Ford gets it right to shrink Toronto City Council

The incompetence of our current city hall is reflected in the recent release of a city ward map which made some Downtown wards impossible to locate, including Ward 21. That’s what we get for having a too-big bundle of entitled seat warmers instead of active, thinking, planning city councillors.

What’s needed now is for Premier Doug Ford to go further and redress that monstrous blunder ex-Premier Mike Harris sponsored in his Amalgamation scheme.Toronto council

Let’s make local politics local once again! Reactivate the former city halls of the former Toronto burroughs and finally bring to us the “common sense” Harris claimed he was advocating in making his destructive, city-wrecking Amalgamation scheme. Read Christine Van Geyn below. She nails that destructive city-wrecker Mike Harris for his idiotic “amalgamation” of our city with the dissimilar suburbs. What a fool Harris was/is.Toronto council

Now there is a concept that when you get past a deliberative-body size of 10 members, the overall IQ of the group and its rulings drops to the level of the dumbest member. So who is the dumbest member of today’s Toronto Council? I’m voting for Giorgio Mammoliti, but there are so many prime choices for that title. Whom do you pick?

— Frank Touby

Opinion by Christine Van Geyn, Director of Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF):

Premier Doug Ford is making the right move in erasing the result of ex-Premier Mike Harris’ stupid move to smush the city and its boroughs into one monstrous and ungovernable deliberative body. It’s about time!

Along with Toronto citizens who had given up on common sense coming from city hall, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) welcomed news July 27, that Ford is reducing the size of Toronto’s city council.

At a press conference in Toronto, Mr. Ford announced that he would be making amendments to the City of Toronto Act, the Municipal Act, the Municipal Elections Act, and the Education Act. The Amendments would redraw ward boundaries in the City of Toronto to go from a planned 47 wards to 25 wards that mirror federal and provincial boundaries.

During the election, Mr. Ford told voters he would reduce the size of government, and it looks like he’s starting with Toronto politicians. Rarely are things made better by having more politicians. Adding more and more people to city council hasn’t fixed any of Toronto’s big problems, nor cut property taxes. If this legislation passes, Torontonians will only have to deal with the pork-barreling pet projects of 25 city councillors instead of 47.

The 2018 Toronto municipal elections would have been the first with 47 wards, up from 44 in 2014. The new 47 wards range in size from 28,665 people to 70,535 people. When the boundaries are changed to create 25 wards, they would be more even in population distribution, ranging from 94,579 people to 129,081 people.

The current plan for 47 wards leaves a very unbalanced distribution of population across the wards, with some wards with low population quite overrepresented on City Council. This is distorting, and bad for democracy. And the best part of this plan is that it will save taxpayers in Toronto a low estimate of $25.5 million.”

— Christine Van Geyn