Guelph Municipal Election

Yesterday, I finished managing the campaign for Karolyne Pickett: Council candidate for Ward 1 in Guelph. Karolyne was a woman with minimal connection to her community beyond living in it, but had a passion for service and working to engage more people with the decisions being made by council that was affecting their lives.

Sadly, we lost: Finishing fourth out of eleven candidates. Perhaps more sadly, only about 33% of eligible voters in Guelph turned out to vote. I observed very traditional campaigns in Guelph, where candidates seemed exclusively focussed on debates, yard signs and 'knocking on doors'. On paper, this seems fine except that 'knocking on doors' seems to mean that campaigns were dropping off flyers without actually stopping to talk to residents. At most, campaigns seemed to spend less than a minute at doors giving a quick spiel about themselves then moving on.

33 percent is a problem. 33 percent means that the overwhelming majority of people in Guelph didn't feel it was important enough to vote. This is not the problem of the non-voters, this is the problem of our community leaders. We need to be finding leaders who are proactively going out and providing people with reasons to be interested in being involved in their communities. We need to find great communicators who can draw lines between how taxes create services, and the great things those services are doing. Great leadership will inspire people to become involved. Yard signs inspire people to do nothing.

This is achievable. We can find people who want to go out and talk to their neighbours about the kind of community they want, even if it's as simple as traffic calming or activities for their kids. We can find leaders who can inspire hope and passion for the community they live in. We should expect this of ourselves. Guelph failed at this in 2010, and I hope we can do better in the future.