THUNDER BAY – Ensuring fair and equitable representation to voters across the city “must be achieved and is the paramount goal” of the city’s Council Composition Review, according to the terms of reference ratified by council in June 2023.
In one of the two options under consideration by the Council Composition Review committee, the number of wards would be reduced to 4. The first priority listed in the city staff's recommendation for the new ward boundaries was to reach comparable population numbers in each ward, in order to give more equal weight to every vote.
Although the proposed 4-ward system does get significantly closer to population parity than the current system, there is a difference of more than 10 thousand people between the most and least populous wards, according to the staff recommendation.
“I wouldn’t call that similar populations,” said Robert Williams, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and a consultant who has worked with municipalities across the province on similar reviews.
If giving voice to diverse groups is the goal, Williams suggests the public consider whether the boundaries are drawn “around communities of interest and not through them.”
“I think it comes back to what I said earlier about the rural area. Are those pockets, whatever they might be, a demographic or otherwise cultural, are they clustered in identifiable areas? And, how do they fit into these wards?” Williams asks.
“Do the lines cut through some of those areas and split them up?”
In an at-large system, the second option under consideration, each vote does carry the same weight, but Williams suggests that that doesn’t necessarily translate to better representation.
It would in theory be possible for every councillor elected in an at-large system to live in the same part of the city, he said. “Usually they're more affluent. They're usually more engaged. They're usually better organized. A candidate who appeals to that area in particular is probably going to get elected,” Williams said.
There is no one right answer, Williams said. There are several principles involved in restructuring a municipal council and “they are not always going to be met successfully in every scenario.”
As a consultant, Williams said he would present a range of options optimizing different principals and leave council to chose which to prioritize.
“If indeed councils adopts a proposal, either one – either to abolish wards or to change them to what's here – that by-law is open to appeal.
“As few as one person could appeal that to the OLT, the Land Tribunal. And the city would have to be able to explain why it picked what it did.”
Ultimately, Williams said “there's more than one way to do this in a given community. And this is a good complex community.”
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 five in a series examining the potential impacts of those changes. Read part one, part two, part three and part four.
