Soon after Toronto council passed a construction dust bylaw and dog tag pilot project, the provincial government considered 14 bills about zebra mussels.The zebra mussel bills account for about half the legislation considered in the first session under the Progressive Conservative majority government that began July 11. The NDP’s Gilles Bisson introduced the zebra mussel bills, naming almost every lake and waterway in Ontario as needing to be investigated to determine the extent of the problem, to try and stall Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 5 legislation in August that proposed cutting the number of Toronto wards to 25 from 47.Despite the apparent inefficiency of his own legislature, Ford has stuck to the assertion that cutting the size of Toronto’s city council mid-election is necessary to ensure the city can get more done faster. It’s a justification Ford used when invoking the notwithstanding clause to override a judge’s ruling that the unexpected ward cuts were unconstitutional, and when holding a midnight session Monday to ram through revised ward-cutting legislation, Bill 31. The Star took a look at what council was able to achieve in the past two years with 44 councillors, and how that compares to another major Canadian city, and the provincial and federal governments. Toronto council From Sept. 2016 to Aug. 2018 there were:56 days of regular council meetings 3,565 items approved64 items approved per meeting day on average These numbers from the City of Toronto don’t include decisions made by the four community councils on items such as fence bylaw exemptions and appointments to local boards and business improvement areas. Items city council considers range in their impact. One day councillors could be voting on relatively mundane items like adjusting street parking rules, permitting pedestrian crosswalks, or protecting heritage properties. Next, they could be debating items with broad implications, such as the future of the ...
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