Interestingly enough, we went to a place where I wanted to ask the question—when power gets expanded in one area, it always comes at the expense of something else. In this case, it comes at the expense of councillors. People go to the polls to vote for mayors, generally, for a vision overall, but, ultimately, for councillors to make local decisions.

Can you expand again a little bit, briefly, on why it’s important that councillors have a say, are respected and have power to be able to make decisions?

I want to congratulate the member on her re-election and for her submission and speech today.

She said, for instance, the mayor of Toronto has 500,000 votes. But councillors receive cumulatively, across the city, the same number of votes, essentially, as the mayor does. People vote for councillors and expect them to have the paramountcy on local issues, the understanding of local issues. When you’re in a city of millions, you don’t expect a response from a mayor when something goes wrong.

So what is it about this government? Why do they want to weaken local councillors in their ability to make decisions when the mayors of municipalities already have overwhelming powers to be able to get their agendas across?