Comment 89 – comments and feedback

Kurt Vermont, President, Scarborough North Provincial Liberal Association

To: The Honourable Justice Lynne C. Leitch and Commission Members:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment. My name is Kurt Vermont. I am the President of the Scarborough North Provincial Liberal Association, as well as part owner of my childhood home within the riding, a property which has been in my family for over 30 years.

Our association is composed of thoughtful, diverse, progressive-leaning volunteers from all walks of life--students, professionals, parents, seniors--all with the same mindset of advocating for a better quality of life through policy at the provincial level. It is because of this lense that we possess some of the most acute understanding of the correlation between the availability of services and the quality of life in a community--especially one as geographically large and diverse as Scarborough.

I am here today on behalf of my association to express our gross dissatisfaction with your Commission's proposal to eliminate Scarborough North as a federal electoral boundary district, which we feel would inevitably lead to the riding being abolished at the provincial and municipal levels. It is particularly egregious that it is purportedly being done to enhance democracy, since abolishing Scarborough North would effectively silence the 630,000+ residents that call this riding home.

Census is not always right. This is a fact that I hate to admit as a firm believer in our institutions, but alas, it is reality. Though census counts the number of residents in Scarborough at 629,941, recent planning consultations led by the City of Toronto that included social services organizations like TAIBU Community Health Centre found that residents had been undercounted in the 50,000 to 100,00 range.

As I alluded to prior with the census not always being right, undercoverage, as is the technical term, is rather common. It is likely made worse in a pandemic, which is why even the City thinks it may have undercounted residents by a rate of 6.05 percent, which is almost double the undercoverage rate of 2016.

What contributes to this rate of undercoverage? More than half of Scarborough's population consists of new Canadians and permanent residents, many of whom do not speak English or French. As a result we may feel less comfortable, or outright fear, filling out a census?unlike other residents.

This is compounded by the fact that Scarborough has a significant population of "non-traditional" residents: people in precarious housing, refugee claimants, international students, temporary foreign workers, and undocumented immigrants, many who may be living in illegal rooming houses due to our City Council's class warfare driving by-laws. Folks like these simply are not filling out censuses either.

Why does this all matter? If we lose a seat, we lose funding for services. This is not something we can afford.

With all due respect, if any of you as commissioners were to simply take a trip during rush hour on the 131 Nugget bus through Malvern or the SRT from McCowan Station, you would see just how populated we are.

We need more transit, not less.

We need more affordable housing, not less.

We need more investments in jobs for workers and social services for youth, families and newcomers, not less.

Do not make the mistake of blindly following data, therefore confining us to less. Keep in mind that even if the conservative estimate of 50,000 uncounted residents is added to the 629,000 residents as per census, our population would be 8 percent higher and there would be no reason to remove one of our ridings. Please heed the guidance of the numerous residents participating in this process to maintain Scarborough North as a federal seat.

Sincerely,

Kurt Vermont President Scarborough North Provincial Liberal Association