New provincial rules for the conduct of mayors and councillors will be welcome, but there’s one thing missing from their plans.
The NDP provincial government says updated conduct standards are on their way. This will target problems such as bullying or harassment during council meetings, or harassment of staff by councillors.
These aren’t just problems of decorum. We expect councils to have disagreements, including strong ones. There may even be raised voices and glaring. But some councils have gone farther, descending into a kind of toxic gridlock.
This can derail vital local bylaws and budgets, hold up major community projects, run up massive legal bills, and see valuable senior staff either fired (only to return to sue for wrongful dismissal) or departing en masse, to look for less stressful jobs elsewhere.
With four-year terms, this can leave a lot of mess for the next council to clear up.
The cities of Kamloops and Harrison Hot Springs have seen this kind of slow-motion disaster in recent years. It has become a sideshow that locals find mortifying.
Other cities in B.C. have dealt with councillors and/or mayors facing major criminal charges, who refuse to step down.
The changes proposed by the province would go some way to clearing up these issues, but it won’t solve all of them.
What is needed is something along the lines of the escape hatch we have at the provincial and federal levels – the vote of no confidence.
At present, a toxic council will continue operating (or not operating, as the case may be) until the next election. The province can appoint an outside manager – something that has happened with school districts several times in recent years, but much more rarely with city governments.
But the voters should have a bigger place in this process.
If a provincial or federal government can’t pass major legislation, the legislature or parliament is dissolved, and we get a new election.
We need that kind of a ripcord at the municipal level. If a government fails, the solution should be giving the people the ability to elect a new government, to essentially start from scratch if necessary.
There’s no constitutional requirement in Canada to have democratically-elected local governments. Technically, the province could appoint bureaucrats to manage local affairs, and that’s the sort of last-ditch solution that has been used on rare occasions in Canada in the past.
But it is far better to have elected and accountable local leaders to oversee our cities and regional districts. And when they fail the accountability test, when the process grinds to a halt, the last resort should be putting the matter in the hands of the voters again.
Democracy’s fallback should always be letting the people choose their leaders.