Years ago I mentioned to someone that it was sad that the Islands Trust for all the implications of its namesake simply does not trust the people to protect their own homes and lands. They voluntarily expand their mandate as if they were a legislative body and then propose a hefty pay raise to accommodate their extra curriculer activities using our tax dollars.
A thorough Provincial review of the Islands Trust Act is clearly needed! Something that will clarify for the Trust and the public, precisely where their mandated parameters extend to.
With all due respect to most all volunteers picking up the slack, allowing our services to be run by so many decentralized volunteer organizations becomes a double-edged sword especially in regards to safety and ensuring qualified personel handle things as important as our water supply.
But beyond all that, it is about fundamentals and fiduciary accountability. John Ralston Saul once wrote a cautionary note about a weakening democratic input by the people: "Indeed you can usually tell when the concepts of democracy and citizenship are weakening. There is an increase in the role of charity and in the worship of volunteerism. These represent the élite citizen's imitation of noblesse oblige; that is, of pretending to be aristocrats or oligarchs, as opposed to being citizens."
What is so difficult to contend with, regarding the Islands Trust, is that it appears to use a benign 'community concern' style of encroachment on our property rights. The spread of volunteerism within hand-picked advisory committees however well intentioned and 'harmlessly' made up of our own citizens, makes it almost impossible to ascertain whether they really represent the greater community. Unfortunately they may only be providing a fuzzy smokescreen of so-called 'community input' for an otherwise closed-loop ideological autonomy. With no appeal process in place for Trust Committee decisions, the picture grows exponentially less attractive.
The answer is easy to surmise if you ask yourself whether you are happy with our current decentralized network of groups, each asking for their own tax requistions or whether you feel our taxes could be more efficiently spent under a single Municipal Council? It is not new or rocket science but maybe it makes cents ;-).
People require an apolitical governance structure with checks and balances that consider all our community needs without wasting tax dollars on 'things we can do nothing about' under the current limits of the Trust mandate. A municipal governance model ensures a wider diversity and number of candidates to feel like they can run for an elected position without necessarily bowing to a single party line.
No comments:
Post a Comment