A welcome release of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s mandate letters to her cabinet ministers heralded a new dawn of openness and transparency.

Nothing in the past prevented premiers from making their marching orders to ministers known to the public.  But Wynne has demonstrated a willingness to be open with the directions she as premier gives to the chieftains of her newly minted majority Liberal government.

Unheralded in the flurry of publicity over the mandate letters was any hint of a downside to all this.  But let me tell you, having worked inside the grand legislative palace, it’s not what the mandate letters say, but what they do not say.

The truth for activists and lobbyists is their causes will be ignored if the matters are not part of the minister’s mandated bundle.  I know this too well.  While at Queen’s Park, I saw the former premier Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals drag their heels on introducing legislation that automatically enabled workers’ compensation for fire fighters who developed diseases as a result of fighting fires.  

The issue of “presumptive legislation” had not made it into the Minister of Labour’s mandate letter.  Only after considerable pressure over the course of years did that important legislation come to pass.  And I take great heart in knowing that the final three life-threatening illnesses that the Liberals chose not to include the first time around will, in fact, be part of the mandate going forward.

If an issue found its way into Wynne’s election platform in June, then there will be a directive about it tucked into a ministerial mandate letter somewhere.  

The trouble with mandate letters rests in what they do not include and how a government will use them to justify ignoring other important issues, ideas and points of view.

I nearly leapt from my seat when I saw that the city ethics commission in Los Angeles is pushing the idea of a contest to increase municipal voter turnout.

“Los Angeles considers cash-prize drawing as incentive to vote,” screams the Toronto Star headline above the story.

I have long advocated a voter lottery as a surefire way to raise voter turnout tallies.  A musician, I even wrote a song about it.*  Now before my eyes, validating my belief -  a jurisdiction willing to give it a whirl south of the border.  With a few tweaks the current proposal from L.A. Commissioner Nathan Hochman could muster an odds-on chance of succeeding.  Frustratingly, though, here in the face of dismal numbers – fewer than 5 in 10 voters actually vote – Toronto, Canada has fallen victim to new national laws that make it more difficult to vote. 

In my scenario, the voter registration card doubles as a lucky draw ticket after the election.  Why not a televised draw about one week after Election Day using pre-existing government gaming infrastructure? 

Unlike the LA scenario, which proposes a single incentive - a cash prize in the range of $25,000 to $50,000, my voter lottery spreads the wealth around and corrals a bigger budget by redirecting millions of misspent voter awareness advertising dollars into meaningful prizes.

A year’s mortgage payments made. Your annual hydro or gasoline bill paid. Transit passes, super “staycations”, your rent paid for a year.  The voter lottery would offer a grand prize, but also many smaller rewards that would contribute to an individual’s quality of life and entice people to the polls for a change.  Who wouldn’t vote for that?

In submitting my proposal to Ontario’s select committee on electoral reform back in 2005, I had a hunch no one would take it seriously.  And now, a decade later, someone has.  I must be a futurist.

* The Voter Lottery (Original Song) 
by Sheila White   © 2003

No one cares about elections.
There’s a bad case of voter apathy.
Until they invent a clinic to cure the cynic,
We need a gimmick to get people voting again.
If you take a minute
to examine it,
A lottery can.

Let’s go in a new direction
and do our part to boost democracy
We can offer prizes
And cool surprises
The turnout rises because
Everyone’s playing to win.
If we advertise it,
I’ve analyzed it,
And I say, “We’re in!”

A voter lottery
will push the numbers up
to where they ought to be.  Whoa!
The media will love it.
We’ve already won.
Voter turnout will go up,
But most of all, it will be fun.

We may face the odd objection
To how we solve this electoral ennui
We had to be inventive,
Provide incentive
They’ll be attentive and voting like never before.
This is not expensive
We must attempt it
They’ll come back for more.

A year’s free gasoline,
who wouldn’t vote for that?
A trip to the Caribbean,
Luxury hybrids, tuition fees,
Voter turnout will go up.
Most of all, it will be fun.

I see today the Ontario Health Coalition has copied an idea I dreamed up for the Ontario NDP as Communications Director under Howard Hampton in around 2000: The Rocking Chair Protest.

I had all NDP MPPs involved – Marilyn Churley, Frances Lankin in Toronto, Shelley Martel in Sudbury, David Christopherson in Hamilton, and so on. Our crack NDP health researcher, Marit Stiles, now a director with ACTRA, did her trademark networking to draw the broader community to our event.

The mid-morning kickoff took place at Bay and Wellesley in Toronto and at seven other Ontario centres. Martel’s event, artfully planned, regrettably in a flash was wiped out by a mini-hurricane that ripped her tent apart and sent the chair flying across the road.

Other than that, fantastic press – a front page for Christopherson in The Hamilton Spectator sitting in his rocking chair, and generous coverage province-wide. To his credit, Christopherson spent a full 24 hours camping out in his protest chair (or so the story goes).

Tony Clement was Conservative Premier Mike Harris’s health minister back then, proposing to hike nursing home fees by 15 per cent. 

My vision for the Rocking Chair Protest played out perfectly. Politicians, concerned citizens and people involved in the field, assembled by Marit, took turns sitting in an oversized rocking chair on the sidewalk, commenting for the media scribes, television cameras and microphones.

On a public sidewalk, I kicked the whole thing off playing “We Will Rock You” on my trombone, interspersed with a rally cry of “Stop the Fee Increase!”  Meanwhile, eager NDP staffers gathered signatures for petitions from sidewalk passersby. Although the Conservatives didn’t stop the fee hike altogether, the Ontario-wide exposure for the issue caused them to reduce it enough for this particular media stunt to be considered an absolute win. A significant reversal within 24 hours.

The greatest compliment a media strategist can receive is when people replicate her ideas and run with them, not just a year later, but 10 or 15!  About five years ago, CUPE Ontario staged a similar rocking chair protest, which a friend drew to my attention. And now the health coalition is trotting out the giant rocker once again.

Good ideas withstand the test of time.  Unfortunately, the high cost of long-term care continues to make this type of creative advocacy ever necessary.

Saturday’s sudden death of Peter Kormos brought to my mind the many times we worked together in an outstanding capacity between 1998 and 2003.  Peter always supported my outside-the-box ideas as NDP communications director.  He was my media star.

I write this to remember Kormos and to explain something.  Remember his genius at delivering to the waiting microphones and cameras, and explain the context behind a few of the TV images that eulogized the popular politician.

Like, why was Kormos leading a pony around Queen’s Park, a prominent image in CITYtv’s montage?  Why was he sprawled out on a chaise lounge sipping an umbrella-topped drink and being fanned by doting staffers?

I never laughed as hard or as long as I did when Kormos brought my dog and pony stunt to life.  It was March 2003.  Janet Ecker was finance minister to Ernie Eves’ premiership in the year of the Magna Budget.  Some Tory operative’s best idea for escaping public scrutiny of the province’s finances in an election year was to present the annual budget via television at the Magna auto parts plant to a stage-managed crowd. 

Prorogation may have its warts, but what bigger pock on democracy is there than the outright removal of the budget from the Legislative Chamber on Budget Day?

That’s when we landed Kormos in front of the grand old parliament building resplendent with two four-legged props on budget day.  Midnight, my friend’s Pomeranian did a wonderful spinning trick. Princess, the rental pony, delivered in spades, (so agile she could have walked up the front steps to the main door, I found out later.)  Kormos was a delight to script.  He gave grace to the written word, one of his loves.

The NDP’s Dog and Pony show dominated the news, mocked the governing Conservatives and sent opposition, heir-apparent Liberals, ignored, scowling and pouting, back to their offices.  It was an event, the veteran MPP from Welland told me fairly recently, that people continued to mention to him a full decade later.

Kormos was always a player in these efforts and relished my schemes.  I had him selling pencils outside Old City Hall in Toronto defying rigid laws proposed against panhandling.  He paraded a team of NDP colleagues to the parliamentary parking lot to squeegee MPP car windows, protested nursing fee increases in a rocking chair marathon.  Wherever there was action there was Kormos, master of creative media arts, always hungry for the next bite.

My team conjured up the ‘lawn chair press conference’ where Kormos held court basking in the sun and calling for two new statutory holidays a year.

For all his depth, Kormos remained ever the nuanced actor, who embraced the simple idea that fun communicates, fun sells.

The strangest thing just happened. I received a phone call to my home from the development company responsible for an illegal rooftop sign that I complained to the City of Toronto about. Aren’t complaints to the city supposed to be anonymous?

That was the case in 1999 when I wanted to know the identity of the person(s) who complained about my election signs as they awaited pick-up at the printer. (See blog 03/12/12) Back then, complainants’ anonymity was closely guarded, guaranteed, and I never was able to confirm with certainty that the source was a rival candidate for the city council seat.

Now I’m off the phone with someone at Tridel, whose illegal rooftop sign has been wedged solidly in my craw since the day of its installation six months ago.

She tells me that the project manager asked her to phone to determine the nature of my complaint.

“How did you get my number?” I ask. No clear answer there. Someone gave it to the project manager.

The Tridel assistant doesn’t think the sign is illegal. I explain to her that I have conversed with Robert, the guy at the city who knows this stuff chapter and verse. His team boasts an impressive 90 per cent compliance rate when it comes to the removal of rooftop signs. The regulations came to be in 2010. They were drafted with developers and city staff working together. Tridel was one of the developers at the table. Surely , in helping to design it and investing employee time in the exercise, Tridel was aware of Toronto’s sign bylaw. The thing’s only three years old!

I suggest to the employee that she speak to Robert. “I shouldn’t be in the middle of this,” I said. “I’m the complainant. You should be dealing with the city.”

She tells me the Metrogate condo project, where people now reside, is “a construction site”.  You still need a permit, but why am I the one telling her this?  That would be the job of the councillor.  Hmmmmm ... 

Here’s what I think happened:
 
Instead of making an easy inquiry on my behalf to city staff about the legality of the vexing sign, the local councillor’s aide made an inquiry to the developer.  After many months I went independently to city staff through the main switchboard, and that’s how I met Robert. I knew through Robert that investigators were to visit the site today.

I was phoned at 4 pm. The project manager, I’m assuming, received his surprise afternoon callers. My Tridel contact, in all likelihood, obtained my phone number and knowledge of my complaint from the councillor’s aide.

I know Robert respects the anonymity of complaints. We talked about that. You can feel completely at ease making reports about illegal rooftop signs, or any other matter, to city departmental staff. I think the problem here is one of a political staffer referring my complaint to a powerful developer who might want to squash me like a bug.

Robert’s department receives one complaint a day, a total of 260 a year.
It tells me I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who feels a skyline should be unfettered by garish displays of commercialism and condo ads yelling from great distances at the neighbourhoods the new buildings surround.

If you have a rooftop sign peering at you or big banner advertising on a bridge disturbing your view, you can report it to 3-1-1 and have it looked into. Unless approved, these signs are in violation. At that point, the offender is expected to remove the sign or apply to make it legal within 14 days.

The developer's rep says she will get back to me next Wednesday. My friend says I should file a report with the city’s integrity commissioner. I’ve written this blog in lieu.

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.

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