Trustee Electoral Zone Boundary Review

The OCDSB has 12 elected trustees and each trustee represents one electoral zone. These zones must be based on the City’s ward boundaries. 

The City of Ottawa (the City) recently completed a comprehensive review of its ward boundary configuration and has adopted a new ward structure that will be used for the next three municipal elections. The OCDSB must adjust its trustee zone boundaries to align with the City’s 24 new wards.

Electoral zones can be comprised of one or more municipal wards, but the combined wards must adjoin. Municipal wards cannot be divided, they must be wholly included inside an electoral zone. 

School attendance boundaries are different from electoral zone boundaries. School attendance boundaries define the catchment area for students who are eligible to attend the school. A review of electoral zone boundaries does not impact on the school attendance boundary - where students go to school is not affected by electoral zone boundary changes. 

Currently, the OCDSB electoral zones have some large differences in electoral population and there are some geographic configurations which could be better aligned. These are issues that may be remedied through this review.

The OCDSB has some flexibility in determining its zone boundaries in three areas: the weight it gives to elector parity; the capacity to represent (workload); and, important aspects of the education system, such as the number of schools and communities of interest. 

Another element that must be considered with this work is longevity. The City anticipates the revised ward structure will be used for at least three municipal elections (2022, 2026 and 2030) and, perhaps, a fourth in 2034. The Board should also plan for the long term use of any revised model.

Staff has developed five preliminary electoral zone models for review. These can be described as follows:

Share your feedback

We want to hear your feedback on these preliminary models. This feedback will be used to further inform the development of formal options which will be presented for consultation in the fall of 2021.

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