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Political Landscape of Toronto (including Ward Boundary Review)

BurlOak said:
We already have a process to determine the riding in the City - it is a federal process that solicits input from the local government and citizens. Why reinvent the wheel when the process already exists. The City is not getting smaller any time soon, so the same philosophy can be used for years to come as the current 25 ridings (wards) would increase to maybe 30 or 35.

I think the one thing the City has too much of is local representation. There are 44 Councilors who are only concerned about there few square kilometre area, and only 1 mayor who has the interests of the City as a whole. I agree with the above that if local representation is too difficult, it should be handled with additional assistants, and not more Councillors, who would have the effect of farther weakening the power of the mayor.

To increase the power of the mayor, I would make his/her vote be worth more than 1. I think about 10 to 15 would be the right value - so Council as a whole would still be a significant force to oppose a rogue mayor. As an added bonus, I might add 4 aldermen, elected by the voters at the same election, for the 4 community council areas (Toronto/East York, Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke/York). The vote of each of the these aldermen would be worth about 3 to 5, depending on the population of the area.
Click to expand...

If we go to a ward being the same size as a federal/provincial riding, I would have to replace the current appointed executive with an elected Board of Control. The Controllers would be elected from two, three, or four wards (dependant upon population), who would look at the city as a whole. Better than the fiefdoms we have at present.
 
I think the decision to maintain the former boundaries of Scarborough and Etobicoke would hurt the city by continuing to reinforce internal divisions.

Maybe I'm social engineering, but I think it would be good to have wards which traverse Victoria Park Ave and the Humber River. The boundaries between former Toronto, East York, York, and North York have blurred and the city is better for it.
 
I don't like how your 38 Ward proposal has the area north of Eglinton between Yonge and Bayview as part of that North York ward. It is completely disconnected from the rest of the ward and I don't feel they would be represented by the same interests.

Actually I don't like how the current ward boundaries splits the neighborhood between Ward 22 and Ward 25 for that matter. That area south and west of Sherwood Park and Mt. Hope Cemetery are more connected to the Eglinton area to the south than it is to the Lawrence Park area to the north.
 
CDL.TO said:
I think the decision to maintain the former boundaries of Scarborough and Etobicoke would hurt the city by continuing to reinforce internal divisions.

Maybe I'm social engineering, but I think it would be good to have wards which traverse Victoria Park Ave and the Humber River. The boundaries between former Toronto, East York, York, and North York have blurred and the city is better for it.
Click to expand...

100% agreed. I'd go even further to suggest that we rename institutions (like the Community Councils) to things like Toronto West, Toronto East, Toronto North, and Toronto South. I think it'd be a good start to fix the divisions created by people's ridiculous nostalgia for no-longer-existant cities (and/or boroughs).
 
According to the WBR, Toronto's estimated 2014 (1 year ago) population was about 2,682,000

According to StatsCan, Toronto's population in July 2012 (3 years ago), was 2,800,000

Why is there such a large discrepancy between the two estimates?
 
God I am just dreading the amount of political pandering and posturing during the review. I can already hear the cries by De Baeremaeker and Mammo about how "Downtown-centric" the new wards are. There will also be a lot of arm twisting by incumbents who would be forced to run against one another. For instance, most proposals have Councillor MMM's and Fletcher's wards more or less merged. That would make for a spectacular race, but I'm sure both camps will try and prevent that from happening.

It will be interesting to see how Tory plays his hand knowing that any addition of council seats for 2018 will be fuel for Rob Ford, who promised to chop off half of council to 22 seats. Given Tory's vote for the Gardiner, I am sure he weighs the political implications of his proposal with the interests of Ford Nation.

I'm quite partial towards Option 1, which maintains the overall form of the wards with some minor tweaks to adjust for population. However, I think something along the line of Option 2 or Option 5 is more likely to happen.
 
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Here's a GIF of the different options.

ward-options-0.gif
 
After skimming the report, I think Option 2 would be best. We'd have 44 wards, with average population of 70,000 and a population variance of +/- 105
 
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Yeah, I'm down with the 75k per ward population layout. I never thought I'd agree to a reduction of representatives, but I didn't realise that changing the ward boundaries could achieve this while also maintaining a decent ratio of citizens to reps. Also, this is the best chance to get rid of at least Mammo. Make it happen, please.
 
I did a count of the wards layout in the report, and it appears that Old Toronto will be the biggest benefactor of these changes. The ward boundaries don't follow the boundaries of the dissolved boroughs, so this count is just a crude approximation. Nevertheless, there's definitely a greater concentration of power in the central areas of Toronto with these new boundaries.

Old Toronto (+3)
Current Boundaries: 11
New Boundaries: 14

Etobicoke (+0)
Current Boundaries: 7
New Boundaries: 7

Scarborough (+0)
Current Boundaries: 10
New Boundaries: 10

North York (-2)
Current Boundaries: 12
New Boundaries: 10

East York (-1)
Current Boundaries: 3
New Boundaries: 2

York (+0)
Current Boundaries: 1
New Boundaries: 1
 
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