Municipalities should be able to decide their own electoral futures

“This changes everything.”

How many times has that been said or written during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Reality check: Nothing changes everything. Everything is too complicated for that. Premier Doug Ford is no exception. His relatively warm, fuzzy and responsible pandemic response doesn’t signal a new Doug Ford. Hence last week’s imperial decision to take away the right of Ontario municipalities to decide how they elect local politicians. No warning, no arguments.

Municipal voting structure was never been top-ofmind. The battle to replace traditional first-past-thepost systems with proportional voting has mostly been fought at the provincial level. However, the right of grown-up municipalities to make more of their own decisions, free from overbearing parent figures at Queen’s Park, is an ongoing and important issue.

Progress has been made. Not so long ago a cabinet minister had to approve every zoning change in every one of 400-plus municipalities. Now, a Peterborough business owner who jumps through all the hoops and is finally ready to open in a former home might have to wait six weeks for the minister of municipal affairs to sign off.

The most recent Liberal government edged municipal emancipation further along by giving cities the right to use ranked balloting in elections. Voters could list all candidates by order of preference. Ballots would be counted and the lowest ranked candidate dropped, with their votes going to their second choice, and so on. In a Peterborough ward election, that would eventually reduce the field to three candidates and the two with the most votes would be elected.

London was the only Ontario city to switch to a ranked system in the 2018 elections. Most considered the option and decided to wait and see. But whether cities immediately used their new freedom isn’t the point. Neither is Ford’s rationale for taking it away, which is so weak it’s not worth discussing. Neither is the question of whether ranked voting is better or fairer.

The Constitution gives provinces authority over municipalities, and Ontario legislation defines municipalities, somewhat creepily, as “creatures of the province.” But cities are not children. They have grown up since 1867 and are perfectly capable of deciding big questions on their own, including how to vote for their mayors and councillors.

Would ranked balloting make for better outcomes? There are strong arguments for the change. Incumbents are hard to knock off, in part because name recognition goes a long way. Combine that with multiple candidates and the result can be longserving councillors repeatedly elected by a small percentage of voters. There is also a concern that newcomers, including minority candidates, fight an uphill battle.

In Peterborough that has not generally been the case.

The 2018 election is representative. Mayor Diane Therrien, a young woman, defeated a two-term incumbent. Three first-time councillors were elected, two of them Black. There was an average of five candidates per ward race and the winners, on average, were named on 57 per cent of ballots.

A review of voting totals suggests ranked balloting might have changed the outcome in one or two of the five wards, but equally might not have. But again, that’s not the point. Cities were given the right to set their own rules and the premier took it away on a whim. He is still too much the thoughtless, despotic leader we saw pre-pandemic.