A bill that slashes the number of municipal wards in Toronto from 47 to 25 has passed at Queen’s Park.

The Progressive Conservative’s “The Better Local Government Act” was approved by the majority government Tuesday afternoon after debate was limited to one hour.

The bill also cancels the regional chair elections in Peel, York, Niagara and Muskoka. The positions will revert back to an appointment process, which was in place prior to 2016. Former leader of Ontario’s PC Party, Patrick Brown, was planning on running for the position of Peel Regional chair and Steven Del Duca, former Liberal cabinet minister, was hoping to become the next chair of York Region.

The ward cuts will drastically impact Toronto’s municipal elections, which are scheduled for Oct. 22. Prior to Premier Doug Ford’s July 27 announcement, most wards already had numerous candidates who had signed up to run as city councillor. Many of these candidates will now have to run in different wards.

The nomination period for the October elections was extended to Sept. 14 to accommodate the ward changes.

In a news release issued Tuesday afternoon after the vote, Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Housing Steve Clark said the new legislation will help the city make decisions more effectively.

“It saves the city more than $25 million – money it can use to build transit, housing and infrastructure and make life better for the people in Toronto.”

Opposition Leader Andrea Horwath said the New Democratic Party tried to “drag” the bill out, but the party was out of options.

“At the end of the day, this government was drunk on power and Mr. Ford decided he was going to take revenge on his opponents, whether it be Patrick Brown as regional chair in the Peel region or the people of Toronto who didn’t support him for mayor last time around, and he has pulled that power into his office here at Queen’s Park,” Horwath told CP24 after the vote. “It is a stunning trampling of democratic rights of the people of Toronto as well as these other regions.”

Speaking with CP24, Interim Liberal Leader John Fraser said the bill will “cause chaos in the City of Toronto and the 905.”

“We felt like this bill was an intervention into a municipal election, which has never happened anywhere in Canada,” he said. “It was the wrong thing to do.”

Speaking in the house, Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner urged members to vote against the bill.

“I think members opposite will agree that serving people is the most important job we have as elected – and I emphasis elected – representatives. Matter of fact, it’s what elected representation is all about,” he said. “It is why we actually have a budget for constituency offices so that we can help the people that we serve.”

The majority of city council, including Toronto’s Mayor John Tory, has been vocal about its opposition to the provincial government’s plan.

“I continue to believe that the process followed to date is absolutely wrong and that you don't change the rules in the middle of an election,” Tory said in a statement released Tuesday.

Tory said he looks forward to hearing the city’s legal options at a special council meeting on Aug. 20.

“At that time, City Council will vote to direct any official legal action, which could include the request for injunction relief,” his statement read.

Monday evening, hundreds of Toronto residents gathered at the Scadding Court Community Centre in the city’s west end for a town hall meeting on the legislation. The meeting was attended by city councilors Joe Cressy and Mike Layton.

“Doug Ford often claims to be for the people, but here we had, in the middle of summer, on a hot and sweaty night, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Torontonians come out in opposition to his move,” Councillor Joe Cressy told CTV News Toronto after the town hall meeting. “So, if Doug Ford is truly for the people, he should listen to the people and they are clearly speaking out in fierce opposition to his proposed council cut.”

Ford announced his intention to reduce the size of city council on July 27, saying that he was elected on a promise “to reduce the size and cost of government and end the culture of waste and mismanagement.”

Ford has said the cuts will result in $25 million in savings for the City of Toronto.

Last Friday, Tory released an open letter to Ford asking him to “hit the pause button” on his plans to slash the size of city council until a referendum can take place.

In the letter, he said that Toronto went through an extensive boundary review, which prompted the city to expand the number of wards from 44 to 47 ahead of the Oct. 22 election.

“Something as fundamentally important as an election – a primary mechanism of civic democracy – should not be changed without public input and in the absence of a clear process or robust understanding of public impacts and costs,” he wrote.

Ford responded with an open letter of his own defending his proposal to slash council.

“An oversized council makes it almost impossible to build meaningful consensus and get things done. As a result, infrastructure crumbles, the housing backlog grows and transit isn’t built,” Ford’s letter read.