In its Nov. 5 edition, the St. Albert Gazette published an article discussing the perception that’s arisen in some circles that our city council is divided into camps that consistently vote on different sides of various issues. These camps, and the council members that form them, could also be seen as representing different groups of residents that have different priorities for spending tax dollars. According to this perception, some members of council and their supporters want to see a cap placed on tax increases, and for city spending to be directed away from things like arts, heritage and recreation and focused mainly on established infrastructure and support for lower-income residents. Other members of council, and their supporters in the community, are seen as wanting to spend large amounts of money on civic projects like the Downtown Area Redevelopment Plan.
Similar polarizations also arguably exist at the federal level. The Conservative Party and many of its supporters largely deny that income inequality is a problem, and support the construction of new pipelines to get oil and gas to market. Many members of the Liberal party and the NDP, and their supporters, believe that income inequality is a serious problem, and that the proposed pipelines will cause serious damage to the environment.
In both federal and municipal politics, the politicians in each of the parties and camps have shown that they all have a lot of public support. While the councillors seen as wanting to spend money on many new civic projects are a majority on council, the council members seen as wanting to cap tax and spending increases got some of the highest vote totals in the 2013 election. Similarly, none of the federal political parties currently look as though they would have enough support from Canadians to form a majority government. As a result, especially at the federal level, none of the political parties or camps can necessarily muster enough support to make major progress on various issues. Besides the political leaders not addressing these problems, there’s also the serious risk of normal political differences turning into vicious personal feuds and attacks, as we’ve seen in places like Toronto and the U.S.
As a result, the leaders who may be best suited to taking St. Albert and Canada forward may end up being the ones who can actively bring people from the different camps together and address the issues each of them raise at the same time. The decisions political leaders make will always be criticized by some citizens, but if the differences between citizens become too entrenched and too personal, then the community runs the risk of leaving major issues to fester and becoming much bigger problems than they would have been if they were dealt with sooner.
The idea may be seen as naÄ‚Ĺ»ve and unrealistic to some, but politics has always been the art of the possible, particularly when the political acrimony itself is a major reason for so much of the public’s cynicism.
Jared Milne is a St. Albert resident with a passion for Canadian history and politics.
