Actually, that doesn't matter one whit.

McGuinty makes it clear to Bratina he's not interested in de-amalgamation

That's the headline on page 16 of the Stoney Creek News this week. I can't find the article online at the SCN site...though this is what the Dundas News has as the article's headline online:

Mayor-elect Bratina, premier McGuinty meet for half an hour

Regardless of these differences/glitches, here's what's in the article regarding de-amalgamation:

Mayor-elect Bob Bratina met with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty last week and talked about de-amalgamation.

But Bratina said he didn’t bring up the hot-button subject when they met prior to McGuinty’s announcement at JNE Consulting about a new $5-million project to build solar panels and add 300 jobs in the city.

He said McGuinty pre-empted the soon to-be Hamilton mayor’s issue about deamalgamation, by pointing out the Liberals are against any de-amalgamation talk.

And as my 'headline' says, 'Actually, this doesn't matter one whit.'

The fact is that it's a no-brainer that the Premier is (purportedly) going to say something like this. Why would he be so foolish as to proceed with any other sort of soundbite, especially from a position of authority?

However...

However, if he had five or ten thousand impassioned people in front of him, sufficiently impassioned by the desire for de-amalgamation, were he 'meeting' with them, I do not believe for a second that he would be able (or be foolish enough) to say "Sorry, I'm not interested in de-amalgamation', see ya."

The Politician's Default is to take the most pragmatic approach. To risk only what's required to be risked at any given moment. And part of what informs this default process is the degree to which pressure's being applied. In other words, 'The squeaky wheel gets the grease.' The corollaries to this are 'If you ignore it long enough, hopefully it'll just...go away,' and 'If you provide sufficient bureaucratic bulwarks to the democratic process, more often than not you'll find that pesky constituents give up and go home.'

So there's a few things to say here, from my Editorial Soapbox, anyway. And two have to do with lameness.

The first has to do with the notion that an esoteric issue such as de-amalgamation of a municipality is of no interest to the Premier. Even taking into account something getting lost in translation...from McGuinty to Bratina to the media to the SCN to the printed page...it's lame.

The second has to do with the 'herding' technique used by the SCN in their print edition, wherein it's presented to the sheeple via the bold headline that 'This is the way it is. Move along, folks. There's nothing for you here...' Me using my 'Lame' stamp is reinforced by the fact that the remainder of the article has nothing to do with de-amalgamation. So while the headline implies that something substantive has been declared by the province's premier to the city's new mayor, substantive enough to warrant an article being headlined this way, the fact is that this just isn't the case at all. So once again, nothing has actually been 'discussed', no information has been presented, none of the elements qualified...nothing. Nothing at all. This 'non-discussion' continues as it has thus far: lips barely moving...and not one shred of cogency being uttered.

So this is where we'll see just how entrenched the 'de-amalgamation' movement really is, whether people who believe in this option will push the issue...or allow the bulwarks to rule.

(As an additional source, here's a Spec article from October 29th...rife with all manner of play-it-safe, 'We don't want to touch that!' comments. The funniest? "If Hamilton wanted to change that rule, the city would need to convince the province that deamalgamation wouldn't cause any financial or political strain." Um... I think I'm stuck in permanent spit-take mode.)

Thirdly, here's my challenge to the Hamilton Community News group, or The Spec: do an article, or better yet, a series of articles examining the impetus behind de-amalgamation, the costs, the benefits, the drawbacks.

To wit: either take this issue seriously...or stop mimicking the behaviour of bad politics by paying lip-service to something that many people in The Amalgamated City of Hamilton take very seriously.

And finally, my challenge to those same people is to get a little louder in talking the talk...and be prepared to start walking the walk.

Or cleave to your mainstream media herders once and for all on this issue.

Addendum: I was remiss in not actually addressing my 'headline', the subject of this editorial.

Whether or not Premier McGuinty has any 'interest' in de-amalgamation reveals a ton about the current state of governance. How our elected officials set the tone...when in fact, they shouldn't be, not arbitrarily. (But that's fodder for another article.) So I'll put it plainly for the Premier:'

While you may not be 'interested' in addressing this issue, while your provincial Liberal party may be 'against' any effort to either examine or put into play a de-amalgamation effort, the truth is that ultimately, it's not your decision to make. If there is sufficient groundswell towards de-amalgamation, if sufficient energies are expended to push in this direction, then whether or not you are 'interested', whether or not your party is 'for' or 'against' the notion will be rendered moot. Because in the end, it's the people who decide what it is they want, not a 'disinterested' politician. History is rife with those who were not 'interested' in listening; they're the ones whose mandates got rejected at the polls.

I'm just sayin'...