2026 Election - 1st Strong Mayor Electiom

When the Province of Ontario established strong mayor municipalities as the norm, in rural as well as urban Ontario, in April of last year, it came as a surprise in many rural communities.

Strong mayor powers were first brought in for Toronto, a city with a population of 3.3 million, which had a budget if $25 billion in 2025, and is overseen by a 26 member council, including Mayor Olivia Chow.

North Frontenac is one of the smaller strong mayor jurisdictions in the province. It has a permanent resident population of under 2,000 people, a budget of $11 million in 2025, and is overseen by a 7 member council, including Mayor Gerry Lichty.

A 7 member council is the minimum size for strong mayor designation.

The anomaly here is the size of North Frontenac Council, with 1 councillor for every 285 people (Toronto has 1 council member for every 126,000 people)

It is hard to see why strong mayor powers are necessary in such small municipalities, where fiscal reality, the Municipal Act, and provincial decisions exert more influence on decisions than local politicians do, but the province imposed them nonetheless.

The idea behind strong mayor powers is to enable policies to be enacted more easily, by giving one person the authority to act, with the rest of Council having a limited ability to block measures that a super majority of them disagree with.

Instead of requiring a majority vote in order to spend money on a municipal priority, the mayor is now able to make that kind of decision on their own, and Council is only there to ratify that decision. If Council says no to the mayor, the mayor has a veto. Council can still over-ride the mayor’s, but that requires that two thirds of them are willing to defy the mayor.

The government of Ontario imposed these powers in the midst of a council term, when the mayor and council had been elected under the previous system, which was clearly undemocratic.

When we voted in 2022, the candidates for mayor stated their priorities, but it was clear to them and to the voters that they had only one vote on council, and had to win over council to advance those priorities. Under the old system, the Mayor ran the meetings, represented the township to other levels of government and the community, and had an ability to set the agenda for council. But they had one vote out of many at the end of the day.

Council made the decisions, and Council had the authority to hire and fire the chief administrator.

In this coming election, however, everything has changed. When the powers were imposed this year, both the North and South Frontenac mayors said they were not interested in the changes and would not make use of the powers.

In this year’s election, candidates for mayor will be expected to indicate their priorities for the next term and how they plan to pursue them, just like they would have in the previous election. Except now, they will have an extra tool to make their plans come about, so if they say they will not use strong mayor powers, they will effectively be undermining the priorities they are basing their campaign on.

The role of mayor under this new scenario is different. It is no longer first among equals. It is certainly fair to campaign as a mayor who wants to work with Council on priorities, but to also say that if Council does not agree, those priorities will not be pursued, is no longer a viable stance.

When strong mayor powers came in last May, it happened at a time when Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith felt that a majority of Council was actively opposing her agenda in an organised way.

So, at the time she said she did not necessarily like having strong mayor powers, but if she felt that Council was not acting in the best interest of the township, she would have to use them.

That may have been a controversial position at the time, but every candidate running for mayor in 2026 needs to take that same stance.

Or else, they will be running to be a weak Mayor, and no politician wants to base their candidacy on the weakness of their convictions.

Strong mayor powers will settle into place across the three townships once the new council is elected at the end of this year. ■