Shut up or else?

As of yesterday, The Monitor announced that Loyola councillor Warren Allmand will not be running again, a fact that’s certain to disappoint many West End residents, who view him as an honourable and independent thinker – a politician not to keen on towing the party line. There are so few of those left these days…

While West End residents look around to see who else will be joining the race (most current CDN-NDG councillors have confirmed that they’ll be running again), over in the West Island, Pointe Claire mayor Bill McMurchie has been making waves (and some enemies) with a controversial new bylaw that would make it legal for the city of Pointe Claire to slap residents who talk too much or ask too many questions during council question period with a fine!

Fines would start at $300 for a first offence and go all the way up to a whopping $2,000. While bylaws aiming to limit the number of questions asked per person during a council meeting’s Q & A period are nothing new, the addition of fines has certainly gotten people talking. Many local residents and journalists alike are up in arms over this decision and rightfully so! While writing this column, rumours have started circulating in the newsroom that said bylaw may be on the way out just as quickly as it was introduced. My guess is that McMurchie must have received his fair share of angry emails and “what the hell were you thinking?” phone calls and decided that passing that bylaw was not one of his finest moments.

As someone who has covered my share of council meetings in a number of Montreal and off island boroughs, I know, only too well, how tedious they can sometimes be. I know that, just like taxes and death, the only other certainty in life is that every council meeting has that one resident who will get up to the mic and go on and on and on about a matter that only he or she considers of supreme importance. I know that everyone is tired and wants to go home and limiting the questions is certainly one way of doing it. The easy way, however, is not the right way.

Creating a bylaw that discourages free speech is setting a dangerous precedent. It’s basically telling people that we will listen to you – but only up to a point and only if you don’t become annoying.

Sorry to break it to municipal councillors who, after all, decided to take on the formidable task of borough politics without anyone twisting their arm to do so, but council meetings are sometimes not neat, orderly and tidy for the simple reason that democracy isn’t neat, orderly and tidy. Sometimes it’s a downright mess, with questions, accusations and grievances flying left and right.

But, here’s the catch: democracy requires questions and scepticism. It requires a lack of faith in authority and it requires local reporters at council meetings taking notes and asking questions. It requires residents to do the same.

To paraphrase George Orwell, who certainly warned of Nanny States before they came into style, “Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose." To criticize and oppose. No mention of a time limit there. Attempting to enforce a time limit through a bylaw that penalizes people with actual monetary fines is to severely limit democracy. In an attempt to defuse the trouble-makers, to limit their time at the microphone, free speech takes a hit. It’s like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Journalist Neil Macdonald of the CBC News recently wrote: “While I am perfectly prepared to concede that today’s newspaper reporters and their broadcast colleagues have always been a flawed bunch, I also know, having spent 33 years in this dodge, 11 of them at three newspapers, that many of the people who govern us do not believe the public has a right to know very much at all. (…). Information is empowering, which makes its release politically risky. So, given a choice, those in power will hoard it.”

Allowing the public the opportunity to ask their questions and quiz the people they elected into power –without the risk of fines or severe time limitation impositions- evens the playing field and enables democracy to take place.

As a footnote to Warren Allmand’s announcement that he’s quitting politics, speculation has began to take place about who might be throwing their hat in the ring for the Loyola district. Will former councilor Jeremy Searle be making a comeback? Will NDG resident and Green party candidate during the last provincial elections, Peter McQueen, be channeling his civic-minded concerns into municipal council politics? It remains to be seen.