Mayors react as Mississauga, Brampton set to become independent from Peel Region

Ontario filed for a municipal divorce of sorts on Thursday with legislation to break up Peel Region, and while the mayors of its two biggest cities welcomed their looming independence, separating their assets and finances promises to be messy.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark tabled a bill to dissolve the regional government covering the municipalities of Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon as of Jan. 1, 2025, though much of the heavy lifting is being left to a transition board that he’ll name at a later date.

The board, which will have up to five members, will make recommendations to the province on how to handle shared services such as police, social services and water. It could recommend some of those services continue to be shared between the communities, but will ensure no disruption.

“If you live in Caledon, or Brampton, or Mississauga, the front-line services that you receive today, I want those preserved on Jan.1, 2025,” Clark said. “In fact, I think we should look to a view of strengthening them.”

The transition board will also be tasked with making recommendations on employment issues, property tax arrangements, and _ perhaps most contentiously _ finances.

Brampton mayor Patrick Brown, speaking to Breakfast Television, expressed some concern about the fate of his municipality, with much of the existing infrastructure currently outside of Brampton.

“Essentially, all the critical infrastructure for the Region of Peel are in Mississauga,” he says. “Our water treatment, our wastewater plant, our police headquarter. Already we don’t have the service and capacity for new housing.”

Brown told CityNews on Monday he would be seeking a financial settlement should there be a breakup. He claims Mississauga owes Brampton close to a billion dollars as a result and will take it to court if they don’t pay their share back.

“Brampton would never accept our residents being taken advantage of,” he said Thursday.

“Every single cent we put in to build that infrastructure in Mississauga my residents expect back because the infrastructure has been used up, the servicing capacity has been used up. It’s like going for dinner and having one party eat the entire plate, give you the empty plate, and say, ‘Let’s share it now.”’

Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie has been pushing for her city to become independent, saying it will save her municipality $1 billion over 10 years and make it more efficient. She says the Region of Peel was created in the first place to “fund the growth and development of Brampton.”

“We were paying for that growth,” she says. “We were sending 70 per cent of the revenue from our tax dollars to the Region of Peel. My taxpayers find this very inequitable. We want to be able to invest our tax dollars into our infrastructure, our programs, and our services.”

Doug Ford has vowed that the goal of any changes would be to ensure each of the municipalities have equal or better service.

“I do welcome some aspects of this,” said Brown. “We’ve got two planning departments, two legal departments, and the list goes on and on in terms of redundancy.”

Peel Region is currently responsible for services such as paramedics, health programs and recycling in the three municipalities.

“These things are not easy,” Marvin Ryder, a professor at McMaster University who chaired the transition board back in 2000 that created the new City of Hamilton, tells CityNews.

“You’re going to need an independent tribunal who are going to sit there and adjudicate on how basically this divorce is going to happen. And I think calling this a divorce is the best way to think of it. The stickiest thing in a divorce is not the two people who decide they can no longer get along with each other but how you then divide the marital assets.”

Ryder says along with the division of assets there will also need to be negotiation on “joint custody” of other assets moving forward.

“What I mean by that is because for so long you’ve had a Region of Peel, as you were building water lines they would have crossed some of these boundaries quite easily. Now you’re putting up a barrier and saying ‘No, no, that’s going to be in Mississauga, that’s going to be in Brampton’ so then who is going to maintain that,” he explained. “You really can’t have an efficient situation where we’ll maintain it up to here and you take it from there, becuase it’s a system – it can’t be divided that way. So a new plan has to come up with managing the joint assets.”

Future of Caledon uncertain

While the financial fracas between Mississauga and Brampton demanded most of the attention at a joint news conference Thursday with Clark and the three municipal leaders, Caledon’s mayor chimed in to express hope that the process will take care of her residents, too.

“I know that we’re the child in this marriage, but the children get to speak in a divorce because at the end of the day, the children, they are affected,” Annette Groves said.

“The region has served Caledon extremely well, so it isn’t something that we wanted, but at the end of the day, we’re here with this decision today, and I think that we just have to work with it.”

Groves said she is unsure about what future the board will recommend for Caledon – whether as a standalone city or part of a different region – but she is confident the province’s process will work.

“I don’t have any issues here in making sure that Caledon’s residents will be well served through this divorce,” she said, going on to crack a joke.

“I had a great divorce. I didn’t even use a lawyer and my ex-husband comes and lets my dog out and takes my garbage out. What more can you ask for? So I think that this is the kind of divorce we’re going to have here in Peel Region.”

Government officials say a second piece of legislation is set to be introduced in the fall of 2024 to address any outstanding restructuring matters for the region west of Toronto.

Clark had announced in November that he would appoint facilitators to assess six regional governments, including Peel Region, and look at the best mix of roles between upper-tier and lower-tier municipalities with an eye to expanding “strong mayor” powers beyond Toronto and Ottawa.

Clark said the province wants to give all three Peel Region municipality mayors those powers, which would give them certain veto and budgetary powers.

The facilitator process now will not move forward for Peel, but Simcoe County has been added to the reviews that will also include Durham Region, Halton Region, Niagara Region, Waterloo Region and York Region.

Files from the Canadian Press and CityNews reporter Cynthia Mulligan were used in this report