The Ford government is moving to take direct control at the top of some local governments in Ontario, offering its appointees enhanced powers and shrinking the size of two councils.
The new Better Regional Governance Act, tabled by Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack on Thursday, will allow him to appoint regional chairs, give those appointees additional powers and streamline both Niagara and Simcoe.
Eight of the province’s biggest regional governments in Ontario will have their leaders directly appointed by the province, a move designed to “ensure more efficient, streamlined regional decision making.”
Those appointees will be given what the province is calling “strong chair” powers.
Those will mirror existing strong mayor powers — allowing the province’s selected candidates to appoint or fire senior staff, direct staff, veto bylaws and propose the annual budget.
Officials said the appointees will make those decisions on their own, not at the direction of either the elected council or provincial government.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said she was worried about allowing the provincial government to control who is appointed to be chair.
“We have no sense of how he’s going to be picking these people,” she said. “We’ve seen the track record of this government; their appointments are almost always failed conservative candidates.”
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Strong mayor powers were first introduced for Toronto and Ottawa in 2022 as a way, the government said, to ensure provincial priorities around housing were fast-tracked.
They have since been expanded to various municipalities across the province. They’ve been used to clear out long-serving senior staff, while one Toronto-area mayor recently used his powers to veto a plan for more density.
A survey of civil servants in towns and cities across the province found the powers had had little to no impact on creating new housing, which has fallen every year since 2022.
“We lose. The province loses. They created a solution for a problem that didn’t exist,” one anonymous city leader said in the 2025 report.
Flack said giving out strong chair powers was about ensuring regional governments were “in sync” with provincial priorities, “as the chair of the board.”
He said he would not be “handpicking” the chairs and would look at their qualifications.
Elsewhere, the government will also streamline the size of Niagara regional council and Simcoe County council.
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The former, in particular, has caught the imagination of Premier Doug Ford, who has repeatedly complained about the number of councillors in the area.
“They have 126 elected officials with about 500,000 people, which is staggering,” he said last month.
“I put it out there. Do you want four cities? You want one city? I said you have to get the majority of the mayors plus one, 50 per cent plus one, and they weren’t able to do it. But I always say it’s like asking the turkeys to vote for Thanksgiving. They don’t want to lose their jobs.”
Simcoe County will be reduced from 32 to 17 members under the new changes, while Niagara regional council will drop from 32 to 12.
The government said it didn’t have an exact figure for how much money the move would save, although Flack said it was “not about saving money.”
He also revealed that he had received a request to reduce the size of some lower-tier municipalities in Niagara. The minister said he was still digesting its contents, but “we’ll see if we can’t get something done.”
The province said it will also consider weighing votes on upper-tier municipalities based on population.
Ontario Liberal Leader John Fraser said people would “not appreciate a Doug Ford bobble head with strong mayor powers.”
Flack said he is not planning to roll out the chair appointment process to the entire province.
Sounds like he’s trying to eliminate opposition to his crazy goals for the province and control all the way down to the local level what can and cannot go on. We didn’t elect him to do anything like that. Time to stop his overreach and changing of structures and procedures and reviews without any input.
Makes sense reducing councilors to the number of people. Yes if you don’t control it, municipalities will continue to add more. Remember Mike Harris?…cut to the bone and build back from there if needed
City of Toronto reduced over 50% and has become more efficient. City of Hamilton should be reducing from 15-10 and covering larger areas. Right now we have duplication in some areas and no distinct councillor. 2 for mountain, 3 for lower city, one for Binbrook/mount hope, one for Dundas, one for Ancaster, and one for Waterdown, one for Flamborough and surrounding areas. Right now we have Alex Wilson covering Dundas and neglecting Flamborough area, Craig Cassar also covering parts of Flamborough and Ted McMeekin covering Waterdown and parts of Flamborough with no one really representing Flamborough.
We also have 4 conservation authorities in Hamilton It’s time the province right size and reduce the red tape and bureaucracy. Too many salaries, pensions, benefits for what ? We have not seen more efficient handling of any city affairs except for increased taxes.
Doug Trump centralizing power at Queen’s Park. The people of Ontario should be alarmed. It is clear he does not like democracy. He is no better than Donald Trump.
@fordnationdougford is becoming more and more like tRump every single day
This stinks of Trump’s style of government. A chair position in any area should be voted on, not appointed.
Where is live we have 4 layers of government that we pay tax to before we pay tax on day to day living. Absolutely ridiculous to have so much government coming back to the tax payer every year for more money. Government should only be utilitarian. And cut them sel es across the board in half
Reduce the number of employees in charge of areas to help save some salaries and bonuses etc. that all these employees receive.