Random Access

They’re calling the “town hall” meeting that the City is hosting Sept. 19 Mississauga Matters, but it could more properly be called Mississauga Mutters — about the state of the union of the province. As always.
Hazel McCallion and company have invited the leaders of the provincial parties to drop into the council chambers that night, where a hand-picked audience of ratepayers’ association presidents, business people and community groups, can watch Dalton, John and Howard squirm under the McCallion microscope. If they choose to show up, that is.
If they don’t, their designates, who may or may not be local MPPs and/or candidates, will answer in their stead for McGuinty, Tory and Hampton.
The City has prepared four background papers on “key issues” such as transportation and transit, current value assessment and downloading. Those will be the basis for the questions that will be posed to the party representatives that night.
Those papers set out the City’s shopping list of Things That Need To Be Corrected.
All of the provincial candidates in each riding will be issued an invitation and each councillor has been given the opportunity to invite several representatives from their wards.
The moderator for the evening, who will pose the questions and keep order, will be Francis D’Souza, a Mississauga resident and a newsman at CITY-TV.
Gary Kent, the City’s director of strategic initiatives, says the objective is to make residents aware of the critical issues for municipalities in the campaign that ends Oct. 10. The details of the whole process, including the backgrounders, are set out at http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/cityhall/mississaugamatters.
“We’re going to be presenting facts on the issues that affect Mississauga and asking the party representatives where do you stand?” says Kent.
It won’t be one of those unwieldy giant all-candidates’ meeting and only the designated representatives of the parties will speak. (Methinks the mayor just might do a little summing up/interpolation/thank you, however.)
After the meeting, when the parties have supposedly made their positions clear on the issues, the mayor will be sending a newsletter out to residents. It won’t tell Mississaugans whom to vote for, of course, but it could indicate which party policies are more city-friendly and which less so.
None of the party leaders have committed to the event yet, although the City has been talking to their offices regularly.
The concept is, as Arte Johnson used to say on Laugh-In ..... “verrrrry interesting.”
It has obviously been set up so that the party leaders won’t fear that they are walking into the Shootout at the Post-Modern Corral.
But will they attend?
We can only hope so. Anything that educates and engages voters is a good thing.
The City clearly misleads, however, in billing this as a “Town Hall” meeting. It is not a chance for Everyman/woman to storm City Hall to ask any questions that they might like about their municipal operations, which that term implies. In fact, there will be no open mike at all and you are not guaranteed a seat unless you are blessed with an invitation.
Perhaps in response to the strident semaphore signals of a certain blub-blub-blub blogger, the City is, at least, setting up an overflow room where the meeting will be broadcast. It will also be available on Rogers Community Television and will be streamed to the City’s web site.
One major caveat: although it will be instructive to know where the parties stand on the issues that affect cities, it seems highly unlikely that information will sway the votes of any more than a tiny fraction of voters of the electorate.