‘It’s more like a dictatorship’: Local mayors reject strong mayor powers

The mayors of Goderich and Port Elgin are rejecting the strong mayor powers awarded to them by province last week. Scott Miller reports.

Trevor Bazinet is very clear, he doesn’t want any special mayoral powers, soon to be bestowed upon him by the province.

“I don’t want them. We have a team here. I believe in democracy,” said Bazinet, Goderich’s Mayor.

Mayor Luke Charbonneau in Saugeen Shores feels the same way, “I don’t think that in order to make our community stronger, we need to make one person stronger.”

Bazinet and Charbonneau reject “strong mayor powers” that the province wants to give them and 167 other municipalities in Ontario. There are 47 cities and large municipalities like Toronto, Woodstock, London, and Kitchener-Waterloo, that already have the powers that allow the mayor to veto bylaws, hire and fire municipal staff, and override council decisions.

“It’s more like dictatorship to me. If the majority of council was to make a decision and I was to override it, what am I doing? What’s the message that I’m sending to my team? It’s not a very good message,” said Bazinet, who became Goderich’s Mayor in 2023, following the death of previous mayor Myles Murdock.

The province said the focus of strong mayor powers is to speed up approvals for provincial priorities like housing. Councils with six or more council members qualify for this latest round of strong mayor powers, meaning places like St. Thomas, Tillsonburg, Hanover, and municipalities like South Bruce, North Huron, and North Perth, qualify.

“I think that it runs the risk of destabilizing our municipal governments. It runs the risk of rash decision making. One person acting alone can act quickly, yes, but sometimes not advisedly. Councils are moderating, councils moderate each other,” said Charbonneau.

During the first round of doling out strong mayor powers, only a handful of municipalities rejected them, but many more mayors of these smaller municipalities are already standing up to say they don’t want these new responsibilities put solely in their hands.

“I do not plan on using it. I plan to continue moving forward with the council that we have and working with them and staff provide us recommendations. And then council is the final decision maker, whether we want to move forward with that recommendation or come up with another recommendation. But I have zero plans on invoking it whatsoever,” said Bazinet.

“I think that the most ideal thing would be that they just don’t come into effect. But then I guess if they do on the 1st of May, then we’ll have to talk about how we handle them. I will almost certainly delegate as much of that authority as I can back to council, and back to staff. But I think the best thing would be if these powers were not conferred or imposed on us,” said Charbonneau.

A list of the 169 municipalities that have been given the opportunity to use the new “strong mayor powers” can be found here.