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KENORA — The majority of councillors in Kenora voted to oppose the province’s imposition of strong mayor powers on the municipality, but they ultimately remain in effect.
At its June 17 committee of the whole meeting, councillors debated a motion that, in part, formally opposes “the imposition of strong mayor powers and requests immediate removal from the list of designated municipalities.” It was ratified at council’s June 24 meeting. The report from city staff, however, also stated that the motion was for “advocacy only.”
Strong mayor powers allow the mayor of a municipality to unilaterally hire or fire the CAO and other senior staff, propose the municipal budget, veto certain bylaws if the mayor feels they go against “provincial priorities,” and give other authority.
The Ford government started giving mayors these powers in 2023, starting with the province’s largest cities; Thunder Bay was the first municipality in the Northwest to get them on October 31 of that year — also over the wishes of council. That list was expanded by an additional 169 municipalities on May 1, 2025, which included Kenora. Whereas municipalities in earlier rounds had to request those powers (they were tied to promised housing funding), the communities that received them in May did not.
Kenora’s corporate services director and city clerk Heather Pihulak confirmed the motion’s passing doesn’t change the day-to-day operations of how council works.
At ratification, Kenora council voted 5-2 to oppose the imposition of those powers. One of the two votes against the motion was from mayor Andrew Poirier. He said he understands the concerns that have been raised about strong mayor powers — such as if a mayor were to be elected and then subsequently abuses those powers — but said he feels they can potentially do some good in the right hands.
“I'm not going to vote against something that I'm somewhat in agreement with at this point in time,” he told Newswatch in an interview. “We may need it to use (them) to move something ahead … the whole planning piece, the housing, the infrastructure and we need to step up our game in the city and build houses where we're short hundreds of units.”
Poirier has delegated strong mayor powers around the employment of the city’s CAO back to his council colleagues. He said he doesn’t intend to use the new powers heavy-handedly and maintains that there’s a “trust level on council that I'm not going to abuse it, because I've said time and time again in public that I won't.”
“That's not my intention to use those powers that way, but I've always said if I needed to use them to advance provincial priorities, then I would look to do that.”
During the committee of the whole debate, Coun. Kelsie Van Belleghem — one of the councillors who supported the motion to reject strong mayor powers — said her opposition to them to had nothing to do with Poirier specifically, rather what could happen down the road, and how those powers were introduced part-way through council’s term and without consultation.
“I just do not support strong mayor powers because they're not about the individual, it's about the chair and you are not going to be in the chair forever,” she said, referring to Poirier.
“In making it democratic, it should have been done as part of the voting process so people knew what they were signing up for when they were voting, rather than in the middle of a term once you're sort of already in the seat.”
“Now it's completely concentrated the power in that chair for a lot of pretty important decisions.”
The motion Kenora council debated and voted on was part of province-wide advocacy being led by Paula Banks, a municipal councillor for the Township of Rideau Lakes in southeastern Ontario. Like many municipal councillors across Ontario, she said giving the mayor too much power is undemocratic, especially when they can override top city staff who are paid for their expertise.
“We need qualified staff, we don’t need a mayor that thinks he's king,” she told Newswatch. “I'm not talking about Rideau Lakes (currently) ... it's not my mayor, it's four mayors from now, because once you have that power and you get used to that power, you don't want to give it up.”
“It's my grandkids I'm worried about.”
Banks is keeping a list of how each of Ontario’s municipalities are reacting to strong mayor powers and said she knows of over 120 that have opposed them since May 1.
Banks said she will continue to speak with municipalities about this. She added that it’s an issue she also intends to discuss at the upcoming Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa in August.
“People have to think the next mayor and the next mayor — that's the part that bothers me,” Banks said. “People look at their mayor now and they say ‘well, you know, that person's not that bad,’ but you don't know who's going to get elected next.”
“You don't know what the person's going to be like.”
