A tempest in a teapot at a Lanark County Council (Ontario) hearing raises some useful questions for housing activists. Presentations were made at an 2022 Community Services Committee meeting that dealt with concerns about social housing in the county.
Councillors were taken aback, indignant, hurt and disturbed by the public deputations. An activist who attended the meeting, however, was adamant that deputations to the Committee were controlled, respectful, low key.
The councillors, it seems, heard the opposite. So much so, they are now considering steps to curb the excesses they characterize as disrespectful.
Are Lanark councillors shrinking violets? Possibly a teensy bit. Politics involve a hurly-burly of exchanges, and local politics can be the most belligerent and shout-y of the lot.
However, their concerns are worthy of some consideration. In general, as persons whose day-to-day responsibilities include dealing with housing issues, they felt disrespected by presumptions of their interest (or lack of interest). They felt they were being lectured by discourteous know-nothings, or at best, know-littles.
One question that immediately leaps to mind about such meetings in general: are they opportunities for community input on one hand? Or are they vehicles of community education on the other? If the answer is ‘both,’ then a local council should expect that sometimes a dumb question is just that, a dumb question, not an intolerable insult that demands a life or death duel at dawn.
The Lanark Council tempest also raises an issue that activist organizations should probably consider. How important is education surrounding the often-complex issues that are raised in public debates, especially those in which activists hope to influence government policies?
Do housing and homelessness activist organizations bear some responsibility for ensuring that their members, when entering debate, have at least a vague understanding of the issues and preferably considerably more?
Read more on Lanark County’s dismay at the nature of its Community Services Committee meeting, at InsideOttawaValley: Lanark County council eyes procedural changes after ‘disrespectful’ delegations
Read about some further developments, including ongoing Council investigations regarding methods of preventing similar humiliations in public hearings, at InsideOttawaValley: Housing advocates ‘astounded’ by Lanark County council backlash to presentations
