These are my speaking notes on a motion to improve accessibility at public hearings. I recognize the irony of complaining about public hearings while being a regular speaker at City Hall, but, well, my comments speak for themselves.
If you’re interested in learning more, Uytae Lee has an excellent video talking about the issues with public hearings.
A clip will eventually appear here. Until then, this is the link to my comments on the Council livestream. Apologies for my appearance – I’m well aware that I’m not cool enough to pull off a popped collar.
Some of you may know that I’m very active in municipal politics and housing advocacy. As such, I’ve been asked: Have you ever thought about running for Council?
And the answer is yes, I had thought about it…until I went to a public hearing.
Let me tell you about that public hearing. I made the mistake of signing up to speak to multiple motions – a mistake I’ve repeated today – and so I found myself sitting in that windowless room listening to speakers at various levels of unhinged complain that building new housing would ruin the neighbourhood, or cast shadows, or just give you a bad feeling. And at the end of the speaker’s list, Council would vote yes or no and move on.
And that part really struck me as putting the lie to this whole process. Because as I said in my final speech of the evening, at 11:15 PM on a Thursday night, either Council had already made up its mind and we were all wasting our breath, or Council hadn’t made up its mind and the developer risked spending millions of dollars and months of work on a project only to have the brakes slammed at the absolute last minute. Not exactly a pro-business environment, and not exactly consultation.
If I put down a deposit for a reservation at a restaurant, pre-order the Chef’s Tasting Menu, order an Uber to the apartment, and then turn to my girlfriend and say “Hey, what do you want to eat tonight?”, can I really be said to have consulted with her? I don’t think she would agree, and I don’t think that relationship would last very long if that was the only way I made decisions. But somehow we’ve deluded ourselves into believing that this is the best and only way that citizens can engage with our local government.
And this is without even mentioning how public hearings entrench local opposition by favouring landowners who have the time and money to speak to Council. We put a lot of effort into allowing people who already live in a neighbourhood to block new developments without thinking about or consulting the people who want or need to live there – thus putting us in our housing crisis (have I mentioned we’re in a housing crisis?).
This motion does have some good ideas and I do urge Council to support it. It’s mystifying to me that the number of speakers to a motion is not published in advance, and The Social Network Formerly Known as Twitter is a very inaccessible platform for people who don’t have an account. Allowing video recordings is more accessible and probably an improvement over the sound quality in the chambers when somebody calls in, although I have heard concerns that it could be used to filibuster new projects.
But what I want to emphasize is that the public hearing system is a bad system, and while this might make it more bearable it doesn’t address the need to find a better way to engage with local government.
Harmon Moon 
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