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If Horwath is saying Ford is being a “dictator” in 2018 for downsizing Toronto council, then Horwath enabled a “dictator” in 2009 when she and her party supported McGuinty on the GEA.

It doesn’t matter that McGuinty had a majority government at the time and could have passed it without NDP support.

If Horwath had any significant concern about the intrusion of provincial power into municipal government, she would never have voted for the GEA, even though that legislation was legal, too.

Go back further and we have an actual NDP government in Ontario, headed by then premier Bob Rae, usurping the authority of Metro council, which had sought for years to evict the Toronto islanders from their homes, by passing the Toronto Islands Residential Community Act in 1993, granting sweetheart 99-year leases to the occupants.

That was controversial, too, but it was within the power of Rae’s government to do so.

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Ontario PC premier Bill Davis killed the Spadina Expressway out of nowhere in 1971, shortly after winning his party’s leadership but prior to calling his first election as premier, despite decades of planning, approvals and expenditures that had already been invested in the project by Toronto’s municipal government.

Davis’ “dictatorial” decision to kill Spadina has had a far greater impact on the lives of Torontonians than Ford’s to reduce Toronto council by 22 seats ever will, because Davis’ edict is one of the major reasons for the permanent traffic congestion we have in Toronto today.

What about former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne killing Toronto Mayor John Tory’s plan to put tolls on the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway in early 2017, after previously giving her tacit blessing — another huge intrusion by Queen’s Park into Toronto’s municipal authority?

Horwath supported that decision because she was opposed to tolls.

So apparently, Horwath’s hypocritical definition of“dictatorial” intrusions by the provincial government into municipal authority depends on whether she agrees with the decision.