About forty Cortes Islanders attended a public meeting on February 15th at Manson’s Hall, to discuss local governance models and alternatives. The meeting was announced in Regional Director Noba Anderson’s article “Seeding Community Council: Hornby and Cortes” which appeared in Tideline on February 2nd; it was co-hosted (with introductory remarks) by Director Anderson and moderator Kristen Scholfield-Sweet. Folk U co-sponsored the event. While some were disappointed in their expectations of a much larger turnout (“I thought the hall would be full!”) others pointed out that many people are still engaged in the ongoing search for missing island youth Miles Meester.

 We have a regional district system that, by its very nature, regardless of the people involved, leaves decisions off-island with a group of people that know little about our community.

— Regional Director for Cortes Island, Noba Anderson

“Why Are We Here?”

Why did forty-odd Cortes Islanders come out on a Saturday afternoon to talk about governance — a topic many people find rather dry and uninspiring?

Because…
… I’m interested in community
… something quite amazing is about to begin
… I care
… there must be a better way!
… I’m very interested in participatory democracy
… I’m curious
… I love this community
… I’m always interested in community affairs
… I want to find out what other people think
… I’m frustrated beyond words with our existing governance structures
… I’m optimistic
… I think this is a positive direction
… I’m interested in a way of organising ourselves that is not about any one elected person
… I’ve been really frustrated trying to understand what’s going on at the regional district level
… I want this community to be somewhere my daughter still wants to be at my age

— Various answers given by attendees to the question “Why are you here?”

Many Cortes Islanders have expressed their frustration over the last several years at the “lack of democracy” they perceive in the relationship between the island (Area B) and the Regional District. We seem to have very little say in our own affairs, and Regional Directors from other Areas can veto our proposals with impunity. This constituent dissatisfaction motivated Regional Director Anderson to research alternative public process, both historical and contemporary. She interviewed Cortes elder Bruce Ellingsen about the history of the Cortes Island Ratepayers’ Association, and visited Hornby Island to learn more about HIRRA, the Hornby Island Residents’ and Ratepayers’ Association. Her article was based on these conversations.

Anderson felt that the interaction between SRD and Cortes Island could become more reality-based and more democratic if there was a local process that formally expressed the majority will of the residents. Could residents do more local decision-making? Could regional directors serve merely as the conduit between a local council or grass-roots democratic process and senior levels of government, rather than relying on one person’s judgment to interpret the majority will? Is the community ready and willing to undertake some self-organising for local democracy? The Saturday meeting was the first, tentative step in exploring these questions.

How do we as a community come together and build greater cohesion, decision-making capacity, communication structure? We don’t have that, and I don’t know what it looks like […] We don’t have the hub that’s in the centre of community resilience planning […] We don’t have the hub that tells me what to do, or tells Highways to build paths or whatever… so much is left to me, and it’s a system that just doesn’t sustain [us].

— R.D. Noba Anderson, opening remarks

Many Possibilities

After the introductory remarks, there was a lively discussion covering the necessary questions of local governance: who should be allowed to vote, how would agendas be established — and would decision-making power reside with an elected board or committee, or with the general public? If there were an elected body on Cortes, what would it actually do? Do we want to improve our relationship with SRD, or work towards independence from SRD?

Would decisions be by consensus, or majority rule? Bare majority, or super-majority? How would local deliberations and decisions (whether directly democratic or representative) be legitimised in the eyes of Cortes residents and senior levels of government? What part would Klahoose First Nation play in any structure for local governance? Supposing there were a council with elected members, how could elections be so perfectly conducted so that the results were accepted as legitimate? How could the process attract enough participants to be truly democratic? Could technology play a part by extending access to more participants?

Despite the bewildering array of options and ideas, it all came down to two basic concepts with many variations. Some spoke strongly in favour of direct, non-representative democracy as documented in Roy Hales’ podcast on the traditional Town Meetings of the Eastern US states. Others preferred an elected council, as proposed in Anderson’s article. But all agreed that the community needed more face-to-face discussion, more control over our own local affairs, more listening, more opportunity to resolve issues among ourselves rather than lobbying a remote power base (SRD) for our individual priorities.

