Polls break down public opinion on regional governance in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon

Yorkregion.com
May 24, 2019
Graeme Frisque

Brampton council received the results of a pair of Main Street Research polls commissioned by the city at a special meeting on May 21, breaking down public opinion across Peel Region surrounding the Ford government’s ongoing review of regional governance in Ontario.

All three municipalities making up the Region of Peel -- Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon -- have now made their submissions to the province and stated their official positions.

Brampton and Caledon councils both voted in favour of keeping the current governance structure as is, while Mississauga has asked the province to dissolve the region and grant that city its independence.

Main Street found 49.5 per cent of residents across the region preferred the status quo, 29.7 per cent favoured dissolving Peel, while 20.9 per cent said they would prefer to see a centralized Peel mega city.

“We’ve done two surveys here, one of which only looked at Brampton, the other looked at Peel Region broadly,” Joseph Angolano, Vice President of Main Street Research, told council, adding both surveys included between 12-15 questions.

The first poll, which surveyed 2018 adults across the region, was conducted between April 26 and May 1 using robocalls. The second utilized live agents and surveyed 1,500 random adults living in Brampton between April 26 and May 4.

Public opinion was varied across all three municipalities and Main Street broke down the numbers for each. In Brampton, 66.4 per cent of respondents said they wanted to keep the region as is, with 25.4 per cent preferring a City of Peel and only 8.2 favouring Brampton independence.

Up in Caledon, 63.5 per cent of residents surveyed cast their support behind the current Peel Region structure, while the remainder were split between amalgamation and dissolution at 17 per cent and 19.5 per cent, respectively.

Mississauga residents, on the other hand, accounted for the majority of those wishing to see the region dissolved, with 48.3 per cent preferring that option, 34.2 per cent in favour of the status quo and 17.5 per cent opting for amalgamation into a “super city”.

“Support for leaving the government structure intact is strongest in Brampton, and also extremely strong in Caledon. It’s pretty rare for us to see support levels that high,” Angolano told council. “The one difference, of course, is Mississauga.”

Main Street also found only 49.9 per cent of the region’s residents even knew the province was conducting a review. However, according to Main Street, that's actually considered a strong result.

“It is the municipal level, sometimes it’s not always the hot, sexiest provincial or federal issue that going on. I would say awareness for this is actually very, very high,” said Angolano.

In addition, the poll found 60.1 per cent of Peel residents believed the current number of councillors sitting on Peel Region council is the ideal size.

The margin of error for the first poll is +/- 2.18 per cent at the 95 per cent confidence level. The second poll carries a margin of error of +/-2.53 per cent at a 95 per cent confidence level.