Mayor's Chair

This is the Toronto Today podcast. I'm your host Greg Brady. This is Mayor's chair to GTA mayors. Look at what it really takes to keep our cities running on Toronto today with Greg Brady on six 40 Toronto. Yes, indeed. Welcome to mayor's chair. We'll spend about 10 minutes. Maybe a minute or two more. If it gets juicy talking about issues, both in Niagara Falls. And we do that first of all with the mayor of Niagara Falls. He is Jim D. O'Doddy. Good morning mayor. Mayor D. O'Doddy. Good morning. Great. And we've got the mayor Brampton Patrick Brown joining us. Mayor Brown. Thanks very much for your time today. I'm pleasure. I feel like you guys were on the last time together and you like each other. I mean, I'll try and change that. I've only got 10 minutes to do it. But maybe we can get something for you guys to complain about and cross jurisdictions. Jim, let me start with you a malgamation. And that's something something mayor Brown has probably memories and dreams and nightmares about based on everything that's happened and peeled the last few years. But this is quite interesting. Where do you stand on this? There's a lot of a malgamation talk that there's just too many bodies, too many municipalities and merging some. If not all of them in Niagara Falls would be a good idea. Where does all this stand for us to know? Well, as far as I'm concerned, we've got way. The status quo is not acceptable. We've got way too many politicians and you know, it's not just about the cost of the politicians. Too many cooks in the kitchen. There's an old saying that a camel is just a horse that was designed by a big committee. And with too many cooks in the kitchen, we never seem to get things right. So, you know, here in Niagara with a population of just over half a million. We've got 126 municipal politicians. Hamilton just up the street with work population. Does it with 16 Toronto? Not too far away. Does it with 26 with significantly more population? So that's the first thing. Second thing we've got higher property taxes than the provincial average significantly higher. And in the concern we're carrying more per person significantly more than the city of Hamilton. Some people will say the Hamilton malgamation was not a success. Maybe not the first few years. But when you look down the road and compare numbers today, they're doing great. Well, let me give I'm going to rip this off here. The 12 mayors of Niagara, which by the way, sounds like a great Netflix season. Like I would watch that. I think I would watch that. We'll see. Sometimes by episode three, it might be lacking. But anyway, Niagara falls St. Catherine's well in Niagara on the lake 40. He Grimsby Lincoln, Thorold, Port Colburn, Pelham, West Lincoln. And let's not forget Wayne fleet to your point, though there's a lot of hardworking men and women who are mayors who are local counselors. There might be some redundancy. Is that that seems to be the concept? That's exactly what we're saying. We could do things a lot more efficient and and it's we're never going to do it ourselves. So the minister said, well, they make the changes. Well, here's the problem. And this is always what it comes down to. No politicians going to vote themselves out of a job. It's just the way it is. We need big brother to help us out with the process. And we're working on it. And I'll say the other thing. Greg, there's no. I don't believe right and wrong answer. I think it's effective and ineffective. That's what we're looking at. Something much more effective than we have today. If you want to weigh in on on on that for Niagara again, Mayor Brown, because you went through Peele region. I wouldn't even say they considered a malgamation. There were a lot of a lot of pen marks instead of pencil marks. And the goal. The goal was break apart actually, not a malgamation. So in a way, the Ontario government passed the Hazel McAllian Act, which would have mandated the region appeal dissolved by Jan 125. And then obviously there was a U turn. How do you reflect back on that now? Well, I think it's always easier to bring something to get it than terror to part. And so in the Peele region example, there was a real business case for a city appeal. But that wasn't their quest of Bonnie Cromby at the time she wanted to break Peele region apart, which would have meant three police forces, three paramedic forces, just so much additional cost, so much additional infrastructure, especially when we shared all these regional services since 1974. I thought the more compelling argument would have been to unite rather than divide in terms of Niagara. I agree with with Jim. I can't believe how many politicians they have in Niagara. How many different cities this is long overdue and hopefully the province has the courage to address this. And I think the hindsight of history is real guidance. Could you imagine Toronto today as five cities and I know it was controversial at the time with Hamilton and Ottawa and Toronto bringing these, you know, municipalities together, but thank goodness they did. And frankly, you go back even further, look at Mrs. Saga when it was a number of communities and they put it together. Could you imagine Streetsville being its own city today? And so this is necessary and changes in easy sometimes, but if it's for the benefit of residents over the long term, I think provincial government needs to have the courage to do the right thing. Now the tax issue and one ask you, and this is more hypothetical for you than it is for Mayor Diodati, but what could you have perceived as being attack savings had, because that was always the argument. This is going to cost people more money or is this going to save people more money if we dissolve peel and we're all running our own systems, our own police force, our own water, our own everything. It's significantly more expensive to make things smaller. And so when you have multiple administrators, multiple, multiple