‘Any chance of a call?’: Inside Ford government’s lurch to cancel Peel Region split

In early December 2023, as the Ford government considered backing away from dissolving Peel Region, the man tasked with managing the government’s decision suddenly found himself out of the loop.

The plan to split the Region of Peel into three separate cities was on the edge of being cancelled but John Livey, chair of the Peel Region Transition Board, wasn’t even being offered a meeting with the government to ask what was going on.

“Any chance of a call?” Livey asked Michael Klimentowski, chief of staff at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, in a text on the morning of Dec. 4.

He didn’t receive a reply.

The next afternoon he tried again. “Does anyone in the MO want to give us the courtesy of a call?” Livey asked. The text also went ignored.

It was four days after Livey’s first request that he finally got a reply, with Klimentowski promising to give him a call.

The text exchange is one of several communications obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws.

Together with emails, the text messages tell the behind-the-scenes story of how the Ford government initially failed to engage its own expert panel in its plans to reverse course on the Region of Peel. And then how it was forced to change course once again when it did.

Ultimately, during the first two weeks of December and after an intervention from Livey and the premier’s office, the government settled on a watered-down plan for the Region of Peel, downloading some powers to its three members: Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga.

The Ford government’s plan to dissolve the Region of Peel — which would have granted late Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion a lifelong dream — didn’t last for long.

In May 2023, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced the plan, saying he would dissolve the Region of Peel, directly to the west of Toronto, into three separate municipalities. He set an ambitious timeline, pledging the complicated work of untangling a 50-year-old municipality would be done by 2025.

To manage the move, his government struck a five-person transition board. The panel included Livey, another former Toronto civil servant, a former financial accountability officer of Ontario, a former York Region police chief and an infrastructure lawyer.

Through the summer and fall, the board set meetings and started to study how it could complete the complicated task. Even as its work got started, discussions about reversing the plan were underway.

As December dawned, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown — who had opposed the split from the beginning — began to complain publicly about the potential costs to taxpayers. The complaints escalated and rumours percolated at Queen’s Park that the government was having second thoughts.

Government sources told Global News the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, along with Ford’s office, was receiving complaints and growing concerns from stakeholders and municipal leaders at the time.

The transition board also faced pushback as it met with local stakeholders to thrash out how the split would work.

As questions continued, the government kept a tight circle. Sources in Brampton, Caledon, Mississauga and the Region of Peel insisted they weren’t briefed until the very last minute.

Even Livey and the transition board, the group supposed to advise the government over the split, were kept in the dark.

On Dec. 5, days after Brown started to complain, Livey said in a text that only the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing’s top civil servant, Deputy Minister Martha Greenberg, was speaking to him.

“Any update? No one has called me back other than you,” he wrote in the message, obtained by Global News through freedom of information laws.

“I’ll give you a call later this evening if that’s okay?” Greenberg replied.

The communications obtained by Global News show that, sometime between Dec. 4 and the evening of Dec. 6, the government’s attitude changed and Livey was brought into the fold.

Finally in from the cold, Livey was given a meeting with Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Paul Calandra.

“So you aren’t surprised – minister asked me to join your meeting with him tomorrow,” Greenberg wrote in a Dec. 6 text to Livey around 8 p.m.

Bringing the chair of the transition board back into the process also changed the plan. The government seemed to shift from potentially scrapping its transition team altogether to working out how to recalibrate its approach.

Sources told Global News Livey and those around him called the premier’s office to discuss the impending reversal around the same time they appear to have been ignored by staff in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

After they made contact with the premier’s office, the strategy quickly changed.

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing was told by the premier’s office it had to find a way to retool the transition board and change its scope, instead of scrapping the panel altogether.

Global News understands that, while Livey and the transition board had pushed the premier’s office to change direction, Ford and his staff were receptive to the move. Government sources said there was internal concern that the plan to split up Peel Region was looking increasingly expensive for local taxpayers.

Late on the evening of Dec. 6, after getting back into the government’s planning, Livey sent a memo to the province “outlining a potential path forward on the Peel dissolution.”

An email sent on Livey’s behalf, also obtained using freedom of information laws, contained a memo and a folder of files from the transition board’s chair with options for how to handle the dissolution the government wanted to scrap.

“The memo is attached, as well as the zip folder referenced with summaries of working group meetings with the four municipalities, mediated by Justice Lederer,” the email said.

Every page of the file Livey sent to the government on Dec. 6 was redacted by privacy officials, claiming cabinet records.

Discussions on exactly what the split would look like continued through early December, as staff and politicians scrambled to sort out the announcement, which eventually came on Dec. 13.

All the while, Mayor Brown was loudly banging the drum for reversal, suggesting the split would be financially ruinous for local taxpayers.

On Dec. 5, near the start of the process, the transition board sent the government a briefing note analyzing the numbers Brown was using to discredit the potential dissolution of Peel Region. It was also redacted in documents released to Global News.

On Dec. 8, Livey suggested in a text that the mayor’s public statements weren’t aiding the process.

“You may not have heard,” he wrote in a text to Klimentowski, the chief of staff. “Patrick Brown is making an announcement at noon. So far it hasn’t been helpful or well informed.”

Almost two weeks after Brown started to push back publicly, and a week after Livey and the transition board were brought back into the process, the government was ready to make a decision.

News that the government would renege on its promise to dissolve Peel Region was announced late on the morning of Dec. 13.

A cabinet meeting leading up to the announcement included Livey’s suggestions for how he could continue working on some kind of watered-down dissolution, sources said.

Exemptions for cabinet confidentiality applied under freedom of information laws confirm they were considered around the cabinet table.

The transition board, which recently billed the Region of Peel $1.5 million for its work so far, will remain in place until at least 2025 or later if the government directs them to continue work, a spokesperson for the province previously said.

The government spokesperson told Global News that the minister “remains open to scaling up transformative ideas” if that is what the transition board recommends.

“The government awaits the final recommendation on how the transfer of public works services (land use planning, water and wastewater, roads, stormwater, and waste management) from Peel Region can benefit residents and taxpayers in the region,” the government said in a separate statement on May 7.