What the strong-mayor powers have been used for
The tension: Powers that let one office act without a council vote — held since 2023, used here for committees and senior appointments, used for the budget once and declined for it since, and — by a provincial regulation taking effect November 15, 2026 — extended to the chair of Peel Region, an office Bill 100 provides shall be appointed, by the Minister or by the regional council. No Mississauga nomination, mayoral or ward, was affected.
Since 2023, Mississauga's mayor has held powers no other councillor has: to propose the budget, to hire and fire senior staff, to create committees, and to put certain by-laws to a vote that can pass with just over a third of council. The previous council opposed them 12 to 0.
Their use has been narrower than the coverage. In 2023 the power reopened a four-plex decision that had died on a tie, and Council passed it 8 to 2, a majority without the lowered threshold. Apart from one budget, the powers used without a council vote have been organisational: a new City Manager, senior appointments, committees. The budget power was used for 2024 and declined since.
From November 15, 2026, Peel Region's chair, now an appointed office, gets these powers too. The questions below ask when these powers should be used, and who gets to see the reasons.
Resolution Options
Questions you can ask
To: allUnder what specific circumstances would you use, or support using, strong-mayor powers to act without a council vote?
To: mayoralSection 284.11.1(3) already requires a head of council to give every member of council their reasons for proposing a by-law under that power. The regulation requires the written record of the power's use to be made public, but does not say the reasons must be in it. Will you commit to publishing them, in full, on the day they are given to council?
To: mayoralThe Mayor proposed the 2024 budget under the strong-mayor power (MDE-0008-2023); the 2025 and 2026 budgets were prepared as staff-recommended budgets with the power declined, and the 2027 budget has been directed the same way. Will you commit to declining it for every budget in your term?
To: allSince May 7, 2026, Bill 100 has provided that Peel's regional chair shall be appointed, by the Minister by order or else by the regional council, and from November 15, 2026 a provincial regulation gives that chair strong-mayor powers, including a veto over by-laws the chair considers could interfere with a provincial priority. What is your position on an unelected chair holding those powers, and what will you do about it from a Mississauga council seat?
Candidates on record
The full story
Ontario’s strong-mayor powers came to Mississauga in 2023. They give the Mayor authority no other member of council has: to propose the budget, to appoint and dismiss the City Manager and senior staff, to set the City’s organisational structure, to create and dissolve committees, and to direct staff in writing.
The previous council opposed these powers, 12–0
On August 10, 2022, before the powers reached Mississauga, Council passed a resolution opposing them. It was moved by Councillor Carolyn Parrish — now the Mayor who holds them — seconded by Councillor George Carlson, and carried 12–0, with Mayor Bonnie Crombie voting in favour.
The reasoning was recorded in the resolution itself. Allowing a mayor to impose directives on the budget or other significant matters, rather than spend the time to win over a majority of colleagues, “is not in keeping with the directly democratic functioning of a city council”. It called housing a weak rationale for the change, noting that planning appeals already run to a provincially controlled tribunal. It argued the reform municipalities actually need is the ability to raise money other than through property taxes. And it warned the model could draw partisan politics into local government.
It also said that if the powers were extended beyond Toronto and Ottawa, regional government would have to be reconsidered from a leadership perspective.
On May 7, 2026, Bill 100 changed how the heads of eight regional councils, Peel’s among them, are chosen (below).
Every current member of Council who was there voted for that resolution — Parrish, Damerla, Dasko, Fonseca, Kovac, Mahoney and McFadden, along with Crombie and four members who have since left. Three of them — Parrish, Dasko and Damerla — also told CBC News in May 2024, as candidates in the mayoral by-election, whether they would use the powers.
That is the honest baseline for this page. The powers arrived over the unanimous objection of the council before it, and what follows is what has been done with them since.
