Steve Paikin: Welcome everyone to the OnPoli podcast.

John Michael McGrath: And I'm John Michael McGrath. Today on the pod, we unpack transit-related developments that could deliver some big results. Then, the government is eyeing some significant changes to one of the capital city's most iconic parks, [music] Queen's Park. And remember when the provincial government gave so-called strong mayor powers to municipal leaders across Ontario, theoretically to build more housing? We get into whether those superpowers actually delivered. And in your column my column, I'm going to talk about a finicky planning dispute between Toronto and Ontario and what it tells us about the housing crisis. Finicky? Did you say finicky?

Steve Paikin: I said finicky, yes.

John Michael McGrath: Finicky. Okay, I want to hear about this.

Steve Paikin: I'm taking a look at what for my money is the best mayor's race anywhere in Ontario, and it happens to be in my hometown. [music] You? Hamilton? I'm shocked.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter]

Steve Paikin: It's Friday, April 10th, 2026, so let's get to it. A little sugar off the top, JMM?

John Michael McGrath: Hello, sir.

Steve Paikin: And we've we're we're we're not even through the intro, and we've been teasing each other already.

John Michael McGrath: I know. I know. We're We're We're getting caffeinated, apparently.

Steve Paikin: Now I know why you're wearing NASA today. Yes, I you gave me a little bit of flack a few a few weeks ago about repeating t-shirts, but look, I am enjoying Artemis 2 too much to not wear the NASA t-shirt again this week.

John Michael McGrath: story.

Steve Paikin: It is a great story. The pictures have been phenomenal. Obviously enjoying the the Canadian news angle here as well. Yeah, like I think I said this last week as well, but like as somebody who was too young for the Apollo program and and frankly, you know, spent a good chunk of my life regretting that.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter]

Steve Paikin: Seeing astronauts go to the moon and and come home safely is I have enjoyed it actually more than I thought I would. And I knew I was going to enjoy this event, and somehow it has has ended up meaning more to me than I anticipated.

John Michael McGrath: That's wonderful. Yeah. Do you know Can I make you jealous a little bit? Just a little bit jealous? I was 9 years old when they walked on the moon, and I we watched it I was at summer at the time. It was in July, and it was I mean, provided it really happened.

Steve Paikin: [laughter]

John Michael McGrath: It was an astonishing thing to watch. Pretty quite incredible. You had to stay up late to watch, right? On the East in the Eastern time zone. It was like super early in the morning. Boy, isn't that funny? I don't recall. What time of day was it? So, I seem to recall it was right in the middle of the day, but maybe I've got that wrong. I'm not sure. Although, there was an amazing development. Did you hear about this?

Steve Paikin: No. No, Jeremy Hansen, our Canadian astronaut who's on Artemis 2? He crossed the floor. He's sitting with THE AMERICANS NOW. [laughter] THAT WAS A GENUINE LAUGH. I was really proud of that joke, and that was a genuine laugh. [laughter] That's great. Well, no no premier anniversary for me today. I'm just going with a basic here. I'll stand so you can see it. This t-shirt, which is a guy in a canoe, and it just says Ontario,

John Michael McGrath: Yes. really does portray my hopes for spring, which despite temperatures of minus 4 at some point this past week. Yep. I I I am reliably advised that spring will be coming this year eventually, right?

Steve Paikin: Yes. Yes, we will eventually tilt back towards the sun and its light. Let's hope. Anyway, enough of our shirts. On to issue one.

Steve Paikin: Last week, we discussed some of the housing-related parts of Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act.

John Michael McGrath: [sighs]

Steve Paikin: But, as the title of the bill implies, it's too long, but it does have a good title. [laughter] The proposed law isn't just about building homes, it also includes measures intended to make people's commutes easier and improve transit throughout the Greater Toronto area. JMM, you already did a housing rundown for us last week, but the transportation parts of this law deserve equal billing as well, do they not? It pains me to admit that housing policy is not the only important thing to discuss in provincial politics, but it is true. And some of the stuff that is being proposed in Bill 98 could end up affecting how people travel throughout the region, how easy or not their commutes are. So, one measure I want to make sure to mention right at the top is the creation of a unified booking system for accessible transit services. So, here in Toronto, I think it's it's called Wheel-Trans, and there are similar services throughout the region. And and I think it's fair to say that people who rely on these services often find them not the easiest services to navigate as as well-intentioned as the operators are. And so, the province wants to create a unified booking system so that, you know, whatever city you are in in the GTA, you would I guess you would just need one app to to communicate with the the service provider. One-stop shopping. Exactly. And they want to make it easier for a trip to cross local boundaries. So, you wouldn't have the problem of, you know, somebody who lives in Toronto, but maybe needs to run an errand in Mississauga, there are procedural barriers there that this bill will seek to eliminate.

