Participate

The Women’s Institute hosted the candidates in Ameliasburgh on Monday night. It was a lively and, at times, emotional evening (More on that on page 22). Yet, it was just the second session The Times has attended in this election cycle. That is a worry. It is getting late. Just four weeks are remaining until voting day on October 24. We need more candidate meetings.

Four weeks may seem forever in social media time—but it is an oh so brief window when your information doesn’t come on your phone via Facebook or Instagram. It is but a heartbeat when folks are busy and preoccupied with the demands of busy lives.

We need more meetings—more ways to see and hear from the candidates for the next municipal council. We are doing ourselves a disservice by failing to hear from the candidates directly. Face to face. These folks are responsible for spending about $70 million yearly in the County. We should pursue every opportunity to look candidates in the eye and ask them what they have in mind.

This newspaper and others are presenting profiles of each candidate in their pages. Indeed, there are other ways of finding out what the folks who want to lead the County for the next four years think. What they believe. Or what they understand about the challenges ahead. Are they equipped for it? Or are they looking for a part-time job?

It isn’t easy to assess any of this from a few hundred words in a newspaper profile. It requires looking candidates in the eyes and making a human judgment: Will they do what they say they want to do? Are they familiar with the issues? Do they have a credible plan? Are they serious? Do they have the experience, temperament, and personality to be effective in this role? How do they stand up to scrutiny?

And, perhaps most importantly, who are they seeking to serve?

Nor does one get these answers by reading the online survey or questionnaire answers. These almost always represent a small and narrow subsection of the population. Moreover, the responses tend to be skewed to feed the special interest of those asking the questions. Even professional and long-established survey firms struggle to read actionable data from the results. In any event, there is little evidence that it is reaching the voting public.

Door-to-door canvassing is good—but we lead busy lives. The candidate who arrives at dinner time isn’t likely to get an openminded reception. It is not the ideal venue to talk County politics or burrow into local issues.

That leaves us with all-candidate meetings. This election season, so far, has seen just a couple. Both have been well-attended. Both have filled the meeting halls— every chair in the building supporting the interested, the curious, and the frustrated. (Indeed, one mayoral candidate, late for the meeting on Monday, was forced to perch himself on the window sill for the duration— his chair forfeited to an Ameliasburgh ratepayer.)

All-candidate meetings aren’t perfect. Such meetings are easily overcome by folks with a special interest—folks with a specific axe to grind. And as we saw in Hillier, a combined meeting with mayoral and ward candidates tends to be consumed by the challengers for mayor. Moreover, candidate meetings can decay into gripe fests as a sense of grievance fouls the air.

Nevertheless, candidate meetings are the best thing we have to evaluate these folks.

Some of the lateness in getting these meetings off the ground is, I suspect, the residue of Covid. We are reluctant to gather. We have forgotten how. The organizations that provide the organizational legwork on the ground in our communities have been dormant for a couple of years. Some are relearning how to use these muscles.

The Women’s Institute in Ameliasburgh, for its part, did a fabulous job. These folks could give a master class in all-candidate meetings. Monday’s gathering was orderly—kept so by a firm but fair moderator—while questions were posed respectfully through another WI member. Mostly. All candidates— mayoral and five ward candidates—were given ample opportunity to make their case—and all held to a strict time, which made for tight, concise answers. Mostly.

When one ward candidate failed to show up on Monday despite assuring organizers he would be there, the moderator suggested that residents might want to consider his absence when weighing their vote on October 24. Rightly so.

More meetings are coming. October 4 at Bloomfield Town Hall. October 5 at Wellington on the Lake. October 6 at Picton Town Hall. October 13 at Milford Town Hall and October 19 in Consecon.

I urge all readers to find an all-candidates meeting in your corner of the County. Or consider one beyond your neighbourhood. They are lively events that are sure to get your blood flowing, the mind buzzing.

But there is more to it than that. As one councillor candidate said rather eloquently on Monday, “Our job as a citizen is to do our best. The only way we can do that is to participate.”

If a candidate meeting hasn’t been organized yet in your ward, consider stirring some friends and neighbours into organizing a gathering at your town hall, barn, or school. We will miss such events if we give over politics to the cloud. We will miss the to and fro. We will miss our neighbour’s enthusiasm and passion.

And we will have lost something rather important.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca