I like Amos' question--it would help with understanding the whole picture to understand the mechanism that allows or triggers such an intervention. Ontario municipalities exist solely at the pleasure of the provincial legislature, so the provincial gov't can un-exist any township, town, city, regional municipality etc. at any time for any reason that the legislature deems adequate. But I don't know if there is a mechanism to replace elected mayor & council with an appointed person or body. I would bet there is.

I've only been aware of this sort of takeover here of an occasional hospital or Community Care Access Centre (the entity that manages home care, retirement & nursing home waiting lists, school medical supports etc.). In the 2 or 3 cases I can think of, arrival of such a manager marked the beginning of a swift end to media coverage and letters to the editor. Before the appointment was a significant period of problems or serious complaints brought to light by either honest investigative journalists or "gotcha" journalists--couldn't say for sure which. But once the manager was in place, the media & public reaction here suggests to me that people thought it was a good solution. Or their attention span was all used up.

But that is more and more the case with every issue--potholes, gun violence, pension restructuring, tax policy, etc. Often it does seem to be "gotcha" journalists working hard to prop up dwindling circulation numbers, or self-promotting bloggers, so much so that I honestly don't know where to look these days for actual public discourse on public/civic issues.