Due to the recent contentious public hearings, I have taken it upon myself to understand further the process around how the public’s feedback is taken into consideration on certain issues.
In the provincial Local Government Act there is a section on public hearings which states: “separate from the legal requirements, appropriate procedural rules are needed to ensure that the council or board gets sufficient information to make appropriate decisions about proposed bylaws, and to enable the public to see that the local government acknowledges and respects their right to participate in the local decision making process.”
This presents two points that are “separate from legal requirements” around public hearings. The first part says that procedural rules are needed for the board to get sufficient information to make decisions.
The second part presents an obligation for the local government to enable the public to see that they acknowledge and respect the public’s right to participate.
Genuine consideration of the public’s concerns is the reason public hearings are law. If genuine consideration is missed by the process, then a decision could undermine the moral justification for the law.
Scottish political philosopher Edmond Burke once said that “morality is more important than laws, because law depends on morality.”
But what satisfies the condition of genuine consideration, acknowledgement and respect? And what is a municipal council’s process for doing this?
In council’s decision making, each individual councillor is responsible for considering the points before the council. If there is a petition and written feedback forms received, they are sent to the councillors beforehand for them to deliberate on.
Thereafter the councillors come to the public hearing and hear the people voicing their opinions. Following this the council then has a discussion in the next meeting on the topic, whether that be first, second or third reading.
According to discussions that I have had with councillors it objectively does not matter if there is one signature on the petition or 300, it does not matter if there are 100 feedback forms received as opposed to one, it is the argument that is taken into consideration by the councillors.
If there is a serious argument brought up, such as towering building heights and is only supported by one member of the public, that can carry more weight that 100 people backing an invalid argument, such as renters who don’t take care of the rental properties and therefore should not be allowed into a neighbourhood.
It is not necessarily about the public’s support, but it is about the validity of the arguments.
If this is the case, then in fact the condition of the public hearing and its requirement that the government respects and acknowledges the public may be more muddied than originally thought.
Not everyone’s arguments are valid and justify much consideration at all and there are no laws in place around how the council must take into account the feedback. Despite the section above referring to “appropriate procedural rules”.
The onus is on individual councillors, in the privacy of their own mind, that must give the proper due diligence to the arguments presented. There is no collective discussion among the councillors about the petition in particular, not one required anyway.
But, if the councillors do not mention the petition or the feedback forms, but do engage in robust discussion of the arguments then we are presented with an interesting two sided coin: from the council’s point of view they duly considered the public and respected and acknowledged them.
But from the public’s point of view, the condition of legitimacy was not satisfied, at least for some as they may have signed a petition but did not see the council discuss it at all.
Thus, it is crucial to focus on transparency, and have people actually attend meetings, and have councillors be available to the public, because no one is a universal subject that can see each other’s side, unless it is through communication. Alternatively there should be actual procedural rules in place for how these things must be taken into consideration.
