Ford government ministers fielded questions on HART hubs, health care and ‘overreach’ at the 2025 AMO conference

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a new Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.

Ford government ministers fielded questions Tuesday afternoon from municipal councillors anxious for a long-promised bill providing stricter consequences for harassment from their colleagues. 

The questions, and others on municipal jurisdiction, HART hubs and more, came at the annual Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference’s “bear pit,” where provincial cabinet lines up before hundreds of local leaders to take a few of their queries.

Two of those questions were about the Ford government’s Bill 9, the Municipal Accountability Act, which would allow for councils to boot members for serious code of conduct violations. Municipal leaders have been clamouring for this power due to a score of misbehaving councillors, and no way to remove them except the ballot box.

Stakeholders have been weighing in with suggestions on the bill in committee this summer — but it can’t be passed until the Ford government recalls the legislature.

“My question is very simple,” Niagara Region Coun. Haley Bateman said. “When are you going to prioritize this and get that legislation passed to make our municipality safe for its workers and its councillors?”

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Rob Flack said he was “convinced it’s going to get passed once we come back in the fall session, after we go clause by clause, and there’s some improvements perhaps to be made to the bill.”

As of now, the legislature is set to return Oct. 20.

Pickering Coun. Mara Nagy later noted that she was 31 weeks pregnant but that staff couldn’t protect her from the alleged “workplace harassment” she said she received from Coun. Lisa Robinson. She urged Flack to “streamline the process, limit delays and place final decision-making with an impartial body and not with local politicians.”

Flack again noted that the bill may see changes, but will be passed in the fall.

Moderator and TVO journalist John Michael McGrath banned further questions about the bill.

Municipal ‘overreach’

Two councillors asked about the Ford government’s pattern of exercising its control over municipalities. 

Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward asked how the government would “commit to respecting municipal autonomy” given recent legislative changes that exempt developments from municipal oversight, specifically noting the controversial “special economic zones.”

“So really, this is the don’t do things to us, do things with us question,” Meed Ward said. 

Flack appeared to mis-hear the question.

“It’s kind of hard to hear these questions up here, but I think what you’re referring to is our finances and the new municipal structure going forward,” he said before talking about municipal funding.

Oshawa Coun. Derek Giberson earned a round of applause for his question about whether municipalities “should expect to see more overreach into our area of planning jurisdiction” given the government’s attempt to remove three Toronto bike lanes.

Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said the province was forced to remove bike lanes to reduce congestion and that the government works “very well and very closely” with municipalities on infrastructure. 

Mental health and addictions

Ottawa Coun. Ariel Troster called out crime statistics the government used to justify shutting down a supervised drug consumption site in the city.

Last year, the government said crime rates were 250 per cent higher in the area around the site than in the rest of the city, Troster noted. 

“Yesterday, CTV News reported that, after submitting an access to information request, that those figures are false. In fact, violent crime decreased by 23 per cent in 2023 in the vicinity of the supervised consumption site,” she said.  

Police told CTV the area’s crime rate in 2023 was only 14 per cent higher than the citywide average. 

“So my question is, what are you going to do to help Ottawa’s Chinatown that has now been plunged into absolute chaos since the supervised consumption site was forced to close?” Troster said to applause.

In response, Health Minister Sylvia Jones referenced the killing of a woman in Toronto from a stray bullet fired near a supervised consumption site. 

“So with the greatest of respect, I never ever want to have a mother who is killed because she happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in front of a consumption site in the province,” she said.

“We want to be part of the solution, and the solution cannot, and will not, under our government, be continuing to encourage drug consumption in the province of Ontario,” she said, also to applause.

Parry Sound Mayor Jamie McGarvey said the government’s HART hub spending is appreciated, but “a fraction of what is required” to combat homelessness.

“And there’s no overall strategy to prevent and reduce homelessness using an all-of-government approach,” he said, calling for a funding increase.

Flack said his government has increased homelessness spending. He said he will meet with his federal counterpart early next month “to make sure the federal government steps up to the plate as well.”

Northern health care

Sault Ste. Marie Coun. Lisa Vezeau-Allen asked the health minister what the plan was for health care in northern Ontario. The Sault has been “hit hard” by de-rostering of patients from primary care providers, more than 5,000 of whom are still without primary care, Vezeau-Allen said.

According to the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), northern Ontario has a shortfall of 350 physicians, 200 of which are family doctors, Vezeau-Allen noted.

“What is your plan within the ministry, specific to northern Ontario, to ensure that everyone in northern Ontario has a physician, and addressing that 350 physician shortfall, as reported from the OMA?” she said.

Jones noted that her government has increased family doctor training spots at Northern Ontario School of Medicine University by 50 per cent. 

“That is very specifically because we have data showing that when you train, when you do your practicums in northern Ontario, you are far more likely to stay,” she said to applause.

She also pointed to a program that shortens the wait time for internationally trained doctors to practise in Ontario, in exchange for those doctors working in an “under-served community.”

“Our northern and rural communities are already seeing benefits,” she said. “Gore Bay is the one that comes to mind where, in our very first cohort, the community of Gore Bay has an internationally trained physician practicing in their community,” she said. 

Eventually, Jones was cut off by the moderator. 

“Oh, I have so much more,” she said.