City councillors bidding for provincial office should resign: Goar
City councillors have an unfair advantage over other election candidates; they keep their municipal seats while they run.

Thestar.com
June 3, 2014
By Carol Goar

Toronto has a long tradition of sending talented municipal politicians to Queen’s Park and Parliament. David Crombie, Alan Tonks, Art Eggleton, Jack Layton, Olivia Chow, Judy Sgro, Peter Tabuns and Doug Holyday all got their start at city hall.

Now Adam Vaughan, Peter Milczyn and Raymond Cho hope to follow in their footsteps.

But this venerable practice has a little known - and unsavory - aspect. Most Toronto councillors who climb the electoral ladder keep their municipal seats and salaries as they campaign. If they lose, they have a job waiting.

There is no law prohibiting this. But it raises a bundle of ethical questions.

• It gives city councillors - who already have the advantage of local visibility - an economic benefit unavailable to other candidates.
• It compromises their ability to serve their local constituents.
• It erodes public confidence in the motives of elected representatives.
• And it produces regular displays of hypocrisy. Holyday, for instance, lectured other councillors about the impropriety of running in federal or provincial races without relinquishing their council seats. Then last summer, he turned around did it himself. (He mitigated the damage by forgoing his municipal salary.)

Other levels of government don’t offer this kind of cushion. Olivia Chow had to give up her parliamentary seat to run in the 2014 mayoralty contest. Former Scarborough MP Jim Karygiannis, likewise, had to sever his federal connection before entering the municipal race. Provincial MPPs who seek federal office - former education minister Gerard Kennedy for example - have to pull the plug at Queen’s Park.

A few Toronto politicians voluntarily take the high road. David Crombie stepped down as mayor before running for federal office in 1978 and Adam Vaughan resigned from the city council last month to run in a federal by-election in Trinity Spadina to be held on June 30. Others wait until they’ve left municipal politics - by choice or defeat - to move to a different level of government. Jack Layton, Alan Tonks, Art Eggleton and Peter Tabuns fall into that category.

But the majority of municipal representatives take the no-risk route. In 1997 - the peak year for failed ambitions - four Toronto councillors reclaimed their seats after losing bids for federal office.

The best way to end this practice would be to pass a law prohibiting it. Under the City of Toronto Act, council has the power to “govern the city’s affairs as it considers appropriate and enhance the city’s ability to respond to municipal issues.” But that would require an act of leadership from a mayor or councillor with no desire to seek higher office and no qualms about incurring the wrath of colleagues who did. That is probably why it has never happened.

In the absence of legal reform, public censure is the most effective deterrent. If city councillors running in federal or provincial elections faced pointed questions from their constituents, their peers and the media, fewer of them would use their municipal seat as a taxpayer-funded cushion.

It wasn’t altruism that prompted Vaughan to make a clean break with city hall to run in his month’s closely watched byelection in Trinity Spadina. It was the knowledge that he was under scrutiny. It wasn’t a desire to raise ethical standards that prompted Olivia Chow to resign from city council in 2005 to seek federal office. It was experience. She had made two previous unsuccessful attempts, keeping her seat at city hall as a back-up option. The third time, facing criticism, she relinquished her municipal perch (and won).

A healthy political feeder system is good for all levels of government. Municipal councillors bring a knowledge of local issues and a network of fresh contacts to Queen’s Park and Parliament. MPs and MPPs who return to city politics bring an understanding of how municipalities can advance their priorities nationally and provincially as well as valuable bureaucratic links.

But no one benefits from an unfair electoral system. When municipal politicians play by different rules than the rest of the population, other candidates don’t get a fair chance and voters don’t get a fair choice.

Toronto could take the lead in fixing this problem. It has the tools. It has the prominence as the nation’s largest city. And it has the profile, with four daily newspapers, three television networks and 37 radio stations as well as specialty channels, ethnic publications and social media.

All that is missing is the political will. A new mayor and a clean-up crew of informed citizens could rectify that.