When it happened, I figured maybe the solution was close by. I wasn’t entirely certain they could or would pitch in, but I thought I’d try to find out. I’d never really gone to them for help before, but I thought this time I would. So, I sat down and wrote a letter to township council.
“The recent rain and wind storm,” I wrote, “battered the township. And among the victims were some of our old-growth trees.”
I went on to request some assistance.
Like many neighbours on our street and across the region we faced some heavy work and a lot of debris. I hoped the township might assist. I was impressed when I got a prompt response informing me that my request would go before council.
Then, following the next council meeting, I was advised the region (not the municipality) was the appropriate jurisdiction to deal with my problem, and if I prepared the tree debris in the appropriate way, that the region would help dispose of it. Council’s response didn’t solve my problem, but I have to say I felt as if my concern had received appropriate and rapid attention. It was actually addressed by a motion in Council.
“Yours truly,” the returning letter said. Signed, “Deputy Clerk.”
In four and a half weeks – on Oct. 19 – we shall (I hope) all go to a local polling station and exercise our franchise. We will have endured perhaps the longest national election campaign in this country’s 148-year history. We will have listened to or watched the last of some of the most insulting attack advertisements ever produced. We will have absorbed the pundits’ last summations of the election. And we will, at long last, determine in 338 ridings, which of the federal political parties we prefer and in so doing determine the 29th prime minister of Canada.
But I worry, as loyal as we feel to Elizabeth May, Tom Mulcair, Justin Trudeau or Stephen Harper, that none of us will feel as close to our federal representatives as we do our local council.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, I recall some of the connection I had with MPPs Larry O’Connor, Janet Ecker and John O’Toole. When there was discussion about building a new school in the community, large trucks on provincial highways or the survival of local services at the local hospital, a lot of us felt comforted by the fact, the farthest we might have to travel to state our case was an office at Queen’s Park in downtown Toronto. The provincial legislature – as far up the food chain as it was – still seemed accessible to our daily lives. But federal politics and politicians can often be another matter.
Generally, the federal constituencies cover much more territory than either the provincial or municipal ones. I can walk across a ward in a few minutes, but need a car to reach the extremities of the federal riding. If a federal representative makes it into the community more than a handful of times during his term, it’s rare. And even during federal campaigns – such as this one – the opportunity posed by next Monday’s Candidate Forum (sponsored by the Uxbridge Cosmos) is likely the only time we’ll hear what the major candidates have to say.
It’s not their fault. There are plenty of constituents’ doors to visit and the most densely situated ones are not in this part of the riding. The law of percentages plays against us. I remember moderating a federal candidates’ debate a few elections ago, when one candidate summed up his frustration.
“I can only be in so many places in a campaign,” he said. “I’m only human.”
Fair enough. But I think in some ways federal politicians have to be larger than life. Their vision cannot be limited to a traffic bylaw, business tax or garbage pickup. I think, to a certain extent, their view must be an outward, far-reaching and sometimes poetic one. Their view must connect Canada with the rest of the world.
Their grasp, I think, must explain such issues as climate change, the plight of refugees half way around the world and the needs of armed servicemen and women who come home with PTSD. There has to be a touch of the philosopher about them. And while they may not have a grasp of a culvert that needs upgrading, I think they have to know us even better than our municipal councillors do.
They say the most responsible politicians in a democracy are those who know where we live. That may be true. But those who represent us in the nation’s business are those who know where our hearts and minds live.