The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Just about every political movement imaginable has gained a voice within Canada's House of Commons. Whether you want pot decriminalized, Quebec separated or carbon taxed, your point of view is represented within our federal political system. As it should be. The whole point of electing multiple MPs is to ensure the broad desires of the populace are proportionately reflected when the decisions that shape our collective present and future are made. It's the same reason why in Flin Flon we have seven council members Ð one mayor and six councillors. With roughly one elected official for every 834 residents, the goal is to ensure our city's diversity of opinion manifests itself at the uppermost level of our local government. Unfortunately, that goal is not being sufficiently met. City council almost always votes in perfect unison. Rare indeed is the motion that garners opposition from even one of the seven decision-makers. Some might call that commendable, evidence that council has the uncanny ability to arrive at full consensus over and over and over again. The problem is that when it comes to the complex issues with which the city must deal, some disagreement Ð certainly more than is reflected in the way council harmoniously votes Ð is normal and indeed healthy. Not only that, many of the ideas commonly held among the 5,800-plus Flin Flonners NOT on city council never seem to find their way to the council table. Let me point out that according to the provincial government, any member of any municipal council in Manitoba has the right to bring forth a motion on any issue. There may be procedural rules to follow, but basically if a councillor has an idea to benefit the community, he or she has the right (duty, I would say) to make a relevant motion. You'd think this autonomy afforded to our councillors would generate all kinds of motions. Some would carry, others would be defeated, but at least the sorts of ideas many in the public hold would be debated in an open forum, our elected officials forced to go on record as either for or against. Many in this community, for instance, strongly believe City Hall must act now to open a new subdivision. "We can't afford to" is no doubt the refrain we'd hear from council. The real question is, can you afford not to? How many luxurious new homes have to go up in Creighton, the lake areas, even the new cottage subdivision in Cranberry Portage, before suitable residential lots become an urgent priority? With mines due to open in Snow Lake, the challenge of keeping people in Flin Flon will only grow in the coming years. Maybe you can't keep all of those people in our city, but you can sure's heck try. Even if council imposed a one-time tax hike in order to develop a new subdivision, along with incentives to build there, would it not be worth it in the long term? Perhaps in their closed-door meetings council has more diversity of opinion than is apparent on the surface. If that's the case, it would be nice to see more of it in public. Flin Flon is too diverse of a city to have all of its council members voting, if not thinking, in virtual harmony. Local Angle runs Fridays.
