City councillor to bring motion forward looking to end strong mayor powers

A Windsor city councillor will be bringing forward a motion looking to put a stop to the use of strong mayor powers locally.

Ward 9 Coun. Kieran McKenzie said the power violates the basic principles of democracy.

Strong mayor powers, put in place by the PC Doug Ford government, expanded to Windsor effective July 1, 2023. These powers offer tools to help heads of council cut red tape and speed up the delivery of key shared municipal-provincial priorities such as housing, transit and infrastructure in their municipalities.

Kieran McKenzie said a notice of motion will come forward in April, asking for council support to send correspondence to the Ford government to repeal the strong mayor power legislation.

He said these powers played out in a terrible way recently when it came to the tunnel bus vote.

“You had two majority votes of council, one 7-4 and then we had one councillor reconsider, but still another majority vote 6-5 in favour of maintaining a service that’s been in our community for 100 years. And as a result of, we had two majority votes, and now we’ve lost this service. Make that make sense,” McKenzie said.

McKenzie added he doesn’t believe anyone around the council table feels comfortable with this legislation, “I don’t think that there’s anyone - at least that I’m aware of on our council - who’s come to me and said, ‘Oh, I think this is a really good thing, it improves the community, it improves the governance of our community.’ I haven’t heard anyone express anything positive about what the impact of strong mayor powers in the City of Windsor.”

He said from the start he’s been vocal about not wanting this legislation, “When it was first introduced in the middle of the first mandate in the City of Toronto, I think Ottawa was the other municipality that introduced it, it was bad then, it was a bad idea from the inception. I expressed strong opposition to it right from the beginning.”

McKenzie said when the motion comes forward in April that he will be requesting a vote on it that same day.

The Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, 2022 became law on Sept. 8, 2022, and started in Toronto and Ottawa before expanding.

Ontario currently has a total of 46 strong mayors.

Council is able to override the mayor’s veto, but only with a two-thirds majority vote.

-Meagan Delaurier/AM800 News