One of the lingering questions about the next Ontario election was answered on Thursday. Premier Doug Ford confirmed that his government won’t introduce legislation to harmonize Ontario’s provincial election boundaries with the new map adopted by the federal Parliament last year. That would seem to confirm that the next election — likely in spring 2025, a year earlier than required by law — will be held under the same riding map that the 2018 and 2022 elections were.
So why does this matter?
The importance of “one person, one vote”
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees citizens the right to vote in federal and provincial elections. The Supreme Court of Canada, in 1991, said in a reference decision that this right included some measure of parity between ridings. However, that decision gave provinces a great deal of flexibility: in the majority opinion, then-Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote that voting rights under the Charter should be read to include not just equality among citizens but also effective representation for distinct communities, whether linguistic or geographic. So a riding map that allocates more seats than is strictly mathematically equal to some areas may still comply with the Charter. Nevertheless, both the majority and dissenting opinions in that decision acknowledged that the principle of “one person, one vote” should be a guiding star for legislatures.
Ontario is growing — but not everywhere
While the provincial population is growing — and, indeed, growing rapidly — not everywhere is growing at the same rate. The GTA and, in particular, its fast-growing suburbs have added substantial numbers of new people, while other parts of the province have grown barely at all. According to Statistics Canada, Ontario grew by 5.8 per cent overall between 2016 and 2021, but that figure includes places as different as Milton (which grew by an eye-watering 20.7 per cent) and Sault Ste. Marie, which shrank by 1.8 per cent. This isn’t unusual: Riding maps always need to be adjusted to incorporate divergent demographics. If they aren’t, the population of different ridings will start to diverge in ways that dilute the weight of voters in more populous ridings.
Okay, but why do federal ridings matter in provincial politics?
The Constitution requires that the ridings of the federal House of Commons be adjusted every decade. Current federal law creates independent, non-partisan commissions for each province charged with adjusting the riding map to incorporate the latest population numbers from the census, and the most recent changes were finalized in 2023. As far as the Ontario Legislative Assembly is concerned, there’s no rule requiring Ontario to adopt federal riding boundaries. It has, however, been the practice at Queen’s Park since the Mike Harris government introduced the Fewer Politicians Act in 1996. That law harmonized Ontario’s riding map with the map of federal ridings in Ontario — and shrank the number of MPPs at Queen’s Park from 130 in 1995 to 103 in the 1999 election. Subsequent Liberal governments maintained the federal riding boundaries for southern Ontario but did not mirror the changes in northern Ontario, where shrinking relative populations have meant the loss of seats federally. The most recent federal map, adopted last year, adds one riding to Ontario overall, removes a riding from the north and from Toronto, and adds three seats to Brampton, Milton, and Durham Region.
What does this mean for voters?
It depends on where you live. In many parts of the province — including even in some large cities — the relative change in population has been minor, meaning that the value of one person’s vote hasn’t changed dramatically. But, in many ridings, the population change just between the 2016 and 2021 census was substantial, leaving some voters with a larger mathematical heft than others. In Toronto, the federal boundary commission found that the least populated riding (Scarborough North) had a population of 94,717, while the most-populated (Etobicoke–Lakeshore) counted 141,751 residents. Perhaps more glaring was the difference between neighbouring ridings Brampton West and Brampton Centre: 60,000-plus. In order to iron out differences like that all over the province, the commission adjusted ridings and, in some cases, created whole new ones to achieve greater vote parity. Keeping Ontario’s 2015 ridings, however, means that the next election will still include some of those large disparities.
So why is Doug Ford sticking with the status quo?
It’s true that changing the riding map isn’t the kind of thing that can be done on short notice, even if most of the hard work has already been done by the federal commission. There are real implementation issues running the gamut from how riding associations would be transitioned to the new map, to how Elections Ontario would actually administer the election with new boundaries. Ford, however, asserted without evidence on Thursday that the federal map has been “jerry rig[ged]” and reiterated his belief that “the less politicians, the better it is.” (Ford recently unveiled the largest cabinet in the province’s history, with ministers and associate ministers collecting substantial salary bonuses above and beyond those allocated to backbench MPPs.) The Ford family has some unpleasant political history with boundary changes, however: when the Harris government passed the Fewer Politicians Act in 1999, one of the Tory MPPs who lost his seat in the ensuing downsizing was the premier’s father, also named Doug Ford.
Is this legal? What about the Constitution?
Given the large disparities between Ontario ridings, it’s possible that someone could sue the government to try to force the adoption of a new riding map. A court could consider whether inaction by the legislature is harming people’s Charter rights and at least theoretically could order a remedy — either require the legislature to update its own map or adopt the federal one, for example. But that would be a lengthy court case (lengthier still with appeals), and it’s almost certain that nothing would be decided before an election next year. Speaking of appeals, if the Supreme Court were to find that Ontario’s inaction violated Section 3 of the Charter, that decision would not be subject to possible reversal using the notwithstanding clause. The calling of the election itself is entirely within Ford’s control and can’t be stopped or delayed by judicial order — which means that all of this will be a problem for the next legislature to solve, whomever Ontarians elect to fill its 124 seats.
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