Meslin does the math and discovers he agrees with Ford

If you’ve ever wondered what sort of mayor Rob Ford would be if he didn’t have an allergy to common sense and basic math, the latest blog post from Dave Meslin might surprise you.

Ford spent some time in Winnipeg this week, and one of the things he really liked about it was that “they only had sixteen councillors down there and a little, small council chamber.” This should come as no surprise, because as Meslin notes, Winnipeg is about a quarter of the size of Toronto.

In fact, if you follow Meslin’s lead and compare the number of councillors in each city to their respective populations, you’ll discover that Winnipeg actually has a proportionally larger council. It has 2.3 councillors for every 100,000 residents, compared to Toronto’s 1.7 councillors.

“Ford talks a lot about ‘customer service’,” Meslin writes, “and how important it is for politicians to be available and accessible to their constituents.” If Ford wants to follow Winnipeg’s example, then the solution isn’t to shrink Toronto’s City Council, but to expand it. In fact, we’d have to elect another sixteen councillors in order to match Winnipeg’s ratio of representation.

“While I don’t tend to agree with the mayor on many policy issues,” Meslin writes, “I’m with him 100% on this one. Toronto’s residents are under-represented and that has a terrible impact on customer service.  Let’s at least try and catch up to Winnipeg’s standards.”

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