Anyone hoping to see democracy in action at the MRC Council of Mayors would be excused for feeling a bit short-changed.
At the monthly public meetings, what you see is 18 mayors dutifully raising their hands in support of a rapid succession of resolutions, with little-to-no discussion or dissent. If there has been any debate of the proposed actions, the public would have no way of knowing because it would have taken place behind closed doors at the in-camera plenary session held the week before.
As a result, all we see at the public meetings is . . .
pro forma voting on resolutions which the mayors have previously agreed to move forward.
Without access to the discussion that went into formulating the resolutions, the public is prevented from knowing the various positions taken by our elected officials on our behalf. We don’t know if any of them even took a position or added anything to the discussion at all, or if they simply went with the flow of what was being proposed.
Nor do we see all the other proposed resolutions – excellent, mediocre or absurd – that did not win enough support at the private plenary session to make it to the public meeting.
Some may feel that none of this is any of our business, that all we need to know is the outcome of the votes. We would, respectfully, disagree.
When deliberations about policies that affect our lives are conducted in private, we are all deprived of becoming better-informed citizens, which is fundamental to empowering civic engagement and the many benefits that can contribute to our community.
But it can also raise our suspicions about what it is that our elected representatives are willing to say in private but not in public.
And how are we, as voters, to evaluate the performance of the mayors we elect to manage our community’s affairs if we cannot see them in action, learning about their thought processes, their preoccupations, their values?
Shuttered away in their closed-door meetings, they could be doing a brilliant job, for all we know. Just as possible, they could be doing an abysmal job, squandering the opportunity we have given them to chart a path to a brighter future.
But the Pontiac is not alone with this problem.
As THE EQUITY’s Brett Thoms reports this week in his front-page story Behind Closed Doors, the 2015 report of the Charbonneau Commission raised concern over the lack of transparency at the municipal level across Quebec.
The report cited the minimalistic language of the Quebec municipal code as a big part of the problem, requiring municipal councils to hold public meetings while not limiting the extent to which they may conduct their public policy deliberations in private.
There are, of course, times when a public meeting needs to slip into in-camera mode to protect such things as the privacy of a citizen or the proprietary interests of a company, among others. But the occasional requirement for a few minutes of in-camera discussion cannot be the justification for holding entire meetings behind closed doors.
The justification offered by MRC Pontiac for routinely holding in-camera plenary sessions refers to the very passage of the municipal code cited by the Charbonneau Commission. It rests on the claim that the in-camera sessions have no decision-making authority and that all decisions are rendered at the public meetings when the mayors cast their votes on resolutions. While this may technically be true, it appears that only the resolutions which have met with sufficient support at the private plenary sessions are carried forward to the public meetings for voting. This makes the private plenary session the moment when, in all reality, mayoral approval is first signaled. How else could the public meeting consist of nothing but votes that overwhelmingly support every resolution that comes up, and all without discussion?
The Charbonneau Commission’s recommendation was to take a page from the Ontario municipal playbook and limit the subjects that warrant in-camera discussion, leaving the rest of the public agenda where it should be, in the public domain.
That is exactly what should happen here in the Pontiac, and it is entirely within the discretion of our locally-elected politicians to make it so, without in any way offending the Quebec municipal code, such as it is.
Pontiac is blessed with a great bunch of mayors. We need to hear what they’ve got to say. So let’s pull back the curtains and let the sun shine in on local democracy. Let’s take a bold leap of faith and see if it is possible to grant the public access to discussions of issues that are on the public policy agenda and that involve the spending of public funds.
Seeing how the Pontiac political sausage is made is simply a matter of transparency and accountability, the foundation of public confidence in our democratic institutions.
Let’s start next week when the Pontiac warden said she intends to discuss with mayors the comments she will deliver to the upcoming public hearing on the proposed nuclear waste dump site in Chalk River. A week ago, we asked the MRC whether the public and media would be welcome to attend. As of press time, we have had no indication that this meeting would be anything other than yet another private session behind closed doors.
Charles Dickson
