If everyone voted according to their race, then maybe. But in order to achieve this ideal:
-Everyone should vote according to race
-You would probably have to abandon the ward system to eliminate regional issues and variables
-You would have to vote out incumbents for no apparent reason
-This perfectly balanced set of candidates should conveniently espouse political opinions and platforms that will get them elected
- There are no scandals involving any of this perfectly balanced set of candidates
- Said candidates are all respected and well known individuals in their community.
- No external event happens to violently shake the political landscape.
-No conflicts of ideology, religion, or lack thereof
In other words a perfectly ethnic/gender balanced democratically elected council is a utopian fantasy.
In any case, time is the best cure. As ethnic communities grow, grassroots political participation will grow from the ground up.
Maybe that's a bit harsh, as you said "Vaguely". But it does summarize some of the complexities in singling out one aspect of the current council as a bad thing. For an exercise, pick a couple of councillors that are over-represented, and figure out why they personally should not have been elected, who could have and should have been elected instead, and why their platform is better, and all this in the context of the needs and wants of the community that elected them.
I also said I abhor quotas.
I do wonder why people react to singular statements in isolation instead of context.
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To be unabashedly clear, I don't think Toronto (or any other jurisdiction anywhere on earth need have a legislative body elected entirely on the lines of artificial demographic constructs (or real ones, arguably, such as sex).
Rather, i think a democracy, in representing a diversity of interests, benefits greatly from seeing that diversity reflected in its body politic. (that includes variability such as class/income, not merely 'identifiable groups' in conventional parlance. )
I also think, that if the system is otherwise fair, allowing for variation and complexity, one would expect such a body to be somewhat representative 'ish of its broader community.
That is not naive in anyway, nor Utopian.
I don't fail to recognize obstacles and normative variability.
But I also think 16% 'minority' in Toronto of 2018 is underweight and not by a little bit.
I always see it as a concern when large groups of citizens may feel they aren't represented in the government they are asked to financially support.
I also would add I vehemently disagree that it requires voters to consider 'race' in their voting. I certainly don't, and I wouldn't expect anyone else to.
I would expect people to vote their political leaning and their interest. But where given a representative slate of choices, I would expect something closer to demographic parity to be the outcome, by virtue of happenstance.
