Many of us from a certain generation are familiar with the old axiom “new brooms sweep clean.”
I guess it was a bit of old, grandma-type wisdom where it was established that a new broom, with its brand new bristles firm and steady, could get that dirt the old worn-out broom in the corner couldn’t handle anymore. The new one swept all before it, and with a little bit of weight behind it, there would be nothing that could escape it.
It might also scratch your floor.
Politics can be like that.
You get a government, or a board, or a similar collection of individuals given a certain task or mandate. Maybe they start out okay, but over time, stuff happens that leads to the impression among their constituency that they have to be sent packing, whether through their perceived ineptness, incompetence or for the simple fact that they’re tired and have gone flat. And then comes the statement that grows and grows and grows, a statement dreaded by incumbents everywhere: “It’s time for a change.”
Hence the need for a new broom, so to speak. And what do brooms do? Well they sweep, with new ones even sweeping clean. Sweeping clean politically will more often mean that every, or almost every existing member of that government, or board, or council, or committee, what have you, will be replaced by someone new, and often extremely inexperienced. And maybe even packing a grievance. Or an agenda. Or, gasp, both.
It happens, part of the human condition, and what are you gonna do? It occurs often and will continue to occur moving forward. A situation where one group is replaced by another group intent upon blowing up whatever the former group was up to. And sadly, alas, the new group, the new brooms, will likely fall victim to the same phenomenon in their own time. Some politicians, and let’s face it, all the folks described above are politicians in some sense of the word, see the big wave coming and execute a tried and true political maneuver known by its acronym GTFO, which translated into long-form means Get-The-Fuck-Out. Those who ignore the forecast and hang in there run the risk of getting swept away, something that almost always happens.
We’ve seen it before right here in Ontario and in Canada at large. Tired and long-in-the-tooth and in power since the depression, the federal Liberals and their leader, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent were destroyed by John Diefenbaker’s Conservatives in 1958. It was the biggest majority in Canadian history, the Tories sweeping the Grits right off the floor and out of the building. Some twenty years later, in 1984, John Turner’s Liberals limped into the federal election against Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney. Tired with Justin’s father Pierre Trudeau, who had ruled for all but nine months from 1968 to 1984 (the Libs first got the streak going with Lester Pearson back in 1963), the voters of Canada set out to destroy Turner’s Liberals and succeeded in sweeping the Liberals damn near right off the electoral map with a new record majority. And eight years later, jean Chretien’s Liberals absolutely crushed Mulroney’s Conservatives, only the Tories were led by that time by Kim Campbell, Canada’s first female prime minister, who took it on the chin in the absence of an almost universally vilified Mulroney. That election, in 1992, reduced the Tories from 156 seats to two. It also had the effect of creating two new and significant federal protest parties: the Reform Party, built on the grievances of western Canada, and the Bloc Québécois, a separatist party that almost exclusively held Quebec. As a result of that broom sweeping clean, Canada ended up with two new parties, based upon regional grievance, and both intransigent when it came to their agendas, which were both marked by the beging of the souring of the political climate. Our political tone, such as it is right now, can be traced to this event, which happened because angry voters wanted to viscerally remove the party in power. These two parties, now the BQ and the Conservatives, have been angry pyjamas just about ever since. I chose that description rather than the more accurate miserable-pains-in-the-ass descriptor because, well, tone. Just trying to be fair and objective.
Kathleen Wynne’s provincial Liberals sure took it on the chin after fifteen years of she and Dalton McGuinty, but she was the one to pay the price for voter fatigue with Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives chasing them right out of town, reducing the Liberals to a rump of a caucus with no party standing in the legislature, a condition they’ve not yet recovered from, and if I’m smelling the breeze properly, not about to any time soon.
And we’re in that exact situation right now, with another Trudeau, this time Justin, looking like he may lead his troops into a battle they cannot win. Some of his troops have already implemented Plan GTFO, and, while Trudeau is a campaigner not to be underestimated, it certainly looks like he and Team Red will go down, and go down hard, maybe as hard as they did when Michael Ignatieff was in charge back in the early 2000’s.
