Rob Ford’s power problem

The loss Rob Ford suffered this week – yet again – on the transit file demonstrates how poorly he understands his own job description and the powers associated with it.

Our chief magistrate has limited powers not by accident but by design. And his job is to use them wisely.

As Transportation Minister Bob Chiarelli, a former Ottawa mayor, said recently, “I learned a long time ago that a mayor’s most important asset is patience.”

These restrictions must be frustrating for someone committed to making radical changes, because that project relies on exactly what the current mayor has demonstrated little aptitude for: cooperation.

That need to engage others explains why mayors over the last 50 years have largely been former councillors who have had the experience of navigating council to get motions passed. Ford, perhaps because of his outsider persona on council for 10 years and his tendency not to engage in governing through committee work, obviously missed some of the basic lessons.

The mayor’s actual powers are extremely limited under the City Of Toronto Act passed by the province in 2006. Section 134 says the mayor shall (a) “uphold and promote the purposes of the City”; (b) “promote public involvement in the City’s activities”; c) “act as the representative of the City both within and outside the City, and promote the City locally, nationally and internationally”; and (d) “participate in and foster activities that enhance the economic, social and environmental well being of the City and its residents.”

The act also states in section 132 that “the powers of the City shall be exercised by city council.” And finally in section 136, the act states that “it is the role of the officers and employees of the City to implement the decisions of city council and to establish administrative practices and procedures to carry out those decisions.”

Notice that the act gives the mayor almost no specific powers other than being a civic booster. Further, it says staff can only take direction from council as a whole acting through the enacting of bylaws, and not from individual councillors or even the mayor. And city staff must carry out the decisions not of the mayor, but of council.

In other jurisdictions, specifically the U.S., mayors have a lot more specific powers, and in cities like New York even control the police (as seen in many Hollywood movies), because the commissioner of police reports to the mayor.

In Canada, this has never been the case. In our system, general management of municipal services is left to an independent civil service. These professionals issue public reports – quite a different model than the provincial or federal civil service, which outlines options for ministers and cabinets who decide on a course of action, and not all policy review and analysis is available for public scrutiny. This municipal structure likely reflects our ancestors’ aversion to the consolidation of power.

Toronto’s mayor has never had the power to issue edicts, and now council has found its feet and declared the decisions of 44 elected reps do collectively trump the mayor’s “mandate.”

Original Article
Source: NOW
Author: Adam Giambrone