From small towns to growing suburbs, fewer people in Ontario are running for council, and 1 in 3 mayors or reeves has already been acclaimed

CBC.ca
Sept. 26, 2022
Kate Porter
Safiyah Marhnouj

Three times now Steve Fournier has put his name forward for a seat on the council of Drummond/North Elmsley, an eastern Ontario township tucked between Smiths Falls, Ont., and Perth, Ont., where he once served as fire chief.

But his name has never appeared on a ballot.

Fournier, 59, was acclaimed this year as the municipality’s reeve, just as he was acclaimed when he first ran for the top seat in 2018 and when he ran for councillor in 2014.

Steve Fournier has run for office three times, and each time he has been acclaimed.

“I always say I’ll at least want to buy one election sign,” he said. “I’ve never had that chance.

“I’ve always wanted to buy a shirt that said ‘Steve for Reeve.’”

This year, Fournier has company: the entire council of five was acclaimed. He sees it as a vote of confidence.

“I think we’re doing a good job,” he said from the township’s council chambers in Port Elmsley.

“I think the taxpayers appreciate that and they’re behind us for this election.”

Not good to have 'unchanging group of people'
At her home just down the road from the township office, Susan Brandum sees things differently.

Brandum says she was “kicking herself” for not encouraging people to run this year, as she did in 2018, when she came in second in her race.

She wishes the council was more diverse and better equipped to handle increasingly complex files facing smaller communities, including climate change and its effect on local weather patterns.

“I don’t mean to represent all councillors as being not open to a lot of ideas and change, but it’s just not good to have that sort of stilted, unchanging group of people,” she said.

Susan Brandum ran in Drummond/North Elmsley in the last election but decided against it this year. She says she wants to see more women and more diverse opinions on council.

Acclamations are part of the election process, and have been common through the years in smaller communities or in towns where an entrenched representative remains popular.

There is another worrisome reason, according to people CBC spoke with across the province who have run for office this year or decided against it: interest in local politics is waning.

The job of a local politician has become more difficult and less appealing and councils are aging out with no replacements on deck, many said.

To understand the scope of the issue CBC compiled data, including acclamations, from 414 municipalities holding elections for 2022. We then compared the data to numbers provided by the province from the last two municipal elections in 2014 and 2018.

The broad trend, across municipalities, is a drop in the number of people choosing to run, and a rise in acclamations.

Fournier is among the 139 -- or one in three -- Ontario mayoral or reeve candidates who have already won or reclaimed their seats by acclamation in 2022. In 2018 it was 118. In 2014, the number was 104.

Most of the affected municipalities are small and rural with many found in northern Ontario, but the list of towns with an acclaimed head of council also includes larger municipalities like Greater Napanee, Ont., which had not acclaimed a mayor since amalgamating 24 years ago, and Newmarket, Ont., which had last acclaimed a mayor in 2000.

Drummond/North Elmsley is also one of 32 municipalities that has acclaimed its entire council, compared to 23 in 2018, and 18 in 2014.

In total, 546 seats on councils -- or nearly one in five -- have been filled by acclamation. That includes deputy mayors, deputy reeves and councillors, as well as regional or county councillors.

In 2014, 403 were acclaimed.

Elections allow communities to 'rock the apple cart'
Steve Clark, the Ontario minister of municipal affairs and housing, declined an interview.

In a statement, his office wrote, “We encourage citizens across Ontario to get involved in local elections and ensure their voices are heard. Participation, including running for office, is part of a healthy democracy.”

Zachary Spicer, an associate professor at York University who focuses on local government, says uncontested elections mean important local issues go without a good shake.

“The assumption when incumbents become acclaimed is that they’re doing a fantastic job and there’s no reason to rock the apple cart, so to speak,” said Spicer.

“That’s not necessarily the case. There could be issues that require community discussion. Elections are a chance to do that.”

The population of Drummond/North Elmsley -- 8,000 and growing -- is pretty content, Brandum says, but she partly blames a lack of media coverage bringing issues to light.

“Unless you actually go to council and attend meetings and talk to the councillors, then you don’t really know what’s going on,” she said.

Fournier, who has lived in the community his whole life, acknowledges elections used to be a bigger deal. He fondly remembers tagging along with his parents for trips to the polls. The races were contested, and the same faces regularly joined his family in exercising their democratic right.

“It was a social thing,” he said of voting in past elections over the decades. “I’ll miss that.”

'A full-time job with part-time pay'
If you head southwest past Toronto, you will discover acclamations aren’t limited to rural communities.

The ever-growing Oakville, Ont., has seen four members of its 15-person council acclaimed.

Jasvinder Sandhu, a lawyer in her late 30s with a private practice, sits on Oakville’s council, but she’s not even running to keep her seat. As a mom with three young children, the role has thrown her life out of balance.

Sandhu says she jumped into politics in 2018 because her booming subdivision in North Oakville was living through constant construction and she felt she could fight for neighbours who never knew when trucks might bring mud and dust.

She soon realized that being on council was not, as some colleagues had told her, a part-time commitment.

It wasn’t so much the twice monthly council meetings that took place when she would typically be putting her children to bed, but the long hours at events and answering constituents.

When Sandhu’s third child was born during this council term, the situation became unworkable.

