I gave an Ignite London talk on Tuesday night at the Aeolian Hall. It was a fantastic evening - lots of inspiring speakers. My mind has actually blanked out the entire 5 minutes that I was on stage, so I thought I’d post the full text of my comments in case I didn’t quite get them all out.

SHAKING UP THE 2014 MUNICIPAL ELECTION - The Time to Organize is Now

The Municipal Election is two weeks away, and I’d bet that very few in this hall are tingling with excitement. Many of you undoubtedly feel the election lacks vision and you’re not particularly inspired by where London is headed over the next 4 years.

If I wasn’t involved in a ward campaign (I’m helping out Paul Hubert in Ward 8) I think I’d be utterly disengaged. And I’m a politics guy – my wife and I fell in love as students watching Kingston City Council and way too many Senate Committees on CPAC. Yeah, really hot, I know. So if I can’t get really excited about this election it isn’t a good sign.

So I’m going to try and do two things with my talk: define two key challenges facing municipal elections; and start a dialogue about how 2014 can be different.

Making 2014 different’ centres on a two-part idea: organizing citizens to develop a vision and plan for London, and then turning those citizens into a political force that will elect candidates who can make that vision a reality.

Challenge 1 - There are close to 70 candidates running in this election. Contrary to popular belief, many of them have visions and plans for the city, and are quite talented people – I’m sure that all of us could all find at least one candidate that excites us. So why this collective sense that the election is devoid of ideas, vision or talent?

I believe it is because the greatest strength of our municipal political system also works as its greatest weakness. That strength is that councillors are elected as independents, able to vote their conscience – allowing them to think freely and work towards compromise on public policy. All good things.

Only at the municipal level would you find the famed ‘Killer B’s’ – four Councillors who would likely run under different party banners if they sought provincial or federal office, but are very effective when working together on common issues around the council table.

But this independence also acts as a weaknesses because it is difficult for voters to discern a common vision or platform during election time, which can be confusing and disempowering. Also, those informal coalitions that do exist around the Council horseshoe aren’t entirely transparent for voters – so it should be no surprise that some folks perceive there to be ‘socialist cabals’ and ‘good old boys’ running the show from behind the scenes.

This extends to the Council term, where the public perceives a Council that is always fighting about seemingly small, meaningless issues. You can find common visions among groups of councillors – to its credit, this council even wrote a strategic plan – but you really need to be looking for vision. It isn’t easily apparent.

Challenge 2. I hate the rule that you can’t bring up politics in polite company. We need to reclaim ‘politics’ and make it something we can all feel comfortable engaging with.

At its core, politics is about discourse – and turning that discourse into policy that meets the needs of our community. This doesn’t mean everyone needs to aspire to public office, but more of us need to get involved with candidates, politicians, or undertake advocacy in between elections.

Politics is participatory. It isn’t enough to point out problems, or just talk about solutions. Sometimes you’ve actually got to lay it on the line and be the solution. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough of us willing to do that. This must change.

We can no longer view politics as a gladiator arena with winners and losers. We need to appeal to our greater instincts; through both our deeds and words we can demonstrate that politics and government can be a source of good in our community.

So what to do? I believe we must maintain the independence of councillors, but borrow some of the organizing and platform development strengths of political parties. So I suggest that we organize a coalition of candidates and volunteers for 2014. Coalition candidates that are elected would remain independent, free to vote as they choose from issue to issue, but they’d be united by a common vision and broad platform. That vision would be transparent for voters, and those voters can decide in 2018 which coalition candidates held up their end of the bargain.

The first step in building this coalition is to organize citizens to develop a vision and broad platform. This must precede the recruitment of candidates so that ideas, not egos, are at centre stage in the beginning.

The good news is that there are plenty of citizen coalitions already out there – I just think these groups need to come together around the same table more often. The Labour Council and the Chamber of Commerce; Emerging Leaders and Senior Citizen groups; Students’ Councils and Neighbourhood Associations around campus; the Urban League and the Keep London Growing Coalition. Let’s get uncomfortable, and then try and find some common ground. Too often we’re singing to the choir when we should be testing our assumptions and beliefs.

Finding a common vision may not be possible – this group of citizens may in fact splinter – but having two or three coalitions pitching different visions is better than an election with no vision at all. If we as active citizens don’t try to bridge differences, should it surprise or dissapoint us when our politicians don’t? Lets model good behaviour.

The coalition(s) must then engage with the political process. This involves finding at least 15 people – current councillors or complete newbies – willing to put their names on a ballot, and hundreds of citizens willing to support them. I can guarantee there’s a role for everyone in this hall to play if you want it.

How to select candidates is a whole other can of worms. Should one candidate per ward be supported, or any candidate that signs on to the vision and plan? The first is likely to garner greater electoral success, but would exclude some motivated people from running under the coalition banner. How should candidates be selected? These are tough choices that need to be addressed early on.

If you take anything from this talk, I hope it is this: It isn’t enough to get passionate about a vision for London – you also need to do the hard work to elect candidates who will help make that vision a reality. We’ve got 4 years and we can do this. I’m ready to get started, are you?

I love the ‘fantasy council’ game that the good folks at Hack the Vote have put together. I know that I should be keeping my predictions to myself to increase my odds of winning, but thought I’d share anyway. (Quick rules of the game: You get 5 points if you pick the mayor, 3 points for correctly calling your own ward, and 1 point for every other correct ward.)

