In the election, 58% voter turnout was recorded—so 5.8 million votes cast. 2.3 million votes represents 40% of those voters, actually a little less. So essentially with this overwhelmingly strong majority, they get to ignore the courts for five years and do whatever they want.
The courts are not elected and so they should not set the course of the government. That is the arguement. Because they are not elected they have no say in what the government does. Except they do. What are the three pillars to Democracy? Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.
The Executive, composed of the leader and the cabinet, set direction. They determine the majority of the laws and the way they people will be governed over the mandate of the term of office.
The Legislative, composed of all the elected members of government and the Senant, if there is one. They are the people that brainstorm the bills and laws in committees to make sure that the laws cover what they are supposed to cover. Then they are debated. The opposition offers constructive suggestions on whether the bill is good or bad. They offer amendments that modify bills to make them more inclusive. Then the bill is voted on and may become law off there is enough supporting votes.
The Judicial, or the courts, determines if the law infringes on the individual or group rights of the people. The guiding document is the Canadian Bill of Rights in Canada and the Constitution in the States. If the law is found unconstitutional, the law is invalidated, and the government can re-table the law, make changes and pass it again.
That is what the courts do; that is why they are important part of our Democracy. When the government has enough votes to pass a bill into law without opposition support it has to be careful or it will pass unconstitutional laws.
The Notwithstanding Clause was put into the Canadian Bill of Rights to get it passed, because some people were worried that laws might be passed that conflicted with regional cultural differences and still be constitutional. It was never really ment to be used and has only been used rarely or by Quebec in the first years of its inception as a protest against the federal government. The clause allows the government to pass laws that are unconstitutional and have them work for five years.
What this means for this government in Ontario, a government that has the support of only 40% of people who cast a ballot, 23% of elegable voters, or 16% of Ontarians, less than one in six, but has an absolute majority. They could pass laws that infringe on people's rights and freedoms for five years. They could make police enforce those laws too.
The law that they made was to reduce the size of a cities council from 47 to 25. They are allowed to do that. That was not what was disputed. The law went into effect the last day that people could declare that they wanted to run for local government. The law extended the time they had to declare, but that was not the point, they created too much turmoil and disrupted the election campaign by re-aligning the ward boundaries too close to the start of the election. The law was taken to court and the law was declared unconstitutional and made defunct. The law was many things, petty, the premier was a former councilor for one term, rarely showed up to vote and was a failed in a run for mayor, but it was also exactly what the courts had declared it as unconstitutional due to timing. If they reworked the law and stated that it came into effect the next election, there would have been no problem, but after people had declared the intent to run…
So there is more background. There was a report over twenty years ago that stated that for simplicity the Greater Toronto Area should amalgamate and fold twelve or more seperate municipalities into one government structure because they were all similar and had the same concerns and this would reduce the government and the disparities of taxation in e seperate communities. Build a super city in place of smaller cities. The Conservative Leader at the time thought this was a horrible idea, because it would alienate all of his key support in the province, so he implemented only half the plan, the people who did not vote for him. The five boroughs of Toronto were amalgamated. Each five borough had a working city council and some of the boroughs were larger than the others, geographically and demographically. They all had seperate concerns. One was heavily urbanized and the others were suburbanized. Each election since that first election they have been reducing the number of wards piecemeal. The trouble was that some of the boroughs had a small population and a good ratio of representation, you can't reduce representation from ten to one over night, there would be riots as people would feel that they don't matter.
People point out that bigger cities have smaller councils, but those bigger cities have had in many cases centuries of growth not a sudden expansion to deal with. Usually the larger city is more homogenized too, but toronto has had a large number of communities in each Borough for decades and they were effectively different cities. For example Toronto, the old city started the Transit system and the Subway and it was later expanded into the other areas, when amalgamation occured, all the boroughs had a piece of the subway system, but some were underserved and demanded more service and greater expansion. When they first were forced to gather there were over a hundred Councilors now there are only 47. 25 they could do. But the timing.
The analogy is a class of Class of students being told that they are going to the next grade together, but just before classes start the new school tells the students that they will only accept half of the students and the rest will have to go to a different school. If the students were told last year or even before summer break, they would have time to find accommodation elsewhere, but it is the Friday before school start and it is a national holiday and everyone has to rush around looking for accommodation the next day.
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