The four-plex directive, precisely
On October 11, 2023, a notice of motion to allow four residential units as-of-right — moved by Councillor Alvin Tedjo, seconded by Councillor Carolyn Parrish, and revised on the day to read that Council “supports in principle, four unit residences where lot sizes and set backs can accommodate”, with final approval subject to the Housing Panel and a full public meeting — was lost on a 5–5 tie, as The Pointer reported; the minutes record the debate but no vote on that motion. The Pointer’s roll call: for, Tedjo, Parrish, Martin Reid, Joe Horneck, Chris Fonseca; against, Brad Butt, Stephen Dasko, Dipika Damerla, John Kovac, Matt Mahoney; Councillor Sue McFadden absent. The minutes record no vote on that motion; as the item opened they record that “Acting Mayor Councillor Fonseca left at 1:54PM and Councillor Kovac took over as Acting Mayor”, and they do not record her return. What they do record under the item is Resolution 0223-2023, moved by Councillor Damerla and seconded by Councillor Dasko, requesting staff “to report back on the feasibility of four-plexes in Mississauga in consultation with the Housing Panel and subject to a full public meeting”, recorded as carried 9–0. Mayor Bonnie Crombie was on leave campaigning for the Ontario Liberal leadership and did not vote.
On October 3, the federal Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities had asked the City for four things, the first being four units as-of-right city-wide. Council endorsed a revised funding application on October 11 without adopting that change. On October 19 the Minister replied to Acting Mayor Fonseca that “in the absence of a definitive path forward on ending exclusionary zoning, I am not in a position to approve Mississauga’s application.” He named neither four units nor a figure; the directive of the next day supplied both, and put the fund at an estimated $120 million. The full mechanism is on the housing-rule page.
On October 20, Crombie issued Mayoral Directive MDI-0002-2023.
Here the document differs from how it was reported, and from the headline on the City’s own news release, “Mississauga moves to permit fourplexes city-wide”; the release’s body lists the preparatory steps. The directive did not permit four-plexes. It directed Planning and Building staff to prepare an official plan amendment and a zoning by-law amendment for the Mayor’s review, and directed the City Clerk to schedule, should it be required, a statutory public meeting before the end of 2023. It then recorded her intention to “move a motion using my Strong Mayor Powers under s.284.11.1” when she returned to Council.
She used the power to put the question back to Council on different terms. She did not decide it alone.
What happened next, in full
Staff produced a recommendation report on November 10, 2023 — titled, plainly, Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendments to Permit Four Units on Low-Rise Residential Lots. The Planning and Development Committee meeting of November 29 served as the statutory public meeting under the Planning Act. Seven oral submissions were received.
On December 6, 2023, at a Special Council meeting, Mayor Crombie moved the motion she had said she would. Councillor Alvin Tedjo — who had moved the failed October motion — seconded it. It was made expressly “pursuant to the authority granted by section 284.11.1” of the Municipal Act.
What that section actually does, now that we have read it
This page could not characterise s.284.11.1 until August 2026, because Ontario’s e-Laws site returns nothing to an automated reader and CanLII refuses us. The operator supplied the consolidated Municipal Act directly. The section does three things:
- It reaches planning by-laws. Subsection (1) applies the section to by-laws under the Municipal Act and — the part that matters here — “the Planning Act and its regulations, other than under any prescribed section.” An official plan amendment and a zoning by-law are Planning Act instruments, which is why this power could touch what may be built on a residential street at all.
- It lets a head of council propose one. Where, in their opinion, a by-law could potentially advance a priority the province has prescribed, they may put it to council and require council to consider and vote on it. The priority relied on here was Ontario’s target of 1.5 million new homes by the end of 2031. No ordinary member of council has this route.
- It lowers the bar to pass it. Subsection (4) is headed “More than one-third vote required”: a by-law proposed this way “is passed if more than one third of the members of council vote in favour.”
Mississauga’s council is twelve — the Mayor and eleven councillors. More than a third of twelve is five. So this by-law could have been enacted with five votes in favour and seven members opposed.
