Fix Governance 4: Democracy is at Risk. City Halls are on the Front Line of Saving It.
Municipal leaders who choose opaque decision-making over meaningful public engagement are supporting the conditions that allow authoritarianism to flourish.
Democracy is a responsibility of all leaders
We instinctively think of higher levels of government as the custodians of democracy.
Federal and provincial governments have direct responsibility for our election process. In Canada, a majority government can change our system of voting, decide when elections take place, or determine whether private influence can be bought through campaign contributions.
But elections only happen once every few years.
Democracy happens every day. And it involves all levels of government.
Norms and values are under attack
Democracy is being able to say whatever we want, other than hate speech or slander, without the fear of reprisal. It is a free media able to hold politicians to account. It is people peacefully gathering in the streets and protesting something they oppose.
Canadian society has a set of norms and values that support democracy, and which serve as a counterweight to the temptation of would-be-authoritarians.
But some politicians are trying to chip away at those norms and values. In the US, Donald Trump has declared his ambition to be “a dictator for one day”. In Alberta, Danielle Smith has been stripping away the ability of municipalities to make their own decisions.
City Hall is how most people experience government
Protecting democracy is the responsibility of all our elected leaders. Including City Hall.
City Halls plays a more important role in protecting democracy than most people realize. For the simple reason that, for most of us, government means City Hall.
When you open your front door, it is local government providing most of the public services you see. Filling potholes. Collecting garbage. Dealing with homelessness. Providing safe drinking water. Policing and firefighting. And so on.1
City Hall is where people are mostly likely to interact directly with government.
Municipal engagement matters
But what happens when people engage their local government on issues that matter to them, and do not get a satisfactory response? Or feel they have not been heard? Or even feel they have been treated with contempt?
They start to lose faith in government. Not just local government but all government.
This is why it is so important that cities make an effort to meaningfully engage their residents.
Many people try to get involved on local issues and quickly run into a brick wall. They often come up against long-established municipal cultures influenced by strong-arm Mayors. Cultures that prevent public servants from even trying to build something better through the messy process of engaging the community.
Chipping away at our norms and values
People only have to have one or two bad experiences with City Hall before they lose confidence in government.
All government.
We lose confidence in our politics and trust in our democratic institutions.
It makes people feel powerless to stand up for a free society, and complacent to those threatening to take our freedoms away.
Last line of defence
In the absence of anyone else, accountability of local governments falls to citizen groups. Community groups are emerging as one of the last lines of defence in protecting democracy at the local level.
How we best support community groups in holding City Hall to account is a topic for another day.
Look to how a city manages engagement
Democracy dies out of neglect. Many municipal governments are unknowingly contributing to that neglect.
It is high time for city leaders, both elected officials and staff, to recognize that they are not innocent bystanders in the demise of democracy.
Municipal authorities are active participants who either reinforce the societal norms protecting democracy, or weaken those norms through a disregard for the public.
How a city manages its public engagement processes is an indication of whether that local government is defending our nation’s democratic institutions, or eroding them.
While higher levels of government may have legislative responsibility for some of these issues and even provide base funding, often delivery is delegated to municipalities, with cities ultimately responsible for filling in any gaps. Homelessness is a highly visible example of an issue where cities are left addressing the inadequate response of higher levels of government.