There’s a healthy democratic rhythm to this 52-week cycle – just as with sports seasons, television schedules, school years, and annual festivals. This is, after all, local government: folks we know doing things we can closely monitor and directly evaluate. Even Santa keeps a list of who’s been naughty or nice, so he can settle accounts yearly, too.
Ontarians value annual elections because, as “small-d” democrats, we know “responsible government,” the foundation of our constitution, demands holding to account the men and women in public office who tax us and decide matters impacting our daily lives. If a municipal term ran beyond a year, our representatives would lose touch and get bogged down, and we’d forfeit our citizens’ right to issue report cards on those exercising power over us.
Wait!
It was a century ago that nominations were completed by Boxing Day, the mid-week newspapers reported which candidates were seeking what offices, community hall meetings took place so contenders could address electors, and on New Year’s Day votes were cast and counted. The first weekly paper in January reported, for posterity, what most locals by then already knew from the grapevine about who’d be at the helm for a year.
Back then, democratic accountability extended to major municipal issues, too. Electors answered ballot questions to approve, or reject, extraordinary measures like building a public library or a community rink. By answering YES or NO to major public works, or transcending questions like Prohibition of alcohol, local majorities opted to impose taxes and reap the benefit of new facilities, or keep taxes down and just carry on with things as they were.
But times have changed. So has democracy.
The term for holding municipal elected office in Ontario bloated, in stages, to become FOUR YEARS between voting! No wonder, with 48 months instead of 52 weeks between democratic accountability, councillors grow disconnected from the people they’re meant to represent. They turn to consultants from afar who, for high fees, recommend choices foreign to the incumbent council’s mandate. Four-year office holders, grown so allergic to citizen accountability, now seldom even submit ballot questions, fearful of learning what the people they purport to represent actually think about a far-reaching proposal.
Putting local democracy in perspective reveals how hollowed-out our system for holding local representatives accountable has become. Nowadays Ontario’s communities, at least those which are non-Indigenous, must endure four enervating years between council elections. When did we agree to that?
