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Political Landscape of Toronto (including Ward Boundary Review)

DSC said:
It's easy but it is FAR more important to have 'neighbourhoods" together at the municipal level and the recent federal review split several. St Lawrence is split along The Esplanade and the Distillery along Mill - that was just stupid and absolutely should not be replicated at the Provincial level and MUST not be replicated at the municipal level. (Of course there is no sign of any wish to have a redistribution at the Provincial level that I have heard of.

There also appears to be no great wish to have MORE City councillors and I agree that we certainly do not need more and could well do with less (not likely to happen) but if the population in Wards increases the Councillors will certainly need more staff.
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It would really take a great leader to actually get politicians to reduce their own numbers. I doubt Tory can do it.
I doubt that anyone could. Are the actually Ward boudaries determined by the Province, since the City's are just products of the province?
 
The ward boundaries are decided by the city, but just like any decision the city makes, the province has the power to overrule and impose their will.
 
More stunning stupidity from Karygiannis:

When the issue was first raised during the 2010 election, then mayoral candidate Rob Ford used the opportunity to run with his “cut council in half†mantra. The idea has gained traction, including among some councillors. At one of the meetings, Councillor Jim Karygiannis (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) said that people living in high-rise towers don’t need the same kind of representation as their single-family household counterparts. After all, he argued, can’t they just call building management?
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http://torontoist.com/2015/02/torontos-changing-political-map/
 
I wasn't very familiar with Karygiannis before he became a councillor and I started learning about him from you guys. Now I know why I wasn't familiar with him in spite of my political obsessions.....he can't possibly be a real person. (Like Mammo!)

Who the hell says that? Especially given the number of residents in his ward who live in high rises.

Anyway, I'm relieved to know that the next time I want to attend a development consultation I can just ring my property manager. The same manager who can help my opinion on proposed legislation be known to the legislators!
 
Well put. Despite the high level of urbanization in Canada, the majority of ridings in the House Of Commons are for rural areas.
 
Videodrome said:
Well put. Despite the high level of urbanization in Canada, the majority of ridings in the House Of Commons are for rural areas.
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Are you sure? Ontario has 106 electoral districts currently. The urban area from St. Catherines to Oshawa is over 50 seats. There's 5 mostly urban seats in Ottawa. 4 more with KW-Cambridge and Guelph. 3 in London. 2 in Windsor. That's 65 of 106 there, before counting ridings like Kingston, Peterborough, Barrie, etc. And then some other "rural" ridings are dominated by urban areas. And this before the the recent addition of 15 more, mostly urban, ridings.

Sure, that's just Ontario, but I see similar trends in other provinces, such as BC and Quebec. 16 of Alberta's 28 seats alone are in Edmonton and Calgary.
 
nfitz said:
Are you sure? Ontario has 106 electoral districts currently. The urban area from St. Catherines to Oshawa is over 50 seats. There's 5 mostly urban seats in Ottawa. 4 more with KW-Cambridge and Guelph. 3 in London. 2 in Windsor. That's 65 of 106 there, before counting ridings like Kingston, Peterborough, Barrie, etc. And then some other "rural" ridings are dominated by urban areas. And this before the the recent addition of 15 more, mostly urban, ridings.

Sure, that's just Ontario, but I see similar trends in other provinces, such as BC and Quebec. 16 of Alberta's 28 seats alone are in Edmonton and Calgary.
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I can't remember which of the mayors said it, but they indicated that less than half of the ridings were in the cities. PEI has four ridings despite only having around 145,000 people in total.
 
Videodrome said:
I can't remember which of the mayors said it, but they indicated that less than half of the ridings were in the cities. PEI has four ridings despite only having around 145,000 people in total.
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So a Mayor was wrong ...

I don't think PEI is representative of most Canadian provinces electoral make-up.
 
I could go on for a while about PEI. Maybe that point about the ridings was wrong. I think that what he was trying to say is that 2/3 of Canadians live in cities and don't get noticed as much as they should.
 
The Consultants hired to redraw Toronto's ward boundaries (http://www.drawthelines.ca/) have completed their first round of public meetings. I have created three maps of proposed ward boundaries.


38 Wards -- This proposal would reduce city council by six members without having wards cross the Humber River or Victoria Park Ave.

44 Wards -- This proposal would freeze the size of city council at its current level.

50 Wards -- This proposal would add six councillors by splitting each of the 25 new federal electoral districts in half.


These proposed maps are my own ideas, and are not part of the official process. I would appreciate your comments on them.
 
Nice maps, Krago. I'd be more in favour of the 44 or 50 ward arrangement, essentially for the reason that W.K.Lis stated above. Neighborhoods are so distinct in the city, so much so that going over one street could suddenly change the makeup of the ward. Too few wards and focusing on key neighborhood issues will be made that much more challenging. While reducing the number of wards may 'streamline' the system in the short term, i don't think it's a feasible option in the long term growth of the city.
 
I would personally not go over the current 44 (and prefer less) and would rather see Councillors getting more assistants than more Councillors (who would also have assistants, of course). I realise that your ideas are simply 'lines on the map' but note that your 50 Wards version draws a line right through the St Lawrence and Distillery neighbourhoods by drawing a boundary at The Esplanade and Mill Street. This is what the Federal constituency review did - to much local complaint - and the current Ward boundary consultants have said that this kind of 'neighbourhood splitting' - they mentioned this is particular - will NOT be part of their plans. Of course, drawing any lines will divide up someone's neighbourhood...
 
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.
 
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