Steve Paikin: So, so the biggest change though, however, That was a funny moment. I was waiting for you to say something, you were waiting for me to say something, and neither one of us said anything. That doesn't usually happen, but note the date and time. That was funny.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter] Professionals.

Steve Paikin: The biggest change however that the government is proposing is an expansion of the GO Transit One Fare program. So, just to refresh people's memories here, in 2024, the government introduced the One Fare program. That means someone who boards, let's say, a GO train in Mississauga, they don't get dinged again if they get off at Union Station in Toronto and then get on to the TTC and take a subway, right? They just pay that one fare.

John Michael McGrath: This had answered a complaint from gosh, going on decades, from particularly from commuters in the 905 who felt it was unfair that they were getting charged twice.

Steve Paikin: Yes. Double dinged.

Steve Paikin: Um The government is now proposing to actually harmonize fares for transit services across the GTA. So, for example, at the moment, even if you take the the One Fare take advantage of the One Fare program, you can pay a a different fare for like your return trip depending on which transit provider your trip starts with because not everybody charges the same fare. So, just as a for example here, someone whose commute begins in Peel and ends in Durham region, with this new expansion, they they would not get charged wildly different rates depending on which city their journey begins in. The city the province wants to get the the fares closer to parity. Yeah. And I think I remember the transportation minister back in the day saying something like the average commuter saved 1,800 bucks a year thanks to this new One Fare situation. So, this all sounds fairly straightforward, and we don't need to do any follow-up questions on this [laughter] at all, do we? Or do we? There are some details that I would like to know more about.

John Michael McGrath: Do tell. So, for municipalities, of course, the big question here is going to be whether the province forces them to raise or lower their fares. And like if they are asked to raise their fares, then passengers are going to have to eat that cost. And if they are forced to lower their fares, then that's going to create a financial hole that the municipality is going to have to fill somehow, right? So, in in the context of Toronto, where I'm most familiar with these budget issues, you know, the the city council really does try to keep the TTC's fares from going up too quickly, but it doesn't control the price of diesel for its buses. It doesn't control the price of electricity for subways. It doesn't even, frankly, control the cost of labor because TTC the TTC's union was declared essential more than a decade ago now, and they no longer have have the power to strike or be locked out. And so, all of labor issues all go to arbitration now, right? So, all that is to say that Toronto is not really in control of the the costs of providing transit. So, if the province takes over the role of setting the fares for municipalities, those municipalities are going to want assurances that they're not going to have to eat a large and ongoing cost because the province is taking some some flexibility away from them. But the provincial government did help subsidize the One Fare, I think, did they not? And do they Could they not do the same thing again? Yeah, they did. And so, the province could, of course, subsidize any financial holes that it creates with these rules, but how big that cost would be is going to depend on choices that the government either hasn't yet made or it hasn't made public to us.

John Michael McGrath: So, just again, to use the TTC as an example, the TTC collects nearly a billion dollars in fare revenue every year. So, if the province is going to freeze the fare increase or lower it or whatever, that's going to impose a pretty substantial cost on the provincial treasure. I mean, you know, in the context of a $200 billion budget, a few hundred million dollars is not that big, but it's Still real money. It's It's real money, exactly. Still real money. And so, you know, we we we presumably need And of course, you know, I'm going to get into this a bit more, but you know, Toronto is just one of many transit services. So, this could potentially be a large expense for the province. Well, if you think about different examples around the Greater Toronto area, if you're a kid in Brampton, let's say you're 12 years old or younger, you've got to pay two bucks to ride the transit system in Brampton. If you ride the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission system, you ride free. So, clearly there are some anomalies that got to be figured out. Yeah, and and those examples, and and there are many more across the region, are exactly the kind of thing that the province is looking to address here. Another one I'll say real quick is that, you know, in Peel region, the the province is hoping to eventually open an LRT line between Mississauga and Brampton and those cities currently operate their own transit systems independently um and they they charge different fares and this seems to be one of the specific cases that the province wants to address uh because the whole point is to get more people riding between Mississauga and Brampton and the province would like it to be easier to do so.