There is also a disclosure duty. Subsection (3) requires the head of council to give the clerk and every member of council both a copy of the proposed by-law and “the head of council’s reasons for the proposal.” Reasons are already mandatory. The Act itself does not require them to be published. Its regulation, O. Reg. 530/22, requires the written record of these powers’ use to be made available to the public, subject to privacy law — except a direction to staff under s. 284.3, which goes to the clerk and chief administrative officer — but does not say whether the head of council’s reasons must be part of that record.
It carried 8–2.
For: Mayor Crombie, and Councillors Tedjo, Fonseca, Parrish, Horneck, Damerla, Reid and McFadden. Against: Councillors Mahoney and Butt. Abstaining: Councillors Dasko and Kovac.
Council enacted Official Plan Amendment 166 (By-law 0195-2023) and the companion zoning amendment (By-law 0196-2023) the same day.
What the two votes, read together, actually show
Set December against October and the picture is not one of a mayor overriding a council.
Five members voted against four-plexes on October 11. By December 6, one of them — Councillor Damerla — voted in favour. Two more — Dasko and Kovac — moved to abstention. Only Mahoney and Butt held their position, and they are the two who can say they voted the same way both times. Councillor McFadden, absent in October, voted in favour. And Crombie, on leave in October, moved it.
So the mayor used a special power to reopen a question, staff worked it up, residents were heard at a statutory meeting, and council then passed it eight to two.
The lowered threshold did no work here. It permitted passage on five votes; the motion drew eight. Had s.284.11.1 never existed, eight votes in a council of twelve would still have been a majority. That is worth stating plainly, because the reverse claim is the one this episode most invites — and the arithmetic refuses it.
What the section did supply was the route, not the result. Only a head of council can put a by-law to council this way, and Crombie used that to reopen a question that had died on a tie. Reopening it was the exercise of power. Passing it was not.
That is the honest shape of this episode. Something real was used: a directive, a special statutory authority, and a compressed timetable the directive tied to the need to secure federal funding. And the outcome was a Council decision with a clear majority, reached on December 6, 2023, eight weeks after the October 11 tie.
The part that should still trouble a reader has nothing to do with what happened here. The mechanism remains on the books exactly as written. A future head of council may propose a by-law they consider capable of advancing a prescribed provincial priority, and five of twelve members can enact it over the objection of the other seven. Its stated limits are in the regulation, O. Reg. 530/22: the power does not reach procedure, budget or vacancy-filling by-laws, and once it can be determined that an election will seat a new head of council or fewer than three-quarters of the outgoing members, it cannot be used to authorize spending or a property disposal over $50,000 that was not in the budget adopted before nomination day. That it was not needed in December 2023 is a fact about that vote, not a limit on the power.
A note on the numbering, because we tripped on it. The December 6 resolution refers to the October directive as “Directive EDI 0002-2023”. The signed instrument itself is headed “MAYORAL DIRECTIVE MDI-0002-2023”, and that is how the City’s own register lists it. We cite the signed document.
What has been used without a council vote
Not a zoning decision, and — apart from the 2024 budget, covered below — not the budget. Otherwise, in this term the powers exercised unilaterally are the organisational ones.
The City Manager, and what the register does and does not record
The largest single use came first, and this page omitted it until August 2026.
Mayor Parrish was sworn in on June 24, 2024. On June 25 she signed MDE-0006-2024, appointing Geoff Wright as Interim City Manager and Chief Administrative Officer “from June 25, 2024 until December 31, 2024”, under s. 284.6 of the Municipal Act. It took effect June 26. A permanent City Manager and CAO was appointed on August 22, 2024 (MDE-0016-2024).
The City Manager it replaced was Shari Lichterman. She told CBC News that Parrish asked to meet her on June 25 and told her at that meeting that her job was being terminated immediately and without cause. A City news release the following day thanked her for her contributions and did not say why she was being replaced. Parrish did not respond to CBC’s request to discuss the decision.
Here the register and the reporting describe different things, and the difference is worth following. The City’s published decisions contain no instrument dismissing anybody. What they contain is an appointment, dated the same day the outgoing City Manager says she was told, and running from that day.
