New Electoral Boundaries

[Dan416]

There is a pretty good description of how it is done at the Elections Canada website.

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=cir/red/form&document=index&lang=e




Essentially they set a sort of targeted "average" per riding....use that to calculate how many ridings each province should get and then work with the real world to establish them.



Transferring the, what, 40k people who live in Malton.......673,443 served by 6 = 112,240 per riding.....transfering those to Brampton.....563,911 served by 5 = 112,782 so (depending on what the estimated/population of the shifted {for election purposes} people....no one is getting the shaft (the popluation of Malton that creates exactly the same population per riding is 38,522)......the point is, really, that shifting Malton to one of the 5 Brampton ridings is a) historically consitent {they are coming out of Bramalea-Gore-Malton, after all) and (more importantly) the shift of people between Brampton and Mississauga that is the easiest way to get both municipalities as close to that provincial quotient and c) does so, now, with just one shared riding.

Faced with the alternative, I guess if you felt Mississauga was getting shafted you might want to keep all of Mississauga's population together and assign 7 ridings.......(101,920 per riding)....I guess, also, that would achieved by removing one of Brampton's ridings.....so the remaing 4 purely Brampton Ridings would have 130,977 per riding?

I think within the context of Peel Region's large cities, the recommended number of ridings makes perfect sense.

If you'd read my post more closely, you would have counted my proposed 6 ridings.

That said, yes I'd prefer 7 for Mississauga, but I'd keep 5 for Brampton.

Mississauga has around 700,000 people = 7 ridings
Brampton has around 500,000 people = 5 ridings

 

[Long Island Mike]

New Canada Electoral districts-as compared to US Representative Districts...

The United States has some of the weirdest borders for their Congressional Districts. Look at this one in Illinois:

Could it happen here?

Yes-it can I believe...

I read thru this topic and looked at the interesting website that Canada put together
to show the new proposed districts for Parliament...

That strange-shaped US Rep District in the Chicago area is an example of what you
get when partisan politics takes precedence to common sense at times...

I feel that these districts should be allocated in a non-partisan and fair way...

I fully understand having a predominately Latino district but this can be ridiculous!

I also feel that Canada has a better system of allocating its representatives then the
US does...They are frozen at 435 seats in the House of Representatives and I know
that it bothers some when states lose seats to other growing states/areas...

Some areas in the US do deserve to get more Representatives but not at the cost
of other areas losing their seats...

LI MIKE

 

[adma]

The Oak Ridges riding should be called "King-Vaughan" - I think that name may have existed in the past and included a bit more of Woodbridge. This is confusing since the town of Oak Ridges - which has been swallowed up by Richmond Hill - starts at Bathurst Street, which is the end of the riding. No part of the town of Oak Ridges in in the "Oak Ridges" riding.

The "Vaughan-King-Aurora" seat was a Chretien-era entity--it didn't just include "a bit more", it included *all* of Woodbridge. Meanwhile, the "Oak Ridges" seat of those years encompassed all of Richmond Hill (including Oak Ridges proper) as well as Whitchurch-Stouffville and the northern parts of Markham...

 

[TOareaFan]

If you'd read my post more closely, you would have counted my proposed 6 ridings.

That said, yes I'd prefer 7 for Mississauga, but I'd keep 5 for Brampton.

Mississauga has around 700,000 people = 7 ridings
Brampton has around 500,000 people = 5 ridings

But with a combined population of around 1.2 million...there was never going to be 12 ridings for Mississauga/Brampton when the targeted "average" was what it was. There was always going to be some sort of manipulation of the riding borders to get the area covered with 11 ridings. The strange part, as someone pointed out was why Malton was not shifted, in total, to the Brampton-Gore riding....surely the little bit left behind would not have skewed the averages that much.

 

[Dan416]

But with a combined population of around 1.2...there was never going to be 12 ridings for Mississauga/Brampton when the targeted "average" was what it was. There was always going to be some sort of manipulation of the riding borders to get the area covered with 11 ridings. The strange part, as someone pointed out was why Malton was not shifted, in total, to the Brampton-Gore riding....surely the little bit left behind would not have skewed the averages that much.

If you're not going to do 7/5, then do 6/5 and keep all of Malton in Mississauga.

 

[TOareaFan]

If you're not going to do 7/5, then do 6/5 and keep all of Malton in Mississauga.

That would have been "cleaner" but then someone might point out that 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 and that was a rip off in representation to Mississauga

I think we can all agree, though, that splitting a community the size of Malton between two ridings makes little (no?) sense at all....perhaps that is something that will get caught before these recommendations become reality.

 

[Dan416]

That would have been "cleaner" but then someone might point out that 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 and that was a rip off in representation to Mississauga

I think we can all agree, though, that splitting a community the size of Malton between two ridings makes little (no?) sense at all....perhaps that is something that will get caught before these recommendations become reality.

i think they have to completely redo the boundaries...

