Comment 195 – comments and feedback

Elizabeth Woodcock

I have been a resident of Oakville since 2002. Within this time, I spent five years working in the Oakville constituency office of an elected official. My time in a constituency office helped me understand how government and elected officials can serve their community and it also gave me deep insight into how average citizens think about the delivery of government services. Residents are frustrated when they live in a town and are directed to the office of another elected member because they live in a different electoral district. This causes frustration and friction, and no matter how helpful constituency staff are, every time a resident is redirected to another office, trust in institutions falls and results in apathy and lower citizen engagement, including voting.

In reviewing the proposal for the Oakville Lakeshore electoral district, I can see the above scenario playing out continually. The proposed electoral district will remove long-time constituents of Oakville and instead add constituents from a portion of an established community in the neighboring city of Burlington. This move does not serve any of these residents well, not to mention the extra resources it will require the elected official and their staff to scale up activities in another town in order to serve those constituents. Removing Oakville residents from an electoral district only to add residents from a neighboring city strikes me as an ineffective way to balance an electoral district. The additional costs, time, and resources to serve a small portion of another municipality seems inefficient and unnecessarily imposing on taxpayer-funded offices.

While redistribution of electoral districts is an ongoing and necessary exercise, I can't help but wonder whether there is a better way of approaching the task of strict adherence to a mathematical formula and a quota limited to a 10% variance. Communities within an electoral district each contribute to the social fabric of that area, whereby relationships are built with elected officials and their offices and volunteers can be cultivated over time. Frequent shifting of electoral boundaries impairs the social connectivity built up over years, possibly decades. For densely populated areas, perhaps there would be value in adjusting the quota so that the historical patterns of electoral districts can be considered, thus ensuring communities that have been included in a specific electoral district for a number of years remain. This is incredibly important in order to maintain a strong overarching community. Population counts will rise and fall as neighborhoods are established and grow, but neighborhoods always remain an important part of the community and provide a sense of belonging within a wider context.

For the Oakville riding, I strongly oppose some suggestions put forth to divide the community vertically, thus creating an Oakville East and Oakville West distribution. I believe this would be damaging to the social cohesiveness of the wider Oakville community and would reinforce economic differences within the community. Again, the arguments for inclusivity and belonging noted above should be factored into a redistribution proposal.

It is my hope that the Commission will find a way to balance the need to create equitable representation across the province while also keeping established, engaged, and active electoral districts intact.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my views.

Thank you for your consideration.

Elizabeth Woodcock