Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently announced the provincial government will ban speed cameras, despite pleas from mayors, police chiefs and school boards to keep them.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Municipal government is often the start of a pipeline. People cut their teeth in local politics and, once they’ve made a name for themselves, run at the provincial or federal level. As they do so, they begin tackling bigger and bigger issues, moving on from potholes and parks to health care or national defence.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford turns the concept upside down. Although he is reported to be tempted by federal politics, the former Toronto city councillor can’t seem to resist getting back into the weeds on local concerns. He distracts himself micro-managing community issues even as the province confronts weighty challenges such as plunging housing starts and tariff-induced job losses.
He appears to want to be Ontario’s mayor, not its premier.
This is a problem not just because his actual job is serious enough to require full-time attention, which it certainly is. It’s also a problem because the premier of a province of 16 million people can’t understand the specific needs of all the neighbourhoods and communities scattered through it.
The urban theorist and local activist Jane Jacobs was correct when she argued that government works best when it is closest to the people being governed. Simply put, the local issues that directly affect city residents should be decided by them and their local representatives.
Local affairs are not improved by having Mr. Ford blunder into them.
The most egregious example of this recently is the premier’s war against municipalities deploying speed cameras in school zones, which his own government began allowing in 2019. In spite of pleas from mayors, police chiefs and school boards, evidence that the cameras slow down drivers, which saves lives, and support for the devices by a large majority of Ontarians, his government has announced legislation that would ban them.
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Mr. Ford has strong ideas as well about how Toronto should be run. He is pushing a massive spa and entertainment project at the Ontario Place site on the waterfront, which will require over $2-billion in provincial funding. And he is dead set on removing three city bicycle lanes. While this space has argued that a judge was wrong to rule that Mr. Ford cannot remove the lanes, that does not make doing so a sound policy. Safe urban transportation policy is best determined by local councils and professional city staff.
The Ford government has also intervened directly in local democracy. It cut nearly in half the size of Toronto city council in the middle of the 2018 election campaign and axed direct elections for chair of regional councils in York and Peel. It tried to force cities such as Hamilton to expand their boundaries, paving the way for suburban sprawl. And the “strong mayor” powers now granted to the leaders of more than 200 municipalities allow them to pass decisions related to provincial priorities with only minority support on council.
To be clear, Canadian premiers do have the legal right to intervene in local affairs. Under the constitution, cities are creatures of the province. A premier could dissolve local government and appoint anyone as mayor. However, these extraordinary powers should not be exercised.
The lowly status of cities dates from a time when most Canadians lived in rural areas. Now, cities are home to the majority of Canadians. It is their mayors and councillors who know best how to make these places succeed. Which is crucial, because cities are the economic engines of the country. Premiers mess with them at their peril.
Mr. Ford’s local interventions also divert his attention from important issues in the rest of the province.
Residents in Kapuskasing, the town northwest of Timmins where a pulp mill shutdown threatened thousands of jobs, before a possible government lifeline emerged this week, may reasonably want the premier to spend less time and political capital on removing bicycle lanes in downtown Toronto. Drivers who want investments to make dangerous rural highways safer may wonder at a transportation policy so laser-focused on banning urban speed cameras. And residents province-wide may question why they should pay for the spa at Ontario Place.
Mr. Ford often justifies his policies with appeals to common sense. Here’s another take on common sense: At a time of cascading crises, leading a province is not a part-time role. The premier should focus on the job voters have given him three times instead of trying to be mayor of Ontario.