The Municipal Act narrows what that silence can mean. Section 284.4(1) reads: “If the head of council exercises a power or performs a duty under this Part, the head of council shall do so in writing and in accordance with the regulations, if any.” Section 284.5 assigns the municipality’s powers over the chief administrative officer to the head of council, and section 284.15 says in terms that a head of council may dismiss a CAO. So if the dismissal was an exercise of these powers, a written instrument was required to exist.
Whether it had to be published is a different question, and the City’s register page says the Mayor “is required to exercise these powers of decisions, directives and declarations in writing”; the duty to publish is in O. Reg. 530/22 s. 3(b): “subject to the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, make the written record available to the public.”
That qualifier is the explanation, and it points away from anything untoward. A record dismissing a named employee is the clearest case there is for withholding under a privacy statute. Our reading — and we mark it as a reading, because we have not seen the instrument or any decision about it — is that a written dismissal exists, was required to exist, and was lawfully kept out of the public register.
So the gap between the headline and the register is not a finding about this Mayor. It is what the law produces: the personnel decision stays private, the appointment that follows from it is published, and a reader looking only at the register sees an arrival with no departure. We record it because a site about what these powers have been used for should say when the record is designed to be incomplete — not because the silence is suspicious. It isn’t.
We record it here because a page called what the powers have been used for that leaves out the replacement of the City’s most senior public servant is not describing the record. And we record the gap between headline and instrument because a reader looking only at the register would not see it — see corrections.
Committees and delegations
On June 26, 2024, two days after being sworn in, Mayor Parrish replaced the Budget Committee Council had established with a new one that advises the Mayor (MDE-0005-2024 — set out in full under Who controls the budget process). The day before, effective June 25, she rescinded her predecessor’s delegation of the powers to set the City’s organisational structure and to hire and dismiss senior officials (MDE-0003-2024).
On July 8, 2024 she handed most of the staffing power to the City Manager: authority to hire and dismiss any City employee, except Commissioners and the City Solicitor — wider than the 2023 delegation, which covered division heads — with the Mayor expressly retaining the power to appoint and dismiss the City Manager (MDE-0009-2024). In December 2024 she returned the organisational-structure power as well (MDE-0030-2024).
She then used what she had kept: a City Solicitor appointed in August 2024, a Commissioner of Transportation and Works in December 2024 (MDE-0029-2024), and three Commissioners — Corporate Services, Community Services, and Legislative Services — appointed on a single day in April 2025.
The precise finding is that the top layer was retained and the rest returned. “She seized hiring power” would be wrong. So would “she gave it back.”
The budget power has been used once
This is the part that gets least attention and may matter most.
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.
That is worth holding alongside the rest of this page. A power can be real, available, and declined one budget at a time — and a choice renewed each year is still a choice, not a rule. It lasts exactly as long as the next mayor chooses to continue it, which is why it is a fair thing to ask a candidate to commit to.
The question is getting larger
This is no longer a bill. It is law, and it has been since May.
Bill 100, the Better Regional Governance Act, 2026, received Royal Assent on May 7, 2026 — Statutes of Ontario 2026, chapter 3. First Reading was April 2. Second Reading carried on division April 23; Third Reading carried on division May 7, the same day as Royal Assent.
Debate was ended by closure motions at both Second and Third Reading. Of the 31 government bills that had received Royal Assent in this Parliament by September 13, 2026, 27 had debate limited at least once by closure or by time allocation, a motion that fixes how much time the remaining stages get. Four had closure at both readings, all of them given Royal Assent between May 7 and June 2, 2026, and Bill 100 was one of them.
The strong-mayor powers — to veto certain by-laws, propose the budget, and appoint or fire the chief administrative officer and division heads — reach the chairs of eight upper-tier municipalities by a separate route: a provincial regulation, O. Reg. 189/26, adds them to the list of municipalities those powers apply to on November 15, 2026. Bill 100 itself does something the coverage of it says less about. Section 218.1 of the Municipal Act — repealed and re-enacted by the Act — provides that the head of council of those eight shall be appointed: by the Minister by order, or, failing that, by the members of council. Subsection (2) names them — Durham, Halton, Muskoka, Niagara, Peel, Simcoe, Waterloo and York.
