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THUNDER BAY – The city's Council Composition Committee is looking for public input on two proposals to change Thunder Bay council and the electoral system.
One of the options would see the number of wards reduced to four and ward boundaries completely redrawn. The four new wards would each elect two councillors, eight in total. They would be joined by another two at-large councillors and a mayor.
Each of the four new wards would extend from the rural areas in the west to the waterfront in the east.
Every ward would have a similar number of people, with a similar range of income, education and employment levels, both rural and urban populations, as well as business and industry.
“The problem," said Dr. Robert Williams, a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Waterloo told Newswatch, "is that it means that any of those distinctive interests are chopped up into four parts.”
In giving councillors an equal part of the city to represent across all kinds of communities, Williams states the new boundary lines would divide some groups – such as rural voters – between wards, diluting their political influence.
“The proposed wards in effect chop up those interests into four parts and that means certain aspects of the city will have no likely voice,” Williams said.
Williams noted that those living in denser populated areas and likely those residents living along the waterfront would receive more representation than those living in sparse rural areas.
He said that those living west of the expressway draw on municipal water and sewage systems and have regular garbage collection, but have limited access to transit services.
“Those non-urban areas, who see the city in a different way, they probably don't get many of those same services that the other part would. But if you're throwing them all in the same ward you're dealing with quite different relationships to the city,” Willams said.
“That's one of the dilemmas of a system of this kind. Looking at the map, there's a quite a clear difference between those on the west of the expressway and those on the east side. I tend to want to think about those folks who live in the west.”
“They probably see themselves as only partial citizens. They don't get much out of the city, if I can put it that way, yet they're now assumed to be part of ward that includes the people who do.”
“A lot of municipalities are very keen to have these mixed areas on the assumption that does mean that every councillor has a little bit of each in the ward,” Williams explains.
“A ward that is largely, let's say lakefront, would be a more coherent one than one that's partly lake, partly middle, partly inland. It's chopping up representation.”
“The question is: should you try to create a ward that gives that very distinctive part of the municipality its own voice?”
“It may not matter on a lot of things but on others it would because the people who live there have very different connections and different relationships to the city.”
According to Williams, a fully at-large system has its drawbacks come election time.
Those running at-large could live in any part of the city, which means that all candidates could live in the same neighbourhood or be a part of the same organization.
The size and diversity of the proposed ward means "that's a risk both in the at-large and these four proposed wards,” said Williams.
“A group could become very significant in each one of them and have a stranglehold on council.”
He spoke about a file he worked on in the Muskoka region where if the boundaries weren’t drawn in a specific way “the Cottagers Association, which tends to be people who are seasonal, could come in and sweep the whole council.”
“If you had a group that had a particular viewpoint, they could perhaps be very influential. They could elect virtually everybody on council if they got organized the right way to capture the main bulk of the population,” Williams said.
“They could get elected by campaigning down around the university win the whole city because those are the people who vote and if they can appeal to them, they don't need to know anything about Neebing,” said Williams.
The city's council composition survey can be found online and paper surveys are 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 three in a series examining the potential impacts of those changes. Read part one and part two.
