The mayor who shot himself in the foot

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Just a month after being sworn in for a third term as mayor of Toronto, John Tory finds himself in rough water.

Opposition is growing to his decision to accept special strong-mayor powers, including the authority to ram some measures through city council with just one-third of the votes. Fifteen of the 25 city councillors signed a letter insisting that the council be governed by majority rule. Five former mayors condemned the one-third-wins provision. Reaction in the media has been scathing.

For all of this, Mr. Tory has only himself to blame. When it emerged that Doug Ford’s re-elected Progressive Conservative government was planning to give special new powers to the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario’s largest cities, he could have done what Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe did and said, “No, thanks.”

Instead, he asked for more. He persuaded Mr. Ford to add a provision that gives the two big-city mayors the power to prevail in certain votes with only eight of the 25 councillors onside. That is on top of all the other strong-mayor measures, including one that lets the mayors exercise a veto on votes bearing on provincial priorities and another that lets them present budgets and appoint leading city officials.

Mr. Tory’s early career in politics was marked by missteps and misjudgments. The best known is his decision in 2007, when he was PC leader, to promise to extend government funding to all faith-based separate schools. Voters didn’t like it and he lost the election, squandering his only shot at becoming premier.

This may top even that famous fumble. The one-third rule is patently, glaringly, obviously undemocratic. Every important legislative body in the free world operates by majority rule. Win more than half the votes and you get your way; win fewer and you don’t. Saying that a mayor can win a vote with one-third is like saying a soccer team can win a match by scoring one goal when the opposing team scores two.

Absurd. That Mr. Tory thought he could get away with it shows how detached he has become from the mood of the city after eight years in office.

It is no comfort that Mr. Tory says that he will use the power sparingly, governing by consensus whenever he can. Even if it is true of him, will it be true of the next mayor or the mayor after that? Every law must be measured by how it might be used, not by how officials say it will. Let cops on the beat carry a grenade launcher and some day one of them might fire it.

The one-third rule is offensive in principle and dangerous in practice. It flies in the face of tradition and precedent. Beside all that, it is simply unnecessary.

Because they are chosen by the whole electorate in a city-wide vote, mayors come to office with a powerful mandate to govern. City councillors know it and so mayors usually get their way. Mr. Tory has won just about every important vote since first being elected in 2014.

Re-elected in October and facing a different council, he was well-positioned to push through an aggressive plan, fleshed out this Friday, to step up housing construction in the city. The whole city is behind him on the need for more plentiful and affordable-housing options. He had no need to arm himself with the power to overturn the most basic rule of representative government.

As the 15 city councillors point out in their letter, the very body that is being affected by the new rules, city council, has been passed over entirely. Council has had no “opportunity to debate or consult with residents on this fundamental change in our governance” or to “weigh in on the impacts on the checks and balances of power that would result from the loss of majority rule.”

No one asked voters what they thought, either. If they had known, they might have thought twice about re-electing a man so casual about weakening one of the guardrails of democracy.