John Michael McGrath: Um at a another few quick questions here just on the basic sort of technical design questions that we're going to probably want answers to. Go Transit charges people different fares based on how far you travel on a Go train, right? The TTC used to do this I think back in the 1960s but has long since stopped doing it. So there's a question like will Toronto and other cities that do not do distance based fares, will they be required to adopt the Go's system? Toronto's always prided itself on having this if you go two subway stations or if you go from Southwest Etobicoke to Northeast Scarborough, same amount of money regardless. Yeah and and like in the context of who lives in what parts of the city in 2026, there's actually like a an intentional sort of social justice angle to this in that wealthier people who live closer to the city core functionally end up subsidizing lower income people who live on the city's periphery both literally and socioeconomically. So you know that's one example. Another one we've talked about on the podcast briefly Mayor Olivia Chow has proposed to cap fares on a monthly pass basis so that if you use the TTC a lot but you can't afford to buy a monthly pass at the beginning of every month, your your fare would still get you wouldn't pay more than the monthly pass rate. Maybe that can be allowed to continue under this provincial system but like [clears throat] we just don't know. This is just a question we don't have an Is there any way to know how many people this might affect at the end of the day?

Steve Paikin: So this is where I'm going to be a bit of a skunk at the garden party.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter]

Steve Paikin: This issue this whole issue of making it easier to transfer between different transit providers in the GTA is one of these issues that looks super important from the perspective of Queen's Park and it is actually less important than it seems to be. Before I go further, I do want to say that you and I tried pretty hard not to be Toronto chauvinists on this podcast. I think we try to bring in perspectives from elsewhere in the province and I sometimes joked that my job at TVO is to explain to Torontonians that the rest of the province exists and matters.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter]

Steve Paikin: But this is one specific issue where when we talk about public transit use, like the story really is the TTC and everyone else. Like the majority of transit trips in the GTA begin on the TTC, they end on the TTC and they do not involve any transfers whatsoever. I was more uh positively inclined towards one fare because within Toronto there's actually it has benefited me personally. There are places where allowing people to get onto the Go train actually helps decongest the subway and the bus and streetcar lines but just as a as a basic sort of mathematical matter, the the TTC handles so many more passengers on a given day than the Go train does or the entire Go network and then other passenger other transit providers pardon me are smaller still. So just to give some numbers here, right? The province says that one fare is responsible for 72 million transfers over two years. Even if we assume that all of those were actually directly caused by one fare which is a generous assumption, that's about as many trips that the TTC handles in two months. I just looked it up actually while you were talking. People would have no clue how many TTC trips are taken annually. It's almost 430 million.

John Michael McGrath: Yes. Phenomenal number.

Steve Paikin: It's it is a huge number. As I say, it is substantially larger than Go. It is substantially larger than every other GTA transit provider. So if we are talking about uh making transit easier to use in the GTA, if we're talking about growing the ridership of transit, like this is probably worth addressing. It is not realistically I think in it would not be on my top five list of priorities and frankly it would struggle to make the top 10.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter]

Steve Paikin: Um you know, this is if you want to talk about growing transit ridership, it is a battle that will be won or lost in Toronto with people who ride the TTC. And if we're talking about where you should spend the marginal dollar, again, this is nice. This is politically valuable to like the Tories are happen to be the government that have done this but they are building on work that was done by the Liberals by introducing Presto. Both parties have have really made this something they wanted to work on for years. It looks very important from the perspective of Queen's Park and I just really think if we're talking about building transit ridership, we have to talk about like making the TTC better and cheaper and easier to use. Now that we have alienated although mostly [laughter] you have alienated the 10 million people in Ontario who live outside of the Toronto area, shall we move on to issue two? I'm sure I will find other ways to alienate people.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter] I'm sure you will. Off to issue two we go.

