Once More Info the Fray
This article first appeared in the Minden Times and Haliburton Echo in March 2026.
The last Telling Our Stories Speakers’ Series event pulled a full room of movers and shakers -- as it often does, but this time with an unusual sprinkling of non-grey-hairs. They came to hear the highly entertaining (self-described bi-polar, but engagingly speedy) Dave Meslin bounce off his book Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up.
He gleaned from his book some suggestions that he thought might help Haliburton County in its upcoming municipal elections (in October 2026; nominations open May 1, close August 21).
One idea was that wards -- an urban construct, he said – be eliminated. The primary advantage of this, he said and I agree, is that under these circumstances the candidates for office run for election, not against their opponents. Because the five seats, or however many there are at the council table, go to the five candidates who got the most votes. The conversation at the doorstep or in candidate debates is then about what the candidate is offering, not about how s/he is a better person than their opponent. Because everyone is an opponent.
But also everyone may be a person sitting next to you at the council table with when you are elected. Where, if sense and experience have anything to teach us, reaching compromise for the greater good has better outcomes than the high-school you’re-in-you’re-out and gotcha! Social games we often see at play around municipal and county tables.
Serving in municipal office is not like being the Prom King/Queen, where all you have to be is popular and all you have to do is be beautiful/charming.
No. Meslin’s point – municipal government manages all the things that bear most closely on daily quality of life. The state of your road, your garbage dump, your social services, your library, your rec centres, your health and education facilities, the ease with which you build your house.
I asked a municipal rep who attended Meslin’s presentation if we could eliminate wards in my township during this last year of this council’s term. They explained there wasn’t time in any case but foreshortened by the dead duck period if there was to be extensive turnover among council.
I asked another municipal rep if in this last year of term we could reduce the number of counsellors in order that the per-person stipend increase enough that people of modest means could consider running. They said no, the budget was already set, and besides, we’d lose strong mayor ruling if the number declined.
Wouldn’t that be an interesting spin, if a mayor with strong powers were chosen from among the elected? Who do you think can be most trusted with power? Oh, wait, might it be a better idea to share power, devolving it to the person who has the most expertise or is most compelling on a given issue?
Indigenous cultures tended to this structure until colonialism insisted they elect one person to speak for them – and still complains about the inefficiency of having to negotiate First Nations issues with various and overlapping Indigenous authorities. They could instead imagine how citizens feel when we have to negotiate with equally various and overlapping government structures.
But reading in the paper that Premier Ford is suggesting the Niagara Falls municipalities will be ‘consolidated’ for economic efficiency (kinda like Toronto council, but one hopes not in the middle of the election), it’s a distinct possibility that Haliburton will be jack-booted into a single level of municipal governance. It’s irrefutable logic but a political third rail locally – the outside ‘assistance’ we need to make that move may be imminent.
Another of Meslin’s ideas was that the voting age be lowered to 16, so that kids could get into the habit of voting while they’re still in the familiarity of their own community. That might give rise to some interesting and much-needed intergenerational conversations about community priorities.
The best way to get diversity in provincial and federal government, Meslin said, rather than representation being curated and managed by political parties, would be to randomly select the requisite number of people to represent us. Not a new idea: that’s how juries are selected.
That idea tickles the mind, after the knee-jerk relaxes. After all, what is more democratic than probability? People could argue to be excused, as they do from jury duty. Process is less expensive, less time consuming, more nimble in accommodating changes in life circumstances, doesn’t result in expensive pensions. And we wouldn’t have to clutch our pearls about floor-crossers.
What would we have to do to get to ‘yes’ on any or all of Dave’s outrageous ideas?
Courage and imagination, my friends, nothing more, nothing less.
