Why civic politics is actually a step up from provincial

Jun 16, 2018 | 5:00 AM

IS BEING AN MLA really a step up from civic politics? I’ve never thought so, but the traditional thinking is that it is.

The subject comes to mind with the announcement this week that NDP MLA Leonard Krog will run for mayor of Nanaimo in the Oct. 20 civic election. He’s hedging his bets — he’ll continue as MLA for Nanaimo and if he loses the mayoral race he’ll carry on in the Legislature.

In other words, being an MLA is second best and only a backup job as far as he’s concerned.

Former Kamloops mayor Peter Milobar did the opposite, of course, when he decided to run for the Liberals in Kamloops-North Thompson, resigning from council only after his election as MLA was secure.

The Nanaimo civic scene is a gong show. As Krog correctly put it, the council there has become “a bit of a laughingstock.” There have been lawsuits, firings and resignations, and the City hasn’t found a new CAO.

There are all kinds of nuances to Krog’s decision, including the fact it could lead to the defeat of the NDP government and another provincial election if the governing party should lose Krog’s seat in a by-election.

But the intriguing thing to me is that Krog’s preferred departure from the Ledge to City Hall confirms that running for MLA or MP is not a promotion.

If Milobar were to be guaranteed being off the record, I venture to suggest he might acknowledge that moving from the big chair in City Hall to an Opposition bench in Victoria and sponsoring bills on the costs of MLAs’ lunches, while an interesting change, isn’t quite living the dream.

He isn’t the only one to make that move, of course, though Terry Lake’s timing was such that the Liberals were still in power and he got a couple of good posts as environment minister and then health minister.

Some Kamloops lawmakers have gone in the opposite direction similar to what Krog is doing. “Flying” Phil Gaglardi was a senior B.C. cabinet minister for 20 years before he became a one-term Kamloops mayor.

Granted, he was defeated at the provincial level and wasn’t a good fit for the collegial-style decision-making that tends to characterize municipal politics, but he certainly didn’t regard it as a demotion.

And Kevin Krueger, another Kamloops son who served in cabinet for many years, tried for a council seat in last year’s by-election and intends to run again in October.

His situation illustrates the fact that it’s sometimes harder to get elected in civic politics than it is provincially or federally even though there are more chances available in the city. Former Logan Lake mayor Betty Hinton was defeated when she ran for Kamloops council but she later won election to Ottawa as the Canadian Alliance candidate when she defeated Nelson Riis.

Riis made some interesting transitions himself. Elected as a Kamloops alderman when he was a geography professor at what’s now TRU, he switched to school board and then ran successfully for MP representing Kamloops-Shuswap without skipping a beat.

Of course, several Kamloops mayors and councillors have tried and been defeated in provincial and federal elections as well.

Sure, different politicians have different reasons for where and why and when they run but my point is that civic politics isn’t some second-rate, second-choice option. On the contrary, I would argue that it’s the level of government where a person can make the most meaningful difference.

And let’s face it, being an MLA or an MP is, in some ways, a crap job. When the Legislature or House of Commons is in session, you spend all week away from your family in some hotel room or rented apartment, eating restaurant food, reading agendas and white papers and working your ass off, then flying home for a shortened weekend before flying back again.

In the case of MLAs, driving is often the alternative to flying. Though Phil Gaglardi was famous for his airplane escapades, he spent a lot of time driving between here and Victoria (of course, he was often described as flying on the highways, too).

I chatted briefly with Milobar at a Saturday morning event a couple of weekends ago — he’d arrived home from Victoria in his car at midnight the previous night.

Those who serve as MLAs or MPs deserve credit for what they do, but not for one minute is it a “step up” from local government. And based on Krog, Gaglardi, Riis and others, it could be argued it’s the other way around.