Mississauga’s councillors sit on Peel Regional Council. From this election onward, the office that chairs it is not on any ballot, and from November 15, 2026 it holds strong-mayor powers, including a veto over regional by-laws it considers could interfere with a provincial priority.
Schedule 2 of the Act reached into this election directly. It amends the Municipal Elections Act, 1996 to repeal sections 10.1 and 10.2 and enact a new section 10.1: anyone who had filed a nomination for head of council of one of those eight municipalities, or for any office on Niagara Regional Council, is deemed to have withdrawn that nomination as of the day the Act received Royal Assent. Anyone who had put their name forward for one of those offices was removed from the ballot by statute.
To be precise about who that touched, because the wording invites a wrong reading: not Mississauga. Section 218.1(2) lists upper-tier municipalities only. Mississauga is a lower-tier municipality within Peel, and no Mississauga nomination — mayoral or ward — was affected by that clause. Its reach was limited to nominations for the heads of those eight upper-tier councils and for offices on Niagara Regional Council.
The appointment machinery is already in force. Schedule 1 comes into force on Royal Assent except for six named provisions, and section 218.1 is enacted by section 3, which is not among them — so the rule that Peel’s chair shall be appointed has been law since May 7, 2026. What waits until November 15, 2026 — 20 days after the October 26 election — are sections 5, 6(2), 7, 8(2), 9 and 10: the repeal of the provisions that applied only to the term beginning in 2022 — among them the power under which the Minister could appoint the heads of Niagara, Peel and York for that term — and the consequential amendments that follow from it — and two amendments tied to the new appointment rule: one to s. 259(1) making removal by the Minister under s. 218.1 a ground on which the seat becomes vacant, and one to s. 284.12(1) exempting these eight municipalities from the by-election rule for a vacant head-of-council seat.
This is deliberately not a question about whether four-plexes or a 23-day budget window were good ideas. It is a question about the mechanism: when one office can act alone, what are the stated limits, and who gets to see the reasons? A candidate can be entirely in favour of an outcome and still commit to how the decision gets made.
Corrected 2026-08-07, on the first per-issue development scan this site has run. This page said “On April 7, 2026 the province tabled legislation” — and left it there. Two things were wrong. The date: tabling is First Reading, which was April 2. And the tense: the bill had received Royal Assent on May 7, 2026 and had been law for three months while this page described it as pending. Read from Bill 100 on the Legislative Assembly’s own site, fetched raw and pattern-matched rather than summarised. The same stale sentence stood in the fact-check ledger and was corrected in the same pass — a claim lives in more than one file, and fixing one copy only changes which one is wrong. Two things the full text carried that no summary of it did: the Act appoints the heads of eight upper-tier councils rather than merely empowering them, and its Schedule 2 deemed existing nominations for those offices withdrawn. That second clause reads, on an election site, as though it touched Mississauga’s ballot. It did not, and the page now says so explicitly — section 218.1(2) lists upper-tier municipalities, and Mississauga is not one.
Updated 2026-08-01. Section 284.11.1 was an open question on this page since July 30 — Ontario’s e-Laws site returns nothing to an automated reader and CanLII refuses us, so the site described what the instrument said and declined to characterise the mechanism. It is now read from the consolidated Municipal Act itself (e-Laws currency date July 29, 2026), supplied by the operator. Every subsection still carries a single source note — 2022, c. 24, Sched. 3, s. 8 — so the text has not changed since it was enacted. A by-law proposed under it passes on more than one third of council: five of Mississauga’s twelve. The December 2023 vote drew eight, so the lowered threshold changed nothing about that outcome, and this page says so rather than leaving the reader to infer it. Two details came out of the full text that no summary of it carried: the section reaches Planning Act by-laws, which is why it could touch zoning at all; and subsection (3) already obliges the mayor to give council their reasons, which changed the question we ask candidates from whether they would state reasons to whether they would publish them. A note for the record: the province’s own Municipal Councillors’ Guide states this threshold without citing a section, and lists s.284.11 — a different, pre-existing section — among the sections to consult. The resolution’s citation, s.284.11.1, is the right one.
