Ian McCormack

If you follow local government across Canada for any length of time, you start to see two kinds of councils. Some argue loudly, often, and productively and still manage to govern. Others can’t get out of their own way. Meetings become theatre. Personal grievances replace policy debate. And what should be the everyday work of democratic decision-making turns into a weekly exercise in damage control. The difference is rarely ideology. It’s rarely even competence. More often, the difference is...

It’s rare that a week goes by when the topic of ‘good governance’ doesn’t come up in conversation somewhere. Sometimes it’s me questioning an elected officials about what those words mean to them, sometimes it’s the question going the other direction. Just as frequently, the topic emerges in some other context related to how a local government or other organization operates. It’s always perplexed me that we really don’t have a standard definition of what good governance means – other than...

Imagine if a hockey team’s players and coaches decided they’d rather do each other’s jobs. How effective will that team be? The centre decides he’d be a good coach, so he swaps places with the head coach. The result is that we get an untested and possibly disastrous coach, and the new coach-become-centre gets beaten to the puck every time. Whether this is junior hockey or the NHL, this position swap will turn out badly, and the team will fail. The Ineffective Team This is a metaphor I’ve been...