A cyclist rides in a bike lane on University Avenue in Toronto on Dec. 13, 2024.Laura Proctor/The Canadian Press
The B.C. government doesn’t like the pace of housing development in its cities.
The Alberta government thinks anyone running for office in its two biggest cities should have the option to form a political party, even though neither Calgary nor Edmonton have asked for the ability.
The Ontario government doesn’t like Toronto’s bike lanes.
In all three of these provinces, the senior level of government has decided to address these issues by passing legislation outranking municipalities to force the outcome they want.
“They’re trying to use municipalities to solve their political problems,” said Martin Horak, associate director for the Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance at Western University in London, Ont.
“In a way, municipalities, because they have no legal standing, can be safety valves,” he added, getting a province the outcome it wants without having to deal with the fallout of opposition from city residents.
Initiatives that overrule cities can happen for good and bad reasons, he said.
“Sometimes they intervene to save municipalities from themselves, like making them reserve funds for infrastructure. But the worst kind is when provincial governments have a short-term political agenda.”
At the Canadian Urban Institute, president Mary Rowe said provinces are feeling extreme pressure from pan-Canadian and global forces that are wreaking havoc on the economy and trade, including possible U.S. tariffs and changing patterns of immigration. They find themselves caught between grand initiatives from the federal government and “tons of on-the-ground challenges of cities.”
“They’re in the middle, bouncing around and finding themselves a bit absent from problem-solving at the local level,” Ms. Rowe said.
Adding to that sense of impotence, the federal government’s recent trend of bypassing provincial governments to give money directly to cities has seriously irked many premiers.
For some provincial leaders, certain issues are worth risking cries of overreach, observers say.
Lack of housing is affecting both municipal and provincial economies, with the federal and provincial governments under huge pressure to deliver solutions, said Greg Lyle, president of the polling firm Innovative Research Group Inc.
“They’re not prepared to let municipalities be in charge of that.”
In B.C., the province has forced local governments to remake their zoning plans: New legislation requires them to allow multifamily housing of up to six units on any residential lot within their boundaries. Larger cities are also having to change official plans to meet a provincial requirement that they allow significant density near all transit nodes.
B.C. has also brought in some of the country’s most stringent rules on short-term vacation rentals, which has pleased a lot of mayors but worried others in resort communities who fear tourism will be seriously affected.
The moves have prompted criticisms from the Union of B.C. Municipalities, but the new NDP government is vowing to press ahead, even with its majority sharply reduced in last October’s election.
“We’re only going to go forward with new measures,” Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said in a recent interview.
Ontario has also intervened on the housing front, although with weaker and more contradictory measures, as it attempts to grapple with a sector that is not building anywhere near enough to accommodate the number of people moving there.
The housing shortage is so extreme that it’s frequently cited as one of the main reasons Toronto is steadily losing people, especially families, to smaller cities in the province or to other provinces.
“There’s a generational shift in the balance of power when it comes to housing. In the sixties and seventies, resident voices were privileged. Now provinces are realizing that isn’t working,” Prof. Horak said.
In some cases, however, the overrides appear to be purely political, civic observers say.
As an example, Prof. Horak cites Ontario’s unusual move to order cities to rip out or ask permission for bike lanes.
“Mr. Ford is using bike lanes as a wedge issue,” he said.
In Alberta, the move to allow civic political parties in Calgary and Edmonton has left municipal politicians mystified. They are still waiting to see the actual regulations, including rules about campaign financing.
Prof. Horak is suspicious about the Alberta government’s motives. Voters in that province reliably elect conservative parties federally and provincially, except for a couple of core Edmonton ridings. But municipally, both cities have elected liberal-leaning councils.
Naheed Nenshi, now the leader of the Alberta NDP, was the mayor of Calgary, a city often viewed as a right-wing town dominated by oil and gas executives, for 11 years until 2021. His successor, Jyoti Gondek, is also considered to be on the liberal side of the political spectrum. The two were elected in spite of efforts by business groups and others to add more right-wingers to council there.
“With Danielle Smith, they’re clearly hoping conservatives will form political parties,” Prof. Horak said.
Mr. Lyle agreed that Ms. Smith’s and Mr. Ford’s measures are more about politics than solving big economic problems.
“With Smith, it’s that, ‘We want more right-wing people to win.’” The Ford family, he said, has always had a suburb-first mentality: “They rode to power fighting the ‘war on the car.’ He’s from Etobicoke. He’s picked his side.”
Ontario has a long history of bigfooting its cities, more so than anywhere else in Canada.
The Conservative Mike Harris government of the 1990s downloaded social housing onto cities and forced Toronto to amalgamate with what had been separate suburbs – another move viewed as a way to ensure more right-wing civic governments, since suburban voters are typically more conservative than city-core residents.
Mr. Ford carried on the tradition of by reducing the number of Toronto councillors to be elected in 2021. The city challenged that in court but lost for the same reason that local governments are almost defeated when they get into a fight with their province: The Canadian Constitution does not recognize or give any specific powers to cities. It recognizes provinces, and provinces create their own legislation to regulate municipalities.
Ms. Rowe said there are merits in cities not having too much control over issues, such as housing, that require a broad response from all levels of government. But provincial governments also don’t have an understanding of local context the way municipalities do, she added.
Ultimately, Ms. Rowe said, “we need more informal, collaborative processes to arrive at shared decisions.”