John Michael McGrath: When JMM and I talk about Queen's Park, sometimes we mean the Ontario government, sometimes we mean the building of the legislature itself but there is also in fact a park at Queen's Park. Though you might not be terribly familiar with it. On the north side of the building, there is a green space that hosts a statue of King Edward the VII but otherwise often goes overlooked. That may change after a vote at Toronto City Council and the intervention of a former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and JMM has all the deets. Before we go on, you you attended University of Toronto?

Steve Paikin: I did. Were you ever hazed into licking the statue? Do you know what? There is a tradition. This is true. Orientation first week University of Toronto, one of the tasks some poor sucker gets, thankfully it wasn't me back in the day, is to paint the testicles of the horse of Edward the VII. And somebody does it every year and then I guess the city crews have to go in there and wash it off and make the testicles look nice again.

John Michael McGrath: [laughter]

Steve Paikin: But thank you for reminding me about that traumatic episode of my No, thankfully it was never me. Okay. Well, with [laughter] that Where did that come from? Wow. Like I had to ask. With the digression put aside, we are talking here about the revitalization of Queen's Park North. Now again, if you've never visited the legislature or this part of Toronto, I think it is fair to say that the the Queen's Park North is the less photogenic part of the precinct and that was in fact a complaint lodged by the Globe and Mail's Marcus Gee in a column he wrote in 2024. Hm. That column was then read by the former Lieutenant Governor Hilary Weston and last year the Weston Family Foundation announced that they would donate 50 million dollars to revitalize the lands on the north side of the legislature. Fast forward about a year and last month Toronto City Council formally voted to accept the donation from the Weston Foundation and move forward with the revitalization.

John Michael McGrath: Now I guess one of the sad things about all this is that Hilary Weston, the former LG, actually died last summer so she will not actually get to see her work come to fruition but there is a bit of an interesting quirk in this plan in that neither Toronto nor the province of Ontario actually own the land under which all this is happening. It's kind of quirky. Yes, this is just one of those little details. The land is actually owned the land in question Queen's Park North is formally owned by the University of Toronto who were fun fact the previous landowner for the land that the legislature actually sits on. Bit of an urban legend that goes around about how the province doesn't actually own the land that the UFT owns the land. This is where things get mixed up. The province does in fact own the land that the legislature sits on but once upon a time they had to buy it from the University of Toronto.

John Michael McGrath: So technically what Toronto City Council voted on in this case last month was to hash out an agreement between the city, the Weston Family Foundation and the University of Toronto about what a future park would look like. And let's answer the question. Do we know in fact what they're going to do with the place? We don't actually have details, right? It is a local matter in the city of Toronto so we are in the midst of consultations. Ah, there we go. Okay.

Steve Paikin: [laughter] Um you know, this is on the one hand this is the the backyard of the seat of government in the province and it is also a park in downtown Toronto, right? Two things can be true. And it is also a park in a part of the city where green space is very dear and local residents understandably have a lot of opinions about what they do and do not want to see change. The city staff report is available online. I don't know if we'll be able to put it in the show notes but people can get a sense there what staff are considering, what feedback they have received so far from local residents, what concerns city councilors are trying to address.

Steve Paikin: To speak in very broad themes here, something I think we are seeing and we have seen elsewhere in Toronto is a a bit of a philosophical disagreement about who and what parks are for, right? Are these places that we want to draw people into with attractions and amenities. There's been, you know, discussion about like should we have a coffee shop in Queen's Park North? Should we have, but you know, a performance venue, that kind of thing.

John Michael McGrath: There's nothing there right now like that.

Steve Paikin: Yeah, there's it's it's open green space aside from the aforementioned statue and quite a bit of traffic basically. You know, the alternative is, you know, do we want to in fact keep it that way or do we want to keep it as a more of a quiet serene place where people can escape the the bustle of the city, right? Very um very different opinions on what the park should be and and what it should do and who it is for and the kind of thing that the city has to balance frankly in all sorts of places. This one just happens to be around Queen's Park.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah, and and I think I mean the the words you just used a quiet serene place where people can just get away from the hustle bustle. Queen's Park has never actually Queen's Park the park has never actually been that popular among park goers because of course it is situated right between Queen's Park Crescent going north and Queen's Park Crescent going south on either side of it.

Steve Paikin: It's inside of traffic circles.

