Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

[kamira51]

My conclusion is Caledon needs to be axed, it needs to be split up by neighboring regions, we're a rural region, we cant be independent. Caledon can't and will not survive on its own, just get rid of it.

 

[lenaitch]

My conclusion is Caledon needs to be axed, it needs to be split up by neighboring regions, we're a rural region, we cant be independent. Caledon can't and will not survive on its own, just get rid of it.

Perhaps, but there is a significant tax base in the south with its greater population. The population of Caledon (~76K) isn't far off Chatham_Kent (~105) which is largely rural with a small urban core. Same with Kawartha Lakes, which is much smaller. The County of Frontenac provides virtually no services - almost everything is lower tier. If I recall, for a time they abolished the county government but it is now back.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Doug Ford weakened EV sales in Ontario: General Motors VP​

From link.

General Motors’ (GM) head of electric vehicle adoption says the Canadian EV market is “well on its way,” despite slower sales in Ontario.

Hoss Hassani is GM’s vice president of charging and energy. His job is to get drivers behind the wheel of vehicles from the Detroit-based automaker’s expanding electrified lineup. He’s encouraged by zero-emission vehicles taking a near double-digit share of new registrations nationwide in the final quarter of 2022, pointing out that figure is about six per cent in the United States.

But Ontario, Canada’s most populous province and largest vehicle market, isn’t pulling its weight in the shift to cleaner cars and trucks, he told a crowd at this week's EV Charging Expo 2023 in Toronto.

Ontario, frankly, is a laggard. Toronto specifically, is a laggard,” he said.

According to Statistics Canada data, zero-emission vehicles accounted for 9.6 per cent of new light-duty vehicle registrations in the final three months of 2022. Sales were strongest in British Columbia, at 18.6 per cent of new registrations. Quebec followed with 13.9 per cent. In Ontario, zero-emission vehicles accounted for 8.1 per cent.

Hassani says Ontario’s shortfall is largely due to Premier Doug Ford’s 2018 decision to eliminate a rebate that encouraged the sale of more electric vehicles. Shortly after coming into power, Ford’s government slammed the brakes on electric-vehicle incentives worth as much as $14,000 for qualifying EVs priced under $75,000.

“The loss of that incentive did slow down adoption without a doubt. It meant those who wanted to get into an affordable EV had more difficulty doing that,” Hassani told Yahoo Finance Canada in an interview. “We see in B.C. and Quebec, where they have more of that incentive, they have higher adoption.”

Ford has called the credits a benefit for “millionaires” as he shifted the government's focus to boosting Ontario’s appeal as a hub for electric vehicle and battery manufacturing.

Todd Smith, Ontario’s Minister of Energy, spoke at the EV Charging Expo event on Thursday, touting the growing footprint of global automakers in the province focused on an electrified future. However, a spokesperson for Ontario minister of economic development Vic Fedeli on Friday dismissed the idea of reintroducing the EV credit program created by the previous Liberal government.

“Their credits did nothing to build the future of auto manufacturing in Ontario, and instead were used by people who didn't need them to buy cars made somewhere else,” Vanessa De Matteis said in email.

“Our government has taken a different approach, securing billions of dollars of electric vehicle investments and making sure Ontarians can buy electric vehicles made in Ontario by Ontario workers."

 

[DirectionNorth]

The official press release about the dissolution of Peel Region is here:

Ontario Newsroom

news.ontario.ca

The bits that we get out of it aren't substantial at this juncture.

This is most of what we got:

View attachment 478340

They appear to be proposing to take Caledon single-tier; that would really peculiar, and make for some mind blowing tax hikes.

Wouldn't be surprised if Doug chose to abolish all remaining county and regional governance, whether on behalf of amalgamations or on behalf of going-it-alones.

See this quote from the press release:

In the coming weeks, the province will also name regional facilitators to assess the upper-tier municipalities of Durham, Halton, Niagara, Simcoe, Waterloo and York. These facilitators will be tasked with reviewing whether the upper-tier government continues to be relevant to the needs of its communities or whether the lower-tier municipalities are mature enough to pursue dissolution. Where they recommend that a two-tier government is still required, the facilitators will also make recommendations on how they can more effectively respond to the issues facing Ontario’s fast-growing municipalities today, particularly when it comes to meeting municipal housing pledges and tackling the housing supply crisis.

They really do want to abolish all upper-tier governance.

Perhaps this is a strong mayor-style thing. Do it because he wants to screw with Toronto, but include other cities just to distract everyone.

So what developer owns lots of land in Caledon that in some way stands to profit from this move?

This is probably a Mississauga-driven exercise. Brampton is about to overtake them in population, and Mississauga wants to keep their higher tax base (more industrial land, etc.) in their own area. Perhaps this is a move to keep Bonnie Crombie from running at the LPO.

The fact that this is called the "Hazel McCallion Act" is quite funny. I laughed out loud when I read the press release!

