Thanks but no thanks: Northern Ont. town wants to opt out of strong mayor powers

Councillors and the mayor in French River have passed a resolution asking the province to allow it to opt out of the strong mayor powers legislation.

French River Mayor Gisèle Pageau says the province’s plan to give mayors of smaller communities more powers is “one of the most ill-conceived pieces of legislation I have ever encountered.”

“Granting any head of council the authority to override council undermines the foundations of local democracy and veers dangerously close to authoritarian governance,” Pageau said at Wednesday’s council meeting.

“No mayor should have the power to push through, unilaterally, their agenda.”

She said the idea that strong mayor powers are needed to address the housing crisis “is preposterous.”

“The root cause of the housing problem lies largely with the province itself, with insufficient infrastructure funding, failure to close loopholes, renovictions and much more,” Pageau said.

She opposes not only the veto power that the legislation grants mayors, but also the expanded power to hire and fire people.

“It erodes the stability of municipal operations and creates a workplace climate of fear and uncertainty,” Pageau said.

‘Authoritarian’ powers

“No employee should work under the threat of dismissal at the sole discretion of one individual. As mayor, I want to make it clear I will never exercise such authoritarian powers. Our council works together as a team with every member contributing meaningfully with decisions that affect our municipality -- that’s (how) democracy works.”

The mayor says municipalities were not meaningfully engaged and there was limited consultation involving the legislation.

Pageau is asking the province to remove French River from the strong mayoral powers list. She’s unsure why they were given such powers. The only reason she could think of was that they had seven councillors.

“I feel the same as you do Madame Mayor,” said Coun. Dave Viau.

“I’m not worried right now, but we don’t know who’s going to be our next mayor and the mayor after that and I would like to keep democracy here … I can just see a million ways that power can be abused.”

“I think if we allow this to go through, that we might as well dissolve councils across the province because if you’re giving mayors the rights to overrule council,” added Coun. Renee Carrier.

“I’m not sure if the long-term goal here is to get rid of council down the road, but it makes you think.”

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“We should be very angry with the government for not doing their job,” Pageau said.

“We’ve taken over health care, which we should have never taken over, all of this other stuff they have downloaded through the years and so if the mayor decides to fire someone, there could be lawsuits,” added Pageau.

A motion was carried unanimously asking the province to allow the community to opt out permanently of the powers.