CEOs, multiple replicated services, it's costly. And frankly, even now when the region appeal where we've got planning on a regional level and a local level, there is continues to be some redundancy. I think what they're looking at Niagara makes a lot of sense. I think maybe some short term costs to achieve it, but I think over the long term, it will it will save funds and the lessons of Hamilton and Toronto and Ottawa. And Mrs. Saga for that matter in Brampton, our own plane site. Like Mayor Diodati, I don't want to pick on Wayne Fleet, but give me 10 seconds. There are 6,500 people. And though I understand the idea of their mayor Brian Grant, you know, being able to get to everybody. That that may almost be a a bygone era. And if it was pitched to residents of Wayne Fleet, here's how we can save. Here's how the police and the fire response could be more efficient. Here's how community sport, something is important. And yet sometimes forgotten as that could be maybe there's a pitch to make about tightening some of these communities up. There's no question about it. I mean, some of the communities have tried shared services. They tried sharing CAOs, sharing fire chiefs, but they don't last very long because there's no mandate to do it. Nobody's making them do it. In the case of Niagara, we've got in Patrick's exactly right. He nailed it as it usually does. We've got 12 CAOs, 12 directors of planning, 12 engineering leads. I mean, we've got 12 of everything. And in some case, 13, because then there's a regional government, a whole other layer of government that makes things so inefficient. There's so many opportunities that we can do things more efficiently, but we won't do it on our own. And as it is now, as I mentioned earlier, not only do we have more, more municipal politicians than anywhere else, we pay higher property taxes than the provincial average way higher industrial property taxes. It's just too many cooks in the kitchen and without the help of the province and yeah, take some courage to come in and help us do it. We've got a clean house and just like anyone that owns a vineyard or an orchard knows you have to trim back and prune the fruit trees, or they're not going to produce lots of fruit for you. I want to ask about the premier's influence Jim, and I would note obviously people in Toronto are well aware, so are both of you. He kind of stormed in. I didn't like the timing of it. The timing stunk in an election campaign. There's already candidates that have put their names on the bow. There's already signs that have been made and he stormed in and said in the 2018 election. No, no, no, we're going from 48 counselors down to 25. Now in retrospect, I don't I never hear a person complain about it. But I want to know from you what's what could be the influence on the premier of the premier and the provincial government on on an end an end game for a malgamation in Niagara region. Well, I've never heard anyone ever say, you know, the solution to this problem. We need to bring in more politicians. So I think we're safe to say that we've got more than enough. The biggest arguments that we've heard from the people are number one. There hasn't been enough meaningful public consultation, which I completely disagree. The region commission, the Berkeley report in 2000 that called for one level of government three or four cities. We don't talk about that for some reason. We buried that one. We had regional government structure review by provincial advisors in 2019. We had the provincial standing committee in 2024 where everybody gave their opinions. I mean, this is more a matter of a paralysis by analysis. It's timed out of make a decision. I mean, is there ever a right time? I don't think there's ever a right time. But there's got to be a point where, you know, I know we always say measure twice cut once you got to cut eventually you got a cut. You got to make the top decisions like I'll give you a visit. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead Patrick. Yeah. Is I think there's a window right now to do it most efficiently. And that's before me first because the municipal election cycle begins on May 1st. And I think if there's ever a time is right now. It's just so much cleaner to do it. And you know, I hope the province acts on this. Well, really you make that point. If you don't do it now, you can't do it until this time of the year in 2030. Can you? You can't kick people out of terms and once once the people have voted, they're going to feel like, well, what's my vote worth? If you're going to change the whole system of governance after I voted, right? We want people to vote and trust that that person stays there for the term they were elected for, right? Yeah, and Patrick's exactly right May 1st is I mean, if you want to be fair to everybody may 1st is the beginning of the election cycle. Let them know what they're running for. I think it's reasonable. You know, the other main argument Greg is people are always where they're going to lose their identity. And yet when you look around the identities are preserved and I agree example or Niagara Falls example is Chip law. The village of Chip law where James Cameron grew up. It's still the village of Chip law. It's one of the most beautiful areas of the city. We've got the signs. Welcome to Chip law. And that was 1970. They amalgamated today. We spend more money per capita in Chip law than the rest of the city. Today we've got to replace their arena, which is going to cost us some ordinary a 50 million. The village of Chip law couldn't be doing the infrastructure that we're doing today. Yet they maintain their identity. They get a little bit of the cake and to eat it too. So there's a lot of fear of mongering of why we shouldn't do it. But there's a lot of better reasons. Am I paying it why we should do it? Yeah, James Cameron went to Stanford collegiate in Niagara Falls. How about that? Yeah. So I can blame