Aiding and Abetting
This article first appeared in the Minden Times and Haliburton Echo in March 2026.
The third Healthy Democracy event drew a good crowd in Minden last week, including a good scatter of the non-grey-haired demography. They heard a panel of retired municipal leaders, two mayors and a dep mayor, and a younger, from away, current counsellor, talk about the benefits and challenges of public service at the municipal level.
My primary take-away from that is that being a municipal politician is a big job for crap pay, but worth it – if you afford it. Those not financially self-sufficient need not apply – unless you have an employer prepared to subsidize you.
I was discouraged to hear an ex-mayor say that ‘doing it for the money’ was not appropriate motivation. She touted the moral satisfaction of full-time volunteering that so many of us enjoy. (Note: mayors and dep mayors make a reasonable income, all streams combined.)
But the underlying concern, I thought, was about the nature of leadership. Strong mayor power was the acknowledged boogie-man. I don’t recall it being mentioned that that could be solved by reducing every township table to five, which would also allow the counsellor salary line to be shared among fewer people which might address in some way the crap pay problem.
The current sharing of power among a flotilla of elected leaders (I count 32 political positions serving a population of 23,000) managing a morass of inter-related workers now serves as our security blanket. The self-evident fiscal inefficiency of such an arrangement chews some holes in that blankie. We (should) worry that if we don’t solve that problem, it will be solved for us. That municipalities are legally the dependent children of the province does not let us sleep soundly, even if Premier Ford was jolly when he visited us in our time of need, a year ago.
So leadership: what we’ve got ain’t good, but what do we want?
There was agreement in the Minden room that elected leaders need to hear from their constituents and act accordingly for the general good. But ‘hearing from’ is not the same as ‘hearing’.
Hearing is not the same as doing, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not. We heard about the advantages and aggravation of mandated protocols. Even in our personal lives, it’s hard to distinguish between further consideration and procrastination.
It’s hard to distinguish ‘special interest groups’ from ‘engaged citizens’ at dueling range. You can’t please all the people -- never mind ‘all the time’, try ‘ever’ (I learned that when I was president of the Students’ Union Ways and Means Committee in grade 8!)
The solution lies in recognizing the connectedness, whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, between the elected and the electors. The worm in the bud of democracy is that we get the government we deserve.
So: if you don’t vote, you lose your right to comment.
If there’s nobody you consider worthy of leadership on the ballot, you haven’t done your work as a citizen. (That is the raison d’être of the Healthy Democracy project.)
If your preferred candidate didn’t win, either you didn’t do your work or you’re not in tune with the majority. Your work, in this case, might be to raise the decibels of the call for a more nuanced way of expressing preference, say by using a ranked ballot. I reaffirm my support for the logic of campaigning with and for the people you think would make a functional team around the counsel table. Rather than the winner-take-all duel mentality that FPTP requires.
I often look to Indigenous wisdom about the nature of governance and leadership. They managed this land for a very long time, and while we don’t know a lot about how they managed that responsibility, the evidence is they left it in pretty good shape for us to ‘acquire’. So they knew something we don’t. Or act like we don’t.
An article by Darryl Isbister, University of Saskatchewan (https://teaching.usask.ca/articles/2026-03-23-indigenous-leadership-and-community.php) , in the context of reconciliation, suggests replacing the word and concept of ‘ally’ with ‘accomplice’. An ally stands on the sidelines and cheers for those who are fighting the good fight. An accomplice enters the fray, not as an equal but as someone who shares in the outcome. An equal-but-different partner. Isbister says accomplices ‘accept the risk that…leaders assume’. Their ‘support is true and absent of performance. They will focus their efforts on the tangible actions that affect change.’
I thought that idea was very adaptable to the concerns expressed in the Minden room last week. If citizens became accomplices in the business of managing municipal responsibilities to optimize general well-being, we would be a team, not warring factions. We would work together to use all types of resources with utmost respect and effect. We would collectively celebrate our accomplishments (my road doesn’t have any potholes this spring!) and learn from our mistakes (County Rd 121 does have car-eating potholes – on the CKL side).
Let’s hear it for aiding and abetting. Let’s practice being accomplices.
