You stay or you pay.

A politician should have to serve for a full term unless death or unlawful activity cuts short the career.

If you run for a four-year term, you serve a four-year term, or until the next election is called.  That’s your obligation as a candidate, what you signed on for when you ‘answered the ad.’  Let’s just say it’s in your contract with the voter.  I won't disagree if you tell me four years is too long.

Politicians who leave mid-term for their own convenience lay open seats to be filled in expensive by-elections.

We have two such examples in the Province of Ontario right now with Dwight Duncan (Windsor) and Chris Bentley (London), both MPPs and cabinet members making quick exits.  They’re flying the Queen’s Park coop: A premature evacuation?

That’s an expensive exit strategy!  The cost of a provincial by-election must be in the quarter million dollar range.  Under my scenario these elected legislators continue to serve as MPPs until the next general election or they pay the cost of refilling their seats. 

People living in an area represented by an early-quitter are disadvantaged for up to six months.  Their legislative legs just walked out on them and they have no voice in parliament. Then all of Ontario joins in to fork over the dough to run forced by-elections.

Suggesting that candidates pay the cost of a by-election is neither new nor is it unprecedented.

I learned as a municipal candidate that it is possible a government will demand payment for the cost of a by-election.  I go back to a letter I received from the City of Toronto Clerk in 1999 informing me that if I won the contested seat (a vacancy due to a death in office) the city would come after me for the cost of a new by-election.  “For your information the cost of a by-election is between $165,000 and $200,000,” said the letter from top bureaucrat, Novina Wong.

Okay, this was over a logo dispute that was tame compared to the one that bubbled up in Surrey BC recently.  The town launched and then withdrew a lawsuit against a local t-shirt maker who parodied Surrey’s logo on apparel. 

Here I still have in my possession a letter suggesting I pay for a by-election for reasons both silly and nonsensical. So what about these guys who step down early from their well-paying, elected posts and saddle the public with an expensive election exercise?  

The cost of many a by-election could be avoided altogether if politicians stayed put and lived to the terms of their agreement, as many have.  I concede this does make it hard for them to jump to other levels of government mid-term.  Jury's still out on whether that's good or bad.

Did I tell you the one about the city logo?  The line drawing of city hall was a no-go logo for me after my printer put it on the election signs for my first campaign as a candidate for Toronto City Council.  

My sign printer was a sitting councillor, Howard Moscoe, and the company he represented, Adanac.  His idea to have a picture of city hall graphic instead of words 'Elect' and 'Councillor' was really quite brilliant.  He didn’t tell me he was lifting the design from the city’s Millennium logo.  This was in 1999.  It was a summer by-election in Scarborough wards 43 and 44.

Before I even received my sign order from the printer, I received a call from the city clerk’s office saying they had had a complaint about them.  No, they would not release the name of the complainant, but they wanted to see samples of my materials.  Soon after, I was told to scrap my signs and literature ($11,000) and cease and desist using the little logo.  I took time out of campaigning to go to City Hall to be served with a formal letter signed by Clerk Novina Wong and copied to six different senior staffers.

The letter said if I won the by-election, the city would attribute the outcome to my use of the logo and would be forced to hold a new by-election.  The letter left no guessing.  The city would come after me in court for the cost of a new by-election, the Clerk stated.

“For your information the cost of holding a by-election is between $165,000 and $200,000.” 

This was in reaction to a minor and totally innocent trademark infringement issue.   There was no law against putting the city hall logo on an election sign at that time.  The city’s sign by-law was changed later that year to add what I still dub “the Sheila Clause”, prohibiting the use of the city logo on candidates’ election materials.

Never understood until now why I kept that letter.  I can wave it around  and make the point that Rob Ford should pay for his own mayoral by-election, if the city must have one.  For his information, the cost of a new by-election is in the range of $7 million.

What's fair for the goose ... ?

