The people have spoken and Thunder Bay – along with all the
other municipalities in Ontario – has a new mayor and council. Congratulations to the incoming Mayor and City
Council members as well as to all the candidates who put their names forward
and ran. Running for office and serving as the public in an elected role is a challenging and important task and vital to the functioning of our system of government.
It was certainly an interesting
evening last night not the least because of the exasperating nature of the
election results. Despite our “state of
the art” modern election system in Thunder Bay that combines online, phone, in-person,
and drive through voting and with over one fifth of eligible ballots cast in
advance, it took several hours before any meaningful results were
delivered. One hopes that this process
will be thoroughly reviewed because in order for the public to have confidence
in their voting system, the smooth running and operation of the system sends an
important signal and that was certainly lacking last evening.
As for the results, Figure 1 presents the winners as well as
their percent share of votes cast. With
about 35,421 votes cast (at my last tally) Ken Boshcoff emerged the winner as
Mayor with 38.2 percent of the ballots cast with Gary Mack in second place with
34.3 percent of the ballots cast. The At-Large
winners (with over 140,000 votes given every elector can vote for up to 5) were
Mark Bentz (11%), Shelby Ch’ng (9.4%), Trevor Giertuga (8.6%), Rajni Agarwal
(7.6%) and Kasey Etreni (7.2%). In terms
of the Ward races, Michael Zussino took Red River with 33.4% of the vote,
Albert Aiello retook McIntyre with 63.3% of the vote, Kristen Oliver held
Westfort with 45.9% of the vote, Dominic Pasqualino won in Northwood with 41.6%
of the vote, Brian Hamilton kept McKellar at 53.5% of the vote, Andrew Foulds
kept Current River with 74.9% (a ringing endorsement one might add) and Greg Johnsen won Neebing with 36.1 percent of
the vote.
Was this a change council? Not really. If you want to see the results of a "change" election you should check out Hamilton's results where three incumbents actually lost their seats and there are ten new faces on their City Council which consists of a Mayor and 15 ward councillors. In Thunder Bay with a council of twelve plus a mayor, seven of the elected councilors are incumbents
(Bentz, Ch-ng, Giertuga, Aiello, Oliver, Hamilton and Foulds). If one counts Peng You as an incumbent then there was an incumbent not returned. As for the Mayor, well he has been Mayor
before and a familiar face and is effectively an honorary incumbent making for
eight incumbents on council. Are the
other five a vote for change? At best managed
change given that they probably only won because a number of incumbents chose not to
run thereby making room for a few new faces.
Name recognition is important in politics and in Thunder Bay given its
closeted nature even more so, which is why constant calls for people to run
because there is a “candidate shortage” was so amusing to observe this
summer. Ward contests with more than
three candidates essentially guarantee a win for incumbents and At-Large slates
with upwards of 25 to 30 candidates for five positions pretty much do the same for those
races. Sometimes, quality of candidate
should be a more important consideration than quantity.
Will it be smooth sailing for this council? There are a lot of issues coming down the
pipeline – not least of which will be policing - and one expects the honeymoon
period will be short-lived especially with an anticipated major hike in property
taxes being rumoured. The other interesting issue is
whether or not we should reform City Council and go to a fully At-Large system
of between 8 and 12 councillors plus a mayor.
I would say the answer is a definite no.
If one looks at the results in
Figure 1, the five At-Large winners have each won with barely 10 percent of the
votes cast in their favour in the At-Large competition. They can claim to “represent” the
interests of the entire city, but it remains that they do not have an overwhelming
mandate aside from the fact they got the biggest numbers in a ranking. The mayor’s position did somewhat better at
nearly 40 percent. It is the wards where
the strongest mandates have emerged. In three
of the seven wards, the winners actually got a majority of the votes case,
while in an additional two they were over 40 percent. I would say there if you truly wanted
democracy, there is probably a better case for an all-ward system than a fully At-Large
system.
One other point. Take
a look at figures 2 and 3. These are the
“projected” winners based on the TBNewswatch online polls that took place the
weeks of August 20 to 27 and October 7 to 17.
They are a mix of highly accurate projections and wildly off the mark results. In the case of the mayor’s race, the McIntyre,
and Current River Wards they were consistent with the actual election results
though the percentages vary quite a bit.
For the At-Large race, they consistently showed Bentz as a winner but
there was quite a bit of variation in the others over time.
Pretty similar conclusion from the remaining ward competitions which saw
quite a few flip-flops though in the case of some wards like Westfort they
probably reflect the closer nature of the race.
In the case of McKellar or Neebing it was either a really volatile race
or well…something else perhaps given the nature of online polling.
So, to repeat, congratulations to the new mayor and
council. And of course, once again the drama begins.
