New Electoral Boundaries

The commission tasked with setting new electoral boundaries reflecting new seats for Ontario has issued its preliminary findings, which are available here: http://www.redecoupage-federal-redistribution.ca/content.asp?section=on&document=index&lang=e

As previously announced, Ontario gets 15 new seats. The bulk are, obviously, in the 905, where a number of cities (notably Markham) were absurdly under-represented in the Commons. The City of Toronto gets two new ridings, taking it to 25:

--One in Scarborough
--One covering, basically, Midtown east of Avenue Road.

The effect of the latter, provisionally called Mount Pleasant, is to render Trinity-Spadina and Toronto Centre as true 'downtown' ridings, rather than hybrids of downtown and more outlying residential areas.

It's an interesting map, and seems to hew pretty closely to being statistically fair.

What will be really interesting to see is whether municipal boundaries are adjusted (and Council slightly expanded) accordingly. Doing so would result in a non-trivial boost to downtown influence.

I've been following the riding changes as well, and glad to see the gerrymandered wedge-shaped ridings of Saskatchewan are a thing of the past, meaning real urban ridings in Regina and Saskatoon that should help the Liberals and NDP.

Good news is that Toronto no longer shares a riding with Pickering, also Brampton (which was the worst-represented municipality in Canada) has five seats almost to itself now (part of Malton is in Brampton Gore), rather than 2 and 2 halves.

Elections Canada isn't perfect, but at least the ridings are compact, fair and reasonably equal (for now). A far cry from the partisan gerrymandering and rule fixing you see south of the border.

ShonTron said:

Good news is that Toronto no longer shares a riding with Pickering, also Brampton (which was the worst-represented municipality in Canada) has five seats almost to itself now (part of Malton is in Brampton Gore), rather than 2 and 2 halves.

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This is a huge change indeed. Not only for the simple math (a city of 550kish goes from 3 ridings to nearly 5) but the fact that each of those 5 reps will be looking solely to Brampton for their electorial futures and will be less inclined to have to balance the needs of our larger neighbours when they sit in the house.

For those of us that feel the city gets the short end of the stick in areas of provincial jurisdiction/influence (hospitals, highways, mass transit, post secondary education) this is indeed a big move forward.

The caveat is, the new boundaries now go to public consultation. They aren't set in stone.

The Quebec committee, without many new ridings to play with, decided to have fun with the names and existing boundaries instead. Westmount is now part of an Anglo super-riding called 'Wilder Penfield.'

TOareaFan said:

For those of us that feel the city gets the short end of the stick in areas of provincial jurisdiction/influence (hospitals, highways, mass transit, post secondary education) this is indeed a big move forward.

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These are FEDERAL riding changes and though certainly interesting I am not sure if they will make much of a difference to things under Provincial control.

The province has normally updated its ridings to match those decided by Elections Canada, dating back to the Harris era. Whether they will be used by the next provincial election depends on the results of the Sept 6 byelections and how long the government lasts.

ShonTron said:

The province has normally updated its ridings to match those decided by Elections Canada, dating back to the Harris era. Whether they will be used by the next provincial election depends on the results of the Sept 6 byelections and how long the government lasts.

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Correctemundo

Really not happy that Mississauga gets shafted yet again.

Excluding the random pocket of Mississauga in a Brampton riding, Mississauga's 713,443 residents are served by 6 ridings (@ 118,907 residents per riding) and Brampton's 523,911 residents are served by 5 ridings (@ 104,782 residents per riding) using 2011 Census numbers.

Not happy with the proposed names either.

Mississauga North--I'm in this riding, and was quite happy being in Mississauga--Streetsville to be honest, and our exchange is a Streetsville exchange as well. Not a fan of the name either.

Mississauga West--Streetsville - the riding was fine the way it was. Bring back the old boundaries, and drop the "west".

Mississauga Centre - I don't think it makes sense to mix Mississauga Road and MCC into one riding. Do not like. Maybe if the boundaries were different I wouldn't mind it.

Misssissauga--Erin Mills - I'm not against Erin Mills theoretically, I just liked using the old town name of Erindale better. Granted it probably doesn't include Erindale in the riding anymore, but I think that's all the more reason to keep Erin Mills and Erindale together. Not a fan of this either.

Mississauga South - not much change here, but if I were redrawing boundaries I'd separate Clarkson and Port Credit out. (Yes, I'd basically be re-creating the old pre-Mississauga towns lol)

Mississauga East--Cooksville - never liked the East in the name here.

Overall I don't like the hybrid naming scheme used here.

