Mayors in Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and Guelph get new powers from province
CBC
The mayors in Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo, Brantford and Guelph will get new strong mayor powers, Ontario's Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark announced Friday.
The minister announced mayors of 26 municipalities would receive the powers as of July 1. The mayors of Toronto and Ottawa received the strong mayor powers last fall.
Clark said the powers will help heads of council cut red tape and speed up delivery of municipal-provincial priorities, including housing, transit and infrastructure projects.
Under these new rules the mayor can:
In certain cases, a mayor or head of council could pass a motion of council with just one-third of councillor support, rather than more than half.
"Our government wants to do what we can to help these leaders meet the challenges of rising housing costs and population growth," Clark said during the press conference Friday.
Clark said giving strong mayor powers to 26 municipalities was about "empowering municipal leaders to give them the tools to get the job done."
He rejected the suggestion that the strong mayor powers are not democratic.
"We need to make sure ... that we set our communities up for success," he said.
Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe was at Queen's Park for the Ontario Big City Mayors meeting with Clark and said she still needs time to fully understand what the strong mayor powers mean.
But, she added, if it's about housing getting built, then she doesn't see needing the powers in Waterloo.
"I can tell you that in Waterloo, we have a number of housing applications coming in every week and council and staff are working very collaboratively and with the developers as well to get these through the process in a very timely and appropriate manner," McCabe said Friday after the meeting.
"Housing developments are getting approved and so I don't see how that I would need strong mayor powers in order to get housing developments approved. Maybe other communities need this but that's just not the case in Waterloo."
Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic was also at the meeting in Toronto. He says in his work with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities he's seen situations where there are backlogs and these kinds of powers could have been used.
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