can anyone explain Ford changing the council size?
- Thread starter dshaw4096
- Start date
All three of those Cities have various versions of smaller Councils with elected Councillors operating at the community/neighbourhood/village level within the larger City framework. In fact, they have more elected representatives than Toronto, not fewer.
Any plan to improve municipal democracy would make it more responsive to the people. Doing nothing towards that end, and only cutting access to Council in half will make Toronto's government more authoritarian and less responsive to our needs. If Ford really had our interests in mind he would have been thinking and moving along the lines of Community Councils with actual powers, leaving the City Council free to deal efficiently with important issues.
Like the couple of days they spent on Rob's Plastic shopping bag motion.
Yes, I’ve posted similar info before - there are more layers of Govt in the US. We have Federal/provincial/municipal. They have Federal/state/County/municipal/neighbourhood. So if you add up the different layers of oversight, there is not as much of a difference vs the superficial counting of City Councillors.
Face it - Ford pulled the number out of a hat or used a calculator to divide the current number in two (and had an aide explain how you cannot get a fractional Councillor so he chose a close integer). There was no thought. It makes no sense for a City to have matching ward boundaries for the other two levels of Govt. In fact, if it did, then simply eliminate two layers - wouldn’t that be the most efficient, using Ford logic? And the $25 Million “savings” - totally made up and Ford has and will use up a lot of those “savings” simply because of the brain dead way he is implementing the change.
He used the Out of a Hat option, piggy-backing Ward boundaries on Federal ridings. That 'lazy way out' has been repeatedly rejected by everyone who's looked at it, from independent experts to the the Council Doug and Rob sat on. Even Mike Harris couldn't stomach it when he forced the MegaCity on us.
It makes each single Councillor responsible for listening to and voicing the concerns of a Ward bigger than most Ontario cities†, and is hugely unbalanced between ward populations, so it will leave Etobicoke, and Willowdale and Downtown as much as 30% under-represented (with Councillors 30% overworked if you prefer) and Scarborough, the Beaches and Weston benefiting by more representation in proportion to their populations.
The 47 Ward plan Doug is so obsessed with trashing was carefully researched, studied, designed, critiqued, and voted on with the express purpose of giving every citizen present and planned for as equal and effective representation as possible. His back of the envelope 'plan' is so insubstantial even the bureaucrats at the OMB wouldn't give its advocate's 'reasons' <sarcasm> any respect — a preview of the judge's dismissive, "Crickets" to describe the emptiness.
Doug has no plan and no goal, only a number.
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† Here's the list: Ford's plan has just one Councillor for each ward something the size of Kingston. Which he apparently needs 12 Councillors and a Mayor to do its business properly
You mean the fans at sports bars/restaurants contributing to the local businesses and the economy where their money spent on beer and food helps support the employees earning a living so that their taxes can go to people who don’t work and protest against something that has been done lawfully and they can’t change?
Those fans?
this "lawfully" BS is wrong. Ford is using the Notwithstanding clause to lawfully get a TEMPORARY exemption for unlawful legislation. If it was "lawful" he would have no need to use the Notwithstanding clause. It seems a lot of people do not understand that this clause does not make the legislation "lawful". It merely gives the Govt a way to ignore the law (for 5 years) and pass legislation that has been blocked by our courts. But it's a temporary pass, it doesn't make an unlawful law "lawful".
No evidence of that, unless you're referring to his muscle-brained studbborness. He doesn't need to think at all. As long as he's got his trained seals too intimidated and scared to think for themselves, he can pass any law he cares to.
You are really brainwashed into believing that councillors "daydream" through the day. Read the link that Frankfooter posted in Post # 25. 398 items were adopted, and 197 with virtually no debate. More productivity without the Dumb and Dumber Fords in the Council, as they dragged out everything during their time as Councillor / Mayor!! It will be better to abolish the Provincial MPP's and let the Federal MPs take over their ridings and run it in conjunction with the Local Councillors. Real money will be saved, as all we have now is $1 crappy beer and plans to abolish Councils, along with cancellation of the Cap and Trade that worked really well for Ontario. Otherwise, we will have to shell out on the Carbon Tax unnecessarily.
Personally responsible for one entire term of dysfunctionality in Toronto's City Council.Like this guy:
Fans also shout about things that they cannot control. Not all of them will go to bars / restaurants and worse off some will loiter around town shouting, fighting, puking and God knows what. So if it bothers you so much about protesters staying out late making noise let's apply it to everyone. Based on your logic, fans that choose to stay out late that have day jobs would be tired and unproductive the next day.
Not only that, the Star did a survey and found that Toronto City council is actually way, way more efficient the Ford's provincial tories or most other cities.
https://www.thestar.com/news/toront...t-compared-to-other-levels-of-government.html
You want these guys to look at more data? You're going to give Ford and his clan a brain aneurysm. Sorry, brain explosion.
