A decision on changes to Innisfil’s ward boundaries won’t be made until early next year.
Councillors deferred a decision on a recommendation from the ward boundary review ad hoc committee to realign the seven wards. The item will return to council at a meeting on Feb. 12.
Coun. Fred Drodge called for the deferral, suggesting that with budget deliberations right around the corner, council should hold off on making such a substantial change.
“It’s a pretty heavy decision to make on the future of where Innisfil goes,” he said.
Coun. Alex Waters was Drodge’s seconder and said his support of the deferral had less to do with the recommended option — which he doesn’t necessarily disagree with — but more with the process, as he doesn’t feel council should be asked to make such a decision having just received the recommendation.
That recommendation would see Innisfil council remain comprised of seven wards, but the ward boundaries would be shifted, making them fairer and creating more parity in terms of population, with an eye to future growth in the municipality.
“We are asking each of you to have a paradigm shift tonight in how you view the options, and the final recommendation presented,” Donna Orsatti, chair of the ad hoc committee, told councillors during her presentation on the options at a Nov. 27 meeting. “Keeping it status quo is not an option.”
Orsatti is one of four former councillors on the committee, joining Rob Nicol, Bill Van Berkel and Paul Wardlaw in its composition, along with one member of the community. They worked with Watson and Associates, hired consultants to conduct the ward boundary review, and experts in their field, who are undertaking more than a dozen such reviews across the province in advance of the 2026 municipal election.
The main impetus behind the review is the population growth in Innisfil. The current council system, comprising of a mayor, deputy mayor and seven ward councillors, dates to amalgamation in 1991 when about 22,000 people called the town home.
That number is pushing 50,000 today, nearly 35 years later. As the population has doubled, the growth has not been uniform throughout the municipality. The last 25,000 were concentrated in specific areas; the next 25,000 will likely be in an even narrower envelope.
Two sets of open houses were held to invite the public into the process, with limited participation. Fewer than 200 responses were received on two surveys, which Jack Ammendolia of Watson and Associates said was a typical turnout.
The second survey, which featured the bulk of the responses, asked respondents about the five options the consultants had put together based on their initial research into the municipality.
The most popular option with the public best resembled what is currently in place today and was not moved forward by the consultants or the committee to be recommended to council. Coun. Kevin Eisses was interested in finding out just how much pull the public had in the final recommendation.
There had to be more to the decision than a “popularity contest,” council was told.
“All of the analysis is important: from research to public engagement to our professional experience and expertise,” Ammendolia said. “But ultimately, what we tend to fall back on in terms of the evaluation of both the existing ward system as well as any options is the guiding principles.”
Each of the five options was graded based on principles set out at the start of the process:
- Representation by population
- Future population trends
- Protecting communities and neighbourhoods of interest
- Respecting physical features or natural barriers as boundaries
- Ensuring effective voter representation
Each option keeps the ward system for council, which is something Mayor Lynn Dollin supports.
“It’s imperative for us because we represent so many different communities and different characteristics in these different communities,” she said. “We want to make sure that everyone feels their voices are heard across the municipality.”
The first option, which was not supported by the committee, garnered 22 per cent support from the survey. This option had a large rural ward and a ward that encompassed the entirety of the Lake Simcoe shoreline. That idea of a lakefront ward was intriguing in theory, but in practice, it seemed like a daunting task that would limit effective representation.
Option 2A was the most popular among residents, more of a tweak to the existing system. Orsatti chalked that up to people, in general, being resistant to change. If the current system was flawed, then a tweak would not be sufficient in meeting the goals of the committee.
Still, Ammendolia didn’t want to discount the residents’ role in the process.
“What I think is more important when we talk about public engagement isn’t necessarily the vote on the preferred options, but it’s the type of things that we hear: ‘You can’t do this,’ ‘It would be better this way,’” he said. “It’s that feedback that we hear from the public that allows us to make some tweaks to the options or it allows us to focus on what we think are the options that might work best.”
A combined 17 per cent voted in favour of Options 3A and 3B, which is the direction the committee would like to see council move. Option 3A was the official recommendation from the committee for the 2026 election, however, Option 3B would accommodate the growth the town is expected to see in future years while still adhering to the guiding principles in the best possible manner.
“We feel that option 3A meets all the guiding principle criteria to meet these needs with the ability to transition to option 3B, to adjust population parity with the future growth of the Orbit, when that happens,” Orsatti said.
Options 3A and 3B featured a single rural ward, which brought about questions from Eisses and Drodge.
“My concern is by relying so heavily on population as the number one guiding principle, as soon as you got there, you automatically turn a rural area into an urban area just by the numbers,” Eisses said. “How do we continue to represent the rural view through a ward system when population in number one?”
The rural ward proposed encompassed the communities of Cookstown, Churchill, Fennell’s Corners and Stroud, which would not be attuned to the needs of the rural residents in between them, Drodge said. Having large rural swaths included in other wards might be a better way to ensure rural voices are heard at the council table.
Ammendolia looked to the work his company is doing in London to help provide context for the councillors.
“If you create two rural wards, to somewhat balance the population, you have to start to bring in more and more of a subdivision or more and more of that sort of urban area,” he said.
What they heard from the public was that the older rural properties were struggling with representation as the city expanded outward and councillors were being elected out of the new subdivision. With one rural ward, there would be a rural councillor looking at issues through that lens.
“The feeling was that those two rural wards could end up getting quite diluted because it’s possible that your representation doesn’t actually come from the rural area,” Ammendolia said.
During the discussion on the deferral, Dollin urged her colleagues to talk about these changes with their constituents over the next 2.5 months so that the most informed decision on the recommendation can be made when it returns to council.
