Partisan divides hurting municipal governance

A U.S. style of government has crept into Canada

Many of you know I have been around the political scene for many years. I have run a few times and have served on many committees. I even taught the Municipal Act at Humber and Niagara Colleges.

I have to say the trend today where party politics has entered local municipal councils is very disturbing. It totally changes the dynamics around the table.

In the past we all knew who belonged to what party and who supported who in federal and provincial politics, but that was always left outside of council and council discussions.

Local members of council are individuals who run on locally to serve their constituents and not the aims and objectives of any political party. When elected you become the representative of the local population not the representative of any political party. If an individual wants to represent a certain political party, then run for a provincial or federal seat not a local one.

Let’s look at the two.

A political party is made up of a group of individuals who have the same or similar beliefs regarding how and what direction the province or country should go. This is not a bad thing but keep in mind that the party comes before the individual. A specific party’s agenda is not always the best agenda for a local municipality.

In a municipality, without a party focus, the individual ratepayer becomes the focus of governance. That focus is how best to serve the individuals of the municipality no matter what their political affiliation is and it is that focus that must outweigh any party focus. Where to build or where to direct funds should always be in the best interest of the municipality as a whole and not who supported whose party in the last election.

When we start to mix party politics with municipal decision-making everyone loses. What happens locally is we end up with local municipalities that are divided into the haves and have nots. If a municipality has the majority of the ruling party in the seats, then they receive more perks. Look at what happens in the U.S. when there is a Democratic state-run government then the Democratic cities get more support than the Republican-focused cities and that is just wrong.

Now that this U.S. style of governance seems to have crept its way into Canada, we need to fight back. Their system is broken and we cannot allow that broken system to taint ours. Look what has happened already. We are getting more and more backroom deals being done with conservatives on one side and liberals on the other when in the past we all worked together for the betterment of the local municipality as a whole.

I see bias in committee appointments that never happened in the past. I see groups sticking with groups instead of making individually informed decisions as used to happen in the past. I see people making personal attacks on colleagues based on party lines, again something that never happened in the past.

We need to get back to the civil, respectful local co-operative politics of the past or we are doomed to see our democracy begin to crumble as it is dong in the U.S. We are Canada and we are above the petty, partisan name calling that is currently prevalent south of the border. We need to stand up against this and elect people locally who want to serve the people, not a specific political party.

Ted Mouradian is the co-founder and president of the 2% Factor and creator of the Law of Co-operative Action. He is an author and professional speaker whose works have been read in more than 43 countries. Mouradian can be reached at ted@the2percentfactor.com.