Ontario to move ahead with regional government review without facilitators

Ontario’s new minister of municipal affairs and housing says that instead of hiring facilitators to assess the future of six of the province’s regional governments, he wants a legislative committee to do the review.

Paul Calandra announced earlier this week he would review the moved announced by his predecessor to have facilitators assess regional governments in Durham, Halton, Waterloo, York and Niagara regions and Simcoe County.

Today, he says in a statement that he has asked a legislative committee to instead conduct a review and notes all committees can carry out work in a public, open and accountable manner.

He says the study should examine whether two-tier governments in those regions support or hinder the construction of new homes and whether certain services could be combined or moved from one level of government to another.

The previous minister, Steve Clark, resigned last month amid the fallout of two scathing reports on Greenbelt land swaps that found the process of selecting lands for housing favoured certain developers.

The government also enacted a law in the spring to break up the upper-tier municipality of Peel Region, which includes the municipalities of Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon.

The Canadian Press