Gene Miller: Do we want our civic politicians to be leaders or managers? |
We are nearing the end of a strange and horrific year brought on by actions and conditions largely not of our own making.
For Canada, it has been a year of enormous risk and challenge.
We’re all feeling it, one way or another. The vast majority doesn’t experience it in a policy setting, but in cost-of-living impacts like rising food costs and rent or mortgage payments.
In other words, this has been and continues to be palpable, not theoretical.
Assuming we emerge successfully from this mess — I hope and believe we will — we are likely to find ourselves in a significantly different Canada.
Along with other effects, this year delivered a strong message about society.
From national to civic, it is a continuing experiment, not an everlasting condition and, as with other experiments, the only way to find out what works is to try.
Those of you who read this column know that my interest and focus are local.
I was raised civically, not nationally, and that perspective has stayed with me. I think it’s because democracy and citizenship are more rooted and reflex, more apparent, at the civic level.
It may also be because I grew up in New York City in the 1940s and ’50s, and in my kid’s imagination, New York was everything and all-powerful (I will always remember Paul Goodman’s book title,........