Outgoing regional chair cautious of provincial plans

By Dave Flaherty/The Oshawa Express

While municipal political matters won’t be an official worry for outgoing regional chair Gerri Lynn O’ Connor in a few months, there are some lingering concerns.

Premier Doug Ford and his Conservative government were recently successful in cutting the size of Toronto city council nearly in half.

After an Ontario judge initially ruled against the plan, Ford planned to use the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Eventually, the Ontario Court of Appeal sided with the government, and Toronto’s number of council seats will drop from 47 to 25.

Somewhat overshadowed in the controversy of that decision is the province’s pledge to review regional governments, and the cancellation of planned elections for regional chair of Peel, York, Muskoka, and Niagara.

The election for regional chair and CEO in Durham was not affected.

When Ford announced his plans, O’ Connor released a lengthy statement cautioning the province to take great care in its review of regional government.

Speaking to The Oshawa Express, O’ Connor says her concerns remain.

“I think where my concern is that change for the sake of change is not necessarily good. Change to improve things is good.”

With Ford’s plans for regional government unclear at this point, O’ Connor admits it is difficult to form an opinion.

“To answer that fairly, I’d have to see what they were looking at,” she says.

O’ Connor says Durham is unique in the GTA because it has both large urban and rural/agricultural communities, and she feels they need to be represented fairly.

She urges provincial politicians to truly understand the role of regional and local governments.

“The vast majority of MPPs have never sat at a local level of council. They need to sit down and understand the role of single municipalities and two-tiered municipalities,” she says.

If Durham would come to cease as a regional municipality, O’ Connor says she believes it would be very difficult for smaller lower-tiers.

“I think for very small municipalities that it would be a huge undertaking. I don’t know if they’d be able to handle that,” she says. “When you have a municipality of 18,000 and expect to take over policing, roads, water, social services etc., I don’t think they can do it on their own.”

This October will mark the second time the position of regional chair and CEO will be publicly elected.

However, O’ Connor believes the regional chair should be appointed by council, for a few reasons.

She says she has been to several regional chair candidate debates and “people just don’t understand” the specifics of the role.

“I think people think the regional chair has more power [than they do]. The further you get removed from the local politics, the more disinterested a lot of the people are,” she said. “I think the elected officials are in a far better position to select an elected chair. But again, that’s my personal opinion.”

The potential for downloading, or uploading, of services, worries O’ Connor as well.

Before becoming regional chair, O’ Connor served as mayor of Uxbridge for more than 30 years.

She says some municipalities have yet to recover from services that were downloaded from the province during the days of the Mike Harris government.

Regular communication between the province and municipalities is key.

“We need an open dialogue. Never once through the campaign, and I followed it pretty closely, never once did I hear that the size of Toronto government or the review of municipal governments was on the agenda,” she says.

In her role as regional chair, O’ Connor says she hasn’t had many dealings with the Ford government so far.

“In a way, I understand that they are sorting it all out. Hopefully, in going forward we will see more communication and there will be an open dialogue,” she says.

Again, she urged for MPPs, of all parties, to work closely with their local counterparts.

“Listen to us. We’re the ones of the ground [locally],” O’ Connor states.