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Once and for all
Story: Rick Conroy
Few will mourn the end of the size-ofcouncil debate. It was, for most, a discussion occurring on the fringes—with little direct impact on our daily lives, jobs or taxes. The issue only gained wide public interest after council chose to put the question on the ballot in the municipal election of 2010—and then ignored the result.
Most folks went back to their lives. But they did so having learned a bitter civics lesson—their opinion really didn’t count.
Some would raise the issue at the next election in 2014, and, while most council members offered assurances they would fix it if elected, once ensconced in the soft chairs around the council table, however, a majority had lost interest in the project. After all, the only jobs at stake were their own.
They had other priorities, they said. Besides, the silent majority were happy with the status quo, they told themselves.
But in 2015, overcoming their reluctance to wander into the swamp yet again, council embarked on a formal review process of ward boundaries and the size of council— seemingly driven by the sense that there was no other way to settle this simmering question. It was a half-hearted effort and, for some, a seemingly pointless exercise. They believed council was fine—there was no need to fix it. Yet the matter festered.
I must hasten to add that the callous disregard council showed toward the will of the public on this issue was not shared by Shire Hall staff, led by the clerk Kim White and Victoria Leskie before her. As they had in every other iteration of this decade-long debate, County staff conducted themselves professionally, knowledgeably and diligently. The result, however, was ultimately the domain of council.
Had they believed they could have gotten away with it, council would not have changed anything, despite the inequity and lack of voter parity inherent in the electoral arrangement cobbled together in 1998.
But as the vote neared at the end of 2015, they were persuaded it was rash to defy public opinion and possibly provoke an Ontario Municipal Board adjudicator. Displaying the flexible convictions of a band of fleas escaping a drowning dog, they jumped onto a plan devised solely to withstand an OMB challenge with the least amount of real change—deciding to lump Bloomfield in with Hallowell and lop off one councillor from Sophiasburgh. They had reduced the size of council from 15 to 13.
Against this tortuous backdrop, a great many councillors and residents will have heaved a sigh of relief when the OMB adjudicator, Mary-Anne Sills, declared early in the hearing that it was “the board’s intention to resolve this once and for all.”
Yet no matter how Sills ultimately rules— her decision is not expected for a few weeks—our concept of a liberal democracy will have been diminished by this process and council’s choices.
Ajudicator Sills made it clear the board would not accord any weight to the result of the 2010 ballot question or the recommendation of the Citizens’ Assembly in 2013. How the County came to its electoral ward decision was not the concern of the board, said Sills. But rather the only question before her was: Is council’s decision to redraw ward boundaries consistent with the electoral law and legal precedents that has guided boards and courts that have been required to adjudicate such appeals.
I take no issue with the board member’s interpretation—indeed broadening the review would have risked relitigating the issue for many more years. Furthermore, this quasi-judicial forum seems entirely the wrong place to consider such issues electoral fairness.
But here is the lingering problem: to all those who put a mark on the ballot question, who participated in, and followed the deliberations of the Citizens’ Assembly, the message is that your voice doesn’t matter.
And when that happens, some of us pull further away from civic engagement and participation. It’s natural. Understandable.
But here is what happens. Since the County was prodded into amalgamation, more eligible voters have elected to stay home rather than cast their ballot in municipal elections. Efforts to improve voter turnout—such as advance polls and Internet voting— have had little impact.
So we leave the folks managing $30 million of our tax dollars and another $12 million in user fees with little or no oversight. Untended—except when we need something. We’ve become detached in an unhealthy way from the business of local government. That’s bad enough.
But the issues at stake in this debate go beyond civic engagement to principles of representation by population and voter parity—the notion that one person’s vote is roughly equal to another’s. These aren’t lofty concepts that floated down from academia. They are ideas fought over by the founding people of Canada.
At least 105 people lost their lives fighting for these principles in the rebellions of 1837. Two thousand injured. Twenty-nine executed for treason. The settlements that followed these battles led eventually to the Confederation of Canada.
In this anniversary year of that defining event, it reflects poorly upon us if we don’t insist that these principles still matter to us. In 2018, let’s make sure our council members know this isn’t true.
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