Monday, December 30, 2013

A Janus Tribute: To the Past and the Future


Due to the length of my rants and my inability to edit my thoughts down, I have given in to the idea of a blog. It’s long and rambling (consider yourself warned!).
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While I personally prefer September as a time of year for setting goals and resolutions, the approach of January is a great time to reflect on the past year and ponder lessons learned that might help in the future.

I recently finished reading Michael Ignatieff’s book, “Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics”. While I found it to be an extremely frank memoir about the trials and tribulations in the struggle for power, there is one quote that kind of encapsulates some of my learning from the last year (and for those keeners out there, I’ve included some other great quotations from the book at the end of this post):

Once you see a country as a sustained, everyday act of will, you understand why politicians matter. They bring people who want different things into the same room to figure out what we share and want to do together. Countries are “imagined communities” and politicians are the ones who represent what we share then figure out the compromises that enable us to live together in peace…I talked about the “spine of citizenship”…It meant for government to do what it could to strengthen the common experiences, sense of shared history and common rights and responsibilities that make us into a people. It’s only when you’re in politics that you understand both the divisions of a country and the hunger for unity that transcends those differences. Politicians have to find ways to articulate what is common and then build that common life into the fabric of its institutions.”

Obviously, municipal politics is not on the same scale, however I have fully realized in the last year the enormous diversity of opinion out there…and that my role is to represent all citizens, whether they vote or not…and to find the reasonable solution that is in the best interest of the greatest number. I appreciate so much the feedback I get on social media –it helps me to make informed decisions, but I also appreciate all the people who I speak with every day, who write notes or call to let me know their thoughts on a particular issue.
 
I’m convinced that despite the abysmal turnout during elections, democracy still matters and that the more informed citizens are about the issues (yes, sometimes they are complex) the better off we will all be. There is a tendency sometimes for all of us to feel overwhelmed by the “big, thorny issues”, sometimes the media feeds into this feeling of apprehension for the future and citizens feel a lack of power and an inability to change things. But, from what I’ve seen this last year, citizens have ENORMOUS amounts of power to affect change in our world. In fact, in my opinion, that is where the great changes are coming from. And of course, I do think that getting kids involved earlier in citizenship/leadership roles is absolutely vital to the future of democracy. Kids don’t see any limits to making the world a better place, so we need to lead by example and free-up opportunities for the kids to participate.

(Don’t let the doom and gloom get to you! Not to be the Pollyanna here, but check out Margaret Wente’s article from Saturday’s Globe and Mail … there are a lot of ways the world is getting better…sometimes I know I need to hear this amidst all the negativity.)

I am very positive about the future of Moncton. We have a lot going for us at the moment with really strong economic indicators in a lot of sectors…and with the upcoming Economic Leadership Summit, I’m optimistic that we can come up with some concrete plans to keep that sustainable growth going. The City is in a solid financial state (despite all this snow!) and we are benefitting from some excellent leadership over the years. This last year has seen such a spectacular turnaround on our river and its vital importance to all of us from tourism, economic, cultural and just plain pride perspectives...which all bodes well for the ongoing improvement in our river’s health. Our downtown is on the cusp of great things, I’m convinced. Right now I’m reading an excellent report on “Financial Incentive Programs and Strategies that Cities utilize to incite Downtown Development and assist with the preservation of Heritage Properties”…I’m looking forward to co-chairing the Downtown Revitalization Committee and solving three major DT stumbling blocks: parking, unsightly premises and incentives for DT development and heritage preservation.

There is still a lot of room for improvement on public transit, but I do think we are slowly moving in the right direction. I’m looking forward to continuing the improvements and increasing the $4 million return we get on our $10 million investment. I’m thrilled that the City was able to tangibly commit to helping to stop the cycle of poverty through its donation of land for the YWCA’s Home for Her. It seems that the city will be playing a bigger and bigger role in the reduction of poverty and economic disparity and looking to the future is vital. According to the World Bank, a $1 investment today for a child living in poverty will be a savings of $5 in the future. We simply can’t have kids in our community going hungry…poverty is NOT an immutable fact of life, rather, in my opinion, it is a failure of our collective imagination.

We have finally passed our new Municipal Plan and accompanying Zoning By-Laws…now the challenge will be the implementation of the excellent ideas in the plan. While this has been a long time coming, it is so vital for the future of our city and where it will be in the next 20-50 years and just sets the stage in a very positive way. I know that planning is vital and we do a lot of it at the City, but now, I really think that we have enough plans...the time to make some things happen is now!


So, if you’ve made it this far, thank you. I will continue in 2014 to be there for you, trying always to apply my quadruple bottom line to all of my decisions (economic, social, environmental and cultural) and trying to be a leader, benefitting from your excellent input. Now, back to my pile of novels, because fiction, more than anything else, helps me to make sense of my world (since the role of artists is to articulate the world for us). Happy New Year!

As promised, here are some quotes from “Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics” by Michael Ignatieff (Random House, ©2013)
· “Nothing gets you into more trouble in politics than blurting out the truth.”
· “I saw my country as an example of civility, tolerance and international engagement for people the world over.”
· In his Massey Lecture called “The Rights Revolution”he “tried to define Canada’s political uniqueness: the fact that we didn’t have capital punishment or a right to bear arms; that we believed in group rights to protect the French language and aboriginal title to land; the fact that we believed a woman’s right to choose should prevail; the fact that a bilingual national experiment, always under stress, forced us constantly, as a condition of survival, to try to understand each other and reach common ground. …Compromise was built into our way of doing politics. Or so I thought.”
· “In a time of social fragmentation, where we are ever more walled off by class and income, race, religion and age, where so many people live alone, where the public square feels deserted, a political party is the place where strangers come together to defend what they hold in common and to fight in a common cause.”
· “As soon as democracy loses its connection to place, as soon as the location of politics is no longer the union hall, the living room, the restaurant and the local bar and becomes only the television screen and the website, we’ll be in trouble…YouTube videos and ads are no substitute for an encounter between real flesh-and-blood human beings.”
· “In politics calling a fact a fact can be the equivalent of pulling the pin out of a hand grenade.”
· “Without the enthusiasm of volunteers to inspire them, politicians risk becoming the puppets of their paid strategists.”
· “Compromise is impossible unless adversaries are open to persuasion.”
· “So I wouldn’t say our democracy is in difficulty. It is alive and well in citizens’ hearts, or at least I believe so. Where it isn’t so healthy is in the place that should be the very temple of our democracy, the House of Commons.”
· “Politicians have to negotiate trust against the backdrop of permanent dislike of their own profession. When you represent the people you actually spend most of your time trying to overcome their suspicion that you have left them behind to join a brutal game that will do them no good.”
· “The challenge lies in trying to change what must be changed and preserving what must be preserved, and knowing the difference between the two.”
· “If you don’t believe in the ultimate rationality of citizens, you don’t have the faith needed to make democracy work.”
· “To enjoy politics and to do it well, you have to believe that you serve everyone, whether they voted for you or not…To be a good politician is to be responsible to the people who put you there and to be responsible for your actions.”