• Victor Schukov

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Care to join me at AA?

posted by Victor Schukov at 9h46

The big story in the West Island, of course, is the abominable hikes in our municipal tax bills.

 Only six residents showing up at a Pointe Claire council meeting for the adoption of the town’s 2010 budget does not imply that 30,339 residents less six are happy with the outcome. But it does say that the uber-majority couldn’t be bothered to get off their divans. It’s all part of Star Trek’s Borg-like mind space that “resistance is futile” because – prepare for another cliché – “you can’t fight city hall.”

Political abstinence does not mean taxpayers are happy with their mayors and councillors. The only thing that would make citizens buoyant is to pay less property taxes than the year before, for a start. 

Most people also like to sit back and chronically complain. I am one of them. It is one of the pillars – or anchors – of democracy. Meanwhile, the few mayors and councillors who do get into office are obviously more proactive types, good or bad.

The irony of it is that political apathy is so insidious that in the 2009 municipal elections in the West Island, five out of nine mayors won their seats back unopposed. Even aspiring politicians are apathetic; we can’t win, so why bother to run? What’s next, no one runs and we have to force someone to become mayor?

Some specific, local West Islanders do, on occasion, make a difference as we say: Gary Grant staged protests until an overpass was installed on Canada’s most dangerous intersection of Woodland Avenue and Highway 20. Mayor Maria Tutino of Baie d’Urfé et al fought for demerger and won.

And yet, the resulting agglomeration system is feudal in nature: “We let you live on our island, so we make you pay whatever taxes we like and we can pee it away anyway we see fit.”  It is the monetary equivalent of the days when you would have to square the seigniorial taxes by giving the resident lord your last few chickens and cows.

When whole nations decide that they “have had it up to here” with their leaders, we have nice little fits of expression called the French Revolution, The Russian Revolution, the American Revolution, the Chinese Revolution. I can’t say “Canadian Revolution” without giggling like a little girl.  Heaven knows, we are long overdue for a tax revolt, but how do you hack through the entanglement of apathy?

I have the deepest respect for our West Island mayors and councils who aren’t big enough to be affected by the rule of  “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Mayor T. doesn’t know what that means because when you are Emperor Gerald With-No-Clothes, you have long ago passed the stage of understanding the enormity of your ethical and moral obligation to society.

And if you happen to rise to the top of the bureaucratic pyramid of power like Prime Minister Harper, you can do whatever the hell you like with no regard for the cost to the serfs who voted you in. 

We blame Montreal, Montreal blames Quebec City, Quebec City blames Ottawa, and Ottawa – for lack of a higher power to blame  –  opts to teach the country a whole new word:  prorogue; sounds like a Russian baked dumpling, doesn’t it?

Another cliché: It’s called “passing the buck.” Unfortunately, it’s our buck, not there’s.

So almost all citizens don’t come to meetings, almost all citizens don’t vote municipally, and the squeaky wheel of apathy whines ever louder.

We need a new law to be passed. We need to force people to join AA (Apathetics Anonymous.)

Of course, no one would show up. (Oldest joke in the book.)