Shedding light on regional government

Governance, governance. Does anyone talk of anything else these days?

Family barbecues, on the sidelines during kids’ soccer games, in restaurants and around every water cooler — governance is on everyone’s lips.

Instead of counting sheep, children have been heard talking about options for governance in their sleep.

This will be remembered as the Summer of Governance in Niagara. Actually, no. Fact is, if you bring up the topic of governance, you should be prepared to hear crickets.

Not counting press conferences and council meetings, it’s entirely possible you have been involved in precisely zero conversations this summer about how Niagara should be governed.

Should we go down to one city, or four cities? Should we keep regional government or discard it like an old VHS tape?

It turns out that when people do think about it — when they are asked to think about it — they’re generally satisfied with the way things are.

An Environics Research poll conducted for Niagara Region recently found that people are OK with the status quo.

Maybe the question now should be, if it isn’t broken, why fix it?

That might come as news to Premier Doug Ford and his Conservative government.

One of their major moves this year was to declare there were too many politicians in Ontario, and some areas — like Niagara — would go under the microscope and possibly downsized.

Never mind that eliminating a few politicians won’t save much money and that Niagara’s local and regional governments have been working together for years to contain costs.

The survey was conducted from May 30 through June 17, throughout all corners of Niagara.

It found a solid majority of respondents, 76 per cent, are satisfied with the two-tiered government system we’ve lived under for nearly 50 years.

Only 19 per cent felt they weren’t served well under it. Asked about the effectiveness of the current system, 57 per cent said it works while 35 per cent found it ineffective.

And three-quarters felt they received good value for their tax dollars from their city or town government, while two-thirds thought regional government also provides good value.

Jodi Shanoff, a vice-president with Environics, said her company did similar polls in other regions where provincially appointed experts are studying changes to governance. Turns out, they have crickets there, too. “We polled Kitchener and Peel and right across the GTA,” she said. “The typical outcome was people were comfortable with what they had.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. In Niagara, if you live in Port Colborne or Fort Erie or another smaller community, your question is probably: What’s in it for me?

They’ve already lost many of their post offices, schools, drivers’ test centres, courthouses and hospitals. If their town or city gets swallowed up by a bigger centre through amalgamation, what are they going to lose next?

Right now, at least they have their own town hall or city hall, along with the region.

If they’re amalgamated out of existence, they won’t even have that — their new city hall will be in someone else’s community. Remember, you can eliminate municipal boundaries on paper, but sense of community is something that builds over time.

Through this survey, at least, people’s opinions are known. Premier Ford, you say your government is For The People. So what are you going to do?