Rewritten 2026-07-30 after reading the primary documents. This page previously said Crombie’s directive permitted four-plexes city-wide, “overriding” a council majority. The directive does neither: it directs staff to prepare amendments and states an intention to move a motion at Council, and the vote it followed was a tie, not a majority. The page also implied the budget power was in regular use. It has been used once, for the 2024 budget (MDE-0008-2023), and declined for every budget since. Both errors came from relying on reporting and on the City’s own summaries rather than the signed instruments — see corrections.
Fact-check
COUNCIL OPPOSED THESE POWERS BEFORE RECEIVING THEM. On August 10, 2022, Resolution 0179-2022, MOVED BY Councillor Carolyn Parrish (then Ward 5) and SECONDED BY Councillor George Carlson, resolved that Council "outlines its opposition to the strong mayor legislative change" and forward its concerns to the Province, local MPPs and municipal associations. Carried 12-0, with Mayor Bonnie Crombie voting in favour. The recitals argue that letting mayors impose directives on budget or other significant matters rather than enlist a majority of colleagues "is not in keeping with the directly democratic functioning of a city council"; that housing is at best a weak rationale since planning appeals run to the provincially controlled Ontario Land Tribunal; that the reform municipalities actually need is independent revenue tools rather than regressive property taxes; that the model could attract partisan politics into local government; and that extending it beyond Toronto and Ottawa "will require a review of regional government from an ultimate leadership perspective". Current members recorded in that 12-0 vote: Parrish, Damerla, Dasko, Fonseca, Kovac, Mahoney, McFadden (plus Crombie, and Mullin, Starr, Saito, Carlson who have since left council). Ontario's strong-mayor powers came to Mississauga in 2023. CORRECTED ACCOUNT OF THE FOUR-PLEX DIRECTIVE, from the signed instrument: on Oct 11, 2023 a motion to permit four residential units as-of-right city-wide, MOVED BY Councillor Alvin Tedjo and SECONDED BY Councillor Carolyn Parrish, was lost on a 5-5 tie (for: Tedjo, Parrish, Reid, Horneck, Fonseca; against: Butt, Dasko, Damerla, Kovac, Mahoney; McFadden absent; Mayor Crombie on leave campaigning for the Ontario Liberal leadership and not voting; roll call per The Pointer — the minutes record no vote on that motion, record Acting Mayor Fonseca leaving at 1:54PM as the item opened, and record Resolution 0223-2023, moved by Damerla and seconded by Dasko, requesting staff to report back on the feasibility of four-plexes in consultation with the Housing Panel and subject to a full public meeting, recorded as carried 9-0). On Oct 19, 2023 the federal Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities wrote that "in the absence of a definitive path forward on ending exclusionary zoning, I am not in a position to approve Mississauga's application" to the Housing Accelerator Fund. The 'firm commitment … four units as-of-right' wording is the recital of MDI-0002-2023, not the letter's. On Oct 20, 2023 Crombie issued Mayoral Directive MDI-0002-2023 under ss. 284.3 and 284.11.1. The directive DID NOT PERMIT four-plexes. It directs Planning & Building staff to prepare an official plan amendment and zoning by-law amendment for the Mayor's review; directs the City Clerk to schedule, should it be required, a statutory public meeting before the end of 2023; and records her intention to "move a motion using my Strong Mayor Powers under s.284.11.1" on her return to Council. She put the question back to Council on different terms rather than deciding it alone. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT — RESOLVED 2026-07-30 from the Special Council minutes of December 6 2023. Staff reported November 10 2023 ("Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendments to Permit Four Units on Low-Rise Residential Lots"); the Planning and Development Committee of November 29 2023 served as the statutory public meeting under the Planning Act, receiving seven oral submissions (PDC Report 18-2023, PDC-0079-2023, received by Council on Resolution 0261-2023 moved by Butt and seconded by Parrish, 12-0). On December 6 2023 a SPECIAL COUNCIL adopted Resolution 0264-2023, MOVED BY MAYOR CROMBIE and SECONDED BY COUNCILLOR TEDJO, expressly pursuant to s.284.11.1 of the Municipal Act 2001, enacting Official Plan Amendment No. 166 (By-law 0195-2023) and the companion zoning amendment (By-law 0196-2023). CARRIED 8 TO 2 — YES: Crombie, Tedjo, Fonseca, Parrish, Horneck, Damerla, Reid, McFadden; NO: Mahoney, Butt; ABSTAIN: Dasko, Kovac. SO SHE DID MOVE IT, AND IT PASSED BY A MARGIN THAT NEEDED NO SPECIAL THRESHOLD — eight of twelve with two opposed. That sentence was written 2026-07-30 as an INFERENCE from the size of the margin, while this same entry recorded the threshold as unknown — an internal contradiction, since a margin cannot be known to clear an unknown bar. It is now GROUNDED: the bar was five, the motion drew eight. ON s.284.11.1, as the resolution itself describes it: it permits a head of council to propose a by-law where in their opinion it could potentially advance a PRESCRIBED PROVINCIAL PRIORITY. The priority relied on was Ontario prescribing 1.5 million new residential units by December 31 2031. THRESHOLD RESOLVED 2026-08-01, open since 2026-07-30: a by-law proposed under s.284.11.1 is passed if MORE THAN ONE THIRD of the members of council vote in favour. Mississauga council is twelve members, so the bar is FIVE. Resolution 0264-2023 drew EIGHT, so the lowered threshold did not decide that outcome; what the section supplied was the ROUTE back to a vote, available to a head of council and to no other member. Source: Bill 39, Better Municipal Governance Act 2022, section 8, adding s.284.11.1 to the Municipal Act under the heading Powers re by-laws, with subsection (4) carrying the marginal note More than one-third vote required. SECTION-NUMBER DISCREPANCY RESOLVED IN THE SITE FAVOUR: Ontario Municipal Councillors Guide states the threshold without a section number and lists s.284.11 among the sections to consult. Bill 39 shows s.284.11 is a pre-existing section that the bill amends only in its French version (pourrait to pourrait potentiellement), while the threshold is added at the NEW s.284.11.1. The resolution cites 284.11.1 and the resolution is correct. METHOD NOTE: the bill text was retrieved as RAW HTML and pattern-matched, not summarised by a model. That choice was deliberate - three model-summarised fetches of the mayoral-decisions index the same day produced three different wrong counts. COMPARISON OF THE TWO VOTES: of the five who voted against on Oct 11 2023, DAMERLA switched to YES, DASKO and KOVAC moved to ABSTAIN, and only MAHONEY and BUTT held their position. McFadden, absent in October, voted yes. SEPARATELY, and on Jan 28, 2026 council shortened its budget-amendment window from 30 days to 23 (see budget-window-reversal for the corrected mover, seconder and vote). BILL 100 IS LAW, CORRECTED 2026-08-07. This entry previously read "On Apr 7, 2026 the province tabled legislation" and stopped there; both the date and the tense were wrong, and the same stale sentence stood on the Core Issue page. Bill 100, the Better Regional Governance Act, 2026, received ROYAL ASSENT ON MAY 7, 2026 — Statutes of Ontario 2026, chapter 3. First Reading Apr 2 2026 (not Apr 7); Second Reading carried on division Apr 23; Third Reading carried on division May 7, the day of Royal Assent. Read from the Legislative Assembly's bill page as RAW HTML and pattern-matched, not model-summarised. Debate was ended by closure at both readings: closure carried on division Apr 23 at Second Reading and May 7 at Third Reading. For scale, counted from the stage table of each of the 36 government bills