 

[adma]

If you're not going to do 7/5, then do 6/5 and keep all of Malton in Mississauga.

Or, alternately, make it part of "Malton-Etobicoke North."

Oh, and I've been reminded of other riding name glitches: Simcoe-Grey and Nepean-Carleton retain their names even though they have no more Grey County or Nepean to them..

 

[Dan416]

I hope the consultations fix some of these issues.

 

[King of Kensington]

I'm quite content with the 416 redistribution proposals. The gerrymandered riding named "Rosedale" for most of its history is no more. North of Bloor is appropriately sliced off into Mount Pleasant; certainly Rosedale and Yorkville have more of a "community of interest" with Deer Park and Davisville. There is little community of interest with the apartment dwellers south of Bloor, the LGBT community, the poor in St. Jamestown and Regent Park etc. And the MP almost invariably came from north of Bloor (including Bob Rae and Bill Graham).

St. Paul's looks more like the riding of the 1960s and 1970s when it included the Annex (and there are a lot of "Annex-y" parts of the south end of the current St. Paul's). And the way they split the "Don Valleys" better reflected the community of interest concept - with the reconstructed Don Valley West becoming more of a "pure" riding of the suburban rich.

Overall I'd say this hurts the Liberals a bit. They lose 2 safe "prestige" ridings in exchange for 1 safe riding in Mount Pleasant. Mount Pleasant after all is chock full of the most reliable demographic for the LPC today: urban professionals who are "too educated to vote Tory too rich to vote NDP." Meanwhile, their chances at winning back DVW are reduced as it becomes the closest thing to a safe Tory seat in the city.

 

[King of Kensington]

Meanwhile my own MP Olivia Chow is (foolishly, in my opinion) opposing the new boundaries for Trinity-Spadina/St. Paul's:

https://twitter.com/oliviachow/status/240215644698722304

 

[nfitz]

There's always going to be a some compromise, and some oddball ridings. But compared to last time, these boundaries seem very sensible and in many cases unchanged. They seem to have tried to follow municipal boundaries a bit more closely this time.

Within Toronto, my only thought is that is that that the names of 2 ridings don't make much sense. I'm not sure that those who live in the new Toronto North would appreciate the name. It's neither inside the old City of Toronto, nor is it in the north part of the new City of Toronto. Not sure why they didn't leave it as Don Valley West. Mount Pleasant is on odd name for a riding as well - it's mostly associate with the cemetery ... though I guess Mount Pleasant Avenue runs through the middle. I'd have called this one Toronto North, if anything.

Essentially we've got 2.5 new ridings. The existing Pickering-Scarborough riding is about 50% Pickering and 50% Scarborough, giving Toronto 22.5 ridings currently. Now we have 25 ridings entirely within the city.

A job well done I'd say, and clearly without the gerrymandering you see in some jurisdictions. Kitchener South-North Dumfries-Brant seems a bit unfortunate - but that's the only thing that jumps out at me.

 

[ShonTron]

A job well done I'd say, and clearly without the gerrymandering you see in some jurisdictions. Kitchener South-North Dumfries-Brant seems a bit unfortunate - but that's the only thing that jumps out at me.

I guess KS-ND-B is a nice way to contain the unfortunately looney streak of Kitchener-Conestoga, whose current MP, Harold Glenn Albrecht is a rabid right-to-lifer and anti same-sex rights. Cambridge doesn't do much better with Gary Goodyear.

 

[nfitz]

I guess KS-ND-B is a nice way to contain the unfortunately looney streak of Kitchener-Conestoga, whose current MP, Harold Glenn Albrecht is a rabid right-to-lifer and anti same-sex rights.

Don't see that this would impact Albrecht much ... the riding had grown by over 30,000 between 2001 and 2011, so something had to change. They've swapped the larger and recently developed Huron, Trussler, Laurentian, etc. neighbourhoods of Kitchener for lower density and older Stanley Park and Bridgeport areas. Albrecht lives in Wilmot Township, which is still in Kitchener-Conestoga. If anything, I'd have thought he'd benefit from this - but I don't think it's a big impact to him, as much of the population that was in the riding in 2001 is still in the riding.

I really don't think this has anything to do with trying to deal with Albrecht. If so, I'd have thought they'd have chopped the new Kitchener Centre in half, and lumped it with Wilmot and western Waterloo.

Does seem a bit odd that Kitchener Centre is now only 93,000 or so, while Kitchener-Conestoga is 101,000. I'd have pushed a bit more of Kitchener into Kitchener Centre ... and perhaps Bridgeport into Waterloo.

Still, I don't see any malice, It has the appearance of being done in good faith.

 

[CDL.TO]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like Essex (around Windsor) would be the highest populated riding in the country with 127,452 people. While Kenora, in the same province, is home to only 56,641 people.

The differences between provinces is part of the law, but I can't understand the justification for such a range within a single province.