Thorold Mayor Ted Luciani.
JAMES CULIC/Niagara This Week
NIAGARA ? Ripping Thorold out of the federal Welland riding and lumping it in with west Niagara municipalities makes no sense, an Ontario Electoral Boundaries Commission public meeting was told on Monday.
The commission held the meeting on proposed changes to Niagara?s federal ridings, and mayors, MPs and MPPs from across the Niagara Region showed up to voice their opposition to the proposed changes.
The commission is proposing changing the region?s four ridings so populations in the ridings are more closely matched. Typically, once changes are made in federal ridings the provincial ridings are altered to mirror those changes.
Justice George Valin, overseeing the public meeting at Niagara Falls city hall, said redrawing the boundaries is an effort to get all four of Niagara?s ridings to have roughly the same population.
?However, our proposal is simply what it claims to be: a proposal. It is not etched in stone and we have six weeks of hearings for public input,? said Valin.
?Any change to one boundary has an inherent effect on at least one surround area,? he added. ?Some will naturally be the subject of criticism and objection.?
There was no shortage of objection, with more than a dozen politicians, business owners and even a couple citizens speaking out against changing the borders for electoral ridings.
The strongest opposition came from the proposed changes affecting Fort Erie and Thorold. The new boundaries would see Fort Erie moved out of Niagara Falls riding and into the Welland riding, while Thorold would be moved out of the Welland riding, and into the new Niagara West riding with Pelham, Lincoln, West Lincoln, and Grimsby.
Mayors Doug Martin of Fort Erie and Ted Luciani of Thorold were both at the meeting, and both declared the changes as ?not making sense,? arguing their respective towns won?t be a good fit in their new homes.
For Thorold, the concern is being placed in a riding with four other municipalities whose demographics and concerns are too different from its own.
?The agricultural interests of Pelham, Grimsby and West Lincoln will dominate the entire riding, and Thorold will be left out in the cold,? said Tim Geddes chair of the new Greater Thorold Business Council. He argued in favour of keeping Thorold in the Welland riding, and having Wainfleet move to Niagara West, since it shares the same agricultural interests.
The problem with that plan, according to the commission, is it would create a geographically unwieldy riding, so big it would occupy twice as much area as every other riding in the Niagara Region combined.
Welland riding MPP Cindy Forster also argued for keeping Thorold where it is now, and said moving the city out her riding would ?run contrary to the shared common identities that make up the riding.?
Fort Erie on the other hand, is just sick of being bounced around from riding to riding.
In his 30 years as a politician in Fort Erie, Martin said he has seen his town switch ridings five different times.
?The town of Fort Erie has been one of the orphans during all this boundary changing,? Martin said. ?We keep getting uprooted just to make the numbers fit,? he said, adding it has created a great deal of voter confusion over the years.
?We?ve been shifted so many times now, a lot of times people don?t even know who they?re voting for. They aren?t sure who?s their MPP or even what the name of the riding is,? said Martin.
Doug Martin
Martin said he thinks the reason Fort Erie is moving to Welland riding is simply to balance the numbers after removing Thorold from that riding, and he said he believes in another 10 years they might end up getting the boot again.
?If you look at where all the growth projections are for the region, it?s mostly in that Niagara West riding as more people continue to expand out from GTA down the horseshoe. In another 10 years the population there will have grown, and we?ll be right back here again getting moved to some other riding to balance the numbers,? said Martin.
Niagara Falls riding MPP Kim Craitor also argued for keeping his riding the way it is. He said the shared interests such as border crossings, Niagara Parks land and the QEW connecting the two makes them an obvious choice to stay together.
?I know we?re talking about the numbers, but I?m talking about the people,? said Craitor. ?It isn?t always about the numbers; sometimes it?s about how we can best serve our communities, and in my opinion, keeping them together will be the most successful course of action.?
While most speakers argued for keeping the status quo, others like Welland riding MP Malcolm Allen had more radical ideas for solving the region?s numbers problem.
?St. Catharines needs to be divided up no matter what because it?s so big,? said Allen. ?We should take St. Catharines and divide it up into three different areas, have parts of it in all the other ridings.?
Malcolm Allen
Allen?s proposal was to have Niagara Falls and Fort Erie as one riding, then divide St. Catharines along Queenston Street and have the north section in a riding with Niagara-on-the-Lake, with the western portion of the city in the Niagara West riding, while the southern part of the city would join the Welland riding.
According to Allen, with this configuration, all of Niagara?s riding would end up with populations between the federally recommended range of 78,000 to 132,000 people.
Justice Valin said a decision on the riding changes must be completed ?sooner than later? and should be finalized within the next couple weeks.
(For more news, sports and entertainment from Niagara This Week, please visit www.niagarathisweek.com)
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