Premier Doug Ford’s 2018 mid-election slashing of the size of Toronto city council was constitutional, the Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled, overturning a lower-court decision.In a 3-2 decision, the appeal court said Thursday there is no doubt Ford’s move to slash the size of city council months after the start of the election “disrupted campaigning and the candidates’ expectations.”But none of the arguments advanced by the City of Toronto, in support of a September ruling by a Superior Court judge that Ford’s move violated Torontonians’ charter rights, are valid, the appeal court concluded.“The applicants’ complaints have been clothed in the language of (sections 2b) of the Charter to invite judicial intervention in what is essentially a political matter,” the appeal court ruled. “There is no legitimate basis for the court to accept this invitation.”Two judges, however, issued a strong dissenting opinion, finding Bill 5, which cut the size of city council from a planned 47 wards to 25, unconstitutional.Justice James MacPherson, who chaired the appeal panel, wrote that “by reducing the size of City Council from 47 to 25 wards and changing the boundaries of all city wards mid-election, the Act interfered in an unwarranted fashion with the freedom of expression of candidates in a municipal election.”The Ford government “left a trail of devastation of basic democratic principles in its wake,” he wrote. “By extinguishing almost half of the city`s existing wards midway through an active election, Ontario blew up the efforts, aspirations and campaign materials of hundreds of aspiring candidates,” and the violation of their charter rights was “extensive, profound, and seemingly without precedent in Canadian history.”Last January the shrunken Toronto council voted to instruct city lawyers to “pursue a leave to appeal application to the Supreme C ...
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