Municipal Horizons Part 4: WaterlooRegionVotes.org
CivicTechWR has assembled what is by far the best source of information related to doing democracy in Waterloo Country currently available.
Original Kitchener, Ontario
October 12, 2022
The municipal election is now just a few days away. Advance polls have opened in most places.
So far, four candidates, all with one of my neighbours on hand to do an introduction, have found their way to the door of my coop at the co-op: One is standing for regional council, one for the school board, and I’ve met two of the six choices available for who will represent us in my ward around the council table in my city.
I like them all. I was already inclined towards supporting Matt Rodrigues as one of my four regional council choices, and Maedith Radlein for the school board. My neighbour’s endorsement, along with meeting them in person, clinched it.
That’s two down, eight to go if I choose to use all my regional and school trustee votes (“plonking” for just one or two is also acceptable).
Voting responsibly is a civic duty, and it can be hard work. Last time around, I participated in all-candidates meetings organized by The Working Centre, Social Planning Council (now the Social Development Centre) and THEMUSEUM, but these kinds of events have become scarce, probably because of the pandemic. So I was glad to see this notice go out:
CivicTechWR is “a community group that brings together people from different sectors and industries to actively solve issues facing our local community using design and technology.” Launching waterlooregionvotes.org to gather information for voters in the 2018 municipal election was one of the group’s first undertakings. The pandemic took some of the wind out of their sails, so I was glad to see them back at work for 2022.
This is by far the best source of information related to doing democracy in Waterloo Country currently available. The problem is, the more comprehensive the coverage becomes, the more challenging it is to take it all in and make some sense out of it.
When I reached out to CivicTechWR to invite them to talk about their project for Promenade, the “community radio magazine” I work with, Paul Nijjar answered the call, who happens to be someone I got to know and respect as a colleague at The Working Centre. You can listen to our conversation here.
Nijjar agrees that the amount of material accessible through waterlooregionvotes.org can be overwhelming, but he is confident that spending an hour or two with the site can enable any citizen to make an informed choice on election day. While brochures, platforms and prepared answers to questionnaires can be helpful, he recommends taking the time to watch and listen to recordings of unscripted open forums as the most efficient way to get a sense of a candidate’s capabilities and character.
I’m particularly interested in endorsements, both from reputable public advocacy groups and from people I know and trust (like my deeply engaged neighbour). My view of elections as a collective deliberation process involving the entire public of a body politic is somewhat eccentric: I’m hoping we can move away from familiar storylines in which conflict, ambition and partisanship are dominant, with private convictions, habits and wills as the subtext, towards a less combative conception of the process. My objective as a voter is not to have my say, nor to ensure that my will be done in my city, province and nation, but to reach towards some kind of consensus among my fellow citizens. If that’s not possible, I’ll look for a way to be part of at least a plurality large enough to determine the results of an election. In sum: I’m looking for people to vote with, not just for.
The goal, not just for me alone in the voting booth, but for all of us throughout the entire deliberation process, is to achieve the best possible result. After it’s all over, even when faced with the worst imaginable outcome, the only viable option is to carry on and try to make the best of it. What one wants to avoid at all costs is coming out of the electoral process “dis-couraged” -- literally, disheartened. This is a condition that, if left unchecked, can lead to alienation and disengagement. Losing heart can reduce an engaged, responsible, contributing citizen to a mere resident: someone whose civil existence is deadened. Add suspicion, mistrust, fear, resentment and/or hate in sufficient measure, and a benumbed resident can become hostile, obstructive, and destructive: an enemy of a peaceful, ordered democracy, who no longer believes in, and works against government by and for the people.
I’ve only just begun delving into the information that Paul Nijjar and his CivicTechWR colleagues have gathered for us. I’m close to deciding which school board trustees I’m voting for, which is usually the most difficult because, unless there’s some kind of outrage or scandal, we don’t hear much about what happens around that table between elections.
I still have some work to do deciding who to support for regional council. Fortunately, the problem here is a richness of choice.
It appears close to certain that the Mayor of Kitchener and our Regional Chair will be re-elected, which leaves the option open to give an encouraging vote to a deserving candidate who had the courage to stand for office against all odds.
I appreciate the work Debbie Chapman has been doing representing my ward on Kitchener City Council over these last four, often difficult years. She has shown herself willing and able to listen, and has had the courage to speak up on matters of the greatest import that are also complex in the extreme. We need her voice at the council table for the next four years. So I promised her my support early in the campaign.
Although my mind was already made up, it was encouraging to meet Brooklin Wallis, who is also standing for election in my ward, at my door the other day. She was cheerful, seems bright, energetic, and raises some important questions:
“Our city council is too homogeneous,” she contends. “To properly represent their constituents, council needs the input of low-income workers, renters, transit users, Queer people, and people without a car... and our current councillors can’t provide that. We need regular people, who can voice the concerns of their own communities, to have a seat at the table.”
As someone who fits into 4 of the 5 categories cited here, I can identify as a “regular” person, albeit an old, male, white one, and can sympathize with Wallis’s position. So I thanked her, sincerely, for stepping up and being willing to serve. If support for Debbie Chapman was as solid as prospects for Berry Vrbanovic and Karen Redman appear to be, I’d consider changing my vote to encourage a promising new voice.
The visit from Brooklin Wallis didn’t change my mind, but it did move me towards looking more deeply into the Ward 9 election campaigns by following some of the links provided by Waterloo Region Votes. This is where clouds of discouragement started to drift in.
Generally, I began writing off “speakers corner” style online commentary long ago, including comments posted through respectable media outlets like the CBC. Read too much of this kind of material, you end up losing confidence in your fellow citizens, and consequently in democracy itself. I don’t take much store even in my own social media posts. I liken it to being in a crowded bar where people are somewhat inebriated and talking loudly, often over one another and a booming sound system. If you throw your voice out into the din, you’ll be sharing the attentions of those who happen to be listening with all kinds of distractions. What you say will be heard by no more than a couple of dozen within earshot, and understood by an even smaller fraction of those few.
The Waterloo Region Votes site includes comment threads from Reddit, a platform I’m not familiar with but have been meaning to explore. From what I saw at first glance, it doesn’t look like an improvement on the current norm. The hostility, and the apparent eagerness to divide the sheep from the goats, the enlightened few from the ignorant and privileged mainstream, are disturbing:
“Anyone voting for Chapman deserves to be shot into the sun.”
“She’s basically the queen of the NIMBYs.”
“[O]pposes all new housing construction”
“F…ing privileged rich boomer.”
“[W]e need younger people in council not these old trolls who are entitled and don’t care about the community.”
To be fair, I should be clear that these are examples selected to show how bad it can get; there are some thoughtful and articulate responses as well.
It’s that propensity towards simplified storylines like a privileged NIMBY majority versus the truly enlightened and compassionate, and the eagerness to assign blame that I find particularly alarming. Housing affordability is an exceedingly complex issue that touches on some of the most fundamental aspects of our way of life. The problems that need to solved to remedy the situation are systemic, not some kind of moral failure. For an old soul, always trolling for reasons to be hopeful and cheerful, constantly on the lookout for meaningful ways to make a constructive contribution, this is valuable information, I suppose. While straining to avoid the Charybdis of discouragement and withdrawal, one must also be careful to avoid the Scylla of groundless faith, indiscriminate trust, and a friendly, naive embrace of the intolerable.