The province’s move to slash Toronto’s local representation could be turned on its head by city council, which experts say has the power to change how it governs without Queen’s Park’s approval.

That means council could adopt a two-tier system like the one in Los Angeles, with 97 neighbourhood councils, or in New York City, with 59 community boards.

“It’s not the end of democracy,” said Gabriel Eidelman, a University of Toronto urban policy professor. “Nothing in Bill 5 limits city council from rethinking and redesigning its own internal decision-making processes. On the contrary, it may actually wake council up to take action.”

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Premier Doug Ford surprised Toronto in July with his plan to reduce council from 47 seats to 25, now known as Bill 5. City staff are examining if and how the city can challenge the proposed legislation in court, but there remains a strong possibility Toronto will run its fall election under a 25-ward system, with each councillor representing on average of 109,000 residents. If there were 47 wards, each councillor would represent an estimated 60,000 residents.

Council does not need the province’s approval to create a Toronto version of neighbourhood councils or community boards like those in L.A. and New York, Eidelman said. In those cities, the extra layer of government is another way for residents to have their voices heard.

Speaking from L.A., Grayce Liu said the neighbourhood councils were created in the 1990s in response to areas wanting to secede from the larger city because they felt their interests weren’t represented at city hall. Liu, a general manager in the city’s department of neighbourhood empowerment, said the goal of the neighbourhood council “experiment” was to “honour the unique communities in Los Angeles.”

The experiment stuck. Years later, neighbourhood councils advise their council members on contentious developments, award grants to local organizations and make city staff aware of minor problems like potholes that need to be filled, or traffic lights that need to be synchronized, Liu said.

In New York, besides a mayor and council members, citizens elect borough presidents, who appoint residents to advisory community boards. The chairs of each board meet regularly with their borough president and local councillors to initiate and review plans for the borough.

In both L.A. and New York, city staff attend the community board or neighbourhood council meetings, and the bodies have their own budgets. In L.A., all of the associated costs, plus the training of new representatives on municipal processes, add up to about $10 million (U.S.) a year, Liu said.

If Toronto wants some version of what the U.S. cities have, the key is using the four community councils it already has as a jumping-off point to “institutionally have more opportunities for the public to have their voices heard in an official manner,” said Alexandra Flynn, a University of Toronto urban governance professor and lawyer.

Currently, Toronto is divided into four areas each represented by a community council — Etobicoke York, North York, Scarborough, and Toronto and East York. Councillors sit on the community council that their ward is in, hold public hearings and make decisions and recommendations on local planning matters. Most decisions made at community council end up going to city council for final approval.

The system was created after Toronto’s amalgamation to give the six former municipalities control of local issues, said Michael Prue, the last mayor of East York who went on to become a councillor in the amalgamated city and is now running for council in Amherstburg, Ont. The original plan, and one that Toronto should now consider, was for community councils to eventually do “a great deal more,” he said.

Prue said Toronto should have between eight and 12 community councils to preserve “in your face” local politics and allow residents to have their say and continue to participate.

The role of community councils should be expanded, Flynn agreed. “There’s nothing stopping staff from looking creatively at how to do it.”

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Council has the power to establish as many community councils, or other subcommittees or advisory boards, as it sees fit and to approve compensation for members, said Eidelman. Last year, the province under Liberal rule changed the City of Toronto Act to include a section on community councils that states they can be composed of councillors, individuals appointed by council or a combination.

“The new section clearly spells out that community councils can be structured differently than council committees, thus opening up the possibility that council could establish an entirely new mechanism to delegate authority,” Eidelman said. “They could end up even more robust than New York’s community boards or L.A.’s neighbourhood council.”

Council also has the power to expand the role of community councils so they can make final decisions on more items, such as removing trees, granting liquor licences or adding bike lanes, said Eidelman. City council meetings often get bogged down by these hyperlocal agenda items instead of sticking to more pressing citywide issues.

Eidelman was part of a team that put this and other recommendations to improve governance to councillors last year. Only one of the 14 recommendations was adopted.

One limitation is that council does not have the authority to hold elections to fill the spots, rather than appoint representatives, the city clerk’s office said. It would need the province to make that change.

Better representation is something Toronto needs, no matter the number of wards, said a group of citizens who participated last week in an event held to discuss the future of local democracy organized by St. Stephen’s Community House, a social service provider for the city’s most vulnerable.

“If you take away our representation then you’re eliminating the ability to grow, the capacity for people to be represented, and you’re disregarding (that) we are a whole lot of people with a whole lot of issues that are changing rapidly,” said advocate Andy Villanueva, who has experience speaking at city council committee meetings.

For the past two years, Toby Nicol, a member of St. Stephen’s advocacy committee, said he’s watched as councillors approve “Band-Aid solutions” for homelessness issues and fail to stand up for the “disenfranchised community” they’re supposed to represent.

St. Stephen’s social action worker Helen Armstrong said she’s nervous about how a 25-ward system will play out, when program participants, are already struggling to have their concerns heard with far more councillors.

“Sometimes it feels like, ‘Are they really listening?’” Armstrong said.

To get the ball rolling on more local representation, council needs to ask staff for a governance review, but “councillors will come kicking and screaming,” Flynn said. Those councillors who are engaged in their communities already might not see the need for more consultation and meetings and think, “Why bother?” Others may not want to dilute their power by delegating to community councils.

The drive for change will have to come from the mayor, and should be an election issue, Flynn said. “This needs attention because we’re talking about equality of participation and who gets a voice.”

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