Mississauga Mayor McCallion is reopening an issue she’s pushed for decades: getting Mississauga out of the two-tiered regional system of government.

“Mississauga’s the sixth largest city in the country of Canada and we’re not recognized or taken into account because we are not a complete government,” she said Wednesday, after council passed a resolution to work on deciding whether “regional government is still viable.”

The resolution says Peel Region should make reviewing the structure and actual “necessity” of regional government a first priority after the next municipal election.

Under the current two-tiered system, Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon make up the Region of Peel, the second largest municipality in Ontario.

The region is responsible for social services, policing, waste and waste water, childcare and other services.

Created by the province in 1974 under former premier Bill Davis, a Peel resident, the regional system was intended to help urbanize the area and deliver big infrastructure projects.

But McCallion has wanted out of Peel Region since she took office in 1978.

“If the (provincial) government, if it had the backbone to make the right decision — they talk about efficiencies, they talk about eliminating duplication, yet they allow the region of Peel to exist.”

With about 730,000 residents, Mississauga is Canada’s sixth largest city; with about 530,000 residents, Brampton is the ninth largest.

McCallion says her city is far too big to be in a two-tier system of government, with tens of millions of dollars wasted each year because of the duplication in services.

The regional system was meant to help deliver services when Peel had a population less than one-quarter of its current size, now 1.3 million.

Wednesday’s resolution follows a recent request from Brampton to increase its representation at the regional council. Currently, all 12 Mississauga councillors sit on regional council, while seven represent Brampton and five Caledon — even though the latter’s population is just over 60,000.

McCallion says the fight for representation at the region is just another example of the dysfunction in the current system.

She thinks a better approach is to simply get rid of regional government.

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Ultimately, the provincial government would have to pass legislation to dismantle Peel Region.

McCallion says she will no longer be mayor if that happens, as she has stated this is her last term. But she exhorted council to take up the fight: “Is regional government necessary, is it viable? And what is it costing the people of Mississauga?”

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