In these dark days as the new year dawns, Ontario is slipping from a jurisdiction functioning under democratic conventions, to one that is anti-democratic and authoritarian in nature. The extent of the support for the anti-democratic decisions has swept across a majority of those elected to the legislature and through the mayor of Toronto and his allies on city council.

The latest could be the scariest with the Ford government politicizing judges.
I asked a progressive property developer what he thought of the change that allows city council to pass bylaws with one-third of the votes rather than a majority, and his reply shocked me: “I don’t see any issue here,” he said. “It’s a tempest in a teapot.”

Two significant changes are Bills 23 and 39. The first bill is a wish list of the development industry, stripping municipal councils of important controls on development and taking most development fees from municipalities — Toronto will lose about $200 million a year. The bill was introduced without consultation, and the only hearings were held between the time of the municipal elections and when new city councillors were sworn in, so no municipal council in Ontario was able to comment on the bill.

Hearings of the legislative committee were severely restricted and excluded to a hundred or more speakers who wished to depute. Former mayors David Miller, Barbara Hall and myself asked to speak but were refused, and when I objected at a committee meeting, I was escorted from the room by security guards. This breached a fundamental rule of democracy that people have a chance to comment on legislation before it is passed. A democratic convention the provincial government threw aside.

Then came Bill 39, which states that bylaws can be passed when the mayor has the support of one-third of the members of council, even if the majority is opposed. This idea of minority rule was secretly suggested to the premier by John Tory who was then elected mayor when no one knew he had such anti-democratic sentiments.

For most municipal governments in the Golden Horseshoe, it spells the end of the principle that the majority rules. The government held one day of hearings on Bill 39 and allowed only 18 members of the public to address the committee. No other jurisdiction in the western world has passed such a law, yet every Conservative member of the legislature voted for it. One fears the legislature will now pass a law that states that it too will govern on the basis of a minority rule.

Others are falling in line with these frightening changes. On Dec. 15, five members of city council voted against a motion that “City Council reaffirm its commitment to the principle of democracy on which our Procedures By-law is based that ‘the majority of members have the right to decide and the minority of members have the right to be heard,’ according to Section 2.2 of the Toronto Municipal Code.”

The five who do not support the idea of majority rule are Mayor John Tory and councillors Gary Crawford, Vincent Crisanti, Jennifer McKelvie and Frances Nunziata.

And the next authoritarian shoe has just been dropped. The provincial government wants to politicize judges. Rather than follow the long-established practice in appointing a new chief justice after taking the advice of the current chief justice who makes a recommendation on her successor after consulting with judge colleagues, the government has decided the attorney general will ask those interested in the position to call him privately, and he will make the decision.

Whoever thought Ontario and Toronto would fall into such a dangerous pit where democratic practices are abandoned so quickly.