Warding off trouble

There are plenty of differences between life in the big smoke and here in Almaguin.

Without going through the laundry list we’ll get to the point that one of the big differences is local politics.

In a city, such as the behemoth that is Toronto, politics can be anything but local. With so many people spread over a huge area, the idea of just dialing up and speaking with the mayor about potholes on your street seems a bit far off.

To counter this, we’re told, the city is divided into territories known as wards with a councillor elected to represent each of them. It gives ratepayers more conduits to their government.

Why does the Almaguin News bring this up?

Well, here in Almaguin the Town of Kearney is about to embark on a process of analyzing the ward system it uses for selecting its government.

Kearney is the only municipality in Almaguin that employs wards to determine the makeup of its council.

All other municipalities use an at-large system with all candidates competing against one another for a spot at the council table – geography matters not except, perhaps, in the voter’s mind.

In Kearney all councillors represent a specific geographic area within their own municipality.

One wonders if this is useful.

Surely in a rural area, that differs not that much in general terms from the rest of Almaguin, residents and/or ratepayers can contact their council members without having to rely on wards.

So what is the purpose?

We suppose the wards’ purpose is to ensure the needs, desires and opinions of an area are not overlooked at the council table. That representatives of a particular ward will make certain their agenda is not ridden over rough-shod by councillors from another area.

This is not the best place to begin political dialogues from. It starts with the negative presumption that council members do not have the good of the whole in mind, but only that of their own enclaves.

Not to say that this is or was happening in Kearney. The logic of the ward process just leads us there.

And there is evidence the ward system is not working.

In the previous elections, the latest one especially, there was a heap of candidates who stood unopposed and thus acclaimed to office.

Acclaimations are not a sign of bad governance, but are never a symptom of a healthy democracy.

The Municipality of Powassan employed the ward system until its last election. During the ward system acclamations were also seen there despite a relatively large full-time resident population. But in the last election, without wards, there was no shortage of candidates with five people coming forward for the mayor’s chair and another 11 for councillor positions.

If any place in Almaguin required a ward system it would be the Municipality of Powassan. With both a village and town inside the borders of a strong rural farming area, ‘What about us?’ politics is inevitable.

But without wards they manage to have representation from all over the municipality and an understanding, at least at the council table, that a councillor from Powassan cares about potholes in Trout Creek or vice versa.

Whether the Town of Kearney needs a ward system could be hard to argue.

But giving council members the same simple goal of doing their best for the whole of the municipality is not.