John Michael McGrath: Exactly. There is traffic whizzing by there at all hours of the day, so it's not exactly quiet and serene, but it is green. Yes, and you know, other things are going on of course in this whole area. If actually opened a much more convenient way to get from museum station to Queen's Park if you're taking the TTC there. They've they opened a new entrance there and we should put this in the context of they're of course looking at revitalizing the building of the legislature itself.

Steve Paikin: Yes. Right. Still waiting for a more detailed idea of what that's going to entail, but it will probably mean shutting down the legislature for many years, probably around a decade and moving the legislature elsewhere and that seems to me like if we're not talking about coordinating those two plans, probably we should be. Mhm. Right. Now, for those who live outside the greater Toronto area, this is the part of the program where we can assure you we are not only going to talk about Toronto on this show. [laughter] We will talk about the rest of the province and we'll do it right now. Off to issue three.

Steve Paikin: Premier Doug Ford has made no secret of the fact that he thinks Niagara region has too many elected officials. Earlier this year, the provincially appointed chair of that regional municipality raised the idea of major changes potentially including amalgamations to shrink the number of elected officials. That went down like a lead balloon, but the Ford government is moving ahead with changes anyway and Niagara region isn't alone. JMM, if you please. Right, here we are referring to Bill 100, the Better Regional Governance Act introduced by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Rob Flack, on Thursday of last week.

Steve Paikin: So, the bill does a bunch of things, but starting with Niagara region, the premier is getting a little bit of what he asked for. The makeup of Niagara region's council, this is the body making the decisions for all of the municipalities within the region. It is being shrunk from 32 to 13 members. That is going to be a seat for each mayor of a local government in the region plus the chair. We should just stress again, that is Niagara Region Council, but when Doug Ford talks about there's too many politicians, he's not talking about the 32 on Niagara Region Council, he's talking about all the local municipalities within Niagara Region and that adds up to more than 120 politicians for a population the size of Hamilton. So, that's why he has been I guess very eager to reduce the number of politicians there. What have they got announced so far and is it a big deal? Well, as you can sort of do from the math there, they've shrunk the council by what like 15 or 16 members. It's he's clearly not getting what he initially was hoping for when we first started talking about this this discussion. They are not amalgamating municipalities. He's not going deeper into the the weeds of each individual small municipal council and saying well, currently you've got six members, guess what? You're going to be three now, right? He's just sticking to these changes to regional council.

Steve Paikin: It's a substantial change in in this sense and and um speaking as a Torontonian, I guess welcome Niagara region to the club of cities that are not allowed to choose the composition of their own councils. One of the first things the premier did, right? When he when he won the election in 2018.

John Michael McGrath: Yeah. Cut Toronto council in half. Exactly. And that law continues to bind. But it's it is I think fair to call it a bit more of a symbolic change certainly relative to what the premier was talking about a few weeks ago. Bill 100 also deals not just with Niagara Region, but Simcoe County's got a piece of this as well. Tell us about that. Right, so it sounds the same in that Simcoe County is is being shrunk along similar lines, but it does have a different context. Simcoe County had actually previously voted on its own to reduce the size of its county council from 32 to 17. The county's own rules actually require more than just a simple majority to change the composition of county council. So, they didn't actually clear that bar according to their own internal procedures, but the province it doesn't have to follow Simcoe County's internal procedures. So, they are just going ahead with this change via legislation. As in Niagara Region, the new council will consist of the mayors of each local municipality as well as the chair who in this case is properly called the Warden of Simcoe County.

Steve Paikin: Isn't that great?

John Michael McGrath: that title. Great title. The Warden. You are the Warden. Um interestingly, the province is also going to make rules approving weighted voting in these councils and you know, just to spell this out a bit like because we're going with the mayor of each municipality will have a seat at the regional level, but the municipalities themselves have wildly different populations. So, there's going to be weighted voting so that the mayors of the largest municipalities will in fact have votes that matter a bit more than the mayors of the smaller councils. This was actually a long-standing gripe in Simcoe County particularly. The mayor and council of Bradford West Gwillimbury had repeatedly asked for some kind of reform to the the voting structure and uh in that sense, you know, at least in so far as we're talking about these changes to council, I think the province would be on solid footing to say that they are actually just answering a a local request in this case. And when does all this go into effect? The government is moving to have this bill passed before nominations open for this year's municipal elections. That is May 1st. So, they're going to try to hustle this through the house presumably and these changes would all control the councils that are elected in October. So, that the currently existing councils will remain in place until the elections in the fall. Maybe a dumb question here, but does everybody get elected?