And here’s the thing about those new brooms and their efficiency at sweeping stuff away. To put it bluntly, such scenarios often result in someone as distasteful as Pierre Poilievre as prime minister. I mean, listen, I have no problem with the idea of a Conservative government, none at all. But one led by that petulant arse is too much to contemplate.
Anyways, my point here is that you’ve got to be careful with those goddamned new brooms. Sometimes they sweep so clean that they take the finish right off the floor.
As it happens in the federal and provincial arenas, so too can it happen at the regional or municipal level. A group of politicians replaced lock-stock-and-barrel by a completely new group, a group likely to be inexperienced, and if not guided along properly, prone to making self-inflicted mistakes. Often the new group arrives as the new sheriff in town, the folks who are gonna set things straight, make things right again, as in right according to them. Fair enough, it happens all the time. You could point it out on a billboard and they’d still miss it, blinded as they often are by their own self-importance. And this, sadly, often translates into SIFS, or Shoot-In-Foot-Syndrome, a condition whereby inexperienced political gunslingers get cocky and arrogant and make unforced errors and endure self-inflicted political wounds. And then, after a couple of years of that, they too fall victim to the next wave of new brooms.
A group of elected politicians almost entirely replaced by another group of politicians, leaving almost no trace of themselves behind. It’s like a council with no incumbent members among the councillor ranks. Perhaps a little bit of experience, sure, but the rest of the lineup is composed of rookies, not in any way ideal. Perhaps the tone at the table has changed, and they’d argue it ought to be that way given the actions, our lack of actions, of the group they replaced. Sure, I get it, and completely understand.
Locally, I feel it’s not good governance to have a council split between councillors on one hand, and the mayor and reeve on the other. It’s easy to blame previous councils for everything that’s happened, and in this case, incredibly easy. But there’s still an expectation around good government, and the public expects good, sound decision-making, not reactive, sometimes petty stuff directed towards their predecessors. Because every decision made moving forward is on them, not the old guys. The new group has been there long enough to have their fingerprints all over the furniture, so it’s their deal, not the other guys’.
People who fail to understand this concept are at risk of having themselves swept away on the new political tide that’s alway presenting itself on the horizon In a town where the councillor garnering the most votes received 1,619 of them from the 2,788 cast, you would think they’d not feel all that secure. Remember, Renfrew had 6,459 eligible voters in the 2022 municipal elections, meaning the majority of folks didn’t bother to vote at all. Anyone familiar with the basic rudimentary nature of politics will understand that if anyone were to emerge that could tap into those non-voters, that 1,619 votes of the leading vote-getter would be in trouble. The same goes even more for those who finished with fewer votes. Andrew Dick would surely know this, snagging his seat at the table with 1,258 votes, a mere 35 votes away from not even being invited to the party in the first place.
My point is that, no matter the deal with the previous administration, now it’s your turn. They’ve gone. You’re there. You’re at the table providing Renfrew viewers scintillating footage of council meetings that fill the void on a Tuesday night bereft of anything else to do.
You inherited a tough situation, you bet. And that sucks, you bet, again. But now what people want to see is you not making anything worse while you think you’re making everything better. If you’re a rookie, maybe consult more often, if you haven’t already. Inexperience is not a crime, but failing to take steps to correct it may not work out well in the long run.
Renfrew has had its full share of suspect political behaviour recently. Please, in your decision-making, don’t make any mistakes that don’t have to be made.
No unforced errors. No self-inflicted wounds. Just good, mature, and well-thought-out governance. Sounds easy enough, but you’d be surprised how difficult that is. And don’t be bedazzled by leaders of partner agencies who will use your inexperience against you for their own political agendas. Just some general, unsolicited advice.
Welcome to politics.
And keep an eye open for those freaking brooms.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 