Engaging constituents could have tilted merger call

(October 7) - Fine just the way it is. That is the ironic title of Annie Proulx's latest book of short stories. It is a line in one of the more powerful stories in the collection, Tits-Up in a Ditch. That's where you'll find her country after eight years of George W. Bush. The more you read her work, and the closer you examine where she's coming from, you'll see it. America is anything but fine.

Last week I found myself with not much to do on Monday night. I had cataract surgery in the morning. In the evening I had a patch on my left eye and time on my hands. I spent it watching the city council meeting where they decided not to fold Guelph Hydro in with Horizon Utilities. It was a long meeting at the end of a long process. All our councillors behaved as maturely as we should expect. They asked intelligent questions of the delegations. All but one gave an explanation of why they were voting the way they were.

It was a complicated issue. I was never comfortable with the merger, mostly because it seemed that Guelph was a small fish being swallowed by a bigger one.

Horizon was swimming around Ontario making a meal of any smaller utilities it came across. In addition to this, Hamilton is generally perceived as being a dirty place that turned Lake Ontario into a dirty pond. It looked like a bad fit. Safer to go north or west and find a pool where the other fish are about the same size, or smaller.

It seems many of us think Guelph is fine just the way it is and we don't need any help from the likes of Hamilton. The trouble is that it's not true. It is true enough that we don't need help from the likes of Hamilton. It's not true that Guelph is just fine the way it is. We're not tits-up in a ditch, but we're not fine.

All cities in Ontario are creatures of the province, accountable to the government through the Ontario Municipal Act. We are not entirely in charge of our own destiny. There are things council can decide, and things it can't. When the provincial government adopted the Places to Grow regulations, Guelph was assigned a growth target. Our council recognized the target was unsustainable and succeeded in having it lowered. They could not eliminate it. The province wants fewer electrical utilities. It was not ordering us to merge with Horizon, but one day down the road we won't be able to avoid a merger with someone else.

The debate showed Guelph is a very engaged community. The leaders of the hydro board acknowledged as much last Monday. If citizens are to use this engagement wisely, we need to be constantly aware of who does what. When should we lobby city hall, when should we go to Queen's Park and when should we call Ottawa. When the issues are as complex as they were in the hydro merger, the city should ensure we have enough facts to formulate a valid opinion.

Even without seeing the famously secret business case, there were lots of issues open for public debate. Control, ownership, economies of scale, basic premises, service levels, emergency preparedness. Surely councillors had an understanding of these, and an opinion on them, before last Monday's meeting. Even before the mayor issued her position in a memorandum on the Thursday prior. Everyone in town was debating it for a long time. At least, everyone but the people who had access to the background information and who would make the final decision. They should have been engaging their constituents more directly in the conversation. They should have been explaining as well as listening. They should not be the only politicians in the country who are too timid to advocate for the positions they hold.

There was one other big disappointment for me. The union representing the hydro workers spoke against the merger last July, then again on Monday. What attempts were made to bring the union on board? If the union and the Hydro Board had each spoken in favour, it may well have been approved. We cannot have a progressive community without involving working people and their unions in its development.