Letter signed by five councillors raises questions

Councillors Donovan Cavers and Arjun Singh haven’t returned my calls, so some details are lacking, but it’s apparent they were both involved in the sign-up, which resulted in themselves, along with councillors Dieter Dudy, Tina Lange and Denis Walsh signing the letter.

Reactions to the letter fall into two camps:

“Brilliant idea, you deserve credit for standing up for what you believe in.”

“Really bad idea, you weren’t elected to get involved in things that aren’t within the City’s jurisdiction.”

I’m going to jump to a conclusion and suggest those opinions may be heavily influenced by whether or not people support proportional representation.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with City councillors taking positions on issues outside their authority. The jurisdiction question, by the way, is one of the reasons given by the council members, including Mayor Ken Christian, who declined to sign the letter. But City councillors are community leaders, and at times the way in which they can lead is to take principled stands on things over which they have no control.

Ajax was one of those things, and the fact a majority of councillors came out in opposition to the mine may well have influenced the outcome.

The difference is that while Ajax was debated by council in the full light of day, and a formal vote taken, the PR letter was not. Not all councillors were even asked to sign. The letter popped up out of the blue, with the councillors whose names weren’t on the letter receiving an e-mailed heads up the evening before its release.

Strategically, it was pretty smart. An open debate in council chambers on a resolution to support PR would have resulted in headlines that said, “Council split on proportional representation.”

This way, the headlines were about most councillors supporting it.

But doing it offline sets up a split on council. Those who weren’t part of the inside group can be forgiven if they feel a bit slighted at the process. It’s as if a little pro-PR party was formed within council.

This actually contradicts the claim made in the letter that councillors all work together to build consensus through “compromise, cooperation and civility.” The letter’s apparent claim that the City council system is similar to PR is a real stretch anyway — Kamloops councils are elected at large without party affiliations.

The fact the five of them signed as councillors instead of individuals is problematic. As Dieter Dudy says, “We should never have been identified as councillors.”

The letter’s association with Fair Vote Kamloops is interesting. Gisela Ruckert of Fair Vote Kamloops confirms that while the letter originated with the councillors, not with her group, it was asked by one of the councillors for ideas. “We were asked hypothetically if we could get a letter together.”

She says some reference points were provided by her group but she doesn’t know how closely they were followed.

It was a matter of receiving a request and responding to it, she says, emphasizing that the idea of the letter didn’t come from Fair Vote Kamloops. Seems to me, though, that the connection could have been mentioned by both parties in the interests of disclosure.

Mayor Christian has raised the question of whether the letter by the Pro Rep Five is even legal. There are rules around in-camera discussions and what constitutes a meeting and a quorum and what doesn’t, but agreeing outside an official council meeting to take a majority position on an issue that never makes it to council as a whole is uncharted territory.

It will certainly provide fodder for those who get concerned about such things, and theoretically a taxpayer could probably submit a complaint based on the Community Charter, but I doubt it would get anywhere.

It’s one of those things that will be left to the court of public opinion to rule on whether it was appropriate or not.

by Armchair Mayor

Letter signed by five councillors raises questions

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