We need to rejig Toronto’s wards - but we don’t need to add more politicians

nationalpost.com
May 18, 2016
By Chris Selley

Toronto is about to rejigger its electoral map, and it’s about bloody time. This city is a representation-by-population nightmare: six of our 44 wards have populations 20 per cent or more above or below the average. Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27) represents more than twice as many constituents as Coun. Joe Mihevc (Ward 21).

“By 2026 over half of the wards will fall outside a reasonable range in terms of voter parity,” predicts a consultant’s report commissioned by the city, released Monday. “The status quo is not an option.”

City council isn’t the only legislature with this problem: Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan represents 43 per cent more people in Etobicoke North than her fellow Liberal Adam Vaughan does in Spadina-Fort York. So the solution isn’t as simple as basing city wards on federal 416 ridings. The consultants adopted plus or minus 15 per cent as a reasonable goal for balancing wards’ populations, while respecting the political integrity of neighbourhoods and allowing for future growth.

Just how much rep-by-pop matters to voters is an open question, however. When the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission solicited Torontonians’ opinions, it found they were far more concerned with “communities of interest” than with “balanced population.”

Such concerns will come into play when the executive committee, on May 24, and then city council, gets hold of the consultants’ recommendations for redrawing Toronto’s electoral map. Notably, they recommend splitting rapidly redeveloping Regent Park down the middle, on Dundas Street, into two wards.

There is also some potential for political strife: in the proposed new order, the old City of Toronto would have more clout than the old suburbs. You might say that’s only fair, given the distribution of population. But the definition of “fair” is not universally agreed upon at city hall. And I’m sorry to report some councillors may advocate realignment, if any, with an eye to factors other than democratic purity.

It will, at least, almost certainly be less fractious than it was 15 years ago, when councillors David Miller, Doug Holyday and Lorenzo Berardinetti were tasked with drawing up the boundaries - with predictable results. “The fix is in,” said Coun. John Filion; “I think it was a crooked deal,” said Coun. Brad Duguid.

Council was then under provincial orders to reduce its complement from 56 to 44. Political careers hung in the balance; incumbents (including Miller) were forced to compete against other incumbents. This time, I’d say the consultants did a pretty good job arriving at a broadly acceptable solution - except that they propose increasing council’s complement to 47.

Within the confines of their mandate, perhaps that’s a defensible position. Of the five realignment options they proposed, with seat counts as high as 58 and as low as 38, 44-plus-three proved the best combination of popular and not unpopular. (I would moot many fewer, but that’s politically hopeless.)

In the real world...no. Come on. “I think the last thing we need is more politicians,” Mayor John Tory has said, and he’s right.

I defy anyone to sit through a major city council meeting and tell me we have too few legislators. By my count, in the past 12 months council sat for roughly 184 hours - almost eight full days. Perhaps 30 per cent of that time was usefully spent. The rest was dedicated to point-scoring, grandstanding, bloviating in pursuit of lost causes and against faits accomplish, and demanding time-consuming electronically recorded votes on motions asking the province to be nicer to zoo animals.

As for city councillors’ other important mandate, as ombudsmen for their constituents, it’s mainly their staff who fulfill it. If it comes down to a choice, paying for more staff for Toronto’s 44 councillors is a vastly better idea than adding more councillors.

The real efficiency gains to be had at city council aren’t in the quantity of councillors, but in the system itself. Perhaps community councils should be able to decide on such monumental events as the felling of a tree or the granting of a liquor licence. Perhaps committees’ opinions should be worth more than very nearly nothing on the council floor. Perhaps there’s something useful between the weak mayor system and the strong mayor system.

In the meantime, sticking with 44 councillors and redrawing the ward boundaries to fit was one of the five options the consultants studied. Like 44-plus-three, it was one of the most popular and one of the least unpopular. And it’s a perfectly reasonable option for the executive committee and council to endorse.