ISSUE 14 - Caledon council chaos?
Welcome to another issue of #munipoli Matters, where we discuss all about municipal elections and the often unreported area of local government across Canada and beyond.
For this week, I’m going to heavily focus on the Town of Caledon, a place that is rarely discussed except when it came to some shadiness that happened to a former mayor years ago that may have included mafia types.
But the story today isn’t that dangerous…though no less contentious in my view.
In December 2020, Peel Regional Council approved a motion to reallocate existing council seats from Caledon and to give them to the City of Brampton. Currently, the region consists of Brampton and Mississauga, two fast growing cities.
For years, there was a debate back and forth that Caledon was over represented while a rapidly growing city like Brampton was underrepresented. It’s a town of around 70,000 people with five regional councillors while Brampton, with over 600,000 people and climbing, had seven.
Previous proposals centred around increasing Brampton’s representation (the city said they should have four additional seats to a total of 11), which Mississauga was dead set against (they did NOT want additional seats, instead pushing for taking some from Caledon for Brampton). That is what ended up happening.
Caledon’s representation in the region will now drop from five to three councillors, including the mayor, while Brampton’s representation will increase from seven to nine.
Based on this development, the town conducted a ward boundary review which concluded in June 2021. This is the current ward map for Caledon:
After the boundary review, the following ward map will be used for the 2022 elections:
The changes between both maps are:
Ward 2 loses some territory due to anticipated population growth in the Mayfield West community bordering Brampton.
Ward 3 expands its boundaries beyond Caledon East down to the border with Brampton, adding smaller villages.
The town’s largest community, Bolton, will be split between Ward 5 and newly created Ward 6.
Each ward will be represented by one local councillor. In Peel Region, Caledon will have the mayor and two regional councillors, one representing Wards 1, 2, 3 and the other representing Wards 4, 5, and 6. The size of council remains the same.
Suffice it to say, almost all of Caledon’s councillors weren’t happy. In the past, Mayor Allan Thompson would often use a tactic to stop votes from happening by having the town’s contingent walk out of meetings, thereby denying a quorum to continue the meeting.
But one Caledon regional councillor, Annette Groves from Bolton, remained in the meeting believing it was better to hash out a compromise, thereby keeping quorum which allowed the passage of the seat reallocation motion.
For Mayor Thompson, there really is no change since someone running for mayor campaigns across the entire municipality.
But those incumbents who represent the current Wards 3 and 4, as well as two regional councillors, alternate plans might be required. There are four other current regional councillors besides Thompson: Groves, Ian Sinclair, Johanna Downey and Jennifer Innis.
Here’s my personal predictions on what could, or may, happen.
In Wards 1, 2 and 3, either Sinclair or Downey would have to run against each other…or Sinclair retires, leaving a clear field for Downey. Sinclair has been on council during various terms, from 1994-97 as a local councillor and from 1997-03 before leaving for 15 years, then returning in 2018 to Regional Council.
Downey is serving only her second term on regional council, having been first elected in 2014. Her star is clearly more on the rise either as a future mayor or provincial or federal candidate in the Dufferin-Caledon riding.
Sinclair also previously ran for mayor in 2014, coming a distant second to Thompson. But Thompson is relatively popular, and they both agreed on not reducing Caledon’s representation in the region, so it’s hard to find a point of contention between the two.
Wards 4, 5 and 6 may be one race to watch. Councillor Innes was one of the more vocal opponents of the council cuts, lambasting her Brampton and Mississauga colleagues last year for the “undemocratic” actions they were taking, decrying how it shouldn’t have been done during a pandemic.
With the current Ward 4 being put together with Wards 5 and 6, Innes would likely be facing a challenge in her reelection from her Bolton colleague Groves, whose actions allowed the seat allocation to occur. No doubt there would be some fireworks if that happens.
With the additional Ward 6, representing parts of Bolton, there is room for a new local town councillor. I have witnessed strong local activism in the town, so there has to be at least one name from that ilk looking to make a run to get on council.
No matter what happens, there is sure to be some local fireworks in the 2022 municipal elections for the Town of Caledon.
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