Regional politicians don’t expect drastic reduction in council size under Ford government review

Thestar.com
Jan 16, 2019
David Rider

Region, city and town councils under Premier Doug Ford’s microscope will end up with fewer members, observers expect, but nothing like the dramatic reduction imposed on Toronto.

“It’s quite unfair that the province is now saying they’ll consult all the communities impacted -- I don’t think anyone in Toronto will say we were consulted when they slashed our council almost in half,” said downtown Toronto Councillor Mike Layton on Wednesday.

Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti (foreground) said the province's review would be "a waste of time" if the main goal of it is to reduce the number of the politicians.

“I hope they don’t do the same to the other municipalities as they did to us and eliminate what would be thousands of city councillors across the province. I hope they treat those municipalities and residents with a bit more respect, because they essentially spat in our face.”

Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark announced Tuesday the governance review of 82 municipalities. The province says its review is intended to make better use of tax dollars and make it easier to for residents and businesses to access important municipal services.

Two respected experts, former Waterloo Region chair Ken Seiling and Michael Fenn, a former deputy minister and Hamilton-Wentworth chief administrator, will make recommendations. Ford and his cabinet will decide on changes that could include separations and amalgamations.

When the Ford government unilaterally cut, in midelection, the number of Toronto councillors from a planned 47 to 25, it increased the average number of residents per councillor to about 110,000.

If the same ratio was imposed across the province, many communities would have one or less councillor. Many of the smaller governments now under review have, between local and regional councillors, fewer than 3,000 residents per politician. One, Georgian Bay, has only 417.

“I fully expect the number of politicians to go down, but if that is the showpiece of this exercise, it’s a waste of time,” said Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti.

“I hope the goals of this exercise is to save taxpayers money and to be more efficient,” he said. “Whatever the recommendation is, after I think every jurisdiction on their website should have a dashboard that says here are the targeted savings, here’s where we are, here are the number of employees we had collectively, here’s the population, and here’s the number of politicians.”

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said council size in his community, with six regional and four ward councillors for a booming city of about 600,000 residents, is “not really an issue.”

“I think with Toronto the government’s logic at the time was that 40-plus members was unwieldy but I don’t think that’s germane,” to Brampton, said Brown, a former Progressive Conservative leader who is cautiously optimistic the review will heed advice from him and other leaders.

“I don’t think there is a real (problem) with the size of our council.”

Layton, asked how he is coping with an almost doubling in the number of his constituents since the October election, groaned.

“I have over 100 development applications in Ward 11. That’s an enormous amount of time. I signed up for that job, but that takes time away from work on legislative committees,” he said.

“We increased our staff but there are twice as many development files, twice as many park issues to work out, twice as many committees to sit on ...

“One day next week I’m scheduled to be in the civic appointments committee interviewing people, also at the board of health -- a pretty important committee -- and at the first meeting of the preservation board for hearings. I can’t be in three places at once.”

Councillor Johanna Downey, who sits on both the Peel regional and local Caledon councils, acknowledged rumours are flying of potential changes including Caledon and Brampton being merged while Mississauga, Canada’s sixth largest city, is allowed to escape the regional fold.

Regional governments were set up to pool resources and share expenses and find efficiencies for lower-tier municipalities, she says. “To go against it and say we can find a better way -- I think you’d be hard pressed to find those efficiencies,” she said.

Downey is keeping an open mind but warns about making workload assumptions based on the fact she represents about 15,000 residents. Caledon has a big land mass with issues and boards involving provincially protected lands and other rural concerns, plus she has regional issues.

“I may have a smaller population but my workload’s actually higher (than some urban councillors) because I’m representing at all those tables,” she said. “In the last term of council I sat on 22 boards and committees.”

Enid Slack, an internationally known municipal finance expert at U of T, declined to weigh in on council sizes but said the Ontario government is right to review governments untouched in decades.

“The populations have changed, the demographics have changed, the economies have changed, where people live and work have changed, so I think it’s time to ask whether the governance structures are still working as well as they should be,” she said.