Restoring democracy in Ontario

MPP Chris Glover, Spadina-Fort York (NDP) –

We need to restore democracy in Ontario.

Over the summer, Premier Doug Ford’s minister of educa­tion dismissed elected trustees from four school boards, and now threatens to permanently end the election of trustees – a right that Ontarians and before them Upper Canadians have had since 1816. Suspiciously, Ford has also given the minister the power to sell schools to whom­ever he wants with no oversight.

We are losing our democ­racy. In the last seven years, the provincial government has passed legislation that violates every fundamental principle of democratic government. Ontar­ians no longer have the right to democratic municipal elections, the right to majority vote deci­sions in municipal councils, or the right to an independent and impartial judiciary.

Our freedom of speech and other Charter rights have been overridden by three separate bills using the notwithstanding clause. With Bill 5, passed last spring, Ford can declare any part of Ontario or the entire province a “special economic zone” where he can break any municipal or provincial law.

If a government can break any law any time it wants to, if our Charter rights and freedoms are regularly overridden, if the gov­ernment openly appoints parti­san judges, it is difficult to argue that Ontario is still a democracy.

The process of undermining our democratic rights began shortly after Ford was elected in 2018. In the middle of prov­ince-wide municipal elections, Ford cancelled four regional chair elections and cut the num­ber of seats on Toronto’s city council from 47 to 25. This ac­tion was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, which in a 5-4 decision ruled that because the Charter of Rights and Free­doms guarantees the right only to federal and provincial elec­tions, Canadians do not have a right to democratic municipal elections.

The ruling gave Ford an op­portunity to attack another fun­damental democratic principle: majority vote decision-making. His “strong mayor” bills have replaced majority vote deci­sion-making in municipal gov­ernments. Now, mayors and one third of city councillors can override the votes of two thirds of city councillors.

Our Charter rights have also been overridden. Ford passed three separate bills that used the Constitution’s “notwithstand­ing” clause, a section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows provincial or federal governments to violate Canadi­ans’ fundamental freedoms and legal rights, including freedom of speech, for five years.

Ford’s other attack on our democratic rights came with his public call to appoint Con­servative judges. Judges are supposed to be non-partisan and impartial. The right to have cas­es heard by a nonpartisan inde­pendent judge is a Charter right.

One of the few Charter rights that the notwithstanding clause cannot override is the right to democratic provincial and fed­eral elections. But Ford may have violated this right as well. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and unions are now before the courts arguing that the government violated On­tarians’ right to a democratic provincial election in 2022 with Bill 307, which restricted adver­tising critical of the government 12 months before an election.

Most of these attacks on our democratic rights have not drawn the attention they should have. The focus has been on the government’s many scandals – the Greenbelt, Ontario Place, Skills Development Fund, etc.

But our democratic rights are even more important than these billion-dollar scandals. Our democratic rights are the tools that give us the power to expose these scandals, to mobi­lize communities, and to change governments.

To restore our democracy, I have tabled a bill to create a Commissioner of Democrat­ic Rights. The commissioner would be an independent watch­dog able to call out government actions that weaken our democ­racy.

The bill is scheduled for leg­islative debate on Wednesday December 10. If you’d like to attend, please email my office: cglover-qp@ndp.on.ca