Steve Paikin: [laughter]

John Michael McGrath: I mean, we're talking democratic changes. So, it seems maybe a dumb, but maybe a reasonable question to ask, does everybody have to get elected? Indeed they do not and that is the other big change that is being implemented in with Bill 100. The chairs of the regions of Peel, York, Durham, Halton, Muskoka, Niagara and Waterloo plus the aforementioned Warden of Simcoe County, these will now be appointed positions not elected or otherwise chosen by those councils. Those regional chairs are also being given strong mayor powers that match the kinds of powers that the province has extended to mayors in over 200 Ontario cities already. So, these new chairs will have the power to reorganize regional bureaucracies, propose and manage the the budget process and they will be able to veto measures that they think conflict with provincial priorities. Do we know who gets to appoint them?

Steve Paikin: That would be the provincial government.

John Michael McGrath: How about that? Yeah, formally speaking it would be an order in council, but yeah, the the premier and the the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. This is I mean the the issue of strong mayor powers it's actually going to come up in in a column that I will talk about later in the program as well, but it's all part of local government now for a significant majority of Ontarians, right? Yeah, and you know, it's been striking that like, you know, this kind of came out of nowhere in 2022 after the provincial election of that year. Doug Ford sort of announced this was going to be a thing going forward. It's a big change and you know, we can talk about you know, the the relative pros and cons of of these strong mayor powers, but I do want to remind people that when this was a big breach from the the historical precedent we'd had about, you know, how councils were shaped by law in Ontario and at the time it was justified as, you know, this was what we needed to do to get more housing and transit built quickly in Ontario particularly in the big cities of Toronto and Ottawa where these powers were were debuted.

John Michael McGrath: At least on the housing file, that just hasn't happened, right? Not at any kind of macro level, right? We've we've given 200 cities these strong mayor powers and at the same time Ontario's housing starts have fallen off a cliff, right?

Steve Paikin: [laughter]

John Michael McGrath: You know, I don't think one thing has caused the other, but it certainly hasn't helped avert the the the problems we see in the housing market. Um worse still, here's where we get to some current events, right? You do have cases where mayors have actually used their strong mayor powers to thwart housing policy, right? So, last month the mayor of Markham, Frank Scarpitti, actually overruled a majority on council that had voted to allow fourplexes citywide and as a consequence, Markham has forfeited $7.3 million from the federal government. I got to say,

Steve Paikin: [laughter]

John Michael McGrath: it is really not clear to me what these powers are actually intended to accomplish aside from the idea that the like the premier seems to just like the idea that mayors should be more powerful than the councils they sit on and he has the means to do it. And he has done it. And we will circle back to this when we talk about the columns that you and I wrote and we'll do that right after this.

John Michael McGrath: Time now for our regular feature your column my column in which JMM and I reminisce about the columns we wrote for the TVO website tvo.org over the past week. Just go to the website, click on our images and there we go. You'll see those columns. What did you write about this week you want to bring to our attention? Uh so we've mentioned our editor Nat Basin before I inflicted a longer piece than usual on him because there's a weird kind of finicky dispute. We mentioned a change that the province is aiming to make last week about minimum lot sizes where you will be in theory if this this proposal goes forward, you will be allowed to build homes on smaller lots than municipalities usually allow under the current rules.

John Michael McGrath: And you know, understandably municipality or at least predictably municipalities don't love their decisions being overruled by Queen's Park, but there was a specific way that Toronto objected to this change when the first round of consultations was made last year that I wanted to highlight because I really think it illustrates the tension between how the profession of city planning sees the world and how like an economist views the world, right? I'm not an economist, but you know, if you believe that the housing crisis is ultimately the result of a housing shortage, like we need to build more homes and that is certainly the position of the Ontario government for example, um then we need to make it easier to build more homes and the the way that planners have objected to some of this these these decisions seems to me to say that they don't still they really do not grasp this yet as an economic problem.