him for how many times I've had to sit through Titanic. I know how the terminator movies all defend the Titanic a little bit different. One more quick for you. Jim. So I want to get to Patrick on a couple things. How tell me how tourism is. It's more. It's I know you're like if you got a half hour. It's complicated, but how has tourism been crossing the border and back and forth with upstate New York? We want a cease from stability and we want success for you there. What's it been like? Well, there's no question American tourism is down both ways. I mean, Canadians are not going into the US like they used to and definitely Americans are not coming up here like they used to, but the good news. The silver lining in the gray cloud is that our international numbers are way up from Germany to Japan, France, UK. So other markets are picking up because they're choosing to bypass the US and come to Canada and to Niagara Falls. So overall, it's good. Could be better can always be better, but the nice thing is the premier is announced destination in Niagara, whether it's going to be some significant changes, including our airport and some major investments and attracting a major theme park to replace marine land. So it's not as bad as it could have been and we've got some exciting opportunities for what we're going to do going forward. A couple of broadcasts from 640 Toronto's morning show wouldn't hurt the wouldn't hurt the tourism. Maybe it would. I don't know maybe it would and then I would never you never speak to me again. Mayor Brown Brampton City Council last week, you reason the land where the Brampton Assembly plant sits. This is this is a bit of a salvo towards Stolantis to save some of these jobs. And our audience know what they need to know about this. Yeah, and the context and the precursor to this is Stolantis got land from the city in the 1980s for automotive production. And under Prime Minister Harper and Premier McGinty, they received billions of dollars in production incentives to have auto model production in Brampton more recently, premier Ford and Prime Minister Trudeau provided billions of dollars in subsidies for auto production in Windsor and in Brampton. And so there are three times they breach their obligations because they've taken 3,000 jobs and taken them to the US and essentially told us until tariffs are off, they don't have a business case for production in Canada. And so this is just an additional tool if they think there's some mechanism they can sell off the land for condos, they can go fly a kite because we're angry in Brampton with the way they've treated the city and their obligations to Canadian taxpayers. And so we're making it very clear that we expect them to honor their obligations. And when would that, I mean, you can't stop to put a gun to their head and give them a deadline, but what would be your best case scenario with a response from them? Well, they've already reached out for a meeting and so obviously we've got their attention and that's that's part of why we did this is to let them know if they think this story is disappearing. And so the bad news was a one day story about you know, gutting a Canadian city and their and their auto jobs that they're mistaken. They have obligations that need to be honored and I'm working closely with provincial and federal government to make sure if they don't honor those obligations that were going after that company for the funds they accepted on false pretenses. One on it's obviously got some complexities to it, but you've got a Mausomeme Islamic center on Kennedy Road South. And over the last two nights they've had a service of vigil for the deceased Ayatollah Hamam, a Camini. There's not much I don't think a municipal government can do about this. That center gets funding from the government of Canada, but I'm sure you've heard about it from some residents. And again, these are these are tricky times. Mrs. Saga's mayor right next to you, Carolyn Parish has been in and out of some controversy about things that have been set up and then canceled and then moved. Were you aware of this and have you heard from constituents about the controversial nature of this? I haven't heard from constituents about it yet, but I just saw it on June news this morning and obviously, you know, I forwarded it to our chief of police to find out if this is if this is permitted. You know, we have the Iranian government as a designated terrorist entity. And so I think it's obviously highly inappropriate to have a vigil honoring someone that preached such hate. Yeah. And again, I would point out I appreciate you commenting on it. I think it is certainly for the member of parliament in that writing given the funding to also speak up and give it its far more federal jurisdiction than it is municipal or provincial. I got to leave it there, but I wanted to ask about it. Thanks so much for the time today for both you gentlemen. I appreciate it. Thank you. There's Jim do Doddy mayor of Niagara Falls. Go see him there. Spend some money there. Encourage your American friends to do that as well and Patrick Brown mayor of Brampton. Thanks for listening to the Toronto today podcast. We drop the highlights of the daily show every weekday morning. Don't forget you can hear the entire show on the radio at home on your smart speaker. Ask Alexa or say, hey Google play 640 Toronto or Toronto today. You can hear us on between 530 and 9 weekdays on 640 Toronto. Have a great day. New this with our own global. Have you ever told a lie? New serious. Wasn't lying part of the job description of C.I. Executive producer Dick Wolf and the team behind FBI. He can be a little by the book. You never used to be a liar. You're really not used to be dead. I never knew you can. Two perspectives, one mission. You guys will open. We work in the shadows. Starring Tom Ellis and Nick Gelfis. Nice work partner. C.I.A. All new Monday's at 10 on global and stream on stack TV.