“It’s a full-time job for part-time pay,” she said. “Could you make it a part-time job? Absolutely. I think you could use the flexibility that you would have of not having to pursue work during the day.”

She has decided to focus on her law practice and family and give up municipal politics, although she feels council has benefited from her trained legal mind, and its ability to distil complicated information, such as with development files.

“It was a sanity check. I really I needed to make that decision and I’m happy I did.”

At the same time, some experiences she’s glad to put behind her.

On the night before the 2018 election, someone dropped off a racist flyer calling Sandhu and her husband, who is Sikh, terrorists, she said.

“If this was at work, they’d be out the door. So why do we permit people who are at work, politicians who are at work, to be treated this way?”

Harsher political climate
Some said the last term was particularly hard because the pandemic increased demands on politicians.

Cindy Laprade, who like Brandum ran for one of the Drummond/North Elmsley’s ward seats in 2018 and decided not to run again in 2022, says her eyes were opened to the harsher political climate.

In her full-time job as treasurer for a neighbouring municipality, she says she saw the public pressures facing municipal leaders, which she factored into her decision to stay out of the 2022 race.

“It seems to me that residents aren’t as patient as they used to be,” she said.

“Quite frankly, I don’t feel like taking that.”

Cindy Laprade saw first-hand how councillors were treated during the pandemic in a neighbouring municipality, and decided not to run again this year. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
The pandemic might have affected many decisions this year, but the numbers show a more steady decline in the last three elections.

There were 7,196 people who ran for municipal office in 2014 in Ontario. In 2018, that number dropped to 6,575. This year, 6,044 people put their name forward.

Election overload might have also affected interest this year, according to Roger Haley, the mayor of the Front of Yonge township, an eastern Ontario municipality centred around the community of Mallorytown.

Like Drummond/North Elmsley, all five council members were acclaimed in his municipality.

“Provincial turnout was very low,” Haley said of Ontario’s June election, which happened just nine months after the federal election. “People are just getting tired. They’re just, you know, throwing their hands up.”

Few can afford low pay
Pay is also an issue for some. A local councillor in Oakville earns just $53,964. The highest-paid councillor in Drummond/North Elmsley receives $18,242.

A 2018 study from the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario found two-thirds of municipalities paid less than $20,000 to their council members.

“It’s certainly a minimum-wage job by the time you figure out your mileage and your time away,” said Fournier.

He said four of his five council members, including himself, are retired, while the other owns his own business. After Fournier left the workforce, his wife told him he couldn’t “just sit at home with a cat,” he said.

That’s in line with much of the province, says Spicer, who notes 75 per cent of council members province-wide are men, and fewer than one in 50 identify as a visible minority.

Spicer said this leads to “homogeneity in background and thought” and leaves municipal governments open to “equity blind spots.”

“We need people who are retired. We need people who are doctors, lawyers, teachers, businesspeople. We need people who come from diverse cultural backgrounds. We need people who are immigrants. We need women. We need men. We need people. Everyone brings a different perspective,” he said.

Rick Dumas, the mayor of Marathon, Ont., says not everyone can afford to work on council given the low pay and high demands. (Kate Porter/CBC)
Rick Dumas, the mayor of Marathon, Ont., a small community hugging the north shore of Lake Superior, knows well the challenge of trying to attract new voices.

The retired 60-year-old former business owner has been acclaimed to his fourth term and acknowledges he is “getting up there” in age.

To encourage a new generation of leaders, Marathon has welcomed high school students to take part in council meetings, Dumas said. They can’t vote, but the students are sworn in, can pitch ideas and learn first-hand, as one participant did, why Marathon’s summer weather doesn’t lend itself to a splash pad.

Marathon town council has a couple of members who are in their thirties, and Dumas says the town is trying to encourage more of that. It recently approved providing benefits to councillors, he pointed out.

He also thinks higher pay could make the role more appealing.

“If I have to take time off work and I’m not getting compensated fairly for the time I’m giving back to the community, I’m not gonna run,” he said of potential young blood. “So by not running, you’re not getting your voice heard. And I mean, when you look at the table, I want to have diversification.”

Job needs flexibility
Spicer said councils that pay too little for the jobs also need to consider shifting their meeting times because the daytime leaves young parents and workers at a disadvantage.

That’s what Drummond/North Elmsley did in 2014. The township moved its council meetings to 5 p.m. from 1 p.m. to make it more accessible to both council and the public, Fournier said.

He said it would help if younger voices were heard.

“I think if people have a problem, they call us and we represent them and I think they’re happy with that.”

Council just might not be for everyone, Spicer said.

Brandum said she has shifted her community focus from running for office to helping form a local climate change network.

“We have had a huge impact,” she said, citing the group’s success in lobbying the Lanark County Council to adopt a climate change action plan. “So I was content with that.”

She still believes municipalities need to do more to educate people about the value of local government.

“Local municipalities have a lot more power than I think people think. ... A part of it is that unless you’ve actually engaged with them, you don’t know that.”

Laprade of Drummond/North Elsley agrees people should care -- “they’re paying taxes” -- and says she’s not discounting a future bid for council in 2026.

“I think if any of the current members of council in a future election decide not to run, I’ll probably throw my hat in again.”