By Pepper Parr
July 28th, 2018
BURLINGTON, ON
For those who sincerely believe that the public is better served with smaller government the decision Premier Doug Ford made about the size of Toronto’s city council will come as good news.
Ford has told Toronto that it has to align the ward boundaries with the boundaries in place for the federal and provincial constituencies; the two are identical.
Toronto has 25 federal/provincial constituencies and so they will have 25 wards.
Burlington has three federal/provincial constituencies – Milton, Burlington and Oakville North Burlington.
Boundaries for the riding of Burlington
Boundary for the riding of Milton.
Boundary for the riding of Oakville North Burlington.
Some of the people in the Northern part of Burlington are represented by the MP Lisa Raitt and the MPP Parm Gil from Milton.
Some of the people in the eastern part of the city are represented by MP Pam Damoff and MPP Effie Triantafilipoulos in the Oakville North Burlington constituency.
The rest of the citizens are represented by Karina Gould, a member of the Justin Trudeau cabinet and MPP Jane McKenna.
Using the Ford formula – Burlington would have three council members and a Mayor.
That would be nice and cozy wouldn’t it?
Aside from how it was done, and the partisan reflections both left and right. The question to be answered is, how many councilors is needed to effectively run a city ? Burlington has 6 wards and 6 council members, and some think that is too few. Oakville, on the other hand has the same number of wards but 12 councilors? Toronto has 47 wards and will soon have 27 council members? I am willing to wait and see if the 27 will deliver better results, for transit and crime reduction for starters.
No, it wouldn’t because those of us in the northern part of Burlington would be lumped in with Milton because there is no real boundary in the federal and provincial ridings. We’d be in limbo as we are now by having our representatives in Milton. Ford has left us lone only because right now he has no enemies here to assassinate.
No city of almost 200,00 can function with only three wards. I hope that all the people who voted for change for the sake of change are beginning to realize that they have voted in a Mini-Me Trump.
Six ward councillors and a Mayor is too small in my opinion. Forty-Seven councillors is unwieldy. To get consensus would be almost impossible. What the correct number is – well that is another question?
Ford clearly has an underlying agenda in redrawing the municipal wards in Toronto. He knows most of the downtown wards are served by vocal critics such as Mike Layton, Kristyn Wong-Tam, Paula Fletcher,Joe Mihevc and Joe Cressy, and he knows most of them are New Democrats. Re-gigging the electoral map will mean that a number of them are displaced. It will sew division in the ranks as incumbents in downtown wards are forced to compete against one another for fewer Council seats. Fewer New Democrats means fewer critics, and fewer critics means less oversight. The impact upon areas such as Etobicoke and Scarborough (areas that voted PC in the last provincial election) will likely be much less profound. There were eleven Councillors at a press conference yesterday expressing support for Ford’s plan. No accident most of them (e.g. Mammoliti, Holyday, Michael Ford, etc.) supported Ford during the last provincial election.
The Americans have a name for it: gerrymandering…manipulating the electoral boundaries to favour a particular group, candidate or class.
Say what you like but the man is cunning…not necessary astute…but cunning!