Mid March may seem a little early to begin to assemble our new council in November; however I think we need to construct some ideal candidates for municipal office. Judging from the criticism regarding the performance of our current mayor and council in the past year, we need to set out some criteria for a new slate. It seems mere humans will not do for the trying positions in our City. The only solution for electing the perfect Mayor and Council may rest in bioengineering: designing our own candidates.
We are not the only municipality that may be facing tough choices in the fall election. Take Toronto. Please. Mayor Ford has set the bar very high and he is going to be tough to beat. How many mayors of one of the continent’s largest cities could compete with his track record? An admitted drug user and excessive drinker of things alcoholic; a driver who can text in his car but cannot walk without crashing into someone; a talk show delight and unabashed favourite of reporters, Mayor Ford still has a large percentage of the Toronto population supporting him. Who has the creds to take him on?
Maybe Olivia Chow. We all know her as Jack’s spouse. We know she has experience in politics and has the ability to debate. Already in her first days after announcing her candidacy, she took some of Mayor Ford’s thunder by admitting that she smoked, and likely inhaled, a little pot at university. Does she enjoy a glass of wine? Gotcha Rob! Already a third of the people polled like Olivia. The message here to our incumbents and candidates: admit to drug and alcohol use – it makes you human – or as Rob Ford says – real people.
Of course you must bring more to the table than these social graces. Previous experience can be a positive attribute unless you are an incumbent and have a Memorial Gardens target painted on your back. Being a business owner might be a plus, providing your business is a popular one, or at least not one where you are obviously hoping to give yourself some favours while on council.
A former teacher might be a gene that we could engineer into a councillor, but many of that gene pool still bear grudges against Queen’s Park even though Rae, Harris and McGuinty are long gone, and that is not a good thing. We need to cooperate with the provincial (and federal) government. We even tried a college professor once but he was prone to lecturing.
Lawyers like to think that they are well equipped to be councillors; however I harken back to the days when we had three or four of them on council at the same time and it was a matter of showboating their wide knowledge of things not mattering to council. Councillor Don King was forever correcting them on procedure. No, we need to engineer out that gene.
Engineers and accountants tend to be micro managers and want to help staff even if they may need assistance some times. Engineers are notorious for not understanding dollars and cents while accountants fail to grasp the niceties of construction and urban planning. Stroke those genes off our list for bioengineering components.
It goes without saying that we will need some honesty and commitment genes. The hand-shaking gene is a must for the mayor and deputy mayor and being photogenic will be a plus for all candidates. A strong ethnic connection would be an advantage at the polls as would being in the correct age demographic (25 to 80). Good story-telling goes along with glad-handing but we must watch for any dominate genes here as story-telling sometimes slips into spin-doctoring and even prevarication.
The ideal candidate must belong to some community organizations and be willing to volunteer time for worthy causes or at least pretend to be happy in their community work. We ought to beware of people who are extremists for their cause whether it be political, social or entrepreneurial. Can you imagine a council made up wholly of the Taxpayers Association or the Chamber of Commerce or the Battalion Fan Club?
By now you will see why we need to bioengineer the perfect candidates. No doubt there are thousands of taxpayers in the City, or who live elsewhere and hold property in the City, who believe they have what it takes to be a mayor or a councillor. They may have some of the genes we need, or even some better ones that will improve their ability to sit for hours and make wise decisions.
I am beginning to see that this bioengineering may not be feasible in the amount of time we have left until Election Day. So if you find some willing person(s) who have at least a few of our desirable genes put their name on a list and begin circulating it. Oh, and one more thing: they must have both a sense of humour and a thick skin.
