Ontario Municipal Councilors Project

Women Mayors in Ontario

Recently, I've been up-dating the information on women councillors in Ontario. The following table lists the women elected Mayors in the municipal elections held in October 2022. The list is organized in order of descending population of the municipality. It notes whether the Mayor is an incumbent or newly elected, while new position indicates that the Mayor is new to the position, but was an already incumbent member of council. Of the 417 Ontario Councils which held elections, 101 are now led by women. (There maybe a few I've missed, as I have not included Reeves.) Mayor Incumbent or New Municipality Pop Acclaimed Bonnie Crombie incumbent Mississauga 717,961 Andrea Horwath new Hamilton 569,353 Marianne Meed Ward incumbent Burlington 186,948 Elizabeth Roy new position ...

The State of Gender Parity in 2019

On December 16, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Global Gender Index for 2020 based on 2019 country performance. Canada has dropped 3 places in the ranking since the last report a year ago. Since 2006 the WEF has produced annual reports on the progress made toward gender equality using benchmarks based on four thematic dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. In the latest edition of Women, Politics and Public Policy: The political struggles of Canadian women, (Newman, White and Findlay, 2020, p. 389) we had this to say of the 2017 report: According to the 2017 report, no country has fully closed its gender gap; four of the five Nordic countries, Rwanda (4th), and Nicaragua (6th) have closed more than 80 per cent of their gaps. And Canada? Canada does not crack the top ten; it ranks 16th out of 144 countries, which is 2 points lower than its first ranking in 2006. This d...

Is Low Voter Turnout Actually A Good Thing?

[It's a provocative position. I hope my answer is a bit more nuanced. Thinking with a pen, so the views are my own and likely to change as I think about it a bit more.] The big talking point regarding yesterday's municipal election in London is the free fall debacle in voter turnout. Only 25.5% of eligible voters cast a ballot, a significant plunge from the 40% turnout in 2018 (the BRT election) and from the 2014 high of 43% (the get rid of Fontana and the Fontana 8 election). This low turnout is seen as the reason for the rather surprising outcomes in some of the words, namely the defeat of three "incumbents."* Incumbents are considered safe bets because they have name recognition and represent the status quo for voters. Generally, the mass of voters in municipal election have little to guide their votes other than name recognition and a desire not to change things up. However, when that "mass" of voters decides not to show up, that generalized support fo...

Small P and Large P Politics and the F Word

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