Davies: The politics of politics

Summer break is over and it’s time to get back to work. No more mailing it in.

Although, the first few sentences in what now seems like my bi-annual column will certainly have some tropes, rehashes, and redundancies, there will almost assuredly be some fresh takes as well. The advantage of writing a column only once every six months is you won’t remember what’s new and what’s been written many, many times before.

It’s been a long, hot summer, and that used to be, what my former colleague Peter ‘Hungry Like’ DeWolfe used to call the silly season. A time when not much news happened at all. The politicians were on holiday, and while that is sometimes hard to tell apart from their work day, so to were the volunteers, who were noticeably absent based on the lack of community events held in August.

So, we reporters, as we do in summer just made up stuff to fill up the newshole – the spaces between the advertisements. Columns, editorials, quizzes, recipes, editorial cartoons, history – you name it. Because back in the day of newspapers, it wasn’t the amount of news that dictated the size of a newspaper. No sir, it was the number of advertisements sold that determined how many pages were in your West Carleton Review or Arnprior Chronicle-Guide, or West Carleton EMC, or Your Community Voice West Carleton. And as we now know, when those newspapers ran out of advertisements, they ceased to exist.

But the news never ceases to exist.

Just over a month ago, we lost an Ottawa Valley legend. I don’t think many West Carleton Online readers would know Raye-Anne Briscoe, but she was one of the Ottawa Valley’s legendary politicians. A woman with vision, a backbone and a leader without ever having to tell anyone she was a leader.

Raye-Anne spent 20 years as a councillor and another 14 years as mayor of Admaston-Bromley Township. I covered Admaston-Bromley council for a couple of years around 2009. The township is the smallest in Renfrew County, which of course, population wise, is one of the smallest counties in the country. But when Raye-Anne ‘invited’ you to speak to her council, even if you lived in Toronto and were the CEO of Hydro One, you did not send regrets.

She was also a member of Renfrew County Council, the Dairy Union, the Ontario Drainage Board and helped recruit many doctors through her work with the Renfrew Health Village.

Her favourite spot was an old Lazy Boy chair in her living room with a landline phone on one side, a stack of newspapers on the other side, and a full ashtray on top of that stack. Although, her phone was still attached to a chord, when you called, you rarely had to leave a message. Before council meetings would start, Raye-Anne would wheel her chair over to the exit, crack the door, stick her head out and have a smoke. No one ever brought that up, because when council started, they knew Raye-Anne would approach every issue with calm, reason, clear-headedness and an eye on how she could improve her community.

She was visionary in the way few politicians are these days. Raye-Anne led the charge to recruit doctors to Renfrew. She was the leader behind creating the Renfrew Health Village. Raye-Anne wanted to see a variety of health services open around the Renfrew Victoria Hospital. The idea wasn’t to serve the many seniors in the area (although that was certainly a side benefit) – her vision was much greater than that. The goal was to create a health hub that would encourage families to want to live in the Renfrew area, which in turn would encourage industry to open shop in the Renfrew area because their workers would have everything they needed in the community, and that in turn would help boost a stagnate economy. It was a multi-year plan with a clear goal and endpoint, that probably wouldn’t earn her one extra vote in an election, but would make her community a far better place.

I’m not one to remember jokes, what things are called, even the names of people I have literally just met, but I do remember this one thing she told me some 15 years ago during a municipal election campaign that is as relevant today (maybe more so) as it was then. The one true thing following an election is “even when the voters are wrong, they’re right.”

Raye-Anne Briscoe passed away at the age of 83 on Thursday, Aug. 7 at The Grove Nursing Home in Arnprior.

Speaking of politics, who remembers the South March BESS? It’s been a messy issue dividing this community and it filled our Letters to the Editor page earlier this spring. Do we want to support the greening of our electrical grid by having some of this infrastructure built in our community? I’m politically savvy enough to not take a side here. Heck, West Carleton Online literally profited from both sides of the issue. We ran advertisements for proponents and opponents of the project and certainly had a bump in subscribers over the issue as well. I will say I like the idea, but more importantly than my opinion, I truly hope West Carleton Online shared both sides of the issue as fairly and equally as possible.

But I do want to focus on one aspect of the issue which we covered for years in the battle for a Municipal Support Resolution for the project. The 10-hour, June 5 Agriculture and Rural Affairs committee (ARAc) meeting where that committee would either recommend or discourage council to support the resolution.

That meeting featured 69 delegations sharing their opinions and/or expertise on the subject. There were rural, urban, pro, anti, and everything in between perspectives, and the four members of council sitting on ARAc (former chair George Darouze had stepped down to run for a provincial seat) were there to listen and weigh the pros and cons of the arguments being presented before making their decision. I was at Ben Franklin Place in person for the first several hours of the meeting, juggling my camera and note pad trying to chronicle the salient points and wondering how I could accurately reduce this marathon in to a tight 500 words (I failed). Long before the meeting ended, I had to leave for another assignment, but when I got home that night, I watched the rest of the meeting on YouTube.

