Reversal of plan to split Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon soon to be official

The move to reverse course and keep Peel siblings Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon under the same municipal governance roof after all will soon be made official now that Ontario’s legislature is back in session.

Premier Doug Ford’s government announced in mid-December its intention to backtrack on its earlier move to dissolve the Region of Peel and have the three member municipalities go their separate ways.

Now, officially undoing the Hazel McCallion Act, which was passed last summer and would’ve seen the dissolution of Peel at the beginning of 2025, is only a matter of time.

Doing so is one of the many components of pending omnibus legislation, namely the province’s Get It Done Act, expected to be introduced shortly at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

A section of the Get It Done Act will officially amend the previous Peel dissolution law passed last June.

Moving forward, a provincially appointed Transition Board initially created to study how best to dissolve the Region of Peel will now instead look for ways to improve efficiencies in the region.

Part of that board’s reworked mandate is to transfer some key services currently provided by the region, such as garbage pickup and wastewater, to the City of Mississauga, City of Brampton and Town of Caledon.

Those services also include regional land use planning, water and regional roads, among others.

Other services currently delivered by the Region of Peel, like Peel Paramedics, Peel Housing Corporation and homelessness services, will likely remain where they are.

Former Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie, who these days is taking Ford and his government to task from her position as new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, back in December took aim from her previous political vantage point.

A few hours after the Ontario government announced on Dec. 13 it was reversing course on the Peel governance matter, Crombie accused it of caving to “scare tactics and fear mongering” from Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown.

Still, despite the announcement the province had decided to backtrack on plans to split up Peel, Mississauga’s former mayor expressed optimism at the time that dissolution would still happen at some point.

“This isn’t the end of our path to independence; it’s simply a bump in the road,” Crombie told media in December.

Crombie was convinced that Brown’s repeated and “unfounded” public assertions that a Peel breakup would cost taxpayers $1.3 billion over 10 years had much to do with the province backing out of the Peel dissolution deal.

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and former Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie disagreed from the outset on Peel dissolution.