Comment 194 – comments and feedback

Simon Ip

My name is Simon Ip, I am a concerned citizen heavily involved in the Scarborough North constituency as a board member for a condo in the Milliken neighbourhood, co-chair of the Toronto Police 42 Division CPLC (Community Police Liaison Committee), and the president of MTCC 886 at 330 Alton Towers Circle, and a manager at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto.

I live on Alton Towers Circle which is located in the middle of Milliken. Our neighbourhood is named after Mr. Norman Milliken, a British Loyalist and businessman who settled in the area in 1804. The Milliken neighbourhood is 218 years old. (See Wikipedia page; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milliken,_Ontario)

Not to be confused with the Milliken Mills neighbourhoods in Markham; the Milliken neighbourhood in Scarborough is bounded by Kennedy Road (west), Steeles Ave (north), Markham Road (east), and McNicoll Ave (south). The western and eastern portions of Milliken are industrial (see Google Maps). Therefore the residential area of Milliken spans between Midland Ave (west) and Middlefield Road (east); this entire area is in the Scarborough North constituency.

I have looked at the Commissioners' proposal to move the boundaries of Scarborough North in such a way that the current constituency would be divided in half at McCowan Road. Therefore it will divide in half the Milliken neighbourhood and ignore 218 years of history. No one in Milliken supports this.

I understand that the Commissioners must look at communities of interest. There is no clearer example of a community of interest than Milliken. I understand you also look at historical boundaries. If necessary, you could therefore extend the Scarborough North boundary further south to Ellesmere Road, because historically the constituencies in north Scarborough used to extend south to Ellesmere Road (see the previous boundaries of Scarborough-Agincourt and Scarborough-Rouge River).

Additionally I hope that the Commissioners will consider that Milliken has 26.6% residents who do not speak English or French compared to 4.9% for Toronto (see City of Toronto Milliken Neighbourhood Profile based on 2016 Canada Census Data). The vast majority speak Chinese (Cantonese) and this is why the population numbers are low in the Census.

I hope that the Commissioners will not divide in half our neighbourhood and its 218 year old history; I support keeping our Scarborough North constituency in place and consider that our population numbers are not fully accounted for in the Census due to language barriers.

Yours truly,

Simon Ip