The same rules that ensnared our hare of a mayor have entangled this writer in the past.   Little sympathy for Mayor Rob Ford’s plight do I feel, and this is from someone who has encountered legal challenges wrought from the unforgiving clauses of Ontario’s municipal election laws. 

My transgression?  I was one day late filing a second financial statement after losing as a candidate for council in a 1999 by-election.  Had I not penned my case, found a judge to hear me and made my presentation to the court within seven days, I would have been banned from running for municipal office for seven years.  

Diane Alexopoulous, who sought office in Toronto in November 2006 and came close to winning, didn’t do what I did.  Rather than go through the legal process, she didn’t respond to her letter from the elections branch of the city clerk’s office and forfeited her right to try for public office again for seven years.  How many others have similarly faced this law full tackle, like I did, or with a defensive fumble like Diane?  This was a woman who earned 46.1 per cent of the vote and came within 20 votes of toppling an incumbent titan.

Regular folks affected by election legislation don’t have politicians like Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and his federal cousins demanding an urgent review of the law governing politicians, wannabes and try-hards.  Golly, I thought Conservatives were the Law & Order party.  What does it mean? That all candidates are treated equally under the law unless they're a big Tory named Ford?  Is the next Tory campaign slogan going to be, “Give the big guy a break. The law is an ass.”

The entire Ford Family will be thrilled that I’m not a court justice.  When I fought for my rights in court, the law was the law no matter who you were.  It was tough, but evenhanded. 

My penalty for Ford would be banishment for seven years.

I wouldn’t let that rabbit run away from what he’s done.

Clearly a recipe is needed if one wants to stir the pot on Premier Dalton McGuinty’s prorogation of the Ontario Legislature this week.  The public eye glazes over at the mere mention of proroguing in all its minutiae.  As important an issue as it is, political leaders have failed in their attempts to foster anything but a mild reaction from citizens to the Liberal government’s manipulative and cheeky political ploy.

Prorogation has landed on the public with a muted thud.  What that represents is an inability of the opposition parties to effectively grab the media’s attention.  What we got was more of the same rhetoric one expects to hear from opposition quarters.   A static email and phone campaign targeting Queen’s Park isn’t compelling.  One needs to be creative to capture a busy mind.

I hate to say it, but most people view politicians as men and women who get paid pretty well to achieve a whole lot of nothing.  Having a campaign to call MPPs ‘back to work’ is a doomed message.  Most people believe a politician’s place is in the constituency troubleshooting voters’ real life problems.

Here’s how I would advise a political leader on raising the profile of the complicated and dull prorogation issue:

My first event would take place at 11 a.m. the day following McGuinty’s stunning announcement.  Members of the press have been burning the midnight oil.  They’re tired, hungry, probably fuelled on coffee and junk food. 

My media event would be a perogi, er, ‘proroguee’ party, for the media – something a little different.  I’d find volunteers in the vibrant Polish community to prepare some of the most mouth-watering varieties of perogi you’ve ever tasted. 

I’d have a body of real people there bolstering my leader’s point: the senior, the student activist, those who were counting on now-defunct pieces of legislation. 

The press conference would explain to the media the analogous point.  And the point is?  “We politicians have stuff on our plates. The legislative session went faster than this plate of perogi and the public thinks that’s wrong.” 

Then lunch for press and invited guests, with cleverly packaged take-out portions for deadline-pressed reporters who can’t stay.

The press corps comes up with dandy puns, slogans and headlines.  Scribes could go to town with this one, not to mention photographers and cartoonists.  Using simplicity, fun and creativity, a message has sturdier legs, a better reach.

As a follow-up, while legislative proceedings idle, I would question the political junkets and trade missions that this lame duck government no doubt will continue, notwithstanding. 

The leader would emphasize the “work to be done” theme juxtaposed against the image of government freeloaders at the international travel trough.  Sirloin tip versus home spun soul food.

-30-

Copyright  2012   WORDS Media & Communications Inc.
sheilawhiteseminars.com