Toronto councillor to fight OMB decision to boost the number of wards
Councillor Justin Di Ciano filed the motion last week after the OMB ruled to increase the number of wards to 47 from 44. Di Ciano wants to see them cut to 25.

TheStar.com
Jan. 1, 2018
Samantha Beattie

A Toronto councillor is seeking leave to appeal an Ontario Municipal Board decision that clears the city to add three wards in time for the 2018 election.

Councillor Justin Di Ciano and a private citizen filed the motion Dec. 28 at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, following the OMB ruling Dec. 15 to increase the number of wards to 47 from 44.

The city’s media relations manager Wynna Brown said the solicitor’s office had received the motion and will be requesting the court dismiss it.

The motion reflects the same arguments Di Ciano’s lawyer made at the OMB hearing, mainly that there should be 25 wards based on current federal electoral districts. The 47-ward option would result in worse voter parity in the 2018 election than would 25 wards, Di Ciano’s lawyer argued.

“Our appeal has always been non-partisan, and about the OMB stepping in to protect the broader public interest in having fair elections by ensuring the constitutional rights to effective representation and voter parity,” Di Ciano said Dec. 29.

“The OMB got this decision wrong.”

Toronto launched a review of its ward boundaries in 2014, after the current 44-seat structure was challenged at the OMB. The populations of Toronto’s current wards are increasingly unbalanced with extraordinary growth seen in some pockets of the city. The goal with restructuring ward boundaries is to balance ward populations to achieve voter parity — a Supreme Court of Canada-backed principle that every residents’ vote should have equal weight.

Council originally approved 47 wards in 2016 after the option was recommended by third-party consultants. Di Ciano, along with several private citizens, then appealed the council decision to the OMB.

The new boundaries will see four wards created — three downtown and one in North York. One downtown ward will disappear and seven suburban wards will see no boundary changes. A redistribution of the wards would shake up the 2018 election campaign, adding open-seat races and pitting sitting councillors against each other.

The city projects that under the 47-ward structure, voter parity will not be achieved in 2018 or 2022, but by 2026, when the average ward population is expected to be about 61,000 people.

Di Ciano’s appeal motion argues that the lack of voter parity in 2018 is significant, with 1 million residents living in wards with populations outside the city’s target.

If the city has only 25 wards, the number of residents without voter parity would drop to 180,000 in time for the 2018 election, the appeal motion said.

At the OMB hearing, the city’s lawyer Brendan O’Callaghan said that the 25-ward option would result in only a small improvement in voter parity for a handful of wards in 2018.

Two of the three members on the OMB panel, Jan Seaborn and Hugh Wilkins, wrote in the final ruling that there was “no clear or compelling reasons to interfere with the decision of council.”

“The 47-ward structure does not achieve ‘perfect’ voter parity for each election cycle. However, none of the alternative options achieve perfect voter parity either,” the OMB decision reads. “Effective representation is the primary goal and the board finds that the 47-ward structure, reflected in the bylaws, does achieve that goal.”

One of the members, Blair Taylor, dissented, arguing the 47-ward option “will affect the Charter given fundamental right to vote (and effective representation), and unduly dilute that right to thousands of voters, not just in the 2018 election but for all the decisions of city council in the four-year term of office.”

Di Ciano said Taylor’s dissent will give more weight to his motion.

If the superior court grants leave to appeal, it would be heard by a multi-member panel. Following the ruling on Dec. 15, O’Callaghan said the OMB decision would need to be put on hold before Dec. 31 for the new ward boundaries to be blocked for the 2018 election.