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"Mr. Tory, who has praised the Sidewalk initiative but has not seen the text of the deal, says no commercial agreement could strip the city of its authority"This is a quite disingenuous argument.
The general rule in common law countries is that legislatures can't bind their future selves. So in theory no contract can constrain a government with legislative power.
What constrains them is that voiding contracts by exercising that legislative power has ruinous side-effects. It makes it harder to find bidders for contracts, harder to find suppliers, hard to borrow money, all because you just demonstrated a willingness to use your get-out-of-anything-free card without a truly compelling public interest at stake. The reason people are comfortable undertaking large contracts is that the law will keep folks more or less on the level. If you break that guarantee, people will simply not contract with you.
Governments around the world frequently wear the consequences of horrible contracts with terrible terms, because the consequences of undermining confidence in their contractual safety are much worse.
So, in fact, if they sign a contract, they are going to be more or less stuck with it. Even if it's terrible. So it matters what's being signed.
Of course, I am not a lawyer. Hell, in Toronto I can't even call myself an "engineer".
