Council has overruled Rob Ford and decided not to call a by-election to fill the seat vacated by former deputy mayor Doug Holyday.
Holyday became a Conservative MPP earlier this month after winning a provincial by-election in Etobicoke-Lakeshore. According to provincial law, council had the option to either hold a by-election to replace him, or appoint someone to fill his Etobicoke Centre seat until the October 2014 municipal vote.
For weeks Mayor Ford has been pushing hard for a by-election, but at a special meeting on Monday, council rejected that idea by a count of 19-14, and opted for an appointment instead.
After the vote, the mayor said councillors had deprived residents of Ward 3 the right to choose who represents them at City Hall.
“I’m disappointed. Council obviously didn’t listen to what the people want in Ward 3,” said Ford, who held an informal town hall in Etobicoke Centre last week to collect residents’ feedback on the issue.
“We have to start listening to what the taxpayers want in this city. And council does not do that,” he added.
The mayor accused council’s left wing of blocking a by-election because they didn’t want to give him the opportunity to canvass for a conservative challenger in the ward. Liberal councillors will now try to “put one of their tax-and-spend lefties in there,” he predicted.
“They don’t want me campaigning,” he said. “I’ve got news for them. I’m going to be campaigning [in the 2014 election], so they can’t keep me off the campaign trail.”
The mayor’s brother, Councillor Doug Ford, called the decision to appoint a replacement “the worst thing for democracy the city’s ever seen.”
“People travel from all over the world to come to this country to have the democratic right to vote, and we’ve just taken it away from 53,000 people,” he said.
But despite Rob Ford’s assertion that council’s left wing had ganged up on him, the vote did not break down neatly along political lines. Gord Perks and Mike Layton, both staunch leftists, voted to hold a by-election, while conservatives like Denzil Minnan-Wong, as well as handful of centrists, opposed it.
A major factor for those who chose an appointment was the estimated $225,000 cost of a fall vote, which would have taken place November 25, less than a year before the October 2014 municipal election. Nominations for the city-wide vote open in January, meaning that City Hall would be plunged into unofficial election season just over a month after the winning candidate would have taken office.
In his remarks on the council floor, Councillor Minnan-Wong suggested that the cost of the by-election wasn’t worth it, because the “darker and colder” conditions of late November would guarantee a low voter turnout.
“One has to really wonder how much democracy was going to be served when very few people show up at a by-election,” he told reporters afterward.
The councillor said that it was important that council appoint someone who shared the “views and values” of Etobicoke Centre voters, who in Holyday have elected a conservative to City Hall in every vote since amalgamation.
Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, who moved the motion for an appointment, refuted the idea that Etobicoke voters had been disenfranchised.
“I think it’s a very good day for democracy, and we saved taxpayers over $200,000 by giving an appointment,” he said.
“This is a caretaker position for less than a year, and when that election comes those people will appoint who they want.”
According to the timeline presented at the meeting by the city clerk, the Etobicoke York Community Council will hear from potential appointees at a special meeting on October 3. Each council hopeful will be given five minutes to speak, and be asked a maximum of one question by each of the 10 community council members.
Community council will then select its preferred appointee in a run-off vote, after which full council will reconvene on October 10 to decide who gets the spot.
In order to keep a level playing field in the 2014 election, council can request that the appointee not run again next October, but there is nothing that would legally prevent him or her from doing so.
By rejecting a fall vote on Monday, councillors ignored a council policy, adopted in 2000, that any vacancy created prior to November 30 before an election year should be filled by a by-election. According to the city clerk however, the policy is non-binding.
