Former Mayor of Toronto and Eye magazine city columnist John Sewell is running an interesting web site devoted to local government, www.localgovernment.ca. It provides resources and publishes an email bulletin analyzing local government issues and championing increased power for local communities.
The most recent issue of the bulletin includes very interesting analyses of the provincial government’s proposed amendments to the Ontario Municipal Board, and its new City of Toronto act. The analysis is far more in-depth than the coverage these initiatives received in the media, and is therefore well worth the read. In both cases, he suggests that the changes are fairly superficial, and do not represent a fundamental shift in the provincial-municipal relationship; in the case of the OMB, he shows that the changes could in fact make things far worse for citizens who are trying to control development proposals.
