[ Strong mayor reforms are a ruling class effort to insulate
neoliberal policies from democratic interference]
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ONTARIO’S STRONG MAYOR REFORMS  
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Tom McDowell
December 19, 2022
Canadian Dimension
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_ Strong mayor reforms are a ruling class effort to insulate
neoliberal policies from democratic interference _

Toronto Mayor John Tory and Ontario Premier Doug Ford., Twitter

 

Earlier this month, Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth
Dowdeswell affixed her signature to Bill 39
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the _Better Municipal Governance Act_, conferring Royal Assent upon
the most substantial reconstruction of local democracy since
Confederation.
Along with Bill 3
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the _Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act_, the legislation implements a
strong mayor system in the cities of Ottawa and Toronto, giving the
mayors of these cities the ability to pass and repeal by-laws with as
little as one-third support of city council.

While these reforms, which would make Ontario’s mayors the most
powerful of any jurisdiction in North America, have been fiercely
opposed
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by advocates of urban democracy, the reasons for the Ford
government’s decision to resort to such unprecedented measures
remain poorly understood.

One popular theory has been to assume they are a “revenge plot
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Premier Doug Ford for having lost the 2014 Toronto mayoral election.

However, the evidence suggests that the transition to a strong mayor
system in Ontario is neither the result of an interpersonal dispute,
nor the action of a uniquely radical government. Rather, they are
consistent with a broader ruling class objective, occurring elsewhere
around the world, to embed neoliberalism’s market-based approach in
the fabric of the state and society by weakening democratic
institutions and concentrating power in the executive.

Consequently, they should be understood as part of a wider
reimagination of legislative institutions
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in the direction of authoritarian state forms under neoliberalism,
providing the marketplace with long-term institutional certainty and
predictability during an era of rising political volatility.

Strong mayor reforms as a longstanding ruling class objective

Ruling class support for strong mayor powers can be dated back at
least a decade in Ontario as part of an effort to cultivate conditions
for the “competitive city
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in the age of global capitalism.

A 2008 report from Toronto’s Economic Competitiveness Advisory
Committee, a panel comprised of councillors and business leaders, for
instance, recommended strengthening the authority of the mayor on the
grounds that the existing weak mayor model was prone to being
politicized by city councillors and activists.

The report’s findings were endorsed by then Premier Dalton McGuinty
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who claimed that it was “really important opportunity for council to
give the mayor of the day the authority he needs,” which was
“lacking at this point in time.”

Toronto’s mayor in 2008, David Miller, also demonstrated a
willingness to utilize the expanded powers on the grounds of economic
rationalism, suggesting that
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“there’s no organization of our size in the world anywhere,
government or private, that would have the people who run the
operation report to 45 people.”

However, political circumstances in 2008 were not yet appropriate to
actualize a change of this magnitude. Transforming Ontario’s system
of municipal democracy would require a more compelling public
explanation.

Building a populist case for executive dominance

By 2022, however, conditions had sufficiently ripened. A housing
affordability crisis
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in the context of a rising populist zeitgeist
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around the world, created a catalyst for the Ford government to build
a case for “bold action” of the kind that could only be achieved
through a dominant executive.

To achieve this, the government employed a populist strategy that
weaponized these contradictions against democratic institutions
_themselves_, assigning responsibility to them as instruments of
radical leftist city councillors, used to deliberately obstruct
economic development.

In legislative debate, government MPPs portrayed local councils under
the weak mayor model as too occupied with ideology and politics to
adequately respond to the demands of the marketplace, leading to a
“political logjam
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There were simply “too many hands in the pot
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too many layers of bureaucracy, studies, permits” delaying housing
development.

In contrast with the idea of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard), Minister
of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark introduced the concept of
BANANAism, or “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone,” to
describe leftist city councillors and community activists.

The strong mayor reforms were designed to “stop the weaponization”
of democratic processes by the left, ensuring that the “BANANA
group” no longer has the ability to “delay, delay, delay.”

It was therefore necessary to streamline legislative institutions,
concentrating power in the mayor’s office, as a direct means of
insulating the marketplace from democratic interference.

Market outcomes, rather than scrutiny, accountability, or compromise,
become the principal unit of measurement for democracy. Meanwhile,
efficient, technocratic executive rule is presented as a democratic
ideal.

A new shell for urban neoliberalism

Ontario’s strong mayor reforms, then, must be grasped, not as an
isolated event, or the consequence of an interpersonal conflict, but
rather a structurally conditioned class relation, in which
neoliberalism has sought to secure its dominance by assuming
increasingly authoritarian forms
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Ontario’s strong mayor reforms are a _direct response_ to
institutional resistance to neoliberal reforms; a way of transcending
the interference of the democratic majority that they claimed was the
cause of the crisis.

Rather than understanding strong mayor reforms as a fringe, right-wing
scheme, then, they should be grasped as consistent with
neoliberalism’s inner logic, and part of a ruling class effort to
insulate neoliberal policies from democratic interference.

This has been evidenced by the degree to which centrist, third way
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municipal leaders, who normally reject the Ford government’s
divisive brand of populism, have already begun to embrace a similar
political narrative after the province announced it would extend
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strong mayor powers to other cities.

Toronto Mayor John Tory has justified assuming the powers, and asked
the province for even stronger authority
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than it initially intended, on the grounds that they are _required_ to
“get more housing built as quickly as possible
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and to “avoid NIMBYism.” The mayors of Mississauga and Brampton
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meanwhile, have utilized a similar logic in their public statements,
imploring the government to make institutional reforms to reduce
“red tape” and “redundancy” in legislative and administrative
processes.

By implementing a system of permanent minority rule, and establishing
a new political shell for neoliberalism, the Ford government has
designed the necessary institutional scaffolding to set in motion a
new, more aggressive phase of urban restructuring, directed from the
centre.

_Dr. Tom McDowell is an instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University
in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. He is the
author of Neoliberal Parliamentarism: The Decline of Parliament at the
Ontario Legislature
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* Mayoral systems
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* democracy
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