There is danger in reckless change; but greater danger in blind conservatism. — Henry George

Democracy is based on the principle that society shall be governed by the will of the people. Why should municipal councils, having been democratically elected to a position of power and authority, be reluctant to accommodate a citizens’ call for a referendum to determine the will of the people on controversial issues? An election is a democratic process by which citizens consolidate their individual preferences into collective decision. Does a referendum not serve the same purpose? Why would a council not want to know where people stand on controversial issues? The reason is easy to see from the politician’s point of view: elections put decision-making power in the hands of politicians; referendums leave that power in the hands of citizens. One gives power to politicians, the other takes it away.

If you truly wished to find out what is best for the country you would listen more to those who oppose you than to those who try to please you. — Isocrates

Major land use decisions leave permanent marks on communities; their effects often stretch beyond the term to which the council making such decisions is elected. It is in keeping with democratic principles that citizens be actively engaged in such decisions. The decision-making process is political, and politics (to quote Bismarck) is the art of the possible. Laws do not engender politics; politics engender laws. A public hearing should be a political process. Why then are public hearings, forums intended to engage citizens politically in land use decisions, legislated? The answer is that citizens and councils function on separate planes: citizens have rights; councils have power. The public hearing process is legislated because, absent a compulsion to hear citizens, councils could be seduced to make land use decisions that have long-lasting effects without consulting citizens. To that end the Local Government Act requires that public hearings precede the adoption of land use bylaws.

The quantity of every commodity brought to market naturally suits itself to the effectual demand. — Adam Smith

The introduction of a two cents-and-a-bit carbon tax in British Columbia unleashed a torrent of anti-taxation hyperbole. The public’s reaction to the doubling in the price of crude oil was mute by comparison.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. — Rudyard Kipling

We will hear and see the word “taxpayer” bandied about vigorously in the months to come as we enter the season of elections. The word is a construct designed to drug citizens to differentiate people who pay taxes from the rest of the population. But buy a loaf of bread, and included in the price are taxes; mend a shirt, and hidden in the price of needle and thread will be a trace of taxes; everybody pays taxes. And everyone uses the fruits of taxes — roads, potable water, schools, health care services. We are both payers and beneficiaries of taxes. So why do politicians focus only on the payer role?

Time after time we have to choose an action or an idea, often with little tangible information, experience, or knowledge. — Gordon Bailey and Noga Gayle

The Prime Minister’s apology to former students of Indian residential schools was the latest in a line of formal apologies extended to Canadians of Aboriginal, Chinese, Ukrainian, and Japanese ancestry. The events that gave rise to these apologies are not isolated faux pas committed by government officials. The residential school tragedy has its origin in the Indian Act of 1876, the Chinese head tax in the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, and the internment of Ukrainian Canadians during the First World War and Japanese Canadians during the Second World War in the War Measures Act. The realization that apologies are due arose gradually, after much initial resistance, and decades after the full and ugly consequences of decisions made by governments and authorized by Parliaments of earlier generations were evident.