Toronto City Council is set to review its legal options for challenging Bill 5, the provincial legislation passed last week to shrink Toronto’s council in half.

Councillors are set to meet Monday to review a confidential report from the city solicitor’s office concerning the legislation, which was passed without any formal consultation with city council or the public.

While the merits of reducing the number of councillors at city hall has long been debated, the move by the provincial government to shrink council from 47 to 25 wards in time for the upcoming municipal election in October came as a surprise to most observers and left many calling foul on the process.

“We have a very able team of lawyers led by our city solicitor Wendy Walberg and she’s written a very complete report which at the moment is still confidential,” Mayor John Tory told CP24 Sunday. “We’ll hear from her and have a chance to ask questions and then we’ll decide as a council whether we should take legal action or not because the process followed here is one that’s just wrong.”

While the provincial government is generally thought to have wide latitude with respect to its jurisdiction over municipalities, at least one legal challenge has already been launched over the legislation.

The surprise decision by the new provincial government roughly pegs ward boundaries to those used for federal and provincial boundaries. It comes after the city spent years conducting a ward boundary review to come up with a 47-ward model in time for this year’s municipal election on Oct. 22.

Tory called the lack of public input on the move “extraordinary” and said it means that council should weigh a wide array of options to respond.

“When you do something as major as this in the middle of an election that affects the democratic representation of people form Toronto without consultation, without even a meeting being held – this is extraordinary. So I think it requires an extraordinary consideration of responses and that’s what we’ll do,” Tory said.

Premier Doug Ford, who served as a local councillor for Ward 2 when his brother was mayor, has said a smaller council is necessary to save Torontonians money and to make council work more effectively.

“Streamlining Toronto council will help the city make decisions more quickly and effectively,” Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark said in a news release on Aug. 14 when the bill passed.

Some councillors have said they support the move. However critics have argued that a smaller council will make councillors less responsive to their constituents and more susceptible to special interests.