‘This would cost money and it wouldn’t work,’ says SWLSB chairman
Published March 24 , 2010
By Martin C. Barry • TLN
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The Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board’s top elected official says the Quebec government’s proposal to merge municipal and school board elections is likely to create onerous new costs for school boards that are already financially overburdened, while further undermining the interests of English Quebecers.
Gov’t seeks change
Last week, the province’s chief electoral officer, Marcel Blanchet, said his agency is examining proposed modifications to Quebec’s Act respecting school elections, with an eye to holding simultaneous school and municipal elections. In August two years ago, the government adopted a writ requesting the CEO look into the proposed changes.
While noting that his office hasn’t decided whether to go ahead with the request, Blanchet said certain prerequisites must be met before the possibility can even be considered. Political financing and election expense rules for both type of elections would have to be harmonized, he said, while municipal and school board boundaries would also need harmonization.
Conditions to be met
The electoral calendars and procedures for both types of election would also need to be harmonized. “Without the guarantee that these minimum conditions will be met, the Chief Electoral Officer believes that the objectives for holding simultaneous school and municipal elections will be difficult to attain,” Blanchet’s agency said in a statement.
The francophone Fédération des commissions scolaires du Québec (FCSQ) reacted positively to word from Blanchet’s office that simultaneous elections might be possible as early as 2013. The FCSQ sees the dual election as a solution for the ever-diminishing voter participation problem that has dogged school board elections for years now.
Bletas doubtful
Even so, the Union des municipalités du Québec (UMQ) was more cautious, stating that such a decision would be difficult to reverse if it turned out to be problematic. The UMQ also said that municipal democracy deserves its own distinct electoral space. SWLSB chairman Steve Bletas has his own doubts.
“As an English school board, we had told the minister that this would cost money and it wouldn’t work to mix municipalities with school elections,” he told the Laval News. “Imagine the influx of information, billboards, posters that the constituent would see. You’d have various groups running for the school boards, but you’d also have various groups running for the municipal elections. I think we’d be inundating the population with so much information.”
Potentially costly
Since the present territory of the SWLSB takes in more than 160 municipalities, according to Bletas that means the board would have to use significantly more of its resources if a school board board vote were taking place alongside a municipal election. As the SWLSB’s territory stretches all the way up to the northern extremes of the Laurentians, there are some municipalities where there might be just one or two residents who are eligible to vote in school board elections, even though SWLSB candidates would have to run a campaign there.
“That would be a costly scenario, and then we would have to provide all kinds of costly information because it’s their right to get it,” he said. “It’s going to be such an inundation of information and a waste of money.” As for the argument that the voter turnout for school board elections is so low that merging them with municipal elections is virtually inevitable, Bletas said he was not confident the move would bring more people out to vote. He doesn’t believe either that any sort of economy of scale might be achieved by pooling the two elections.