Representation Review: Durham Region Council

NRU
July 22, 2015
By Leah Wong

Durham regional council is reviewing its composition to determine the fairest and most effective way to represent its residents and how population, land mass and local economies should be factored into the equation.

At its inaugural meeting July 17 the Regional Council Composition Review Committee approved its terms of reference, which will guide the review process. The committee comprises 15 members including regional chair Roger Anderson, regional councillors and representatives from local boards of trade, chambers of commerce and post-secondary institutions.

“This special committee will consider a number of possibilities for representation, [including] the optimum size of council,” Anderson told committee members. “Today, the north would say council is pretty equitable, but in the south they would say it’s not equitable.”

Council’s current composition - eight mayors, 20 regional councillors and the regional chair- was adopted in 1998. As municipalities in Durham Region have grown at different paces there is presently an imbalance in how many residents each regional councillor represents.

For example, Ajax is home to 18.4 per cent of Durham residents and presently has two regional councillors, while Brock has 1.8 per cent of residents and one regional councillor.

Similar to the last composition review, the committee will be considering more than just representation by population.

Consideration will also be given to each municipality’s geographic size, current value assessment and the number of households and electors.

“I’m pleased to see there are a number of factors in the thinking, not just rep by pop,” said Scugog regional councilor Bobbie Drew. “Each municipality has a uniqueness. In the north we have the number one economic driver in Durham, which is agriculture.”

While Scugog has only 3.4 per cent of Durham’s population, geographically it comprises 18.9 per cent of the region.

Alternatively, Oshawa has 27.2 per cent of the population but its land mass is only 5.7 per cent of the region. These are just some of the statistics the committee will be considering throughout its review.

“Where we are getting money and where are we going to spending it [should also be considered],” said Greater Oshawa Chamber of Commerce president Gary Valcour.

“The [person] with the gold rules, who is going to be paying for this government should also be factored in.”

Valcour said looking at all of these factors will only help inform the committee’s recommendations. He said while residents generally expect to have comparable services to those in neighbouring municipalities there is not an equality in costs when it comes to how much each municipality contributes to the region.

Another issue raised by committee members during the meeting was how to account for the post-secondary student population. Home to UOIT, Durham College and a Trent University campus, Oshawa has around 20,000 full-time postsecondary students. While a number of these students live at home, there is a growing demand for student accommodations and the city is encouraging new rental developments near the post-secondary campuses. (See July 8 issue of NRU.)

Ensuring students are included in the review is a concern because of a 2013 Ontario Municipal Board decision which ordered the City of Kingston to include students in its population counts for an electoral boundary review. Kingston council had approved boundaries that did not account for the student population though students who meet voter registration criteria are able to vote in municipal elections.

Council`s decision was appealed to the board.

“In Kingston they didn’t consider the student population and it was taken to the OMB,” said Oshawa regional councilor Bob Chapman. “Those types of figures have to be included when you’re looking at population and electors.”

Given the different models the committee could include in its recommendations, region staff has outlined a number of scenarios that could be used to determine council composition.

The initial options, put forward in a report from Durham CAO Garry Cubitt, either maintain the size of council or reduce it by 25 per cent. Reducing the size of council was a goal during the previous review.

Cubitt reminded committee members that these are preliminary suggestions for how it could consider changing council’s composition. The committee has until March 2016 to finalize its recommendations to regional council, with an interim report expected in November 2015.

Staff ’s initial options all include the area municipal mayors in council’s membership.

“We calculated membership with scenarios after that start point that every mayor would have seat,” said Cubitt.