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How
do we measure politicians? What makes
a good one? How do we choose by our
vote? Attending
the May 4th
funeral of former NDP immigration
critic Dan Heap got me thinking about
this politician and others I have
known. It
also sent me back to the 1980s and
remembering my own dabbling in
politics as a candidate because I
thought having a good rep mattered. I
still think so. Perhaps remembering
the good politicians will help us vote
for what we should have. Perhaps
remembering the bad will help us avoid
electing them. But first, let me turn
to my bit of experience.
Yes,
I have a tiny bit of personal
political experience burned into me. I
ran for Alderman in the then Ward 11
of North York in 1980 because the
evidence suggested that my incumbent
Alderman
had a record of absences from Council
and did little for ratepayers and
tenants and social needs in a North
York city centre Ward which was facing
major redevelopment. Moreover he
appeared to follow the
unsavoury pattern
of accepting campaign funds from
developers whose land could be rezoned
to make it more valuable. He
was subsequently convicted for
improperly obtaining the funds which
allowed him to narrowly beat me in the
1980 election.
Lobbying
parliamentarians for the Canadian
churches about changes by the Mulroney
conservative government to the
Immigration Act in the late 1980s, I
met other politicians – and Dan Heap
was one of them. Dan Heap, MP, was a
remarkable human being and NDP
immigration critic. He was most active
in refugee affairs in the 1980s and a
friend of ICCR and of the Canadian
Council for Refugees with which I was
also associated. He helped broker some
improvements to the first big changes
to the Immigration Act 1976 which took
effect in 1989. In those days personal
visits mattered a bit more – there was
no email!
Dan's
funeral on May 4, 2014 was an eclectic
meeting ground of friends from the
union movement, churches, immigration,
NDP and beyond. Dan was an Anglican
priest who turned worker priest,
worked in a cardboard box factory,
became local union Secretary and rep
to the Toronto & York Region
Labour Council. Always a justice
activist, he marched in the 1965 Selma
-Montgomery march against segregation.
He opposed South African apartheid
from 1960 on. He worked for redress
for the Japanese Canadian internees.
He opposed the 1970 War Measures Act.
After serving as city councillor for
Toronto's Ward 6, he was elected as an
NDP Member of Parliament in 1981,
re-elected in 1984 and 1988, retiring
in 1993. But
I should name some others, like the
Conservative MP Jim Hawkes who chaired
the House Committee dealing with
immigration in the late 1980s. He was
an honest man whom I respected. He was
very proper and discreet but he was
open and friendly and could listen to
a point of view and consider it. Those
who worked with Lloyd Axworthy as
Minister of Employment and Immigration
in the early 1980s told me of his
ability to listen and to make
initiatives happen around the
testimony he heard. For example, I am
told that after meeting with Canadian
church reps he arranged to resettle
Salvadorean and Guatemalan refugees
from the United States at a time when
the US asylum procedure was incapable
of recognizing their need for
protection.
Then
there are bad politicians. Recently
they seem to have been at the
municipal level in Montreal and
Toronto. In marked contrast with the
May 4 celebration of the life of MP
Dan Heap, April 2014 ended with
Toronto’s Mayor Ford taking a leave of
absence and disappearing for “rehab”
after a second video was published –
this one allegedly showing him smoking
cocaine. (See my earlier articles
about Ford - Nov 2010 and Nov 2012.)
Ford is a person who was elected Mayor
of Toronto by using a folksy approach
like that of the US Tea Party and a
simplistic slogan “stopping the gravy
train” which sounded plausible but
never really touched down to any
reality. At
the same time, he lacked evidence of
any credentials for the job, and was
known not to have skills at
cooperation or mediation. And
he had a worrisome record of escaping
conviction for driving with marijuana
and impaired driving in Florida. For
me, that made not voting for him a
clear enough choice.
Since
election he has acted - successfully -
above the law. He flouted Toronto
council’s conflict of interest rule,
but was let off by the appeal court.
He has driven dangerously – without
charges. He has used city
transportation for a football team he
used to coach. Ford
has associated with drug dealers. He
is happy proclaiming his lack of
perfection – an understatement – and
his bad behaviour after too much
alcohol. His driver is facing charges
for extortion related to the first
video allegedly showing the Mayor
smoking crack. Ford did not come clean
on any part of this until the evidence
became undeniable. Supporters
still like his direct folksy style and
his current simple slogan to the
effect of saving people money. Ford
is a good example of the kind of
politician I don’t need to have around
– and, I venture to suggest, nor does
Toronto. Both
Plato and the proponents of the US
model of democracy were aware of the
dangers of letting people directly
choose who ruled. In
the US form there is a buffer between
peoples’ votes and the election of a
President in the form of a group of
electors, the Electoral College, who
make the final choice. In
our Canadian system, a related
safeguard allows an established
political party to put forward
candidates for election.
Unfortunately, the party candidate
approach has always seemed a bit rigid
for a municipal election. Maybe Mayor
Ford is the example who proves that it
is necessary there too! I
struggle to understand how voters can
become attached to someone so
unsavoury and phony. It
may be acceptable to put up with
unproductive attention-getting
behaviour from teen pop stars. From
someone supposedly leading a major
city, it is unacceptable. Can
we get into a different mindset for a
city election than the one we use to
watch a soap opera or a teen idol?
Sympathy is appropriate for ineptitude
in a good drama or a soap opera. Anger
is the appropriate response to
ineptitude in public office. When
we vote, can we remind ourselves that
voting is like hiring the person best
qualified for an important job? Being
our representative is an important
job. First,
we must learn what honesty and
integrity mean and demand evidence of
these two traits in the candidate’s
past work as the bottom line. The
mayor of Toronto must be able to
reflect Toronto. The mayor must be a
person capable of reaching out to the
range of groups – some very different
from one’s current bunch of buddies.
And it means “representing” Toronto,
which includes projecting and
promoting the laws and rules of the
place. No one should be elected who
does not fully respect and promote the
laws the rest of us must follow. And
yes, we should tell the courts that we
mean that when we say it. Don’t let
such leaders off!
Somehow,
we must all “get real” and ruthlessly
vote by some of these basics. Of
course many will favour a party
preference, which is fine. But it is
important to have one’s own tests too.
For me, there has to be a track record
of integrity and honesty. There has to
be a proven capacity to listen to
different groups of people’s points of
view and help mediate outcomes with
which all groups are more or less
comfortable. There
has to be automatic suspicion of
simplistic doctrinaire formulas or
slogans.
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