The fallout of London’s growth boom is cascading down to its election map, with changes potentially coming to all its wards to even out differences in population.
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City council is set to start discussions next week about what the city’s electoral boundaries could look like as early as the 2026 municipal election after the city has seen the population of some of its wards explode compared to others.
Reviewing the existing boundaries will help ensure the voices of Londoners are properly represented in council and address some of the imbalances created by recent population trends, deputy mayor Shawn Lewis said.
“The growth patterns have been all over the place,” said Lewis, who chairs council’s strategic priorities and policy committee.
“This isn’t a minor, you know, move a line over one block sort of thing, and two wards will balance out; it really did require a relook at the wards and what they might be in the future.”
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A good example of such imbalances is Ward 7, which with nearly 50,000 residents is the most populated ward in the city.
Represented by Coun. Corrine Rahman, the northwest ward has 22,600 more residents than Lewis’s Ward 2, which is London’s smallest in terms of population.
“When the wards are really unbalanced, population wise, it does make it more difficult for councilors in the biggest wards to really connect with their constituents in the same way that the rest of us are able to,” Lewis said.
“If a councilor is representing 20,000 more people than another councilor, are those voices really being as fairly represented as they should be?”
On the table for consideration are four map proposals, prepared by consulting firm Watson and Associates Economists Ltd., that take different approaches to solving the existing imbalances while, at the direction of council, aiming to avoid breaking up established neighborhoods.
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Though all the options keep a 14-ward electoral map, they range from plans that largely preserve the existing ward configuration to others that rejig them all in an attempt to achieve population parity among all wards.
One of the options, for example, calls for the creation of a massive Ward 14 that would include portions of the city south of Highway 401, which are today part of Wards 9 and 12 and make up most of London’s rural population.
The same proposal would also reduce the size of Ward 7 by making everything east of Wonderland Road part of a reconfigured Ward 5 that would also see its eastern edge altered.
As part of the process, a second round of public consultation will take place in the coming weeks. Final ward options will be presented to council at the end of the year and would need to be approved by Dec. 31, 2025, to take effect for the next election on Oct. 26, 2026.
Londoners can review the proposed plans and provide their feedback by visiting the city website here.
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