With new law, Toronto joins minor leagues of democracy

On Tuesday, a majority of Toronto city council wrote a letter demanding the provincial government respect the city’s right to majority rule. On Wednesday at Queen’s Park, the provincial parliament was moving full steam ahead to pass its super-strong-mayor legislation that would allow formal minority rule in Toronto and Ottawa. It was expected to pass by Thursday.

It’s almost too vivid an illustration of Toronto’s immediate future: you can get a majority of councillors to agree passionately, but if the mayor stands against them, they’re just whistling in a windstorm. There are conservatives who signed the letter and progressives; there are the mayor’s opponents but also three members of his executive committee and two of his longest-standing allies; there are representatives of all six former municipalities that

now make up Toronto. And they’re joined by every single living former mayor of Toronto, who signed their own letter urging John Tory to disavow his request for this power.

All of them together are the equivalent of a squirt gun against a fivealarm grease fire. I suppose that’s the new normal.

So here we go: city council will now be a minority-rule body in which the mayor is close to an elected dictator. Tory, and his successors, will be able to pass laws with the support of only one-third of the other councillors.

Are there qualifications on that power? Sure. It applies only to measures of provincial priority. But according to the legislation, who identifies what fits that category? The mayor does.

It is a system so blitheringly nonsensical as to be an international embarrassment. Coun. Josh Matlow has been saying this will make Toronto “the only elected legislative body in the world that can make decisions by minority rule.” It’s hard to fact-check that, though I tried.

To start, it’s obviously not true Toronto would be the only one: the same provincial law will apply to Ottawa (though the current mayor there says he doesn’t want the power and won’t use it). But how about outside this particular Ontario legislation?

Pippa Norris of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government points out that there’s a form of minority rule in multi-party first-past-thepost systems like Canada’s in which a majority government can be elected with a minority of the popular vote. And there are places like the U.S. Senate — or types of items like amending the Canadian Constitution — where a supermajority is required to pass something. But this? “There are none to my knowledge where only one-third of the body is required to pass laws.”

She pointed me to Louis Massicotte of Université Laval, who has studied election laws in more than 60 democracies around the world, saying he’d know. “The procedure you described looks very odd to me,” Massicotte wrote in an email. He said he’d never heard of anything like it, “though I do not know every legislature in the world. Such a procedure would certainly have caught my attention, but I have no recollection to that effect.”

The closest he could think of was a rule that allows the French cabinet to force the adoption of a bill without a vote — though the opposition can then immediately force a vote

The reason, it seems obvious to me, that no one can find another elected body where onethird-plus-one carries the day is because it defeats the entire purpose of having a legislative body in the first place

to topple the government. “So in the end, the majority prevails anyway.” He said that measure came about because it had been very hard to reach decisions — earlier, successive governments were impotent and then toppled within six months of taking office. He wondered if a similar situation existed in Toronto. I told him that Tory, who requested this power, had not lost a single significant vote during eight prior years in office, though there was one occasion where he withdrew a bylaw to avoid defeat. “Very illuminating,” Massicotte replied. “Good luck, Toronto.” Thanks, Professor. We’ll need it. The reason, it seems obvious to me, that no one can find another elected body where one-third-plusone carries the day is because it defeats the entire purpose of having a legislative body in the first place. Certainly there are systems where a single broadly elected person can prevent legislation with a veto (such as U.S. presidents and governors, and the Toronto mayor under existing strong-mayor powers passed earlier this year), and there are places where a minority can prevent a law’s passage through filibustering or supermajority requirements. The principle in both cases is that a new law represents a change that requires broad consent — a majority is typically the minimum threshold. Sometimes a supermajority is required.

The idea of a superminority threshold is just nutty. It would make more sense if council were dissolved entirely and the mayor just ran the city government. I’m not saying it would be better, but at least you could identify a democratic principle guiding the system, and at least voters would know what they were voting for.

Which wasn’t the case in the election this fall that returned Tory to office. This was a post-election surprise that Tory and Ford had cooked up in a backroom and kept secret until after the votes were counted to re-elect Tory. It stinks.

Only once before have I seen a letter opposing the mayor signed by a majority of city councillors. That was in opposition to then mayor Rob Ford’s transit plans in 2012 — and the letter they signed forced a special meeting of council, the first time in amalgamated Toronto history that happened.

At that meeting, the mayor’s brother Doug decried the process, saying the will of the people embodied in the mayor should be “supreme,” not city council. Coun. Karen Stintz drew cheers from the gallery when she responded, “Council reigns supreme!”

Not any more. Not after this week. Comparing the effect of another letter from council, a decade later, shows it pretty vividly. Doug Ford has finally granted his own wish: council reigns no more.

Good luck, Toronto.