Democratic Accountability Through Municipal Ballot Questions
When we seek to measure the importance of something in Canada, we almost instinctively start with the national picture and next take in the provincial scene. However, that approach is misleading when it comes to referendums. Our three national ballot questions, and the more frequent use of provincial referendums — ranging from well over a dozen in British Columbia and Prince Edward Island to just one in New Brunswick, with other provinces at a half dozen or so — gives the wrong impression of just how important referendums have been for many Canadians. For a very long time, they have been held at the municipal level and have numbered in the thousands. Although a “junior” level of government, municipalities in Canada are the senior player in ballot-box accountability.
Within a province, some municipalities are more predisposed than others to test issues by asking voters a ballot question. Even in the same town or city, there is an ebb and flow in how readily ballot questions are resorted to for municipal decision-making. It’s the same with First Nations reserves where decision-making patterns vary but ballot questions are in the mix for quite a few.
Between provinces there is uneven use of municipal ballot questions, as well. Some, for instance in Quebec and Ontario, have deep-seated local control that emerged because widely scattered communities had their affairs and futures in their own hands. In other provinces, smaller in population and size, established at later dates in history, local government was often less autonomous and more directly controlled by the municipal affairs department in the provincial capital.
Ontario developed especially strong municipal governments from 1850, beginning with An Act to Provide, by One General Law, for the Erection of Municipal Corporations, and the Establishment of Regulations of Police, in and for the Several Counties, Cities, Towns, Townships and Villages in Upper-Canada.1 Although the more convenient short title of this pre-Confederation statute is the Municipal Corporations Act, 1849, it is even more popularly known as “the Baldwin Act.” Named for its sponsor, Robert Baldwin, co-premier and attorney general of Canada, when Canada West and Canada East operated as united provinces, this first municipal statute laid down a near-perfect structure for local self-rule across a vast territory of diverse regions and specialized settlements, from farm villages to mining towns, from manufacturing centres to institution-based communities. The Baldwin Act is authoritatively “regarded as the Magna Carta of municipal government in Canada.”2
That’s why local electors in Ontario, with this pre-Confederation 1840s foundation, viewed voting on municipal questions as instinctively right for a democratic country. Indeed, judges treated it like a “natural right” — meaning it inheres in the people by nature rather than having to be granted by a law-making body. “There is nothing in the Ontario Municipal Act permitting the council to take a plebiscite,” observed Judge Myron Britton 115 years ago in the case of King v. Toronto, “and there is no express prohibition against their doing so.” On this basis, he rejected a legal challenge and allowed a municipal referendum to proceed.3 Prior to that, in 1887, another Ontario court refused to restrain a referendum when a challenger argued the ballot question was outside the legal competence of a municipality. Because there was no statutory prohibition of plebiscites, and because no injustice or injury could be shown by the plaintiff if the vote took place, the judge in Davies v. Toronto had no difficulty letting local electors have their say.4 In 1903 Ontario’s legislature confirmed this long-standing democratic practice, amending the Municipal Act to expressly confer statutory authority for voting on issues by local ratepayers through a non-binding ballot question.
Quebec’s legislature likewise enacted many statutes providing ballot-box democracy, including the Cities and Towns Act, the Municipal Code (for villages and smaller rural settlements), the Education Act, the Municipal Public Utilities Sales Act, the Municipal Franchises Act, the Mining Towns Act, the Liquor Permit Control Act, the Temperance Act, and even the Act Respecting Offences Relating to Alcoholic Beverages. For pure laine Quebec, the right to vote on issues is woven deeply into the original fabric.
In this context, local decision-making, typically entailing significant expenditure for a proposed project such as a library, arena, bridge, water treatment facility, or concert hall, included a ballot question to approve taking on the debt — because local ratepayers would have to pay it off through their taxes. If the majority was No, the ratepayers paid lower taxes and got by with fewer amenities. If Yes, locals got the benefit of such additional facilities, the community became better established, and the costs were borne over the life of the bond issued used to raise money for the construction. The choice being forced between Yes or No revolved around that trade-off.
In the process, this method for achieving local consensus provided democratic restraint on the tendency of councillors to spend money and gain ribbon-cutting glory and votes while leaving the unpleasant financial hangover for their successors. In practical terms, too, locals could keep an eye on the slow progress of construction, or the apparent wasteful use of materials — pressing their councillors for explanations and penning letters to the editor. In all, local ballot questions were an apt instrument for cost-benefit analysis, as weighed by people best able to judge — those paying the freight and enjoying the results. Ballot questions for municipal ratepayers in our country have been an ideal instrument for democratic accountability.
In Ontario this great system got sidelined in the 1960s and 1970s. In that era, spending by the provincial government shifted from frugal financial management to open-future expansion. The first Ontario budget to exceed $1 billion, tabled under Premier John Robarts, was major news. Working at Queen’s Park as executive assistant to Attorney General Arthur Wishart at the time, I felt the sober awe that spread among provincial members over the scale of spending when within three years that amount doubled as Premier Bill Davis took the helm in 1971. By 2016, Ontario government yearly spending had risen to $134 billion, with that year’s deficit of $5.7 billion getting added to the now-staggering public debt of $307 billion, making the province the most indebted sub-national jurisdiction in the world. With a population just one-third of California’s, Ontario’s debt load is more than double that of the biggest U.S. state.