Keep in mind my picks below are not endorsements - they are just where I think the chips will fall on election day. I’ll give you a list of endorsements next week, with a rationale for my preferences.

Mayor - Anne Marie Decicco-Best

Ward 1 - Bud Polhill

Ward 2 - Bill Armstrong

Ward 3 - Joe Swan

Ward 4 - Greg Thompson

Ward 5 - Joni Baechler

Ward 6 - Nancy Branscombe

Ward 7 - Matt Brown

Ward 8 - Paul Hubert

Ward 9 - Gina Barber

Ward 10 - Paul Van Meerbergen

Ward 11 - David Winninger

Ward 12 - Harold Usher

Ward 13 - Judy Bryant

Ward 14 - Jim Wood

You don’t get any points for correctly calling school board races, but here are my picks for Thames Valley District School Board:

Ruth Tisdale

Sheri Polhill

Peggy Sattler

Peter Jaffe

Joyce Bennett

Terry Roberts

Just doing my regular Saturday morning scan of the upcoming Council agenda, and was very pleased to see a motion requesting that all local agencies, boards, and commissions that have councillors sitting on them post agendas, minutes, and meeting notices using the same standards as City Council - approving the motion would direct the city to politely request this action because it can’t ‘require’ agencies, boards and commissions to do so.

This is totally a political/symbolic move by Ms. Barber and Ms. Eagle to squeeze more mileage out of the Western Fair Board decision regarding ticket prices, but politics aside I find it very hard to disagree with their sentiment. (You may recall reports of inconsistent recollections of how certain councillors voted on the matter - public minutes would certainly clear that issue up, but the Western Fair would not release the minutes to the public.)

Though the fair is not technically a city board or commission funded out of the city base budget, it does have councillors on the board who sit on by virtue of their elected office. The Board of Governors at the University of Western Ontario is another example, as is the Fanshawe College Board - according to my old Governance Task Force materials, there are 31 such bodies that Councillors sit on.

As such, I completely agree that citizens should be able to evaluate the performance of their elected officials sitting on those boards. If they make a bone-headed decision, I’d like to know that when I cast my next ballot. 

Many of these agencies will argue that they’re separately incorporated entities that have a duty to their members, not to the public; thus, they are not required to disclose meeting information to the public using the same standards as the municipality. This may be technically correct, but what’s the issue with sharing more information with the public? Many decisions will still be made in-camera (land, labour, law, contract issues) but why not share everything else? Many of the agencies, boards, and commissions have Councillors on them because their mandates serve a clear public interest, they receive some kind of financial break from the city, or both - so it is completely fair to hold them to a higher standard than other separately incorporated entities.

So I say these entities should give the public as much information as they can without breaching their fiduciary responsibility related to sensitive issues (land, labour, law. etc.); 99.9 per cent of the people serving on these boards are doing an excellent job and have absolutely nothing to fear and 99.9 per cent of the decisions are reasonable and made in good faith. Also, letting the public attend portions of meetings that don’t need to be confidential reduces the mystery and public cynicism, and also engages customers and stakeholders during the decision making process rather than after the fact.  Good things, no? 

More transparency very rarely leads to worse decisions - quite the opposite. So I’m hoping a) this motion is unanimously supported by Council on Monday night, and b) agencies, boards and commissions take the advice.

Off to a wedding this afternoon - have a great weekend everybody.

Apologies for my radio silence of late - work, illness, and plain old ‘enjoying the family’ have kept me from my keyboard. A few more busy days ahead, but promise to be more regular once September hits and the Municipal campaign heats up.

I have to break my self-imposed tumblr exile with a plea to ya’ll to read Paul Wells and John Geddes on the Insite safe injection site in Vancouver. I’m hoping most level headed Canadians will be upset by the clear attempts of upper brass in the RCMP, most likely on orders of their political masters in Ottawa (remember Tony Clement on Insite?) to ignore clear-cut science when it comes to harm reduction. I’m not an illegal drug user myself (I have certainly inhaled, but not in quite some time), but I think we should be treating addiction with a view towards what is proven to work just as we would treat any other illness. 

Moralizing, fear-mongering and ideology yet again seem to be trumping data and the better instincts of loyal civil servants, and that just pisses me off.  Hope it pisses you off too.

Anyway, please give these stories a read.  This issue is much bigger than the census in my opinion, and I’m hoping it gets some legs. 

Paul Wells - Insite Flim-Flam

John Geddes - RCMP and the truth

This census debate keeps heating up (never thought I’d write that phrase) after the CBC obtained documents that demonstrate the government tried to arm-twist Statistics Canada into signing off on a communications plan that essentially said that StatsCan, not the Government of Canada, pushed for the scrapping on the mandatory long-form. If you want a good laugh/cry, take a look at the MS Word track change bubbles next to the government communications plans - some pretty unhappy and stunned bureacrats! I’m sure more insights will come from the leaked documents as the CBC has more time to go through them.

Anyway, back to work this week with lots on my plate - so I’m going to leave you with two columns written over the past few days about the importance of this debate. If you haven’t written, called, or e-mailed your local MP please take the time to do so - we’re running out of time.

Roy Romanow - Information Must be Canada’s Bedrock

Jeffrey Simpson - The long form will return.  Voters won’t.