Peel survived. Its roads didn't. Should the region still exist?

In May 2023 the province announced that Peel Region would cease to exist on January 1, 2025, and Mississauga’s mayor held a press conference about independence. In December 2023 it changed its mind, and Bill 185 the following June made sure the region continued.

What did happen is smaller and real. On July 1 this year the regional roads and their storm sewers moved to Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon. Waste collection and two recycling centres in Mississauga moved to the city. The transition board that was going to take the region apart was dissolved at the end of 2024. Police, water and wastewater, paramedics, public health and social housing stay regional, which is to say they stay the thing Mississauga’s council spent a decade saying it was subsidising for Brampton.

It is a settlement nobody proposed and nobody voted on, and it may simply be the answer. Or it may be the pause before the next attempt.

Sources: CBC, Ontario abandons the dissolution · Peel Region, the service transfers · The Pointer, the Mississauga-Brampton feud · City of Mississauga, on the reversal