Random Access

Interesting picture of Emil Kolb being helped on with his chain of office Thursday night by Mayor Susan Fennell and Mayor Marolyn Morrison of Caledon.
Gee, who was missing from this rosy picture of regional camaraderie?
Why, perhaps the woman we thought would be trying to orchestrate the removal of the chain of office from Emil Kolb?
Mayor Hazel McCallion has always had a prickly relationship with the chair of Peel Region, no matter who it is. She was an indefatigable opponent of the regional government as the Mayor of Streetsville, before she and her little town were swallowed into Mississauga’s giant maw in 1974. McCallion became councillor for Streetsville and then mayor of Mississauga but she never got over her disdain for Peel.
It persists to this day and has resulted in the City and Region expending an incredible amount of (largely wasted) time and energy as the mayor tried to pull her little magic act of making a level of government disappear. It is largely a tribute to her own immense personal influence that this discussion even got onto the provincial agenda, let alone resulted in the addition of two Mississauga councillors on Peel council. That triumph, of course, now creates the possibility of regular legislative deadlock at Peel, if Mississauga votes as a block and Brampton-Caledon vote as a block.
This has generally not happened in the past, it is true – except on issues that really matter – such as where to put garbage dumps, the regional headquarters, the police HQ etc.
Since the mayor’s declaration of independence .... pardon me.... her inaugural address restated the mayor’s intention to do everything possible to get out of Peel, you would logically have expected Mississauga to put forward its own candidate for chair this time around.
If the captain of the Peel ship has the final say in a tie vote, one would expect the mutineers to mount some kind of an effort to replace the captain.
It did not happen, however. Which seems mighty strange. Does Hazel know something the rest of us don’t?
It’s true that part of the problem in trying to stage a coup are the rules of engagement. Appointing a candidate from outside council with no political experience, who would be seen as a puppet of Mississauga, has a number of obvious drawbacks.
Having a member of Mississauga council run for chair makes the most sense. If the honourable thing had been done, one of the incumbents would have sat out the municipal election and announced his/her candidacy for chair beforehand.
Even if a councillor had done that, there was no guarantee of success. There was the distinct possibility of a 12-12 tie and the necessity of council members voting over and over again until someone blinked or resorting to a drawing of straws or a coin flip to determine a winner.
What brave soul would risk their political career on that prospect?
If one of the sitting City councillors had run for chair at the inaugural last Thursday, a mandatory, expensive by-election would have been triggered which would not have been seen in the kindest light, to put it mildly.
So the uneasy alliance continues. We are in for another four years of internecine warfare between Mississauga and the rest of Peel, with Kolb cast as the kindly, slightly befuddled arbiter trying to hold the region together as its single most powerful member tugs relentlessly at the keystone of the foundation.