenboom did not respond to requests for comment from the Star.
Hoogenboom sued four council members in February, claiming their behaviour at the October 2025 meeting indicated the penalties approved in response to the integrity commissioner’s report were in bad faith.
Coun. Paula Banks, an opponent of the mayor’s and one of the defendants in his lawsuit, has circulated a pledge to reject strong-mayor powers that she hopes candidates in the upcoming municipal election will sign on to.
Before the powers were introduced, “you had to build consensus to get the majority. Now you don’t,” Banks said.
Strong-mayor powers didn’t create the discord in Rideau Lakes, said Bulloch, who joined council midway through last year after a byelection and who considers himself independent of the two factions.
“It has just exacerbated existing issues,” he said. “Giving a certain amount of authority that didn’t exist before to the mayor has inflamed that distrust.”
Bulloch said town hall has seen very high turnover of senior staff in recent years, though he credits staff’s professionalism for keeping business running as smoothly as possible.
Council meetings have also moved online as a result of staff’s health and safety concerns. Bulloch said they regularly run three or four hours when they should be 90 minutes.
“I think we could operate a lot better, in terms of efficiency,” he said, adding that the situation is “overwhelming our staff.”
How an uproar in Caledon wound up in court
In other municipalities, local leaders’ use of their strong-mayor powers has tied municipal governments up in court.
In Caledon, Mayor Annette Groves triggered a firestorm with her 2024 plan to bypass normal planning procedures and use her strong-mayor powers to rezone 2,000 hectares of formerly agricultural and environmentally sensitive land to allow residential development. After an angry protest, Groves retreated, sending the matter to council, where the rezonings were approved the old way.
Democracy Caledon, a citizens group formed in opposition to Groves’ strong-mayor moves, is challenging the rezonings in court, arguing they don’t conform to the official plans of Caledon and Peel Region.
“It has been a masterful move by this (Ontario) government, finding these willing municipalities quite prepared to upend democratic processes, upend planning,” and embrace “diabolical” minority rule, said Debbe Crandall, the group’s president.
Groves revealed earlier this month that she will not seek re-election. She had previously defended her moves in an interview with the Star, saying that “I do believe in democracy, but you have members of council who are elected who truly don’t understand what it means to move things forward for the municipality.”
Peterborough mayor invokes minority rule
In Peterborough, Mayor Jeff Leal invoked the controversial minority rule provision of strong-mayor powers — allowing the mayor and just over one-third of council to overrule the majority — in February 2025.
Leal and three councillors approved changes — over the objections of seven councillors — to allow construction of a proposed transitional housing project.
The vote triggered a legal challenge by community members, calling themselves Northcrest Neighbours for Fair Process (NNFP), who opposed the facility’s location and Leal’s use of strong-mayor powers to force approval.
Leal used strong-mayor powers again, directing the city’s legal team “to do such things considered advisable” to oppose the residents’ legal challenge.
Northcrest Neighbours for Fair Process abandoned its legal challenge after a judge ordered the group to post $30,000, to cover potential court costs, before its challenge could be heard.
“We were unable to ask the big questions about a brand-new and controversial law …,” group chair Sarah McNeilly told the Peterborough Examiner last December. “Substantive issues of the use of strong-mayor powers that NNFP had hoped to question will never be challenged.”
