Inside Langford

I was in attendance and spoke last night at the public hearing on the new Official Community Plan, and I was in good company. By my unofficial count, over 160 people attended and about two dozen spoke (of which 3 spoke in favour of the OCP, one made comments that were not clearly in favour or opposed, and all the rest of which spoke in opposition to the OCP). People were given latitude in how long they were given to speak, which was a positive as some people had some longer, and some fairly technical, comments on the Official Community Plan. The strong attendance, one of the strongest I’ve ever seen at a Langford Council Meeting, shows that the community cares about this issue, and that’s a very good thing. Not only was the crowd standing-room-only, but it was spilling out into the hallway outside Council Chambers.

There were positives, but there were also concerns. It’s important to understand that a public hearing is meant to be a quasi-judicial process, and is therefore supposed to have a courtroom-like atmosphere. The Chair and the rest of Council are supposed to listen quietly, the Chair is to maintain decorum, and debating each other’s opinions is not allowed to make sure that members of the public aren’t intimidated from speaking for fear of others questioning or attacking their views. Last night I witnessed:

- while members of the public were reasonably easy to hear, the sound system did not appear to be working properly for the Chair and the others at the head of the room;

- cross-talk between the Chair and another Councilor and staff while the public was making submissions;

- the Chair appeared to, on a few occasions, debate and challenge speakers, and at one point specifically discouraged a member of the public from making a comments using a past-tense example to support his point;

- I counted 10 people in the hallway because of the overflow capacity of the room, opening the question whether those interested citizens could meaningfully participate in the process;

- while they were rare, there were a few catcalls from the audience that the Chair made no apparent attempt to rein in, and clapping was frequent and not reined in; these things aren’t allowed at a quasi-judicial public hearing like last night which is supposed to have court-room like sombreness to it (catcalls and cheers, depending on which side of an issue you are on, can certainly intimidate you from getting up to the podium, and one member of the audience shared with me afterward that he had in fact felt intimidated from speaking because of these issues).

While I was concerned about a number of these points, and it did raise questions about whether the proceedings should have gone ahead or whether they should have been put off to a larger venue to make sure everyone could participate and whether decorum should have been managed a bit more closely, things were at least being handled evenly. There was en even bigger concern that came near the end of the public hearing, though.

At a public hearing, the job of the politicians is to sit quietly and listen to the public. Deputy Mayor Denise Blackwell, who chaired the affair in the stead of an absent Mayor Young and two absent Councilors, reminded everyone at the beginning that the public hearing is, as the name suggests, a time for the politicians to hear the public, and that people weren’t to debate each other’s opinions. Unfortunately, she appeared to enforce this rule unevenly during the course of the evening. A Rainville Road resident (who was opposed to the Official Community Plan) made reference to the comments of another Rainville Road resident and was quickly and appropriately censured by Blackwell and asked to stick to his own thoughts and not comment on his neighbour’s. Yet, Ms. Blackwell said nothing when an speaker (in support of the proposed OCP) openly debated the comments that had been made previously in the evening by several other people. This speaker had even announced his intention to speak to points others had made when he first went up to the podium. I sat in the audience, incredulous, as he not only debated people’s points but referenced me by name when debating the points I had raised.

After he referenced me by name for the third time, I stood up and attempted to raise a point of order but Ms. Blackwell refused to hear it citing that the speaker had the floor. The whole purpose of a point of order is that someone else has the floor but a procedural issue that trumps that has come up. To his credit, after I said that I had a point of order, the speaker at the podium desisted in referencing people by name after that, but the Chair continued to allow him to debate people’s points. After the speaker had finished, I made my way towards the podium. Ms. Blackwell again attempted to refuse to hear my point of order, citing that another citizen was waiting in line for the podium. That person ceded the floor to me, gesturing to the podium so that I could speak.

I attempted to question the proceedings because the rules were not being evenly applied, and that there were people not even able to fit in the room which raised questions about how well they could hear and participate in the proceedings. I didn’t get to finish raising my point of order, as Ms. Blackwell interrupted me and indicated that the previous speaker had been speaking to the topic, so the fact that he seemed to be debating the opinions of others was of no concern to her. She then ruled on my point of order still without having fully heard it out.

On a strange note, Langford Coalition volunteers had leafletted to help get a bigger crowd out to last night’s meeting (and had managed to leaflet about 20% of the city despite a tight timeframe). When I attempted to point out that this did appear to have helped in a getting a very good turnout, and that perhaps suggested that mailing out a public notice might have increased the turnout further which was possibly another justification for holding the hearing again and mailing out a notification to each household, Ms. Blackwell cut me off and accused me of electioneering. This isn’t the first time she’s done something like that; in an interview with Monday Magazine she was quoted as saying “I think Mr. Hurdle may want to run for office.” The irony is that every time a comment like that is made by someone, I get phone calls and emails from people urging me to run in the coming municipal elections, despite the fact that I rarely bring the topic up. I think it’s a shame that someone can’t get involved in their community without being accused of having an ulterior motive.

So all in all it was a meeting of highs and lows, but with enough questions surrounding the legitimacy of the proceedings that it’s unfortunately possible that it will have to be done again, at a bigger venue and with all the rules enforced evenly.

- Steven Hurdle -