Comment 25 – comments and feedback

Al Cunningham

Good morning, my name is Al Cunningham and I live in the current Electoral District of Kitchener South-Hespeler. I am writing today to express my concerns over the proposed boundary changes that will affect our riding.

Our riding was created in 2014 which is less than 10 years ago. We are still working on establishing our identity. We have been through3 elections as a riding and are getting comfortable with things as they are. Such a drastic change is not necessary to meet the commission's own population target. At a population of 119,851, KSH is is well within the commission's population target of 116,590 +/- 10%.

There is no shared history between Kitchener South and North Dumfries and their interests do not align. Kitchener South and Hespeler are both suburban ridings while North Dumfries is rural. As the interests of these two areas are so different, effective representation is going to be far more difficult than it currently is.

Hespeler is a unique community, with an extremely strong sense of identity and pride. Hespeler has a very strong sense of being separate from Cambridge. It does not identify as simply "part of Cambridge."

If one of the commission's stated goals is to keep communities together then it makes absolutely no sense to split Hespeler. This is a whole community with families and businesses on both sides of the river acting together in support of each other.

The proposed change would eliminate the name 'Hespeler' from any riding. This would clearly be detrimental to Hespeler's identity and would effectively eliminate it.

Given the above points, I would urge the Commission to reconsider this proposal and leave things as they are with regard to Kitchener south-Hespeler.

Regards,

Al Cunningham