The Ford government should inform Niagara of its municipal governance plan | Daily News Byte

Here’s what Queen’s Park said in October 2019 about why it can’t cram down our throats the changes it wants to see about our local government:

“We know we can achieve positive results by partnering with municipalities without taking a top-down approach,” said Dakota Brasier, an aide to Ontario’s Minister of Municipalities and Housing Steve Clark.

After three years, the partnership with the municipalities is gone and the top-down approach is on.

As Clark himself might say, who needs a carrot when you can whip municipalities with a stick?

Niagara got the short end of that stick earlier this month when Clark announced the St. Catharines regional Coun. Jim Bradley will return as chair of the Niagara Region.

The regional council may still hold an election for that position, as it always does. But regardless of how it votes, Clark said, Bradley will retain the seat. And so it happened, in a vote on Thursday whose outcome was determined by the provincial government.

In addition, Clark will provide a facilitator with whom Bradley will have to work to assess the best way to share roles and responsibilities between the upper and lower levels of municipal governments going forward.

Remember, we just went through a provincial election in June. None of this was discussed at the time by candidates running for Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative party.

Also note, in 2018 Niagara was set to allow voters to elect the regional chair for the first time — until the Ford government went top-down again, killing the plan at the last minute and launching a local review instead to govern at Niagara.

A year after that and months into the local governance review, Ford again changed course and said he would not push for changes in Niagara. And he also won’t release the findings of that review publicly.

Force change, then don’t force change. And then decide, maybe change needs to be forced after all. And what that change is, who knows? If Clark and Ford know, they’re not telling.

In the past, Ford has pointed to Niagara as a place with too many politicians and too many levels of government.

Heck, here in Niagara, we’ve known that for a long time.

Why doesn’t the government just engage us in an open, transparent discussion and analysis? We are open to change, if someone will listen to us.

‘Open and transparent’ has never happened. Instead, we continue to be blindsided by sudden orders imposed on us from 125 kilometers away in Toronto.

In a recent interview, retired Brock University professor David Siegel said that while the government may say governance reform is about getting out of the way to make it easier to quickly build more housing, it’s likely many more are playing.

“It’s pretty clear that these facilitators are going to have a lot of autonomy in terms of making advice,” Siegel said, “and if the facilitators choose it, I think there could be big changes, like mergers -sama will appear here.

“I think that is possible. I think everything is on the table.”

Introducing so-called strong mayoral powers for Toronto and Ottawa and speculation that it could be extended to other municipalities; neutering the election of Niagara’s regional chair; sending a facilitator to see possible changes. This is very undemocratic.

If everything really is on the table, as Siegel suggests, then the Ford government should also put its cards on the table.

It should tell us, clearly, what the end game is. And it should work for us to get there because maybe, just maybe, we here in Niagara have some ideas that can work to everyone’s benefit.

The first step is to let us know the plan.

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