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THUNDER BAY – The city is asking residents to weigh in on two proposals, either of which would mean a drastic change in how council is elected.
With phase two of the city's council composition survey now online, the council composition review committee is asking the public to help narrow their recommendations even further.
The survey will ask the public to consider two options: moving to an at-large council system, or radically redrawing ward boundaries.
“We wanted to give the community a couple of options to look at,” Vice-Chair of the council composition committee Cody Fraser told TBnewswatch.
“This survey asks for preferences and it gives a little bit of information about what [the options] would look like. It also gives a little bit more information about what the norms are in Ontario so that people understand why we came to the conclusions we did with these two options.”
The survey will gauge whether the public would rather do away with the current hybrid (ward and at-large) system the city has known since the amalgamation of Port Arthur and Fort William, transitioning into a fully at-large electoral system; or keep a hybrid system but reduce the number of wards to four, each with two councillors, with only two at-large councillors.
Both options would see council reduced by two to 10 councillors and a mayor
“It's super important to understand that we, as a committee, understand that not everyone's going to have the exact same opinions, whether it be in favour of the at-large or in favour of the of the ward system,” Fraser said.
“We want to hear some specific feedback on why they think it would be good to have all at-large or all in the ward system. We not only want to know what people want, we want to know why they want it or why they don't want it.”
TBnewswatch spoke with Dr. Robert Williams, a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and a consultant on municipal electoral systems, about Thunder Bay’s council composition review to gain a little more insight into the process the city is asking residents to engage with.
After considering phase one of the committee's review, he said, “the current electoral arrangement in Thunder Bay is what I would describe as unconventional.”
Williams explained there are “very few examples in Ontario” that have a mixed hybrid system of at-large and ward councillors.
“It is permitted under legislation, but it is not used in the way that it applies in Thunder Bay. And in very many other cases, I can only think of one other one that comes to my mind that runs with this kind of a system,” Williams said.
He pointed out that Thunder Bay's population compared to much larger urban populations in southern Ontario doesn’t warrant the current Thunder Bay electoral system.
Therefore, he notes the city is doing the right thing in asking the public if they believe the city’s current system still works.
“I find that many communities have an election system that was not imposed, it was designed at a particular time in the larger community's history,” Williams said.
“And of course, with the very important amalgamation that took place, especially with the Fort William and Port Arthur, there was an arrangement that was made to try to deal with that. Is that still an important theme within the community that needs to be represented in the way councillors are elected?”
Through the phase one of its public consultation, the committee found it was time for a change.
According to the phase one review, 56.9% of survey respondents saw value in a ward system while 62.1% saw value in an at-large system.
“It's quite interesting to see where we get the positive feedback and the negative feedback. But on top of it, all the diversity of voices that we were able to obtain over the whole entire process has been, I think, quite beneficial and again quite representative of the options that we chose to bring forward,” Fraser said.
Being an expert and a consultant for municipalities looking to fundamentally change their electoral process, Williams finds the committees' internal review process “unusual.”
The committee is comprised of six citizens representing the community, including Chair Rebecca Johnson, Vice-Chair Cody Fraser, Riley Burton, Wayne Bahlieda, Heather McLeod and Carlos Santander-Maturana. Johnson and Fraser, are former city councillors.
“Some communities think that's the right way to go that they can use local expertise to do this,” said Williams. "It's not an external review. In other words, everybody's got a stake in the outcome in one way or another."
“And that means they're very much in touch with the community, but my guess is none of them have ever done this before including staff, maybe your clerk has, maybe others, but this is a process that they're basically learning about on the fly.”
According to Fraser, the review was not entirely internal. The committee has received educational presentations from political science experts. “It was interesting because the advice or the education that we got is: it's up to you,” said Fraser.
“It's quite interesting and exciting to be a part of this process because it is up to us as residents to determine how we're represented.”
The city's council composition survey can be found online and paper surveys will be available at City Hall and at Thunder Bay Public Library branches. A variety of in-person public feedback sessions are taking place throughout October and November.
The proposals being considered by Thunder Bay's Council Composition Committee would radically change city council and municipal elections, if passed by council. This story is part two in a series examining the potential impacts of those changes. Read part two here.
