Comment
Feelings
How do you feel about gravity? At Shire Hall, they want you to Have Your Say. Next year, we will renew our commitment to the law of gravitation, and public consultation is an important part of the process. There is, of course, no meaningful way that your collective opinion will alter, or amend, any of this law. Nor is there a reasonable prospect that we can explain the complexity of the physics and the effects of distance and mass on gravity in a few paragraphs. Instead, we’ll skip past the gobbledegook to find out how you would like gravity to work. How does it make you feel?
In reaching out this way, we hope you will feel a bit better about the law of gravity— that you feel empowered.
Development charges (DCs) aren’t quite as immutable as gravity, but they may be in the same category. DCs are fees assessed to builders and developers to pay for the expansion of municipal services necessitated by the construction of new homes and businesses (and for the humans who will occupy them). DCs were created to ensure existing residents weren’t paying for the extra wear and tear on roads, waterworks, library and firefighting services, and such caused by new arrivals. DC policy often gets boiled down to the snappy slogan ‘growth should pay for growth’.
But from this rather simplistic explanation, DCs quickly escape into a fog of complexity. The province describes DCs as discretionary, but when a municipality applies DCs, they must adhere to a thicket of rules, formulas and legal administration. So much so that the municipal task of establishing DCs requires a team of consulting economists to work through the numbers and propose bespoke menus of charges and rules.
So complex and arcane are DC rules that Council tends not to contradict, challenge or otherwise push back on the consultant’s conclusions— stern recommendations compiled in thick reports stuffed with spreadsheets, comparative charts and tables of numbers. For this reason, Council—the public’s intermediary— tends to defer to this authority.
Which makes it weird that DCs have become the subject of Have Your Say public surveying. While there is nothing inherently wrong with asking folks what services—waterworks, transit, roads, childcare, housing— ought to comprise DCs, it is not clear what Shire Hall does with this information.
If most respondents say they feel strongly about long-term care services, but not at all about library services, will we drop libraries from DCs? What do such feelings tell us? How should the opinions of dozens of folks impact this policy? Should we fund library expansion another way? Do respondents have sufficient context, information, or understanding of the countervailing forces to render a reliable opinion on complicated topics?
If it is unclear what Shire Hall hopes to achieve with Have your Say, perhaps the better question is why?
Effective governance requires mediation— folks in between decision-makers and residents who are there expressly to wade through the detail of the proposed policy, to understand the pressures, to digest the legal requirements and responsibilities, and to weigh the impact upon the market, residents, taxpayers, and other stakeholders. These folks must sift through reams of information, professional opinions, and arguments and render a recommendation on our behalf.
We don’t ask folks to weigh in on the minutiae of tax policy, military procurement, or drug safety protections. We don’t conduct referendums to determine public views on securities regulation.
Instead, we gather experts, politicians, and stakeholders in a room to hash out recommendations. Decision-makers enact the rules. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, it is amended or repealed. But we don’t ask folks if rule 22, subsection IV, clause (a) conveys an undue burden on a stakeholder or constituent.
Public surveys are a poor substitute for proper research, investigation, and due diligence. Why does any of this matter? Because we desperately need better governance of our waterworks. We need a permanent assemblage of residents, staff, and stakeholders informed by experts, to govern six water systems, two wastewater plants, the distribution and collections networks and the web of agreements and regulations that shape this utility.
It is a complex business. We know this because Shire Hall says these words each time it is asked why County water bills are higher than most other places in Ontario. The utility is currently governed by a council, most of whom have zero stake in the waterworks system. They aren’t customers. They don’t pay water bills. It isn’t their problem.
Most candidates supported the creation of a waterworks commission in the recent election. It is time to hold them to account.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being committed to expanding the utility. Studies are underway to examine ways to amalgamate into a regional waterworks system. Picton’s fragile water source is situated in a busy, shallow bay and is perpetually at risk of contamination. Big decisions must be made. Complex decisions. Buffeted by competing arguments, priorities and funding pressures.
Have Your Say surveys are not, and cannot be, a substitute for effective, thorough, and responsible governance.
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