Only one in four eligible voters showed up to vote in Regina on October 28, 2009. This put the capital city dead last for voter participation in the province-wide municipal elections, with Saskatoon just ahead with a turnout of 27 per cent. Turnout in most other Saskatchewan cities was similarly weak, hovering between 30 and 40 per cent. Nikko Snyder investigates this alarming trend.
Like the vast majority of my neighbours, participating in municipal politics has been low on my list of priorities. In fact, until I voted in Regina in 2009, I can’t say I remember ever having voted in a municipal election before. And it’s not that I don’t take my participation in the democratic process seriously – I’ve never skipped out on my responsibility to vote in a provincial or federal election, even when I’ve been out of the country. But somehow municipal politics seem less relevant.
“There’s a general disengagement from politics,” says John F. Conway, a University of Regina professor and writer who narrowly lost to incumbent councilor Fred Clipsham in Regina’s Ward 3. “It’s an endemic problem, and it’s always been worse in civic elections.”
As infuriating as they sometimes can be, provincial and national politics tend to be sexier and are definitely more visible. They receive far more media coverage, have much bigger advertising budgets, and offer much greater exposure through debates broadcast on TV and radio. There’s a sense that our participation matters, and that it’s in the best interest of the candidates for us, their constituents, to be part of the process.
Local politics, on the other hand, are virtually invisible, despite the fact that our municipal governments are responsible for important issues that affect us every day, such as schools, water and waste. Not only that, but our neighbours are the ones making the decisions, in a building that’s literally just up the road from where we live and work. Politics can’t get more relevant.
So why do so few of us bother to participate?
Democracy for sale
On a brisk, sunny morning in October, I and five other demonstrators (plus a few members of the media) gathered outside the Conexus Arts Centre to protest the lack of a free, public mayoral debate in Regina. Not a terrible turnout, considering the early hour and the fact that the event was thrown together only the day before. We sipped our coffee and shared pastries while the $45-per-person breakfast took place inside. Organized by the Regina Chamber of Commerce, the pricey event was the only opportunity for Reginans to hear all three of their mayoral candidates debate the issues. The only open forum, planned by the Cathedral Area Community Association, was cancelled because Mayor Pat Fiacco was not available to participate.
Our idea was simple: eat breakfast, chat with the media and exercise our Charter right to peaceful assembly by standing outside the event on publicly owned property. A few of us who had pre-registered for the event intended to pay to go inside and hear what the would-be mayors had to say for themselves.
Despite our small numbers, our demonstration asking for access to the democratic process must have been extremely threatening. What else could explain why Conexus Centre staff asked us to leave the premises, citing their policy prohibiting protest as justification?
When pressed, the Centre’s client services manager Lynn Severt later confirmed that there is in fact no such policy: “The Conexus Arts Centre sits on land owned and controlled by Wascana Centre Authority,” she wrote. “The Centre has no authority or ownership of any part of the outside of the Centre. We also have no policy regarding peaceful assembly unless our entrances are being obstructed in which case we will ask the parties to move to allow all patrons of the Centre full access.”
Unfortunately, the citation of a non-existent policy was enough to make us leave.
Fake policy ploy notwithstanding, our breakfast protest was by no means a grand activist success. It was a last minute response to an event the Chamber of Commerce had planned well in advance. And kudos to them for organizing such a beneficial event for their membership. But the experience of having our relatively minor dissent so quickly squashed only made the question more urgent: don’t all citizens have the right to participate in democracy?
Whose responsibility is democracy, anyway?
City Hall “can certainly play a more active role than they did,” said Conway, whose ward was the only one in Regina to hold all-candidates debates. He suggested that the City could help citizen engagement by making the election more of an event, with funds set aside for public debates and fora. “Of course that would engage people. The local media totally ignored it,” he said. “Up to the last week, the most common response I got from people was, ‘What election?’”
In a personal phone call to one concerned citizen prior to the election, Mayor Fiacco noted that he had not received enough notice of the Cathedral Area Community Association debate to fit it into his schedule. He pointed to his record of attending several debates and events in 2006 and participating in informal events in 2009 as evidence that he is accessible to his constituents.
Conway believes all candidates should make participation in public debates a priority. “Door knocking is something you do when you have time. You don’t do it when there’s an organized event,” he said, going on to express concern that our community associations, which could become much more active in nurturing citizen engagement, are discouraged from getting involved with political issues because they are afraid of losing their funding.
The Mayor, who did not respond to my request for an interview, also noted his disappointment that the University of Regina had not organized a debate in 2009. In 2006, a handful of political science students organized a mayoral debate with the support of their sessional professor. But Political Science department head Jeremy Rayner confirmed that the debate was entirely dependent on there being an individual professor with an interest in municipal politics, something that was lacking in 2009.
It would seem that encouraging citizen engagement is a responsibility that falls on no one, so it should be no surprise that we aren’t engaged. It’s certainly no skin off the Regina mayor’s nose if no one turns up to vote. He was happy to claim a landslide victory of 84 per cent, despite the fact that low voter turnout meant he actually received the endorsement of only one in five eligible voters.
The question of who votes is as important as how many. “Marginal people don’t vote,” points out Conway, and the numbers prove it. The CBC reported that in Regina’s Ward 6, which includes most of North Central (the city’s poorest neighbourhood), a distressing 14 per cent of people voted. Marginalized people are certainly even less likely to vote if the only access they have to their candidates is through a $45 meal.
From Rider Pride to civic pride
The Regina mayor’s website states: “Mayor Fiacco credits three little words as the catalyst to the positive change that Regina has seen in the last few years—those words being ‘I Love Regina.’ This positive mantra is not just a slogan but a symbol of the pride Reginans share in their community and a desire for their city to be the best it can be.”
Unfortunately, Reginans’ pride is not translating into citizen engagement. Doesn’t loving something necessarily mean that you also want to be involved in fostering its wellbeing? If voter turnout is any indication, it would seem that in Regina and across Saskatchewan we are failing to make this basic connection.
Despite our indifference when it comes to our towns and cities, Saskatchewanians aren’t apathetic about everything. We are, for example, unanimously engaged when it comes to our boys in green and white. In Regina this was reflected in Ward 10, which boasted the city’s highest voter turnout (31.5 per cent) and where Roughrider Chris Szarka beat out incumbent Jerry Flegel.
If the antidote to our apathy does in fact lie in Rider Pride, I say Go Riders.
Unfortunately, building healthy communities requires that we care about more than just our football players. Only time will tell whether Szarka’s celebrity will translate into positive change for the community. Challenges Conway: “How successful he is will depend on whether he begins to take courageous stands on behalf of regular people.”