How Ford did not achieve his own self-set goals.

This will me a somewhat short post.

Doug Ford, in reducing ridings (IE Wards) from 47 to 25 in Toronto, said he was doing so for a simple reason; to get things moving in Toronto politics.

I want to present to you a map, a little projection I made of the 47 seat council, and where it could well be after this election:

Note that these are not "party" colours. Blue are those who are liable to be Ford supporters, while Red indicates supporters of John Tory, and Orange, the supporters of Jennifer Keesmaat.

These "supporter" lines are always going to be quite fuzzy and soft. Minnan-Wong, for example, is an ally of Tory, but is also an ally of Ford. Which should he be marked down as? I decided Ford.

Regardless, the jist of this map is the division between the three, and the fact that no one "side" wins the election.

On that note I want to move on to the projection using the 25 riding wards:

As you can see, many Ford allies go down to defeat against other Ford allies, as do Tory and Keesmaat allies. And again, the city is split, with no one side "winning" the election.

Reducing the number of councillors does not solve this, the one problem Ford says he wants to solve.


Lastly, I actually do want to comment on this change. I will simply say this:

This municipal election season began on May 1st, with the opening of nominations. It ends in October.

This is similar to, but not identical to, when the writs of elections are dropped. Lets compare this to the recent Provincial election, where the writs were dropped on May 9th, and the election was on June 7th.

Imagine if you will, that the Federal Government had the power to change ridings in Ontario. Now imagine it decides to do in between May 9th and June 7th.

Because municipal election periods are overly long in Ontario, we get a skewed view of time. We can see, however, that what has happened is that Ford changed the rules in the middle of what what municipally is the "writ period".


Had these changes been made on April 30th, I'd have no problem with them.

That being said, they've been made, and however unethical, Ontario has no provincial constitution prohibiting it. As such it's done, and I will be moving forward assuming a 25 member council will be elected in October.