of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session, as read on 2026-09-13: of the 31 with Royal Assent, 27 had debate limited at least once by closure or time allocation, 23 were time-allocated, 8 had closure at least once, and 4 had closure at both Second and Third Reading — Bills 98, 100, 101 and 110, given Royal Assent between May 7 and June 2, 2026. The 4 with neither were Bill 9, the two Supply Acts (18, 95) and Bill 34. Bill 100 does not itself confer strong-mayor powers; separately, O. Reg. 189/26 designates the same eight upper-tier municipalities for Part VI.1 from November 15, 2026 (veto over certain by-laws, propose the budget, appoint or dismiss the CAO and division heads). Bill 100, in new Municipal Act s.218.1, provides that the head of council of eight upper-tier municipalities SHALL BE APPOINTED, by the Minister by order or else by the members of council. s.218.1(2) names them: Durham, Halton, Muskoka, Niagara, PEEL, Simcoe, Waterloo, York. Mississauga councillors sit on Peel Regional Council, so from this election the office chairing it is on no ballot, and from November 15, 2026 O. Reg. 189/26 designates Peel for Part VI.1, giving that office strong-mayor powers including a veto over by-laws it considers could interfere with a prescribed provincial priority. SCHEDULE 2 amends the Municipal Elections Act 1996, repealing ss.10.1 and 10.2 and enacting a new s.10.1: a person who had filed a nomination for head of council of one of those eight, or for any office on Niagara Regional Council, is DEEMED TO HAVE WITHDRAWN that nomination as of the day of Royal Assent. PRECISION REQUIRED HERE, BECAUSE THE WORDING INVITES A FALSE AND DAMAGING READING: s.218.1(2) lists UPPER-TIER municipalities only. Mississauga is a LOWER-TIER municipality within Peel. NO MISSISSAUGA NOMINATION, MAYORAL OR WARD, WAS AFFECTED by that clause; its reach was limited to nominations for the heads of those eight upper-tier municipalities and for offices on Niagara Regional Council. Sections 5, 6(2), 7, 8(2), 9 and 10 come into force NOVEMBER 15 2026 — 20 days after the October 26 election. USE OF THE POWER IN THIS TERM, from the Mayor's signed decisions: on June 25 2024, the day after being sworn in, Mayor Parrish rescinded her predecessor's delegation to the City Manager of the powers to determine the City's organisational structure and to hire and dismiss certain City officials (MDE-0003-2024, rescinding MDE-0001-2023). On July 8 2024 she delegated to the City Manager the authority to hire and dismiss any City employee (wider than MDE-0001-2023, which had delegated the hiring and dismissal of division heads) EXCEPT Commissioners and the City Solicitor and Director of Legal Services, expressly retaining the power under s.284.5 to appoint and dismiss the City Manager (MDE-0009-2024). In December 2024 she delegated the organisational-structure power back as well (MDE-0030-2024, dated December 10 2024, under s.284.13). She subsequently appointed a City Solicitor (August 2024), a Commissioner of Transportation and Works (MDE-0029-2024, December 12 2024) and three Commissioners — Corporate Services, Community Services, and Legislative Services — on April 24 2025. The net position is that the senior appointments were retained by the Mayor and the remainder returned to the City Manager. THE BUDGET POWER. The power to propose the budget has been used once: Mayor Crombie exercised it for the 2024 budget (MDE-0008-2023, October 30 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), a power O. Reg. 530/22 s.7(1.1) now places in 2027. For the 2024, 2025 and 2026 budgets staff prepared the budget at the Mayor's written direction, each Mayoral Direction instructing staff to prepare it "following practices and processes that generally conform with" earlier years (MDI-0001-2023 to MDI-0001-2026; from 2024 the directions call it a staff-recommended budget), 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 (MDE-0011-2023, MDE-0028-2024).