Core themes emerged as moderator Scholfield-Sweet updated her flipchart with notes from each speaker: attendees were deeply concerned about inclusivity and the need to hear a wide spectrum of opinions. There was strong support for youth engagement, including voting rights for any youth “self-identifying as adult, and capable of understanding the governance structure.” Attendees also emphasised the need for respectful, civil discourse and transparent public process. There was a strong sense from the attendees that the system we now have is not serving us well, an appetite for change and improvement.

The meeting ended on time (5pm) having established a mailing list of over thirty people wanting to keep in touch with this effort, and a working group of nine people willing to do more research on local governance models, seeking possible answers to the many questions raised during the discussion period. The working group’s assignment: to organise and publicise a much larger meeting — similar in scale to a Town Meeting — to share the results of their research with the community and get some sense of the amount of public enthusiasm for various options. Director Anderson suggested that if there is sufficient interest and motivation for Cortes Islanders to develop some kind of local governance structure, the Chair of the SRD Board is also interested in the possibility — and it would be appropriate to keep them informed.

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How Things Could Change

What might be different if we did have some kind of local democratic process? One obvious, immediate, practical change might be in the way application is made for Grants In Aid (GIA) from SRD for local organisations.

At present, the Regional Directors bring proposals for GIA to SRD. But (as we have seen in recent years) if there’s personal or political opposition to the RD either on the SRD Board or back home, lobbying efforts by even a small number of opponents can result in denial of funding. If Cortes Island had a grass-roots democratic process by which we could vote on which local organisations we want SRD to support with GIA funds, surely it would be harder for SRD board members to justify opposing the majority will of the Area constituents. The proposals would no longer be coming “from our Director” (an individual) but “from the community” — with documentary evidence in the form of tallied votes.

At the other end of the scale of change, Anderson’s opening remarks painted a much bigger picture, involving much bigger changes than how GIA funds are allocated. She briefly discussed the potential for disruption caused by climate change: economic instability, an unprecedented world refugee crisis, interruptions of transportation. Practical experience with local self-governance could help to make Cortes Island more resilient in facing severe challenges, she said — but even if none of these dire possibilities does happen, local democratic governance is still a good thing and worth working towards. Most of those present seemed to agree with both premises; the general mood of the room was critical of — or bewildered by — the persistence of climate change denialism among SRD board members.

The link above documents some negative or dismissive SRD responses to requests for funding for the first climate-change resilience initiatives on Cortes. I think it’s worth noting that these responses were influenced and bolstered by correspondence received from a very small group of Cortes Islanders — rather than engaging with what I believe to be the majority opinion on the island, which takes climate change seriously. This, for me, underscores the continuing frustration of being governed by a remote body not in touch with our local community.

Perhaps in Campbell River and Oyster River “carbon skeptics” are a majority, and SRD board members who dismiss or deny the gravity of the problem are accurately representing their constituents. But why should those demographics prevent Cortes Islanders from obtaining funds for “resilience” projects, if those projects are important to a majority here?And how can we reliably determine whether these projects really are important to a majority here, without a public democratic process that allows us to gauge and document the majority will?

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My Two Cents

The one thing we can count on in this world is that things will change. The Cortes Island Ratepayers’ Association — the tried and true mechanism for local governance in small island communities since the 1930’s — folded up and lost its mandate in the mid 1980’s as the Regional District system was imposed on the coast. Cortes Island’s political “clout” with senior levels of government was at its peak when an influential politician lived here; now it seems to be at its low point. We have now lived with the Regional District system for almost four decades, for better and for worse… but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only way our community can be governed. Business as usual is usual (and even seems inevitable), until one day it isn’t any more.

MLA Clare Trevena is considering the possibility of “non-municipal municipality” as a legal structure which could allow small rural communities more autonomy — the kind of autonomy enjoyed by municipalities with an elected Mayor and Council, such as Sayward, where many local issues can be locally decided. If that legislative change ever comes to pass, Cortes can only benefit by having local democratic processes already in place, by having some practical experience of local governance and being ready to step up and assume more responsibility for our local affairs.

Personally, I favour the “New England Town Meeting” model of local governance for small communities. But whether we end up with an elected Mayor and Council, or a broad-based elected Residents’ Council whose decisions are carried to SRD by our RD, or regular town meetings where a board of “selectpersons” is elected to implement the results of live referenda — any of these models would be more democratic than what we have now. It seems worth a try.