In tandem with that spending rampage, Ontario’s municipal governments also got themselves cemented in debt. The cause of this can be found largely in the eclipsed role of democratic accountability at the ballot box. Huge public debts occurred because spending restraints were removed.
At the national level, where similar trends occurred, and in the Province of Ontario, the Office of Comptroller General was emasculated. Traditionally, in our parliamentary system, where “supply” (money) must first be authorized by our elected representatives before it can be spent, the comptroller general was an official who controlled the amount that had been duly authorized for a project but for which not enough revenue had yet accumulated in the public treasury. This official could and did hold up projects and programs — otherwise ready to be rolled out — until money was available for them.
In the extended economic boom after the Second World War, people became used to prosperity and envisaged a limitless future. By the 1970s, a new idea was being preached: people didn’t need to save up for something — a car, television set, new clothing, or house — before buying it. Instead, they could purchase on credit, enjoy the item now, and pay off the debt (with interest) in the future. This same thinking pervaded government, as finance ministers, using a one-sided application of Keynesian economics to justify spending into indebtedness, came to view the public accounts in an entirely different light.
During this transition from frugal accountability and fiscal prudence to freebooting financial indulgence, the Ontario Municipal Act was amended, a counterpart to removing the powers of Ontario’s comptroller general. Instead of submitting a borrowing bylaw to local voters, a council could apply to the Ontario Municipal Board for a green light to spend the money. Control passed from local citizens on the scene to civil servants in politically remote Toronto. In the provincial capital, these officials took their cue from the debt-seeking provincial government and seldom refused a municipality’s well-argued case for incurring more debt to upgrade some roads, replace a bridge, modernize a sewage treatment plant, or construct a new hockey arena. In this retreat from ballot-box accountability, tinkering with other statutory provisions reduced possibilities for ballot questions such as under the Fluoridation Act of Ontario.
With the link of democratic accountability broken, spending by municipalities skyrocketed. After the Mike Harris government made mandatory the publication of names and salaries of all public officials being paid more than $100,000 a year, this “Sunshine List” revealed tiny municipalities with as many as eight or ten such secure individuals on their payrolls.
In 2015 British Columbia turned to this use of ballot-box financial accountability when Metropolitan Vancouver voters were asked to approve, or not, a new 0.5 percent regional sales tax, integrated with the provincial sales tax, to pay local government’s share of a decade-long $7.5 billion transit plan to upgrade rapid transit, buy hundreds more buses, add new ferries, and build another bridge. At first this seemed promising.
Results were announced July 2. Almost 600,000 votes had been cast, evenly split between Yes and No in Vancouver, more heavily opposed in outlying municipalities where electors saw little public transit in the ten-year plan to service their areas. Of valid votes cast, 290,151, or 38.32 percent, said Yes. No ballots numbered 467,032, or 61.68 percent. The proposed transit tax had been defeated.
The next Sunday, on CBC Radio’s network program 180, I discussed why Vancouver’s experience was a case study of Canada-wide funding challenges for urban transit systems, but equally a prime example of how not to conduct a referendum.
The Yes side had strong support from those in public office but suffered from a calamitous campaign. The No forces waged a far more effective effort. The subject of public transit understandably raised issues about the operations of TransLink, the regional public transportation authority. The real problems on that front were dramatically highlighted midway through the referendum campaign by the firing of TransLink’s CEO.
Transit referendums are more routine in the United States where their successes in getting voter approval for funding — meaning voter endorsement of the transit program itself — flow from campaigns that can run for up to two years, not two months as was the case in Vancouver. Well-planned campaigns identify the pros and cons that will be argued, then develop a strategy to ensure the best message is conveyed on each issue. Given the short referendum period imposed by the province, all these advantages were lost, which caused the Yes side to flounder.
The all-important education campaign about a ballot issue, prior to voting, benefits from time and intelligence. The Yes side in Vancouver only began publicity efforts in March, with mail-in ballots in voters’ hands from March 16 on, returnable from then until a May 29 deadline. “It was like the Yes side thought it had better not peak too early,” reported Gary Mason in the Globe and Mail, “or perhaps someone suggested a plebiscite was like a general election and people wouldn’t start thinking about the issue until just before voting began.”5 Meanwhile, the No side, with key support from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, studied comparable U.S. experience and for months had already been influencing voters by vilifying whatever the Yes side stood for.
Although TransLink became a lightning rod, it didn’t cause the Yes side to lose. For that, credit goes to the absence of a persuasive campaign. In addition, several mayors said publicly they’d find other ways to fund transit if the referendum didn’t approve the new tax. Given that, why vote for it?
Across Canada, use of municipal ballot questions has declined in recent decades. That causes a downward spiral, as lack of familiarity and practice makes newcomers to politics uncertain about their role and inept when using them. Once mayors and councillors saw ballot questions as a normal part of community democracy. Today they often strive to avoid them.
Over time, efforts to reduce democratic accountability have changed political culture itself. Seldom today do municipal councillors feel the imperative to ask local voters to debate and vote on major issues. They are increasingly prone to commission opinion polls and hire consultants instead.
Ballot-box verdicts, however, reflected a community understanding that governance in a democratic society entails a partnership between citizens and those elected to represent them. That time now past was certainly not a golden age but it was an era when greater satisfaction attended public service and its outcomes.