Summer election called in small northern Ontario to replace mayor and council kicked out by province

Voters in Black River-Matheson will go to the polls on Aug. 12 to pick a new mayor and town council, after the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs removed the entire council for failing to meet over the last two months.

A single provincial staffer based at the ministry's Sudbury office is now playing the role of mayor and council until the byelection this summer, including presiding over council meetings and deciding on the town budget, which is in the works.

"I think I was quoted as saying there was no way that was going to happen, so I was a bit surprised by it," said Chris Wray, the town's chief administrative officer. 

"But having said that, the decision was made and now we'll just work with that and go through the election process and see what happens afterward."

Nominations will open on June 1 and close on June 28. Wray says there has already been a lot of interest in candidates running in the election, which will be conducted by electronic ballot.

No votes were cast in the 2022 election, when the mayor and six town councillors of Matheson were all acclaimed.

But since then, the council voted to hike property taxes in 2023 by 34 per cent and 14 municipal workers went out on the picketlines that October.

On Friday, it was announced that a tentative deal had been reached to end the six-month work stoppage, which if ratified would see them back on the job May 15.

"We're very hopeful. We've got a lot of work to do here," he said. 

"We've got a lot of projects that are on the go and so what we want to do is turn our attention to a lot of the positive things and frankly some of the struggles that we're going to have ahead of us. We'll see what happens when the new council comes on."

Wray is in Sudbury this week for the annual conference of the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities and expects to get a lot of questions about what is happening in his town.

Association chair Danny Whalen, who is also a city councillor in Temiskaming Shores, says he thinks its good that the province got involved. 

"If you have a big stick and you don't swing it, people just become used to you having a big stick and they know you won't use it," he said. 

"I think to see the ministry exercise their powers, whether you consider them right or wrong, at some point somebody has to step in and say 'What's going on here is not right.'"

The minister of municipal affairs has not been made available to speak with CBC since the announcement was made, but the ministry did provide a statement saying that the last time this power to vacate an entire council was used was back in 1993 in the former Township of Front of Escott, now part of the Township of Leeds and The Thousand Islands.