Either go with the cardinal directions or don't. Choose one.

either

Mississauga Northeast
Mississauga Nothwest
Mississauga Centre
Mississauga South
Mississauga East
Mississauga West

OR change the boundaries and use:

Mississauga-Port Credit
Mississauga-Clarkson
Mississauga-Erindale
Mississauga-Streetsville
Mississauga-Malton
Mississauga-Meadowvale

In what is I'm sure a complete coincidence, Mississauga gets one day of public hearings, whereas Brampton gets two:

Mississauga, Central Library, Classroom No. 3
301 Burnhamthorpe Road West Wednesday, October 31, 2012 10:00 a.m.
Brampton, Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott, Bramalea Room
150 Westcreek Boulevard Thursday, November 1, 2012 10:00 a.m.
Brampton, Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott, Bramalea Room
150 Westcreek Boulevard Friday, November 2, 2012 10:00 a.m.

I'm sure a lot of Mississaugans will be checking out the new electoral maps on Hallowe'en.

I've sent an email to ontario@rfed-rcf.ca with my thoughts (mostly an edited and corrected version of the above). I would suggest everyone do the same if they have any thoughts or concerns regarding their own ridings.

ShonTron said:

The province has normally updated its ridings to match those decided by Elections Canada, dating back to the Harris era. Whether they will be used by the next provincial election depends on the results of the Sept 6 byelections and how long the government lasts.

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And the city wards are the ridings split in two. Unless some reductions-in-the-number-of-wards councillors and mayor get their way and uses the federal/provincial ridings setup for city wards.

As to the Toronto changes: Before, the Libs had 2 safe seats in St Pauls and Toronto Centre - both federally and provincially. Now they have 3 - Mount Pleasant will vote Liberal unless downtown Toronto warms to the Tories again.

In Trinity-Spadina, Olivia Chow and Rosario Marchese got bad news. They lose the granola types from Seaton Village and Christie Pits, and they're still stuck with all those condo dwellers down at the waterfront. Rosario's margin was only a 1000 votes last time - he could be in trouble.

The commission was evenly balanced - one Liberal, one Conservative, and one useless academic. What do you expect?

Federal riding redistribution

Here are the proposed boundaries for Ontario:

http://www.redecoupage-federal-redi...on=on&dir=now/proposals&document=index&lang=e

Notable changes to the Toronto map: new Scarborough North and Scarborough East seats, Willowdale cut over to Bayview with a new Don Valley North seat, Toronto Centre and Trinity-Spadina shifted southward below Bloor, St. Paul's is quite different going down to Bloor and picking up the Annex and a new Mount Pleasant seat carved out of TC and St. Paul's in the Yonge Bloor to Eglinton zone.

Mount Pleasant would probably be the safest Liberal seat in the country.

Coruscanti Cognoscente said:

Really not happy that Mississauga gets shafted yet again.

Excluding the random pocket of Mississauga in a Brampton riding, Mississauga's 713,443 residents are served by 6 ridings (@ 118,907 residents per riding) and Brampton's 523,911 residents are served by 5 ridings (@ 104,782 residents per riding) using 2011 Census numbers.

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Though keep in mind that the ridings might be drawn with growth assumptions in mind--and at this point, Mississauga's basically built out, but with continuing growth in Bramption, by the next redraw there's a more-than-reasonable chance that Brampton will have more--maybe significantly more--residents per riding than Mississauga...

Malton split in two? Cooksville and Downtown Brampton each split between THREE ridings? I don't like these new boundaries.

The names don't make sense either. Like Brampton Centre only includes a small portion of the downtown and extends further south than Brampton South.

k10ery said:

As to the Toronto changes: Before, the Libs had 2 safe seats in St Pauls and Toronto Centre - both federally and provincially. Now they have 3 - Mount Pleasant will vote Liberal unless downtown Toronto warms to the Tories again.

In Trinity-Spadina, Olivia Chow and Rosario Marchese got bad news. They lose the granola types from Seaton Village and Christie Pits, and they're still stuck with all those condo dwellers down at the waterfront. Rosario's margin was only a 1000 votes last time - he could be in trouble.

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Then again, Rosario might retire on behalf of somebody more robust. And as for Olivia: through incumbency and knowing-the-constituency (as opposed to the more euphemistic knowing-*her*-constituency), she's actually nurtured a good hold on a critical mass, if not a majority of, the condo vote. But yeah, because the condos are where the hypergrowth lies, there's the seeds of trouble.

But as counterbalance, I'd argue that redistribution has actually thrust Toronto Centre and St. Paul's away from "Lib-safe-seatdom" into unforeseen NDP competitiveness, with the former's loss of Rosedale and the latter retaining all of the former St. Paul's west-of-Bathurst best "left zones" while adding Annex/Seaton (though it retains the rumpish presence of Forest Hill, which *could* wind up working like Rosedale did in the former Toronto Centre)

adma said:

Then again, Rosario might retire on behalf of somebody more robust. ...

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Rosario's not retiring. He was door knocking on my street last night. I would guess he has run the poll-by-poll numbers and is worried.

I don't want to slander the guy, but when I asked him why he said that he was going door to door because "it's hard to get in the media unless you do something special." Gee Rosario, maybe you should do something "special".