Sunday 28 September 1997

An election by default

Citizens' group appeals for more candidates in municipal vote

Mohammed Adam
The Ottawa Citizen

What if there was an election and nobody ran? That's not exactly the situation facing Ottawa-Carleton as the November municipal elections draw near. But it's close.

With less than two weeks before nominations close, seven of the 18 regional councillors are unopposed. In the city of Ottawa, seven of the 10 councillors are heading for acclamation, as are three out of four councillors in Cumberland.

With such large numbers of incumbents running unopposed, a citizens' group yesterday issued an urgent appeal for people to get involved.

Calling this the most important election in years, local activists said public apathy could let in people by default. They organized an election workshop to draw attention to the problem and highlight the issues.

"When you have elections and you don't have candidates, the elections don't matter," said Robert Fox, one-time chief of staff to former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar.

"It's important to tell people, 'Pay attention.' We have to encourage people to run."

Workshop organizer Linda Hoad agreed.

"A lot of people don't understand what is happening and we are trying to impress on them the importance of this election."

Although municipal elections are notorious for lack of public interest, many of the participants at the one-day workshop are particularly worried about what appears to be a lack of interest in the election for regional council.

Given the Ontario government's massive downloading of services to municipalities, regional council will have more responsibilities than ever before. About 80 per cent of the property tax dollar will be spent by regional government. The region will be running everything from water, garbage collection and police to ambulance services, social housing and buses.

"Regional government is the one we know about the least, care about the least, but it's the one that most affect our lives. We have to pay attention to it," Mr. Fox said.

Rather than disappear in any municipal government restructuring, many people believe the regional level of government will get stronger. That degree of certainty should attract more quality candidates, but that is not happening.

Meanwhile, the race for mayor in all the cities except Nepean is no race at all. In Ottawa, everything points to a coronation for Coun. Jim Watson. In the rest of the cities, the mayors seem to be going through the motions of an election campaign, so feeble is the opposition where it exists.

Ottawa Coun. Ron Kolbus say that with the possibility of municipal government restructuring many think will end in some form of one-tier government, people just don't want to chance running for city councils. Why spend thousands of dollars to run for a council that in two or three year's time may not exist?

"People have heard all this stuff about one-tier and they think the cities are not going to be around. A lot of people think one tier is going to be at the region," Mr. Kolbus said.