Thudner Bay Mayor Ken Boshcoff hears from deputants during the January 12, 2023, pre-budget deputation meeting

Thunder Bay is being left off the list of communities where the mayors will have expanded powers.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark says legislation passed last fall for the mayors of Ottawa and Toronto will be extended to 26 other large and medium-sized communities.

Clark says those communities signed a pledge to assist the province in getting more homes constructed.

Thunder Bay, Chatham-Kent and Sudbury were not asked.

“We just extended the initial housing pledge to, we had a list of the fastest growing municipalities that had a population of over 100,000. I wanted to be fair to the three members at OBCM (Ontario Big Cities Mayors) that weren’t asked to do a housing pledge. We’ll be reaching out to them and a number of other municipalities inquiring about the desire for their mayor and their council to sign on to the pledge and do their part,” says Clark.

Clark says the legislation, referred to as Strong Mayor Powers, allows heads of council to expedite the delivery of certain shared municipal-provincial priorities such as housing, transit and infrastructure.

Other powers afforded to the mayor include:

• Choosing to appoint the municipality’s chief administrative officer
• Hiring certain municipal department heads, and establishing and re-organizing departments
• Creating committees of council, assigning their functions and appointing the chairs and vice-chairs of committees of council
• Proposing the municipal budget, which would be subject to council amendments and a separate head of council veto and council override process
• Vetoing certain by-laws if the head of council is of the opinion that all or part of the by-law could potentially interfere with a provincial priority
• Bringing forward matters for council consideration if the head of council is of the opinion that considering the matter could potentially advance a provincial priority

Council can still override a mayor’s veto with a two-thirds majority vote.