Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Welcome to Protons & Electrons


I'm pleased to present to you the first installment of my Clarington blog!

Clarington is a beautiful community about 70km east of Toronto, comprised of many small towns, along with several bigger centres such as Courtice, Bowmanville, Newcastle and Orono, and home to the Darlington nuclear plant - hence the title of the blog. Clarington has a popular zoo, many parks and rivers, a raceway, museums and educational farms. My focus with this blog will be a bi-monthly commentary on the local council and new local developments that are of interest to residents.

I hope you enjoy this start to the Protons & Electrons blog! In the sidebar you'll find a way to follow the blog and you can bookmark this page to make it fast and easy to navigate back. I want to hear from you so feel free to click the comment button below and participate in the dialogue.


  "Keeping your promise"

During Clarington election 2010 many candidates for the various offices made many different promises. I should know - I ran for election as a local candidate in Ward 1 and some of the promises that were being tossed around really concerned me. But demanding to know exactly where a politician stands on a particular issue really shouldn't surprise anyone - least of all those of us who put forward our names for one office or another because we were called upon at every door to make some kind of oath or another proving our loyalty to various ideas, concepts and positions.

Most often this revolved around the incinerator which is proposed for south Courtice but also taxes, speeders, lighting, parking - you name it.

When given a chance residents really opened up and wanted to talk at some length about what they saw were problems in their neighbourhood and what Clarington council planned to do to stop, prevent, slow or support whatever was concerning them.

Residents have a good understanding of the issues, the players and the hurdles that need to be cleared. After all, if a problem could easily be fixed then it probably would have already been done by now and I think most residents understand this.

So where am I going with all this? Those who were elected to an official representative capacity will now have to keep their promises - in most cases at least we hope they do. Residents will be rightly disappointed if those promises, be they big or small, go unfulfilled. Not just untried but unfulfilled.

 I can think of at least five ways that this might happen:

1. Candidates might have been outright lying - This is really, really rare among the candidates that I met and I don't expect it to really happen. Most people running do believe what they are saying.
2. New information - Reports, articles, changing data can all impact a decision whether to move forward with a project or goal.
3. Support shifts - People once supportive of the goal may no longer be so enthusiastic or maybe their priorities have shifted so they may not be the staunch allies they once were. Or perhaps the opposition to the original position is actually much stronger than originally thought. Either way it could mean a rethinking of whether the promised position was tenable.
4. Unable to implement - Pie in the sky. Dreaming. We've all had ideas that were great on paper but not in reality. The classic promise is to cut taxes and raise municipal services. Easy to say - hard to do.
5. Obstructed - Saying you'll do something, even something altruistic, doesn't mean there aren't competitors who will attempt to stop you - for motives of their own.

At the end of the day, though, a promise is a promise to many people.

Clarington councillors who move forward to prevent construction of an incinerator in Clarington should be commended at the very least for making the attempt. Whether they are successful or not still largely rests on Durham regional council shoulders. Plus local councillors may be judged as much for what they actually accomplish as for what they simply try to do. Anyone can say they can stop the puck as a goalie in a hockey game - but we heartily cheer the ones who actually do manage to stop it.

In my next blog post I will discuss a significant issue Clarington council is currently dealing with - a report coming back to council in January concerning the incinerator.