There have been a number of words written about upcoming changes to the Municipal Act but there have not been many regarding the change that will require regional municipalities to review the composition of their councils after the 2018 election, and after every second regular election thereafter. The mandatory review after the 2018 election will provide an excellent opportunity to alter the composition of council in Niagara to one that is both more agile and more reflective of the will of the electorate.
Reviews by regional municipalities
(6) Following the regular election in 2018 and following every second regular election after that, a regional municipality shall review, for each of its lower-tier municipalities, the number of members of its council that represent the lower-tier municipality.
Regulations
(7) The Minister may make a regulation changing the composition of a council of a regional municipality if the regional municipality does not, in the period of time that starts on the day the new council is organized following a regular election referred to in subsection (6) and ends on the day two years after that day, either,
(a) pass a by-law to change, for one or more of its lower-tier municipalities, the number of the members of its council that represent the lower-tier municipality; or
(b) pass a resolution to affirm, for each of its lower-tier municipalities, the number of the members of its council that represent the lower-tier municipality.
The 12 municipalities in Niagara have widely varying populations so in order to be somewhat representative by population there are regional councillors elected from the larger municipalities: St. Catharines 6; Niagara Falls 3; Welland 2; Fort Erie 1; Grimsby 1; Lincoln 1; Port Colborne 1; Pelham 1; Thorold 1; Niagara-on-the-Lake 1. The smallest municipalities, Wainfleet and West Lincoln, send only their mayors to regional council. Even with 1/30th of the seats in council, the smallest municipality (Wainfleet) is over-represented. With a population of 6,356, residents of Wainfleet represent around 1/68th of the 431,346 residents of Niagara Region (numbers from the 2011 census). Niagara on the Lake, with 2 seats on council represents 1/15th of the voting power with 1/28th of the population (15,400) versus Fort Erie (29,960) who with the same two seats is represented just about perfectly. St. Catharines and Niagara Falls are seriously underrepresented with their six and three regional councillors. Thirty seats just doesn’t work.
The Municipal Act only specifies that a council shall consist of, at minimum, five members including the head of council. Niagara Region with a directly-elected chair will have thirty-one elected members. Any future composition starts with 13 as a minimum number because there are 12 mayors from lower-tier municipalities; it is impossible to send a fraction of a person to council; and the regional chair also will sit.
Fair representation at council is not the only thing missing in the current system. The method of electing a large number of regional councillors is seriously deficient. In 2014, 33,016 ballots were cast in the St. Catharines elections. There were 15 candidates for regional council, and voters could choose up to six to elect. The average voter chose 3.5 candidates—of a potential 198,096 votes 74,388 went to candidates who were elected, 41,994 to candidates who were not elected, and 81,714 went to no one at all. In 2010 there were 19 candidates, and voters chose on average 3.9. It is hard to make a case that there is an electoral mandate for candidates elected in 5th and 6th place. (let alone seventh—when 4th place was elevated to chair in 2014, 7th place was elevated to council).
There are consequences to sending people to council when the system that elected them is not legitimate (see Petrowski, Andrew, who came 6th in 2010 and then 5th in 2014 with the advantage of being an incumbent).
With new population results (from the 2016 census) arriving in February 2017 the numbers will be available to reapportion seats in council. There will be the option of shuffling the existing seats to better match municipal populations, the option of adding still more seats, or the option of reducing the size of council and weighting the votes of councillors to represent the populace they represent. The third option is the best one.
A smaller council with weighted voting solves several problems with the existing system. Reducing the number of councillors elected in St. Catharines and Niagara Falls will allow for better quality councillors elected from a more legitimate system. An individual councillor on a smaller council would have better access to staff to have reports prepared or questions answered, and a smaller council is more efficient at debate time.
The voting system at council is already electronic so there is no reason to limit voting to whole numbers. If a system were to be chosen where the Wainfleet mayor was given a voting weight of 1.0 it would be easy to give a weight of 5.1 to the votes of a reduced contingent of three St. Catharines councillors (plus the mayor), a weight of 4.6 to the votes of 2 Niagara Falls councillors (plus the mayor), and so on down the line.
There would continue to be lower-tier municipalities given more voice in council (changing the procedural by-law to apportion time on a weighted basis is not likely to happen) than their population should allow but that voice would not correspond with a matching vote when questions are actually called.
An unwillingness to consider weighted voting is to continue to send councillors with no legitimacy to a council where many lower-tier municipalities are greatly over-represented or greatly underrepresented. Thirty is already too large a council to be efficient, and expanding that number even further to better represent population numbers from the 2016 census would perform even less efficiently. When combined with voting data that indicates only three councillors in St. Catharines and two councillors in Niagara Falls are elected by anything that resembles a legitimate mandate the path to follow is clear: reduce the size of council and weight votes to make representation fair.