What matters? The way I see it.

I guess I'm a bit of a non-conformist.

As well as expecting strong leadership from elected officials, I'd like to expect strong participation from residents. You know, as I proposed in 'The Great Governance Formula' over at Town Halls Hamilton last autumn. I don't believe the paradigm should be 'We vote people in, and content to let them get on with it, we hope things turn out for the best.'

For me, the problems with this notion are fundamental: First off, we don't spend anywhere near enough time vetting our candidates. We simply don't take the process sufficiently seriously. More often than not, the incumbent gets the nod, but not so much based on due-diligence being done, but on presumption. We presume that a good job has been done by a Councillor based on the absence of identifiable screw-ups and the presence of a high enough 'feel-good' level. (The truth is that people by-and-large don't stay on top of their Councillor's performance. In Guelph, their Civic League has developed a two-pronged approach: they established core values that correspond to those of the community, and then track how Council votes according to these values. A wonderful start, but not a be-all and end-all. To simply compare how a person voted with a proscribed list of 'values' as the sole determinant seems akin to those wacky Tea Partiers down south; it's arbitrary, its facile...it's not even as good an indicator as a student's report card is to really understanding their performance. If we can't utilize context and perspective equally when assessing, then I despair all the more for the process.) 

We –generally– don't invest enough in asking the right questions during an election campaign, we don't press the candidates enough- But then we're generally not qualified to do so, commensurate with what's at stake, and our media does a pretty crap job of really getting to the meat of the matter, so everything informs everything else and we end up with this...this dreck. (The analogy of residents being the 'employer' and interviewing the 'applicants' –the candidates– would mean that in this situation, the employers weren't capable of executing their part of the bargain...and everything falls down at the start.) 

Secondly, we're not sufficiently invested in the governance process as it unfolds between elections. Call me wooly-headed, naïve or just downright foolhardy, but I don't believe that in today's world, with our access to information being so broad and so deep, that the traditional bulwarks are any longer in place. So it's ironic that at a time when the Internet and all it encompasses has provided us so many personal opportunities for indulgence that it behooves us to actually 'take back our governance'. (If we ever had it.)

And so, in Hamilton right now, we're not only focusing on piddling issues, but based on some of the online 'discussion' I've seen, we're clearly out of our depths to even address these with any degree of competency. Issues such as:

-Domestic chickens

-Domestic garbage limits as they 'correlate' to illegal dumping

-'Peggygate' as it relates to the Mayor's New Year Levee

-The geographical alignment of Ivor Wynne Stadium II

-The personality traits of our Mayor

-Obsessing over a process currently beyond our contributions (LRT)

Meanwhile, we have several issues that are looming, and forwhateverreason (that's me not launching into 'Castigation' mode), they're not front-and-centre. We don't have visionary, engaging leadership from our Council, we don't have powerful 'lobbying' elements active enough to have awareness at conversational levels throughout the city, and we certainly don't have residents invested in the discussions themselves. Issues such as:

-AEGD, aka 'Aerotropolis'. 

-Our infrastructure deficiency time-bomb

-The economic revitalization of our north-end, from Wards 1-4

-The pro-active re-imagining of our city

Here's what worries me: our 'legacy malaise' continues to infuse our day-to-day, and when combined with an unconscious shrugging of the shoulders, with a Council that frankly, at least to what I've read, what I've heard, what I've witnessed, hasn't provided me with hardly any reason to feel inspiration is bubbling up at City Hall, any reason to feel ambition is fostered there, but rather a weening desire to 'stay the course' conservatively and moderately, within limits, all the while making questionable decisions and expending energies on internecine squabbles, energies that anyone better equipped than a- Well, that most intelligent people would readily concede should be invested in other concerns, all of this doesn't really spell out a situation befitting cheering. (That's me being generous once again)

I have nothing against our Council. ('Damning by faint praise' or a 'backhanded compliment'?) I have no desire to lambaste or pillory. 'We get the government we deserve', yes. But our elected officials...save the exemplary ones, whenever we're fortunate enough to have them presented to us...only elevate their game according to what's asked of them, and what's contained within the collaborative mix. And currently, they're mostly on their own. Hardly setting the world on fire. 

Surely we can do better than this. 

M Adrian Brassington