'It's simply not fair': Stouffville ward boundaries don't add up

YorkRegion.com
Sept. 7, 2017
Simon Martin

At the most recent Whitchurch-Stouffville council meeting, Ward 3 Coun. Hugo Kroon and Ward 1 Coun. Ken Ferdinands said they wouldn’t support GO train whistle cessation at Hoover Park Drive and Reeves Way Boulevard. The fact that councillors from the town’s “rural” wards weren’t in favour of paying money to stop the GO train whistles was not surprising. With little benefit for their constituents, it could be expected for the town’s rural councillors to speak out against such a measure. After all, they are not the councillors getting angry phone calls from residents since the GO train started late night service. What the matter did illustrate was the town’s rural population is grossly overrepresented at council. How much so?

Consider that in the 2014 Whitchurch-Stouffville election, Ward 6, Stouffville’s largest ward and home to the Reeves Way and Hoover Park rail crossings, had 9,062 eligible voters. Ward 1 had 2,753 eligible voters and Ward 3 had 2,433 eligible voters. Ward 6 was more than three times the population of both wards 1 and 3 in 2014. Ward 4 was more than double the population of both wards 1 and 3 in 2014. The town doesn’t have the current numbers, but since 2014 the vast majority of population growth has been in wards 4 and 6, so the numbers will be even worse in 2018. You would think town council would think this is a pressing need to be solved, but not everyone feels that way. While Kroon said he is a “great supporter” of proportional representation, he said the rural areas would lose their voice if the wards were made equal. “Even though they would continue to pour massive amount of tax dollars into the town, they would have no say as to how it would be spent,” he said. Ferdinands didn’t bother to respond to repeated requests to comment on the uneven population distribution of the wards. Ward 2 Coun. Maurice Smith said he had no comment on the matter. Ward 4 Coun. Rick Upton said he didn’t see a problem with the current arrangement.

The majority of the town’s council aren’t bothered that one ward will be four times the population of two other wards in 2018.

The foremost experts in Ontario on ward boundaries, Profs. Andrew Sancton and Robert Williams, disagree and call the current Stouffville ward arrangement grossly unfair. “This is highly unusual. I haven’t seen anything this far out of line,” Sancton, a professor at the University of Western Ontario said. While the population of the wards does not have to be equal, Sancton said the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) has used the benchmark of within 25 per cent in their past decisions. “It’s my view this would be an easy appeal to win at the OMB if someone took it up,” he said.

Williams, from the University of Waterloo, is quite familiar with the town’s wards. He was hired and gave recommendations at the town’s last ward boundary review in 2009 that went largely ignored. “It’s highly unusual that this has been allowed to continue,” he said. “It’s simply not fair.”

Ward 6 Coun. Rob Hargrave remembers 2009. He said it seemed like they were actually going to make some changes, but in the end, a couple of councillors got together so they could keep their own fiefdoms. “It’s unfortunate,” he said.

One of the those councillors was former Ward 4 councillor Suzanne Hilton. She said she didn’t like the new ward boundaries proposed by Williams at the time because it cut the rural people out of her ward. “I felt that was a valuable connection,” she said.

Williams said that kind of thinking is what leaves Stouffville in the situation it is now. “The ward system is completely outmoded and inappropriate for how the community has changed,” he said.

While Mayor Justin Altmann acknowledged the uneven distribution of the wards as an issue, he said he would like to see fewer councillors. “I think we have too many councillors,” he said. Altmann suggested trimming the number of councillors from six to four and moving from a ward system to an at-large system. Hargrave echoed Altmann’s suggestion.

The problem with the current system is the Municipal Act leaves council in charge of ward boundaries, Williams said. If you look at the federal or provincial levels, riding boundaries are looked at every 10 years by an independent body, he added.

“It’s glaringly obvious the province has no interest in getting involved,” he said.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs said, “Ward boundary matters are best addressed at the local level. Municipalities have the authority to make alterations to their ward boundaries under the Municipal Act.”

The OMB is responsible for hearing appeals to municipal bylaws regarding ward boundary changes, and can also receive petitions from a municipality’s electors.