Bill 20 resembles how a unitary system of government works, as it provides the provincial government the unilateral power to dismiss locally elected officials and override local bylaws.
And I said resembles, because while municipalities are not constitutionally recognized as a separate order of government like provinces or territories, their role and functions often mirror the relationship between our provinces and the federal government.
For example, just as provinces have jurisdictional authority over areas like education, healthcare, or transportation, municipalities have authority over local matters like zoning regulations, maintenance of infrastructure, and community services.
But unlike a federal system, a unitary system centralizes power and authority at the central level, with regional or local governments serving more as administrative extensions of the central government.
The core ideas behind unitary and federal systems are the respective centralization and decentralization of power – unitary being centralization, and federal being decentralization.
But both have a component to what makes them work – political accountability. Accountability is key to any form of a democratic government. It is what gives voting weight in the first place, because elected officials are accountable to those who voted for them – not to a distant authority.
But Bill 20 is missing this critical component.
Even unitary systems of governments like the Philippines can only dismiss an official through the court system. The United Kingdom is also unitary, but even their mayors cannot be dismissed through a referendum - although this is another matter of contention in the UK.
However, the fact remains that even unitary forms of governments recognize the need for accountability.
In the case of Bill 20, however, the lack of accountability means the arguable redundancy of a municipal government, leading to the undermining of the interests of a municipality’s citizens. Overriding local decisions without accountability is akin to undermining local priorities.
So, how do you ensure political accountability on the part of the provincial government to make Bill 20 work? You can’t.
There’s a reason that both the unitary and federal systems follow the principle of subsidiarity. A principle that exists in both the unitary and federal systems, suggesting decisions must be made at the most local level to reflect a community's specific needs.
They do this by delegating political power, as both systems recognize the idea that local government units know what’s best for their communities.
Even if one may argue that Bill 20 only applies to extreme cases, the shadow of doubt lingers. And using an equally extreme example, even if one argues that the bill improves the process of investigating local officials suspected of graft and corruption – granting the provincial government absolute power above all else is unnecessary to achieve that.