John Michael McGrath: Like I said, it's a bit of a longer piece. I do hope people have the patience to read it. It's not like War and Peace or anything. But I I as I say, I think it gets usefully at the tension of like two different world views about you know, what is the cause of the housing crisis and how do we address it? And and I very firmly come down on one side of that dispute, but I do hope people will read it. Well, I got through it. So it can't be that can't be that daunting. I got through it.

Steve Paikin: [gasps]

Steve Paikin: You know that I am constitutionally obligated to mention my hometown of Hamilton as often as possible on this show. Notwithstanding that, see how I got the notwithstanding clause into a discussion about constitutional obligations?

John Michael McGrath: Very nicely done. Notwithstanding that, I truly believe that the mayor's race coming up in the city of Hamilton is going to be the best mayor's race anywhere in the province of Ontario and I'll tell you why. We know a lot of the players. Andrea Horvath, the former NDP leader who has been the in her rookie term as a mayor of Hamilton over the last 3 and 1/2 years. She is the mayor today. Running against her is the same person who challenged her last time whom she defeated by just about 1,600 votes, a guy named Keinan Loomis. Keinan was running last time for the first time and as we say, came very very close to defeating somebody who'd been in politics for more than a quarter of a century.

John Michael McGrath: Add to the mix a third guy named Rob Cooper who literally, I don't know, was it 6 months ago, won a by-election for an open seat at Hamilton City Council, then decided to throw his hat into the ring. And this is a guy who's got I mean never mind he's been in the backrooms of politics for a long time, but also got you know, Harvard, Stanford education all over the place, consultant who deals with billion-dollar companies. He has promised that if you want to take a look at this city by the time I'm done being mayor, you won't recognize it. He means it in a positive way. And I'll circle back here to the super mayor powers that we were just talking about. Andrea Horvath used her strong mayor powers in order to push through and overrule actually I think she just broke a tie in this case, but she broke a tie at City Council to get some affordable housing built in a part of town that needed it. That was her view. Rob Cooper says, if I win the mayoralty, I'm going to come in and use those strong mayor powers and overturn that decision to stop the building of that affordable housing because it took away a parking lot that local businesses rely on to get you know, a place for their customers to put their cars and so on.

John Michael McGrath: So we've got a showdown there potentially. Keinan Loomis who you know, sharp young guy, Ontario Chamber of Commerce, Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, works for an organization right now promoting the steel business in Hamilton. You know, we've got three really strong, well-known personalities fighting to be the next mayor of Hamilton and Hamilton has a bit of a thing. If you look at the last six mayors, I think five of them only served one term and then got booted out. There's about one term and out in Hamilton. And there's one guy who managed to get a couple of terms in a row, but otherwise this tend you know, Hamiltonians can be very fickle at election [laughter] time. So you know, all bets are off. It's going to be a really interesting race and if I can add one more wrinkle, there's a former member of parliament named Filomena Tassi who's also considering throwing her hat into the ring as well. So we could have four really well-known intense competitors come this October and that's a race I'm going to be watching. Yeah, no I I mean that already sounds like it will be a um a more uh competitive fight than for example, I expect to see here in Toronto where I think the forces are going to align to make it basically a two-person race here in Toronto.

Steve Paikin: We're not going to make any assumptions and and certainly there will be plenty of mayors races all around Ontario. They're not going to be all that interesting. This will not be one of them. This one will be one to watch.

John Michael McGrath: Absolutely. Anyway, off to the mailbag. If you've got a burning question or insightful comment, please send it along to us at onpolitics@tvo.org. JMM, take it away. All right, we are returning to the issue of strong mayor powers. This is a letter from Richard Crouchin St. Catharines who writes, "Does this proposed legislation really give strong mayor powers to an unelected chair? Could this happen to every other area that has two levels of municipal government? This seems like Trumpian style overreach in Ontario." Trumpian style overreach, Richard. Nice turn of phrase there. Okay, a bunch of good questions. What do we say? So let's start with first, yes, Richard is correct. Bill 100 gives strong mayor powers to unelected appointees from the premier's office, right?

