It’s time to expand recall legislation to include local councils

The decision by Victoria city councillors to award themselves a 25 per cent pay increase has sparked outrage around the capital region.

As several of our readers have pointed out, a raise of this size is out of all proportion to this council’s modest accomplishments.

The explanation is all too obvious. The next municipal election isn’t due until October 2026. Plenty of time for voters to forget this wallow at the trough.

There is, however, a solution. The province could expand the Recall and Initiative Act to cover municipal councils.

As it stands, the legislation permits only the recall of MLAs. Notably, however, in 2017 the Union of B.C. Municipalities passed a resolution asking the province to broaden the act so that it would extend to municipal councils.

On that occasion the government declined, citing a variety of other tools already available. These included ethical conduct standards and conflict-of-interest rules.

However, none of these go any way to dealing with outrageous pay hikes.

Notably, Alberta introduced just such legislation two years ago. Both municipal councils and school boards now fall within the purview of that province’s recall statute.

In addition, last year the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities asked that province’s government to introduce recall legislation covering municipal officials and school board members, as well as MLAs.

The association was told that since the province opposes recall in principle, this would not be an option.

Certainly there are downsides in bringing municipalities within the reach of recall legislation. Many smaller councils have only a tiny voter base. In such cases it might not take much to organize a recall, even for trivial reasons.

That concern could be dealt with by limiting the reach of any recall procedure to municipalities of 30,000 population or more.

Again, we expect local governments to confront numerous hard-to-solve problems, unaffordable housing, traffic density and homelessness among them.

Is it fair to ask councils to take far-reaching and often controversial measures if recall hangs over their head?

Yet that argument cuts both ways. If we are going to place huge responsibilities on the heads of local councillors, shouldn’t they be held accountable along the same lines as MLAs?

There is also the reality that turnouts at municipal elections are characteristically lower than in provincial elections.

While 55 per cent of voters cast a ballot in the most recent provincial election, just under 30 per cent turned out for the most recent municipal elections.

That gives well-organized interest groups far more influence than their numbers might suggest. Understandably, local elected officials may feel bound to give way to those interests.

With recall a genuine possibility, those same officials might feel obliged to keep the needs of the broader community in mind.

And that brings out an important consideration. Perhaps the real benefit of recall legislation is not that anyone is ever actually recalled. Indeed, despite 28 attempts to recall MLAs in B.C., none has ever succeeded.

The benefit lies in the fact that the risk exists. Indeed had it existed, we would hazard a guess that some or all of the five Victoria city councillors who voted for the pay raise might have had second thoughts.

When we raised this matter with the province’s Municipal Affairs ministry, we were given the same answer UBCM received: Other tools are already in place.

That might have been a fair view of things a decade or more ago. But as cities grow in size and complexity, the need for accountability grows proportionately.

The government should consider broadening its recall legislation to cover municipal councils.