Who controls the budget process

Candidates on record

3 candidates are on record on this issue. Every candidate in these races is searched the same way. Only candidates who have said something in public on this issue are named here, with a link to the source; the others are counted by race below. The full record for every candidate is on Candidates.

The full story

The record behind the questions, with a source at each claim.

Ontario’s strong-mayor powers let the Mayor effectively set the city budget; council gets a 30-day window to bring amendments, which it may shorten by resolution. Two things have happened to that arrangement in Mississauga, and the second is the one that got attention.

First, the committee changed hands. On June 26, 2024 — two days after being sworn in — the Mayor issued Mayoral Decision MDE-0005-2024 under section 284.8 of the Municipal Act. It established a new Budget Committee “to replace the budget committee previously established by Council”. The new committee:

• provides “advice and recommendations to the Mayor regarding the City’s operating and capital budgets”
• reports directly to Council on budget items in which the Mayor has a pecuniary interest — the only reporting line to Council the decision gives it
• meets at least four times a year “unless otherwise directed by the Mayor”
• has the Mayor as an ex officio member

The same decision appointed the chairs and vice-chairs of its four standing committees. It did not require a council vote.

Then the window narrowed. On January 13, 2026 the Budget Committee decided not to shorten the 30-day amendment window. On January 28 Council went the other way, cutting the window to 23 days.

The 30 days is set by provincial regulation rather than by the Municipal Act itself. Section 284.16(3) of the Act lets council amend a proposed budget “in accordance with the regulations”, and the regulation, O. Reg. 530/22, gives council 30 days after it receives the proposed budget (s. 7(3)). The same section lets council shorten that period by resolution “for the year” (s. 7(4)) — the power Council used on January 28 — so a shortened window does not carry into the next year unless council shortens it again.

The detail matters here, because the record differs from the headline. The motion stood in the Mayor’s name as a Notice of Motion, but it was moved by Councillor Joe Horneck and seconded by Councillor Natalie Hart, and it did not carry unanimously. It carried 9–0 with two abstentions — Councillor Dipika Damerla and Councillor Alvin Tedjo. The Mayor is not recorded in the vote. Nobody opposed it; two members declined to take a position, and both are now running for mayor.

And something else happened at that meeting, before any of it. At the approval of the agenda, Councillor Damerla asked to add a motion on budget transparency. In response to Mayor Parrish, the City Solicitor spoke to staff policies. The minutes then record that “Council voted on challenging the Mayor and if the motion related to budget transparency should be added to the agenda”, and that the vote failed, so the transparency motion never reached the floor. They do not record what the Mayor said or decided that was challenged.

So on the day Council shortened its own window to amend the budget, a motion about budget transparency was kept off the agenda when a vote to challenge the Mayor failed. Neither event is unusual on its own. Read together, they are the clearest single illustration on this page of the difference between the rules as written and the rules as used.

Read together, these are not two stories. A committee whose mandate is advice to the Mayor, with a reporting line to Council only where the Mayor has a pecuniary interest, is a change in who the budget process serves; a shorter amendment window is a change in how long Council has to respond to what that process produces. Either alone is arguable. The sequence is the thing worth asking about.

The point is not that any of it is unlawful — both are powers the province granted, used as written. The point is that the check Council holds over the budget has been narrowed twice by different means, once without a vote and once by a vote Council cast on itself.

And the third part is how the budget power itself has been used. The power to propose the budget has been used once: Mayor Crombie exercised it for the 2024 budget (MDE-0008-2023). Mayor Parrish declined it for the 2025 and 2026 budgets (MDE-0012-2024, MDE-0017-2025), and on April 15, 2026 advised of her intention not to exercise it for 2027 (MDE-0008-2026). Under the regulation as amended by O. Reg. 189/26, a budget for the year after a regular election may be proposed only in that year (O. Reg. 530/22, s. 7(1.1)), so the 2027 power rests with whoever is mayor in 2027. For the 2024, 2025 and 2026 budgets staff prepared the budget at the Mayor’s written direction and council’s amendment period ran; for 2027 the direction is given (MDI-0001-2026) and the budget is due January 12, 2027; in 2023 and 2024 the Mayor approved council’s amendments and declined the veto.

The decision that put the 2026 budget before Council also set its timetable. Signed in June 2025, MDE-0017-2025 directed staff to deliver the proposed budget to Council on January 6, 2026, and provided that the 30-day amendment period be shortened “if needed to coincide with the January 28, 2026 Council meeting” — seven months before Council did so.

So the honest picture is this. The budget power was used once, in 2023; it was declined for the 2025 and 2026 budgets, and for 2027 the Mayor has advised of her intention not to use it. What has changed around it is the scaffolding: the committee that shepherds the budget is now charged with advising the Mayor, restructured without a vote; and Council’s window to amend has been shortened, by a vote Council cast on itself.

That is a more interesting finding than “the Mayor took over the budget,” and a harder one to campaign on. A candidate can be asked about the power and about the scaffolding, and the answers need not be the same.

It is also worth being clear about what declining the power is and isn’t. It is a decision made one budget at a time, not a rule. Nothing in it binds the next mayor, which is exactly why it is fair to ask one to commit.

Checked September 13, 2026. Of the twelve mayoral decisions issued since MDE-0008-2026, none concerns the budget.

Rewritten 2026-07-30 from the Mayor’s own signed decisions and directions. This entry previously covered only the January 2026 window reversal; the June 2024 restructuring was added first, then the budget-power finding.

Two corrections worth recording, both the same mistake. The April 2026 decision is indexed on the City’s website as “Decision to propose a 2027-2030 Business Plan & 2027 Budget.” We read that label as meaning she had proposed one. The document says the opposite. Until September 13, 2026 this page then said the budget power had never been used, having checked the Mayoral Directions, which instruct staff, rather than the Mayoral Decisions, which record whether the power is exercised. The 2023 decision exercises it.