[Host]: The Government's Better Regional Governance Act 2026 will shake up how decisions are made in Ontario and who makes them. So what's in it and what is it supposed to accomplish? John Michael McGrath is a columnist for TVO Today and co-host of the OnPoli podcast, and he joins us in studio. How are you doing, sir?

[John Michael McGrath]: Good. How are you doing?

[Host]: I'm doing well. Let's talk about Bill 100. How will the Regional Governance Act change the way some jurisdictions will govern in Ontario?

[John Michael McGrath]: Right. So this is specifically looking at reforming the regional municipal governments in Ontario, most of which all of which are in southern Ontario. And specifically, these are the regional governments that are mostly in what we would call the greater Golden Horseshoe. So municipalities around Toronto, but into Niagara region as well, up to Simcoe County. And these are municipalities where there is one big overarching level of municipal government that also makes decisions for many smaller, lower level municipal governments. And two big changes that this bill does well, this bill and previous bills do is it will now make the regional chairs of these municipal councils appointed as opposed to elected, either directly or indirectly. So they will be appointed from Queen's Park, from the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and separately, the Regional Chair will also be given powers analogous to the strong mayor powers, that mayors of other municipalities like Otto and other municipalities have received. And then on top of that, there's also some changes to the size of the regional councils in both Simcoe and Niagara.

[Host]: Okay. I want to get to that. The latter point of the sort of what those powers might mean, but should get a point of clarification here in terms of the appointments themselves, some regions actually do appoint not from Queen's Park, but they do appoint within the region where some are elected during municipal elections. Correct.

[John Michael McGrath]: Right. So there's been a mix of methods. Back in 2018, when the Ford Tories were first elected, the previous Liberal government had just brought in a law saying that for that 2018 municipal election, all regional chairs would be directly elected by voters. The Ford government, one of their first acts, was to repeal that. Since then, some have been elected directly, some have been elected by the regional councils themselves. So you might be a local mayor who gets elected chair famously. Jim Bradley, former MPP and longtime Saint Catherine's MPP, was elected chair of Niagara Region.

[Host]: All right. Okay. So what do strong powers mean for these regional chairs?

[John Michael McGrath]: So it's let me just start with the powers themselves. Just people might need a refresher. It will allow the head of council. And that's the language in the law. It will allow the head of council to move forward certain measures that meet provincial priorities. So we think about building transit more quickly or building more housing. Anything that that intersects with those areas and other provincial priorities, they can move measures like that forward without a support of the majority of council. They can also veto measures, and those vetoes can only be overridden with a super majority of council. So this is already this has been controversial in some cities because you know it. It's not how we have traditionally done municipal democracy in Ontario. And so it's a change. And that's been controversial. But at least in those cases, until now, those powers were held by elected mayors. This new bill gives those same powers to unelected, appointed regional chairs. This is another, I think, likely to be controversial element of this, where some of the people who have been appointed by the current PC government, you know, can go back to the recent chair of Niagara Region, Bob Gale, who was a former PC candidate. He had a substantial career in local politics. I don't want to deny that he had a substantial resume there, but he was. I think it's uncontroversial to say that he was appointed because he was a former Progressive Conservative candidate. At the provincial level, voters had had an opportunity to vote for him at the provincial level. They re-elected a New Democrat in the riding. He contested instead, and then he was made this regional chair, you know, so you very well could see a position after this bill becomes law where, you know, this this kind of pattern could repeat where somebody who the voters had, in fact rejected is now given a powers superior to those of elected officials.

[Host]: All right. Well, let's pick up on that. There's obviously some argument that this isn't necessarily democratic. You share that view in your latest column on TVO.org. Why wouldn't it be? Walk us through a little bit of some of the stuff that you had mentioned, but there's more to that.

[John Michael McGrath]: Yeah. So it is one thing to say that we are giving these powers to elected mayors, and whether you necessarily agree with this argument, let me sort of give the strong version, I think, of this argument, which is that let's take a city like Toronto, right? The city of Toronto has both a mayor and it has councils, elected councillors elected at the ward level. And the argument to give strong mayor powers to a mayor like Olivia Chow or Mark Sutcliffe in Ottawa is pretty simple. These are the only people on the entire council who are elected by the city as a whole, and they have a mandate there, and to make policy for the city as a whole. Again, you don't have to agree with that argument, but I think it is at least a fair argument, a defensible argument that people could could, you know, genuinely debate in a democratic context. That argument disappears if the position is now appointed from Queen's Park, it's not really tenable. And it really does undermine the whole idea of local democracy in the first place. If we are just going to dictate policy from Queen's Park in a super sort of micro managerial way, where it's not just Queen's Park spelling out the the sort of the broad rules of the game and general priorities, but saying to municipalities, not only do you have to do this, but we are going to appoint somebody to make sure you do. Then it really raises the question of, why do we even have local democracy in the first place?

[Host]: All right, well, Ontarians will have their say because municipal elections are going to be happening later this year. However, municipal elections don't tend to do well. I think the last numbers, I think, were.

[John Michael McGrath]: Famously low turnout.

[Host]: Yeah, about 30% or so. Yes. Will Ontarians care about this change to local government?

[John Michael McGrath]: It's possible that they won't in time. Right. You know, before those municipal elections, the bill is going to it's very likely to pass. It's currently at the committee stage at Queen's Park. I have not seen some great groundswell of opposition coming out of the woodworks here. If people do not discover outrage before the October elections, though, what I would say is eventually these regional chairs are going to have to start making decisions. And the reason you make these kinds of changes, the appointments the super mayor powers, is for them to make contentious choices, contentious decisions that the local elected officials would not necessarily make of their own accord. When that starts happening, I don't know which region it will happen in first, but I'm pretty certain it will happen sometime in the next four years. When that starts happening, people are going to notice, right? They are going to suddenly discover that somebody appointed from Queen's Park is making a decision, contrary to the local councillors and mayors that they voted for, and that's probably going to be too late in terms of affecting the legal change. But it will not be too late in terms of causing a controversy that Queen's Park will have to respond to.

[Host]: A story that we will continue to follow. I feel like you planted the seeds for potentially your next visit on the show. Of course we'll have you for that time.

[John Michael McGrath]: It's always planting seeds.

[Host]: There we go. John Michael, always a pleasure.

[John Michael McGrath]: Thank you so much.