Open and Transparent?

Early Wednesday morning, city staff and London Police Service moved into Victoria Park and dismantled tents and other structures that belonged to participants in the local occupy movement.  While many others have talked about the legitimacy and whether this action was right or wrong, I feel a far more disturbing action happened several hours earlier on Tuesday night.

Council met in camera to discuss “a legal matter pertaining to advice re the occupy movement”  During this meeting a vote was taken to have the park cleared. We don’t know the result of this vote as it was done in-camera. We do know raised voices were heard from outside council chambers and Mayor Fontana did say he had overwhelming support but not unanimous.

The purpose of in-camera meetings are described in the municipal act quite clearly.

A meeting or part of a meeting may be closed to the public if the subject matter being considered is,

(a) the security of the property of the municipality or local board;

(b) personal matters about an identifiable individual, including municipal or local board employees;

(c) a proposed or pending acquisition or disposition of land by the municipality or local board;

(d) labour relations or employee negotiations;

(e) litigation or potential litigation, including matters before administrative tribunals, affecting the municipality or local board;

(f) advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege, including communications necessary for that purpose;

(g) a matter in respect of which a council, board, committee or other body may hold a closed meeting under another Act. 2001, c. 25, s. 239 (2).

In this situation council may have had this meeting behind close doors without a valid reason. The only exception I can see this in-camera meeting a shred of validity is section F. As I have stated before transparency is very important, if you are not willing to go on the record for a vote because you feel it will be not popular then don’t run for office.

Most intelligent voters realize they will not agree with a politician on every issue, but most people will have far more respect for someone who is honest and transparent. I will respect someone who is more open who I don’t agree with on some issues far more then someone who bends the rules to only release ‘good’ news. This is why some people are puzzled when I say I have the respect of some politicians that I don’t agree with most of the time.

As Patrick Maloney pointed out in his London Free Press article, Council could be opening themselves to a legal can or worms. In 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada warned London that municipal affairs can not be done in secret. That particular adventure cost the city $300,000 in legal fees.

The Ontario Ombudsman’s office has received two formal complaints about this ‘secret’ meeting so it will be interesting to see what happens with this going forward.

I would love to see a motion to release the minutes of this meeting and the voting results. Not to play the blame game but for the nature of open and transparent government. However that would involve a 2/3 majority to achieve, which would not be that likely given that some on Council don’t want the public to know how they voted. Considering there was a push for Citizen engagement by the city recently, this is very disappointing

Update: Several people have commented that section a could also apply in this instance.  That is true but IMHO still a stretch and doesn’t address my original issue of an unnecessary secret vote.

Candidates and Twitter

Social media is playing a larger role for candidates to get their message out. Twitter in particular has allowed candidates to engage in conversation with the community about why they are running and what policies they support.

As keeping a dialog going on Twitter can be time consuming some candidates during an election will have their staff tweet for them. For things such as press releases, event notifications etc, this is fine. However to keep transparency, candidates should put on their twitter profile is they alone and/or staff will post to twitter using the candidates account.  It is also recommend that if it is staff tweeting that should be clear in the tweet by posting their initials at the end of the of the message.

I will be requesting this information from the candidates running in London and area ridings who I know have a twitter account.  As I get the information back I’ll update the results on this spreadsheet.

Thanks all.

Moving on

One thing that has come out with the death of Jack Layton that is there are many Canadian’s of all political stripes that do want a better society and a better Canada.

It’s good to see all the outpouring of support in particular at Toronto City Hall where Jack got his political start. Seeing the message written in chalk at Nathan Phillips square is particularly inspiring. While watching this video, one message in particular stuck a chord with me. “Jack Layton was the reason I started voting”  This also shows that people are not alone in their grief or their beliefs for a better country.

If you haven’t already it’s worth reading Stephen Lewis’s eulogy of Jack Layton. Beside the fact the Stephen Lewis is one of the finest orators I know this eulogy really shows what Jack Layton was like.

Many speakers spoke of trying to have a better Canada. To have a manifesto for a more social democracy. Many people both in and out of politics forget the purpose of government is to serve and help the people. Not the people who donate to the parties; not the people who come out and work for the campaigns; but all the people. The young; the old; single; married; sick, First Nations and others; all the people.

Like others have said, I can’t agree with everything he stood for but I find his passion and approach to be something we should all aspire towards.

Jack Layton

Most people now know of the news of Jack Layton’s passing.

I’m pleased to see that even those who did not agree with his political views still admired him for standing behind his beliefs. In his final letter that he wrote, we see even in his final days he was still concerned about the future of his party and the country.

One of the best quotes was the final paragraph of his letter, in it there is a message that Canadians of all political sides should read and think about.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

I’ll let more clever minds debate on what this means for Canadian politics, myself I see the loss of someone that cared.