According to the Fords during the last election, there's a much simpler way to know how Toronto is doing. Count (assuming you can) the number of construction cranes in the sky. Still got lots of them downtown. Amazing that continued to happen without Ford in council or as mayor.
Most of politics is irrelevant to most sensible people, who have better things to be concerned with, most of the time.
But if you don't ever pay attention you can wind up with stuff that may take years to undo.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/can...ario-court-of-appeal-sides-with-premier-ford/
Ford backs off Notwithstanding clause. ON C A stays Belobaba's decision to allow reduced seat election to take place on Dooffo's terms.
Translation: The Court of Appeal is picking its time and place for a fight. It will sacrifice TO City Council and husband its ammo to use if Dooffo attempts to attack fundamental rights like LGB or abortion rights. In judicial system terms, the city council is a brawl outside a bar in Brampton while the Notwithstanding clause is World War III with nukes and WMD's.
What Ford threatened to do is a game-changer. Frequent, casual and non principled use of the notwithstanding clause wipes out almost 4 decades of painfully constructed civil rights law in this country and throws everything into chaos. The judges have to choose what to do if this every actually happens. The choices are:
1. Say it's political and it's up to Parliament and the provincial legislatures to re write the Charter to remove the Notwithstanding Clause;
2. Tell the government to go fuck itself and state that Canadian jurisprudence has been so changed in the 35 years since the Charter came into force that those fundamental rights now exist independent of a written, formal constitution. (Yup. They can say this. They can say anything. They're judges). If they say this, they have just notwithstanded the notwithstanding clause into oblivion and won.
I have no idea which way the courts will go, but I would lean in favour of #2. There's too much at stake to allow the Charter to be over-ridden at will by whatever hack idiot poll happens to be in power at any given time.
The Bench is hoping that Ford and the Tories smartens tfu and never tries this shit again. In the meantime, they are going to think and discuss privately and get onside for an organized reaction if the situation ever re occurs.
Ford backs off Notwithstanding clause. ON C A stays Belobaba's decision to allow reduced seat election to take place on Dooffo's terms.
Translation: The Court of Appeal is picking its time and place for a fight. It will sacrifice TO City Council and husband its ammo to use if Dooffo attempts to attack fundamental rights like LGB or abortion rights. In judicial system terms, the city council is a brawl outside a bar in Brampton while the Notwithstanding clause is World War III with nukes and WMD's.
What Ford threatened to do is a game-changer. Frequent, casual and non principled use of the notwithstanding clause wipes out almost 4 decades of painfully constructed civil rights law in this country and throws everything into chaos. The judges have to choose what to do if this every actually happens. The choices are:
1. Say it's political and it's up to Parliament and the provincial legislatures to re write the Charter to remove the Notwithstanding Clause;
2. Tell the government to go fuck itself and state that Canadian jurisprudence has been so changed in the 35 years since the Charter came into force that those fundamental rights now exist independent of a written, formal constitution. (Yup. They can say this. They can say anything. They're judges). If they say this, they have just notwithstanded the notwithstanding clause into oblivion and won.
I have no idea which way the courts will go, but I would lean in favour of #2. There's too much at stake to allow the Charter to be over-ridden at will by whatever hack idiot poll happens to be in power at any given time.
The Bench is hoping that Ford and the Tories smartens tfu and never tries this shit again. In the meantime, they are going to think and discuss privately and get onside for an organized reaction if the situation ever re occurs.
The law is roughly organized into hierarchies of authority:
1. Constitution - Supreme statutory law
2. Quasi Constitutional Statute - Informs the interpretation of other statutes of a jurisdiction, but is subservient to the Constitution - example, Ontario Human Rights Code
3. Statute - Overrides the common law
4. Common Law - applies in the absence of statutory law
In short, rights may develop under the common law, but those rights may not morph themselves into a constitutional right. So, no, courts may not create new constitutional rights under the common law nor seek to supplant a statutory constitutional right with one developed at common law. All that can develop under the common law that are relevant to constitutional analysis are conventions (e.g. the timing of elections, the composition of the SCC apart from Quebec justices), but these rules are not enforced by the courts.
1. Constitution - Supreme statutory law
2. Quasi Constitutional Statute - Informs the interpretation of other statutes of a jurisdiction, but is subservient to the Constitution - example, Ontario Human Rights Code
3. Statute - Overrides the common law
4. Common Law - applies in the absence of statutory law
In short, rights may develop under the common law, but those rights may not morph themselves into a constitutional right. So, no, courts may not create new constitutional rights under the common law nor seek to supplant a statutory constitutional right with one developed at common law. All that can develop under the common law that are relevant to constitutional analysis are conventions (e.g. the timing of elections, the composition of the SCC apart from Quebec justices), but these rules are not enforced by the courts.
