Ward boundaries

From what I understand the City of Toronto Act gives the City the right to change its ward boundaries - the Harris government had forced the City to accept dividing ridings in half. Is this riding-splitting problematic? Should things like the old municipal boundaries be more taken into account?

Municipal boundaries don't mean much anymore, except to determine where your property taxes go. In fact, I'd be pleased to see more electoral boundaries traverse boundaries such as Steeles when appropriate. Why not have a riding of Markham-Agincourt? Thornhill-Willowdale? Etobicoke-Mississauge East?

There is a Pickering-Scarborough East. It's mostly because we haven't had to, and there's a big advantage to use something like a municipal boundary because everybody knows what city they live in. If the boundary's just some arbitrary street or railway line, people often get confused about which riding they actually live in, especially after a redistribution.

I was thinking more of municipal wards than federal/provincial ridings.

Prior to 1969, when the OMB ruled against it, Toronto had very narrow "strip" wards that were done away with because they didn't really represent cohesive commuities of interest and favored the more affluent northern part of the city. The funny thing is around the same time the provincial ridings of St. Andrew and St. Patrick were merged which created a ridiculously gerrymandered riding for Larry Grossman which ran all the way from the lake up through Forest Hill.

Oh I know, and I agree. The wards obviously need to be redistributed, if only because population has shifted significantly since these boundaries were drawn. There's also something to be said for establishing more neighbourhood-based wards. Perhaps a "Waterfront" ward that could be made up of the area south of the railway tracks, just for one example.

Some wards are a heck of a lot bigger than others...there's a few wards under 50,000 people (such as 46K in Ward 29-Ootes) but some have over 70,000 (42, probably 23). Glancing at the numbers (mostly from 2001, though), they could easily carve a new ward out of Scarborough and it'd still be on the large side...if they keep the same number of total wards, that means at least one ward like 16/21/18 will have to be absorbed by its neighbours. North York and parts of downtown also warrant more representation, but it should be doable just through easy boundary shifts.

I honestly don't even know which ward I live in - municipally or federally. It's either St. Paul's or Toronto Centre. I actually got flyers for both riding during the last provincial election. Not that it even matters. I usually end up voting for non incumbents (they haven't been corrupted by the system yet), or whichever party I feel like supporting in that election.

unimaginative2 said:

Oh I know, and I agree. The wards obviously need to be redistributed, if only because population has shifted significantly since these boundaries were drawn. There's also something to be said for establishing more neighbourhood-based wards. Perhaps a "Waterfront" ward that could be made up of the area south of the railway tracks, just for one example.

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The wards are based on the provincial ridings, which mirror the federal ones. They are readjusted every ten years, and the last adjustment (based on the 2001 census) took effect in 2004 federally and 2007 provincially, so obviously municipal wards will be changed before 2010.

But now the City has the power to determine ward boundaries (though I'm not sure if there's still a limit on the total number of wards). I think more cohesive community-based wards should be created.

I'm in Adam Vaughan's ward which runs from University Ave. and Bathurst/Christie from the lake up until Dupont. Right after the OMB decision been in ward 6 which I think was south of Bloor which ran from Sherbourne to Palmerston, I think; while the north of Bloor was in ward 5 which was from St. Clair to Bloor, Yonge to Ossington/Oakwood.

At that time though Bloor St. was a more significant barrier than it is today, and all the old strip wards were cut off at Bloor. Note also at that time the (old) City had 11 wards but 2 councillors per ward. To some extent that undermined the idea of community-based wards, as the eastern half of Ward 5 (for example) was middle class Anglo/Jewish professional and the western half was more working class ethnic.