It was the Goldilocks show at this week's committee hearings on regional governance reform.
For the most part, regional government representatives said the current model works just right and shouldn't be changed. At least one Niagara mayor agreed.
Some mayors were hot on the prospects for small and larger reforms. Officials from other municipalities said they could do without a big brother butting into their business.
From Wednesday to Friday, members of the heritage, infrastructure and cultural policy committee toured across parts of southern Ontario to hear local leaders' thoughts on how regional government could change to help build more homes.
The testimony didn't always adhere to a region's role in home building, verging into broader issues around tensions in the relationship between lower- and upper-tier government.
Former housing minister Steve Clark initially wanted to appoint "regional facilitators" to probe whether regions including Durham, Halton, Niagara, Simcoe, Waterloo and York were still working well or if they'd become too bloated and stand in the way of efficient governance and building homes.
After Clark resigned in the wake of the Greenbelt scandal, Paul Calandra took over and asked the legislative committee to take over and focus less on general governance reform and more on how to expedite home building in those regions.
Niagara — nuisance or necessary?
Niagara's hearings saw regional chair Jim Bradley express confidence in how two-tier government has served the nearly 500,000 residents. His comments focused almost exclusively on how small changes could help build more homes.
"Many long-term academic studies have demonstrated that the projected benefits of past amalgamations often failed to materialize, leading to the same outcomes if no changes had been made. On the other side of the coin, recent studies in Peel Region regarding dissolution showed the potential for massive tax increases, and instability, if dissolution is considered," Bradley's speaking notes said, which were provided to The Trillium.
"While there are many governance models being proposed, none of them are predicated on how they will build more homes," the notes said. Instead, Bradley suggested "a series of incremental changes (that) could strengthen our region, all while avoiding governance experiments that would be costly and distract from our ultimate goal."
Some of the changes include more funding for regional infrastructure, tools to help the region and municipalities force developers to build housing faster while also incentivizing development through tax breaks, and a provincial chief planner to help resolve conflicts between different levels of government.
At least one Niagara mayor agreed the region is working well.
"There is not one new home that will be constructed if there are any governance changes in Niagara," said Fort Erie's Wayne Redekopp.
The region's municipalities are meeting the 90-day development application approval timelines set out in 2022's More Homes for Everyone Act, Redekopp said. Most of the building delays are out of government control, he said.
"Amalgamations, reductions in the number of municipalities, elimination of regional government, that's not going to build a house, that will not get the builders to take on the risk. It does not change the interest rates, and it doesn't alter the cost of construction," he said.
A good incremental change would be to get the region out of planning, he said.
"If you want to avoid some duplication, don't have the region involved in planning that the local municipalities can do."
Other mayors, however, want to go bigger.
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati and St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe explicitly called for a "four cities" model that would see the region's 12 municipalities partially amalgamated into four. The idea came up in 2019 when the province last made noise about regional governance reform.
"The multiple levels of bureaucracy are not suited to address the massive challenges we face in the post-pandemic era. In addressing the housing crisis, regional governance results in decisions and resourcing spread across a large area of 12 different towns and cities with dramatically different and conflicting goals and realities," Siscoe said.
Diodati agreed.
"It's hard to make decisions with too many cooks in the kitchen. Now, there's an old saying that a camel is just a horse designed by a committee. And I suggest to you that we're experts at designing camels," he said.
"The best option to deal with these issues is a four-city model centred around the three urban centers of St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland, with the more rural western municipalities making up the fourth city," Siscoe said said.
"Currently, we're over-governed. Two levels are too expensive. Less is more. Four cities is the sweet spot," Diodati said.
Diodati also said he does "believe one day we will be one city ... but I think we're 50 years old or more here."
Lincoln Mayor Sandra Easton didn't explicitly say whether she supports the four-cities model but expressed interest in a form of amalgamation.
"We believe there could be a successful establishment of a new governance model for Niagara and even a new entity in West Niagara," her speaking notes said.
"In what form that is, we have not come to a conclusion, but we believe there are logical connections between us in the West. Top of mind is and always has been, better service delivery and timely decisions to ensure government is working efficiently on behalf of our taxpayers."
Welland's representatives were also a bit more circumspect.
Mayor Frank Campion and Chief Administrative Officer Rob Axiak want fewer than the 12 current municipalities, according to a copy of their written submission, "while avoiding complete amalgamation."
Should we Peel off a layoff of bureaucracy?
Peel's battle lines have been drawn for a while. Mississauga wants to stand alone, while Brampton sees value in the regional approach.
Despite the Tories pulling back on dissolution, Mississauga's representatives still see it as the ideal outcome. Short of that, they proposed some smaller reforms to have Peel better adhere to their interests.
Continue the transition board's revised mandate, city manager Shari Lichterman said.
"For the first time, we are developing verifiable datasets and workable solutions on service delivery and transfer to the local tiers. You have a provincially appointed group of independent experts who can provide good advice on this to the government," she said.
The work can also serve as a model for future discussions around dissolution.
It's a "great opportunity to see the output of that work and apply that potentially to other regions," she said.
She also expressed some frustration with the region holding up Mississauga's official plan approval that includes new policies on minimum density requirements near transit.
Brampton Councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor said he wants Peel Regional Council to allocate seats based on population because his city doesn't have a loud enough voice.
Sharing housing and social support services between the two other municipalities should also stay, he said.
"Because for a lot of people that come to Canada, they come through the doors of Toronto Pearson Airport. And because of that, we see a large influx of population in Mississauga and Brampton and we're one of the first cities to always welcome people from all parts of the world. So having those support services being shared amongst the two cities and the region at large has definitely been beneficial," he said.
Brampton's commissioner of planning, Steve Ganesh, outlined regional reforms his city wants.
Like Lichterman, he thinks the region needs to have a reduced role in planning. He also used the city's official plan as an example.
"Currently, because of the two-tier system, the new official plan is being held up by our upper-tier municipality," he said.
"Efficiencies can be found in the delivery and maintenance of our roads," Ganesh said.
"There are approximately 700 kilometres of regional roads in Brampton and dual ownership of the roadways between the city and the region results in duplication, administration and inconsistencies related to servicing and maintenance."
