A Region Unpeeled
Corresponding to this week’s subject matter on regional governance, arguably the most obscure level of government of all the others, this submission will briefly examine the most prominent development of the last decade on regional governments. The Progressive Conservative government of today launched a review of regional governments in Ontario last year, triggering dreadful reminiscence of the disruptive restructuring efforts that happened under the Harris government more than twenty years ago. Virtually none of the municipalities affected at that time had embraced the amalgamations with open arms (Miljan and Spicer, p. 5).
Mississauga thought differently upon hearing the announcement of the review, seeing this as an opportunity to make progress on one of the most persistent political controversies within Peel since the regional government’s inception in 1973. One of the core arguments from Mississauga is that it is paying a disproportionate share of the costs of regional government. Personnel at the City of Mississauga submitted a staff report that assessed all of the three possibilities from the province’s review: amalgamation, regional reform, or dissolution of Peel (Raza). Citing an updated analysis of the 2003 Day to Day Report on the financially inequitable position of the city, the staff report concluded with a strong recommendation that Mississauga should separate. Meanwhile, administrative officials at Peel requested a report authored by Deloitte on the financial implications of the same scenarios, and concluded that dissolution would impose the greatest financial costs on all of the municipalities over the next ten years. To be clear, the Deloitte report was not commissioned by the regional Council and thus does not represent the organization. However, the regional Council hired Ernst and Young for their own investigation on the financial impact of the aforementioned scenarios (with a price tag of $600,000), and it made conclusions that their client did not exactly wish to hear. Residents of Mississauga would apparently save $84 million per year if it became independent (Mirza). Yet two days earlier, Caledon claimed that the same report also indicates that there is a risk of increasing the net cost of service provision to all ratepayers inside all of Peel’s municipalities up to $600 million by 2028.
Without delving into the technical analyses presented by the reports (and also given that I do not have the competency to comment on them), this is a situation all too familiar to the courts where there is competing expert evidence at work. So who is right? The reports share one common theme, that there are so many moving parts in the machinery of governance that the true costs and benefits are very difficult to establish. Paul Urbaniak, professor of political science and Mississauga historian, bluntly stated the complexity: “There is no report that is going to give us absolutely definitive authoritative numbers of the financial implications of any reconfiguration” (Raza). I highly doubt any of the stakeholders, especially residents, wanted to hear this either. Moreover, these reports only examine the matter with a financial lens and is silent on other possible implications that may result from Peel Region’s dissolution.
One lingering question from this latest revisiting of municipal governance, in the context of Mississauga’s dissatisfaction with Peel, is the following: Why not hold a referendum for separating from Peel Region? Mayor Bonnie Crombie proposed that this would be a suitable measure to take. According to John Mascarin, a lawyer specializing in municipal law, a successful referendum will not automatically trigger the process of Mississauga’s withdrawal from Peel Region. The province is the arbiter of the matter, and all that the city can hope for is that the province is sympathetic to them. At first glance, this would be a truly difficult political challenge for the provincial government of the day if a referendum were to succeed, considering the significance of the suburban “905” ridings in making or unmaking governments. Yet it is also a gamble that can just as easily work against Mayor Crombie’s and Council’s desires if the referendum should fail. This is not a trivial risk since election turnouts in Mississauga are disconcertingly low, the turnout from the last election being ~27%. The implication is that even if the majority of voters in the referendum approved of separation, the province could easily disagree with the representativeness of the outcome because they are such a small minority of all residents eligible to vote. For now, the premier has decided to push this issue back into its sarcophagus and leave the barrow, but the entrance remains wide open still. Those who choose to follow will soon find that this is a restless abode, and potentially more supine tenants lying in wait.
I am grateful to all of the local journalists of Brampton and Mississauga for making the information for this submission possible and for their continued work on illuminating local issues. I also declare no conflict of interest based on my residence in the flowery city of Brampton…
