Dimming accountability

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Perhaps it isn’t vital to our daily lives that local government hear our worries. Our concerns. Our fears. Maybe the problem with public business is the public. Perhaps accountability is overrated.

I think it’s crucial. More important now than ever. Further, I believe unaccountable institutions and governments are a threat— both to you and me, and also to the institutions themselves.

Canadians are unsure of their institutions. In a poll taken before the pandemic, a majority said they didn’t trust government. Eighty per cent felt that elites were out of touch. This data has swung more positively toward governments and institutions during Covid, yet remains wobbly. In any event, it seems a poor moment to press for efficiency over accountability.

I return this week to the procedural changes tabled before Christmas aimed at restructuring the way residents and stakeholders interact with their government. Generally speaking, the proposed measures seek to insulate Council and Shire Hall business from the bump and grind of public opinion.

The new rules will restrict who can speak, and when, to Council and its committees. As discussed last week, the changes also constrain debate among council members. It promotes the notion that the business of Shire Hall is more important than the voices of this community and that it is somehow diminished by these voices—that it makes outfit less efficient.

Council meets on January 26 (at 6 p.m.) to consider the proposed changes.

In fairness, Council can and does waive the procedural by-law when a majority wants to hear from folks. Folks it chooses. Or when deemed necessary to ventilate a heated public debate or manage the electorate. So the door isn’t entirely closed to public discourse—it just isn’t open to you.

What exactly is the point of erecting new walls around Shire Hall if Council can pull them down at the majority’s will? Remind us what this is all about.

And while not perhaps a crisis, the trend is a terrible one at a moment when liberal democracy is being assaulted on all sides.

More to the point, it is a short-sighted ambition that has found favour due to a weakness inherent in local government. The council table is a venue that promotes and rewards conformity of thought. Once elected and taken your seat, you’ve become a member of an elite club—replete with duties to the group and the adornments of the office (albeit without the financial reward such elite status implies).

Of course, getting re-elected means you must pay lip service to your constituents— but four years is a long time, and incumbency represents an enormous hurdle for an outsider looking to join this club. The pressures to conform are an order of magnitude greater than faithfulness to constituents.

There are also structural conditions that promote conformity of thought. There are no party allegiances on local boards or councils. Each member is an independent. While it may sound good on paper, in practice the array of forces acting upon each council member eventually prods and pokes the collection of individuals into a polite amorphous whole—more aligned with the corporation rather than the residents they serve. There are outliers, of course, on both sides of the spectrum. And on different issues. But as a body of 14 unaligned members, dissenters are easily and regularly sidelined and isolated—thus reinforcing the power of the whole.

Then there is the ‘us and them’ problem. From the inside, outside voices tend to sound the same. Angry. Incoherent. Self-interested. Repetitive. By contrast, the conversations, reports and rules-based debate on the inside seem orderly, thoughtful and cordial. It is a small step for insiders to see only virtue on their side and rabble on the outside. It is a hazard inherent in the institution.

It is manifested, too, in the regional disparity that resides below the surface. When you live and work in Picton, all the problems and solutions reside there. It’s a trap. The further you range from the centre, the more abstract and less urgent problems or requests for service become. It goes some way in explaining why folks in Ameliasburgh feel some estrangement from the County. It’s not that they are so far from the decision-making, but more that their representatives get subsumed by the gravity of the centre.

It’s possible I am overstating these trends and phenomena. There are good, smart and able folks representing County residents and working for us at Shire Hall. But even if there is only a whisper of validity to these arguments, it seems a mistake—a potentially destructive step—to erect a higher wall between local government and this community.

If the length of meetings is truly a problem, make the case to the public, gather feedback and win their support. Not from one contracted consultant, but from the folks who live here. Who work here. Folks who have presided in those chairs before. Folks who invested many years working toward a more workable size of council.

If this passes with a mere majority of council in two weeks—without public meetings (remember those)—it will indeed reinforce the perception that this group of elites is out of touch. We have some agency in this, however. It is up to us to reach out to our council members in the next few days, to urge them to use their energy and talents to break down walls—not to erect new ones.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca