By Don White.

Full confession off the top: I found it hard to get here, to work down to – and write about – the core of what disturbed me most about the gender parity, childcare debates in the December 2 Nanaimo City Council meeting.

I need to be clear about this. It was not the motions tabled by Councillors Hemmens and Brown. Nor was it their motions’ wording nor intention. Rather, it was the tone of the meeting that I found the most disturbing. In particular, the tone Mayor Krog adopted to deal with the motions and with the Councillors, themselves.

I found that tone so derisive, so potentially destructive that I’m worried we’re on the path back to a divided council, to a council as split as the one we recently replaced. Another divided council is exactly the opposite of what our city needs. And, I suggest, it is also the antithesis of what voters thought they would be getting when they turned out in numbers to vote for Leonard Krog.

When I wrote about the mayoralty candidates for the 2018 Municipal election, I said this:

“I believe the best potential leader for this team is Leonard Krog. … I suspect Krog would prove to be the more likely candidate to empower members of the new Nanaimo Council. I believe he would be more willing to encourage councillors to think independently and outside the box and [be] the one most likely to recognize the strengths and abilities that individual councillors bring to the table. Lastly but crucially, I suspect Krog would probably be the one to encourage and assist the development of the younger, newer members.”

After Mayor Krog’s lectures on the Brown-Hemmens motions, I’m wondering if I should be thinking, “caveat emptor.”

The devices Krog used to ignore/dismiss the perspectives and values of the delegation from Equal Voice, the motions’ supporting voices at the table – and by extension anyone in the audience with views different than his own – equate, in effect, to demagoguery. He offered personal opinions couched as factual knowledge; he conjured mythical meaning from his childhood and sweeping relevance from his previous legislative experience; he inferred others were politically naive by citing his own frequent recognition by the public when he visits produce sections in local supermarkets.

Watch his two speeches back to back and tell me you don’t feel diminished for even daring to imagine holding views other than Krog’s own. The first begins at 1:49:30; the second at 2:28:05. The following are two of several instances.

As “the son of a widowed mother who raised four children … to subsidize the cost of childcare for council as if they are some privileged group … is to me, frankly [big grimace here] I won’t say repugnant but I think it speaks to a sense of entitlement …”

“You show leadership by sacrifice. And it is a sacrifice in public life and each and every one of you [councillors] who has no political experience prior understand that now. You do not go to the grocery store and pass unnoticed down the vegetable aisle. You do not get to go to public events without being recognized.”

Krog spoke age to youth as if his opinion evidenced an older, superior insight and a deeper understanding. Even bringing these motions forward in the form they were was flawed. “[T]his is an issue that … unnecessarily, based on the wording of this motion … divided this community, raised an unnecessary sense of rancour …”

His patronizing tone could be taken to be intended for the effect that it produced: a public shaming of anyone who disagreed. It prompted Brown – ironically (perhaps for Krog), as the youngest member of this council – to reassure others at the table that the discussion of gender parity and childcare, while difficult, was not shameful.

It was Councillor Brown who noted that the language and tone used at the table were important. And it was Brown, not Krog, who reassured the other Councillors that he did not want any one of them to feel reluctant to bring forward issues they believed to be important.

Are we to conclude that it’s actually the youngest, the most (in Krog’s view) inexperienced novice who is our Council’s greatest team-builder? It was Brown who tried to build the bridges on December 2.

The demagoguery we saw may be commonplace in Victoria, but it should not be accepted here. When combined with attempts at public shaming, that form of discourse contributes directly to the kind of divisiveness voters in 2018 wanted to avoid. No one wants an out of date, mono-value, mono-view council. However, we want decision-making on whether to consider change that is based on reasoning, not prejudicial inferences.

So now what? What do voters do about it?

I suggest we do exactly what we hope our mayor and councillors will do: lead by example. I recommend that we attempt to reconcile perspectives rather than react as if there is an unbridgeable divide between us and any other person with whom we disagree, including Leonard Krog.

Let’s do what we’d prefer Mayor Krog also do for others: extend the benefit of doubt. Let’s recognize that Krog is as much a novice at municipal politics – and at working in a functional, local administration – as anyone else now sitting at the table. Let’s cut the man a bit of slack.

Specific to the debates on gender parity and childcare: when they appear in the committee meetings to which they have been deferred, we all need to take a breath and evaluate what are actually the goals. Then we need to try and tweak problematic aspects, rather than dismissing the ideas out of hand. We should objectively and conscientiously assess possible benefits and virtues along with projected costs and inequities. Are there ways to maximize the former while minimizing the latter?

Discrediting those younger than us by suggesting they lack insight or experience is as flawed as discrediting Krog or Turley on the basis that old dogs can’t learn new tricks. (Hey, I get to say that. I’m older than them both.) And – in fact – blind deference to the experience and viewpoints of our elders may be a bigger worry.

The younger members of our Council are the ones who must find the way through the messes that the older of us created. The younger will live with the consequences of what they create, not those who are my age or anyone the age of the older group on council. We can offer the knowledge we believe that we possess, but we must not fetter younger members by insisting they follow failed strategies of Boomers.

All of us, of all ages and experiences, must continue reminding Council of our need for full, unbiased consideration of important, possibly innovative thinking. That we need the consideration to be based on facts, not on opinions, “common knowledge”, or on aversion for the novel. And we need action, not inaction. We need to pay more than lip service to operationalizing important values that we share and to ensuring equitable treatment of all members of our city.

Setting aside prejudgements and demagoguery will go a long way towards our finding ways of providing everyone in Nanaimo with the best chance for living as they want. Keeping our mayor and council together, tone-free, and on this path is crucial. As we learned painfully from the previous administration: as goes our City Hall, so go we.