It was the councillors’ comments at the end that challenged my faith in politics the most. After many, many hours of delegations, reports, studies and opinion, Orleans East-Cumberland Coun. Matthew Luloff turned the whole political process in to a moot point. He told everyone who had just spent 10-hours listening to the tedium of such a meeting, he had made up his mind long before the meeting started. He would support West Carleton-March Coun. Clarke Kelly in voting against the support resolution.

“I gave him my word that I would support him today,” he said. “My vote reflects that commitment and that commitment alone (to read his full comments, click on the story link above).”

Orleans South-Navan Coun. Catherine Kitts seconded those exact sentiments.

While that is what happens in politics almost all the time, it is still jarring to hear it out loud, while you’re still waiting for the feeling to return to your butt. And while both councillors voted against support at ARAc, they would flip their votes at council which would support the MSR by a 21-3 vote.

I get it, I get it, I’m an idealist, but something about that whole, exhausting process just seemed wrong to me. What was the point of all that debate?

Now the city’s councillors are discussing pay raises for themselves. Urban Coun. Shawn Menard will forward a motion at tomorrow’s (Sept. 10) council meeting recommending staff include an adjustment to their salaries to align with the “average remuneration for comparator municipalities.”

The raise wouldn’t take effect until after the next election in 2026.

Ottawa councillors earned $119,654 in 2024, while the mayor earned $213,689. Elected officials also received a 2.5 per cent increase for 2025 on Jan. 1.

While Menard refused to speak to the media about his own motion, Coun. Stephanie Plante told the media she’s undecided.

“One of the things I think plays in favour of Coun. Menard’s motion is the big disparity between the incomes of councillors, Members of Provincial Parliament and Members of Parliament,” Plante said.

She argues they do as much work and their work is equally as important. Well, there’s a reason there are three levels of government, and their jobs, while all in politics, are very different from each other.

But to Plante’s point, I would argue I do just as much work and it is equally as important and I make far, far, far less than she does. I also, can’t just vote with my colleagues to give myself more money (although that would be super-awesome). And further to that, I think I could make a compelling argument that my local Tim Hortons’ employee works incredibly hard, and their job is incredibly important to me as well.

If they want a comparator I can relate to, how about the mayor of the town I live in (Arnprior) or Almonte, or Carleton Place, or Renfrew. None of those positions are full time jobs. They don’t pay a living wage. In fact, West Carleton residents probably know the mayor of Arnprior a bit, because she actually works for Coun. Kelly. If you’re not retired, you are definitely working another job if you are a small town politician. You also don’t have your own small team of staff working for you. A small-town council shares its town staff. As for population comparators? Well, it doesn’t matter how many people live in a municipality, you still have to provide them with infrastructure, snow removal, garbage removal, recreation, roads, etc. Dare I say, the smaller your tax base is, the harder it is to achieve those mandates and the more work it takes.

While there certainly is the makings of a good debate in the salary discussion, I think I will just go ahead and promise my vote to my tax-paying colleagues before we get down to it and agree with whatever they think about a pay raise. We won’t even hold a 10-hour meeting for show.

The summer’s top stories

When I used to write this column monthly, I used to do a top five stories of the month recap. Well, let’s skip the witty banter and just say, we’ll look at the Top 10 stories of summer dating back to March 22 (when our last column ran).

Between March 22 and today (Sept. 9) we had 239,720 pageviews spread across 32,030 users. Our home page is always the busiest with 37,811 pageviews in that time. Obituaries is also always important to readers with 12,677 pageviews in that time. Every year over summer, our Events Listing is popular with the Carp Fair Drive-In Bingo event always being the most popular, this time attracting 5,369 pageviews.

Our Top 10 summer stories are:

1. Carp Fair president Rivington seriously injured in crash (Published July 3, 2,580 pageviews)
2. Dunrobin Plaza to reopen this summer (Published April 21, 1,415 pageviews)
3. Police briefs: Impaired Hwy. 416 rollover, Renfrew porch pirate caught, More crashes (Published July 28, 1,410 pageviews)
4. Carleton debate tonight in Manotick (Published April 15, 1,056 pageviews)
5. Fanjoy shocks in Carleton Riding (Published April 29, 890 pageviews)
6. WC’s last mayor Eastman passes at 80 (Published May 16, 829 pageviews)
7. Carp Custom Creamery has new owners (Published April 4, 827 pageviews)
8. A mid-week Canada Day in WC (Published June 25, 812 pageviews)
9. Dunrobin plaza sold, expected to be busy soon (Published March 18, 777 pageviews)
10. Woodlawn’s Braun on an Amazing Race (Published July 7, 746 pageviews)
11. Honourable mention due to vanity – Davies: Misinformed (Published March 23, 678 pageviews)