 

[Northern Light]

They really do want to abolish all upper-tier governance.

I don't know if they do, or they do not, though either way, the irony that it was a conservative government that introduced this idea to Ontario, one which was lauded in many parts of the world for helping provide revenue-sharing for major services and enhanced coordination is doubtless lost on them.

***

Said system is of course, far from perfect; but, for instance, Niagara Region just created Niagara Regional Transit this year; at the insistence of the province by the way, to ensure that the area would be in a position to support GO
Expansion.

On that basis, un-doing Niagara would seem foolish, and its really too big for one upper tier. If I were to tinker there though, I admit, I would fold Thorold into St.Kitts as them being separate makes no real sense to me.

****

Likewise undoing Durham and breaking up Durham Transit makes no sense, and one upper-tiered Durham makes no sense. There, I would seriously consider merging Ajax and Pickering though.

I mean who doesn't find the way Pickering bends over top of Ajax ridiculous in a way that smacks of U.S. gerrymandering.

In Halton, except for fact that the regional Transportation dept. is terrible, I'd be inclined to upload transit to the Region to create the last major transit authority in the GTA.

I don't feel an inherent need to mess w/the boundaries in Halton; though again, the shape of Milton looks silly on a map, and no sensible person likes the gov't in Halton Hills. So maybe we could give Halton Hills to Milton; and come up with uniform northern limit for Burlington and Oakville.

 

[lenaitch]

I don't know if they do, or they do not, though either way, the irony that it was a conservative government that introduced this idea to Ontario, one which was lauded in many parts of the world for helping provide revenue-sharing for major services and enhanced coordination is doubtless lost on them.

***

Said system is of course, far from perfect; but, for instance, Niagara Region just created Niagara Regional Transit this year; at the insistence of the province by the way, to ensure that the area would be in a position to support GO
Expansion.

On that basis, un-doing Niagara would seem foolish, and its really too big for one upper tier. If I were to tinker there though, I admit, I would fold Thorold into St.Kitts as them being separate makes no real sense to me.

****

Likewise undoing Durham and breaking up Durham Transit makes no sense, and one upper-tiered Durham makes no sense. There, I would seriously consider merging Ajax and Pickering though.

I mean who doesn't find the way Pickering bends over top of Ajax ridiculous in a way that smacks of U.S. gerrymandering.

View attachment 478628

In Halton, except for fact that the regional Transportation dept. is terrible, I'd be inclined to upload transit to the Region to create the last major transit authority in the GTA.

I don't feel an inherent need to mess w/the boundaries in Halton; though again, the shape of Milton looks silly on a map, and no sensible person likes the gov't in Halton Hills. So maybe we could give Halton Hills to Milton; and come up with uniform northern limit for Burlington and Oakville.

I tend to agree. Tinkering with some lower-tier municipalities might be in order, but region-sized single municipalities would be a bad idea in areas that extend from dense urban to completely rural. Anytime rural and urban get lumped together, the urban area become sinks for rural tax dollars.

There was some talk a while back about creating a single fire service for Simcoe County. I hasn't gone anywhere - so far - but the general talk is that many volunteers would bail; they want to volunteer for their local community, not some larger, remote entity.

Current municipalities in north Simcoe County are largely small in elected and staff positions and all of the elected positions are part-time. I assume it is the same for some of the rural municipalities in Durham Region. Even with some groupings, I can't see any efficiency in carving up costly services such as solid waste management and EMS.

 

[adma]

They really do want to abolish all upper-tier governance.

Though all of the listed save Simcoe are regions--I'm thinking in terms of counties as well: the Bruce/Grey/Huron/Dufferin/Wellington etc etc set. And in a way, that'd make Ontario more like the western provinces where most everything's some form or another of single-tier--for instance, Alberta's "counties" being nothing more than big and typically rural/exurban unified jurisdictions (and on occasion including urban "hamlets", most notably Sherwood Park within Strathcona County outside Edmonton)

Which might distress those for whom Ontario's geographic order is founded upon the traditional cartographic shorthand of a matrix of county/district/region-type geographic entities; but these days, younger people don't have that county-centric mental concept of Ontario because they don't read or use maps, and Google doesn't show that matrix unless you program it in so if you're not given incentive to engage to such data, it simply slides off you.. So you can see why the Fordistas would find all of that dispensible...

 

[ExtendMySpadina]

Apparently mayors have been “blowing (up) Doug(‘s phone)” for him to do the same thing to their cities that he will be doing to Brampton and Mississauga.

Let’s theorize here who’s next!

Innisfil is first place for me, with the Orbit thing they have planned. Could be as big as Barrie is now population wise come 2050.
Alliston
Milton
Newmarket/Aurora
Bradford
Orangeville

 

[Richard White]

Apparently mayors have been “blowing (up) Doug(‘s phone)” for him to do the same thing to their cities that he will be doing to Brampton and Mississauga.