John Michael McGrath: Um could this happen elsewhere? The text of Bill 100 as it's currently before the legislature is limited to the regional municipalities that we mentioned. So it is at the moment an exclusive list. So if you live in for example, a county with that council and ward and system is not Simcoe County. If if you're not already mentioned in Bill 100, that law will not change anything else and it doesn't give the government at least I I'm hm I'm very relatively confident it does not give the government the ability to to add a municipality by regulation or anything like that. Like they would have to amend the bill to expand the list of municipalities to include any new ones, but of course, they could do that, right? They can introduce legislation in the future if they want to expand that list. How did you like the expression Trumpian style overreach?

Steve Paikin: I liked it. Um and I think there's an an important point here. If people do in fact go back and and and read my magnum opus from this week, you'll probably get the impression that I am not like a reflexive defender of the idea of local democracy. I think local democracy is a fine principle, but it does get invoked sometimes for bad behavior if if I could put it that way. But here is a really important point to make.

Steve Paikin: When strong mayor powers were introduced and you know, the way we've spoken about it, people can probably guess I'm kind of critical about the whole idea, but when they were introduced, we were at least talking about giving new and expanded powers to elected mayors and there is a genuine argument from you know, political science or political theory, whatever you want to call it, that you know, mayors are elected from the entire city, whereas even collectively city councils are just made up of the individual councilors representing their own wards, right? And the mayor has a real democratic mandate to shape citywide policy in a way that city councilors just can't. And so in that sense, the again, whether you agree with the argument or not, but I I do think it is at least a fair argument that a mayor can be given some extra powers to shape policy and and you know, and be the true sort of head of council that they are called under Ontario law.

Steve Paikin: That argument totally falls apart if the person we are talking about is not democratically elected, right? We're not talking about a citywide democratic mandate anymore. We are talking about somebody who was appointed from the premier's office. And in particular, let's talk about the kinds of people who might be appointed by the provincial government. Let's talk about the former chair of Niagara region who was a former progressive conservative candidate who had been presented to voters and voters said, "No, thanks." And are we now talking about making that kind of a person a appointed position given really far-ranging powers to not just I mean we've talked about some of these before, but like they will not only be able to veto majority decisions made by elected councils, they will also be able to present motions to council and move them forward with minority support. Even if a majority votes against them, they will be able to push those uh policies forward. And I I have previously on this podcast described these rules as minority rule in Ontario, right? And I like just mathematically, that is what it is, right? So, as I say, I'm not somebody who like uh reflexively like goes to the barricades to defend the idea of local democracy, but this is really substantial weakening of the idea of local democracy in Ontario. There's something about somebody who runs and loses an election and then is appointed to a job and has more power over people who actually win elections that doesn't sit well with you?

John Michael McGrath: Yeah, [laughter] that's one way of putting it. That's one way of putting it. And and you know, even like to zoom out just a little bit more here, right? Like like the government says it is doing this to align uh the uh policies of regional governments with provincial priorities. And I think you know, it is fair to say that like we we don't expect municipalities to actively try and thwart provincial policy. They are after all creatures of the province. But at a certain point, uh you also have to ask like if municipalities are simply expected to take marching orders from Queen's Park and execute, then what is the point of having local democracy anyway? Richard, good letter. You got us going there. Okay. Why don't you give the email address and we'll get out of here?

Steve Paikin: Absolutely. Again, if you'd like to ask about content on the show, please email us at onpolitics@tvo.org.

Steve Paikin: And that is the On Poli podcast for this Friday, April 10th, 2026. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcast so that you get notified each time a new episode is available.

Steve Paikin: [music] And you can see the video version of the podcast on the TVO Today YouTube channel. Any feedback you have, we're always happy to hear it, good, bad, or indifferent. Write us an email at onpolitics@tvo.org. Please include your first and last name and where you're from. This week's episode was produced by Tiff Lam, editing by Colin Kish. Production support from Jonathan Hallowell and TVO's Digital Media Services team. Laura Few is the executive producer of digital, Stacey Dea Seth is acting vice president programming and content.

John Michael McGrath: [music]

Steve Paikin: Special thanks to our crew for making the video part of the podcast look so nice, and I'm going to give a shout-out to Tony Burke who's right there behind that camera. Tony is having a good day because he's a Montreal Canadiens fan. He's just back from Montreal. He's gone to games. The Habs are doing fine, much to my chagrin. Better than the Jays. Oh, don't get me started. Uh until next Friday, everybody. Bye-bye.