THUNDER BAY — City council will have a major democratic decision to make over the next month.
The city's council composition committee finalized its last report and committee chair Rebecca Johnson is ready to present its final recommendations at the city council on Monday.
If the recommendation is adopted, it could change the size or council, types of councillors and how voting works in the city – in time for the next election.
Johnson told Dougall Media that their report will be presented as a first reading and council will have one month before the committee comes back to council for a final decision.
“Council will then have one month to have input from the community and discuss it in any way that they choose to. It will come back in April for approval, we hope, or at least a vote on it,” said Johnson.
If approved, city staff will have a short window to draw up a bylaw for council to ratify.
“It has to be done in time so that the changes can be made with the provincial government,” said Johnson.
The province must approve the bylaw by January 2026 to make the changes for the 2026 municipal election.
The committee’s final recommendation will be to reduce the council by two seats to 11 members: one mayor, two members elected at large, and eight elected ward members.
This would also mean Thunder Bay's seven wards will be reduced to four.
The committee recommends a new ward map cutting Thunder Bay into four equitable parts north to south. Each ward will run east to west to reflect equitable populations, income levels, and demographics. The wards will have a portion of waterfront, urban, residential, industrial, and rural segments.
Ward councillors would still have specific neighbourhoods to represent but would also see the full scope of the city, according to the report.
Therefore, if the recommendation is approved by council, the public will pick two ward candidates to represent each ward.
According to the committee report, the two elected councillors would share the workload in their ward while increasing citizens’ access to an elected official.
The new wards would be close to equal in population than with the seven wards. For example, Ward 1 will serve a population of 23,701 while Ward 2 will serve 30,247 people.
The report also stated Ward 1 has 10,621 households. An estimated 1,824 homes are living below the poverty line and 934 have an income of over $200,000.
Compared to Ward 3, which has a population of 32,538, there are 14,768 households with an estimated 3,337 homes living in poverty and 991 homes with an income over $200,000.
The report addresses feedback from current and former councillors who expressed concern about the workload issues. The committee determined that the city should review current practices including providing additional staff support, decreasing committee representation, and creating opportunities to leverage technology to respond to resident concerns.
The report also stated that if council doesn’t approve the committee’s recommendation, the Committee sees value in reviewing ward boundaries as a separate exercise.
Council will also hear from residents Shane Judge and Cory Bagdon who’ve requested deputations to speak to the committee’s report.
Judge has been a recurring voice at committee meetings and public consultations. Last November, he proposed the committee do away with the 4-ward hybrid model and opt for an at large model.
Bagdon was another familiar voice during committee meetings. He suggested the review committee add an all-ward system to their recommendation. He proposed a boundary redistribution of nine smaller wards with nearly equal populations.