Let’s theorize here who’s next!

Innisfil is first place for me, with the Orbit thing they have planned. Could be as big as Barrie is now population wise come 2050.
Alliston
Milton
Newmarket/Aurora
Bradford
Orangeville

Durham may be next. Whitby, Oshawa, Ajax and Pickering are large enough to stand alone

 

[Dan416]

York Region is the second largest region in the GTA after Peel. Would their municipalities even want this? The region has been pretty successful lobbying for subway extensions and such. I'm actually surprised that other cities are interested in this. If, for example, Peel Police gets split into a separate Brampton and Mississauga police force, there will undoubtedly be additional costs, so I'm hard-pressed to believe it'll actually end up happening.

 

[lenaitch]

Apparently mayors have been “blowing (up) Doug(‘s phone)” for him to do the same thing to their cities that he will be doing to Brampton and Mississauga.

Let’s theorize here who’s next!

Innisfil is first place for me, with the Orbit thing they have planned. Could be as big as Barrie is now population wise come 2050.
Alliston
Milton
Newmarket/Aurora
Bradford
Orangeville

According to some news outlets, others like Durham Region are saying things are just fine.

The problem with given stand-alone status to only certain individual municipalities in a region or county means that you are blowing holes in what is left. Orangeville is only about 29K. One problem with going standalone is you are responsible for all of your own services, such as waste management, EMS, etc. either by doing it yourself or contracting it all out. For places like Orangeville or Alliston (actually New Tecumseth), even Newmarket/Aurora, I have a hard time believing some major services wouldn't be much more expensive. They either find their own landfill site and manage their own recycling effort, or pay somebody else - which is what they do currently by paying taxes to the county/region. In Simcoe County, the cities of Barrie and Orillia are separate but still contract some services from the county.

Counties (including their precursors to regions) have historically been a fairly weak level of governance in Ontario, certainly compared to the county system in the US. It used to be the basis for services such as school boards, court jurisdiction, jails (and very early on - law enforcement), health units, etc. but most of that has gone out the window, and I'm not sure how important they are now. In terms of roads, most upper tiers look after 'main' roads and I suppose ensure a level of consistency in planning and movement between lower tier municipalities, but it does seem a little odd that different crews, yards, etc. are intertwined.

I'm aware of the large rural municipalities out west and I think they could be instructive. Local experience with melding urban and rural areas seldom works out well for the rural side, but maybe there is some secret sauce out there in municipal rules, taxing levels, etc. that make it work.

 

[lenaitch]

Peel Police gets split into a separate Brampton and Mississauga police force, there will undoubtedly be additional costs, so I'm hard-pressed to believe it'll actually end up happening.

Good example. Two separate command structures, specialty units and support services, including dividing up and replicating communications. They could possibly stay with one using a joint police services board, but the egos involved between the two municipalities that might be difficult. The whole issue of fiefdoms seems to be prominent.

 

[afransen]

As a Mississauga resident, I think this whole divorce thing is very silly. There is only one taxpayer, and this doesn't sound like it will create real efficiencies, it's just financial engineering about who pays what.

 

[Dan416]

Maybe Dougie will just decide to "save money" and merge all the GTA police forces into one, with the police chief chosen by himself directly.

 

[adma]

Counties (including their precursors to regions) have historically been a fairly weak level of governance in Ontario, certainly compared to the county system in the US. It used to be the basis for services such as school boards, court jurisdiction, jails (and very early on - law enforcement), health units, etc. but most of that has gone out the window, and I'm not sure how important they are now. In terms of roads, most upper tiers look after 'main' roads and I suppose ensure a level of consistency in planning and movement between lower tier municipalities, but it does seem a little odd that different crews, yards, etc. are intertwined.

A weak level of governance (which is why Regional Municipalities came into fashion in the 60s/70s: to "strengthen the weakness"), but a strong level of "geographic ordering", which may reflect the influence of the US as well as the pre-70s countycentric order of the UK. And even the regions didn't overly disrupt that historically-entrenched countycentricity--heck, some may remember when, as recently the 70s, Stormont *and* Dundas *and* Glengarry *and* Prescott *and* Russell were individually depicted on the provincial highway map. (And the "geographic ordering" explains why cities and separated towns were commonly treated/depicted as county components rather than as Virginia-esque standalones.)

What I do notice is that when these time-honoured countycentric structures are dissolved (as in 70s Britain or 80s Quebec), the replacement authorities tend to have a more vaporous "identity": they're jurisdictional, but little else, and there isn't the baked-in public-perception "clarity" the preceding county networks might have held (and the fact that said replacement authorities were too often subject to tampering by the Thatcher/Harris/Ford-style powers in charge didn't help). Which is why such reform tended to go hand in hand with dispensing with all "county-type" boundary depictions in such things as highway maps, and a common geographic lay-of-the-land vanishing except as a historical curio.