However it was a good thing, I said at the time, that the 3-way contest between Gord Adams, Hugh Mackenzie, and John Klinck got aborted – because people began thinking that the unfolding municipal election campaign, focusing on the nature of district government, offered them a real choice. But the right issue was in the wrong arena. That debate and voting would have been a dead-end street, just another frustration in our ongoing quest for “responsible government” in Muskoka.
We Muskokans cannot change our municipal government structure. Our constitution is enacted, and amended, at Queen’s Park by Ontario’s legislators. This power comes from Section 92 of the Constitution of Canada: “In each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to . . . Municipal Institutions in the Province.” In constitutional law municipal governments are rightly called “creatures of the province.”
That brings focus back to Premier Ford’s plan for Muskoka government itself – the second instalment of his bigger scale project, far more significant than cancelling last fall’s direct popular election of the District’s chair.
Two seasoned individuals, Michael Fenn and Ken Seiling, are devising the makeover. After they interview Muskoka’s six mayors and district chair, they’ll fashion a plan. They will not issue a public report, but make recommendations directly to Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark and the Premier. Because Messrs Fenn and Seiling will simultaneously be suggesting to the premier and minister on how best to restructure a number of other municipal governments in Ontario as well, we can expect consistency across the board.
A core issue is how local autonomy gets balanced in relation to central control. In colonial times of tight central management, Crown appointed magistrates handled municipal affairs, you could even say micromanaged them. One of this province’s stellar pre-Confederation premiers, Robert Baldwin, acted boldly to achieve responsible government at both provincial and municipal levels. His 1849 legislation which gave municipal governments power to raise taxes and enact bylaws ushered in a long era of robust local governance across this diverse province, under a common democratic framework for all. The Baldwin Act, often called “the Bible of municipal government,” was anchored in the truth that “responsible government” requires democratic accountability.
So what voice do local citizens today have in such matters? None. In any legal or political sense, Premier Ford’s coming revamp is beyond our influence.
Yet local newspaper editor Pamela Steel has opened up her editorial page columns “for reader’s letters and opinions the governance of Muskoka.” Her strong February 14 editorial identified a comprehensive agenda for considering what’s ahead. “Our best course of action is to become informed.”
We Muskokans do owe it to ourselves now, and to our District’s future generations, to be much clearer about what is needed for responsible governance and for proper stewardship of our lands, watersheds, and heritage. Unless we have clarity about that, which can only come through shared understanding openly arrived at – ultimately the political culture in which we live – it won’t much matter what the governing structure is.
