Councillors in Toronto spent nearly 900 hours debating various motions between 2010 and 2014, more or less quadrupling the time spent on debates in a pair of other Ontario cities during the same time period.

According to an in-depth analysis by the conservative think tank Manning Centre, there were 55 meetings held during the last term of council for a total of 883 hours and 29 minutes of debate.

That number is substantially higher than the 180 hours of deliberations undertaken by Ottawa city council and the 227 hours of debate undertaken by Hamilton city council over the same time span.

It should, however, be noted that due to its size Toronto tends to go through more business than councils in other cities.

On average, Toronto city council debated 142 motions per meeting with each item being debated for an average of six minutes and 22 seconds. Meanwhile, councillors in Hamilton debated about 23 items per meeting and spent about seven minutes on each.

“If you compare Toronto to basically any other city council you will see that people are much more likely to prolong debate and much more likely to say no,” Research Fellow Jeromy Farkas told CP24 on Wednesday. “ It is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact as compared to other cities there is a lot more genuine debate that plays out in Toronto.”

In addition to looking at the amount of time dedicated to debate, the Manning Centre also examined how councillors voted and discovered that on the whole Toronto council members are about 100 times more likely to vote no when compared to the council members from the other Canadian cities that it studied.

The analysis found that during the 2010-2014 term, then-mayor Rob Ford voted no 25.7 per cent of the time, which was the highest percentage on council. Ford’s brother Doug wasn’t far behind, casting a no vote 23.5 per cent of the time while Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti voted no about 20.5 per cent of the time.

On average, Toronto councillors voted no about 11.2 per cent of the time compared to 0.1 per cent for their counterparts in Ottawa and Hamilton.

“In just a single meeting in Toronto you see much more disagreement than in four years in some other places,” Farkas told CP24.

Some of the other highlights from the analysis:

  • 93.9 per cent of city council was spent in public and 6.1 per cent was spent in camera
  • City council’s average attendance was 84.8 per cent
  • Gord Perks had the best attendance rate among councillors serving a full term, making 98.1 per cent of roll calls
  • Mammoliti had the worst attendance, making only 57.8 per cent of roll calls
  • 90.4 per cent of all motions were carried.

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