Flamborough: Send Us Your Best

The anti-business lobby at City Hall, CATCH, headed by a committed Marxist-Leninist, is using outgoing Councillor Margaret McCarthy to lambaste the main stream media for ‘collusion’ with city hall.

Here is the quote reputedly uttered by Councillor McCarthy that justifies CATCH’s implied criticism of The Hamilton Spectator.

“Jagoda Pike went in camera with council to deal with the past games bid and then reported on it afterwards. I mean, where’s the independent, non-partisan objective analysis of that, when councillors are reported on by the press that have a vested interest in ensuring that the games go forward.”

What was the issue?  (For the record, Jagoda Pike has gone on to other things.)  Why was her name mentioned in an open public meeting of our City Council?  Why did the Councillor accuse her and the city of ‘collusion’? And why did the Marxist-Leninist writer repeat the accusation in an unsigned column written by CATCH, the anti-business lobby at city hall?

These are all worthwhile questions and deserve some perspective as well as responses.

To be fair to the Councillor, she has consistently, to some perhaps wrong-headedly, but always opposed games for the city of Hamilton as money wasters.  Some critics saw her motivation having more to do with her dislike of the community of Hamilton than her desire to save tax dollars.  After all, wasn’t this the Councillor who derailed the Flamboro slots compromise costing her residents a whopping 10% tax increase a couple of cycles ago?  For my part, I don’t agree that Margaret has extreme antipathy for the city.  At best, she played to what was a strong anti-Hamilton group in her community; but never displayed an obvious bias against us.  Like me, Councillor McCarthy is at heart a fiscal conservative and her votes have for the most part reflected that philosophy.

The Councillor is not running in next year’s municipal election.  Some say that she might run provincially or federally.  She denies this; and we need to take her at her word.  Margaret came into the amalgamated city when I did in 2000.  She was among a group of reform-minded councillors elected to change the culture of self-interest that the city of Hamilton, rightly or wrongly, was being accused of in the early days of amalgamation.  There were a number of us who had none or limited ‘regional’ experience and were willing to allow amalgamation and the new city to work.  Murray Ferguson from Ancaster was another reform-minded Councillor.  Forging alliances with Mayor Wade, Bill Kelly, Dave Mitchell, Marvin Caplan and a few others, we had a loose coalition of individuals bent on improving things for the amalgamated city.

Margaret demonstrated independence but co-operation in those early days.  Unfortunately that changed for her as time went on.  She kept her independence, but didn’t much care about co-operating with Council colleagues.  Beset by some personal staff issues, and confounded by what she interpreted as opposition to her by unsupportive constituent groups, including the Flamborough Chamber of Commerce, she became more and more concerned about political self-preservation, and less and less worried about the reform agenda.  At least that was my read of things.  She also became more strident in her opposition to almost everything Hamilton: the Pan Am games bid, the Maple Leaf employment plan, the Red Hill Parkway project and the list went on.  She seemed to retreat into her ward and fiercely protected what she felt were its interests.  She even warred with her Flamborough seat-mate, Dave Braden, even accusing him of conflict of interest on a land deal Mr. Braden voted on and had a monetary stake in.  She seemed bent on severing bridges all around her.  I always felt that was too bad, because Councillor McCarthy showed a promise, spunk and independent thought that never really translated fully into city-wide leadership.  She could have been one of Council’s great leaders, but seemed not to want to assume the role.

However, this late accusation of Jagoda Pike’s role, an accusation that was made in earlier times, seems bizarre because of its timing and its seeming selective memory.

Here is the context.  It is true that while I was a Councillor and while in the Mayor’s chair, we pursued the Commonwealth games for the city.  The efforts went for naught, first because of some international skulduggery, and the second time because of some national shenanigans.  Our experiences, however, taught us much and prepared us for the current success in the PanAm bid.  It is also true that McMaster University, the Spectator and the City were funding partners in the Commonwealth attempt.  Equally true, as I recall, is an in-camera meeting when the Publisher of the Spectator and the President of the University, as funding partners, were made aware of the status of the Commonwealth pursuit. This seemed entirely appropriate.  The Spec never hid its support for the games effort.  In fact, it was the Spec who motivated the initial suggestion to pursue the games, just as an earlier Spectator luminary, the famed M.M. Robinson, did to obtain the 1930 games for the city.  The Spec’s interest caused them to pony up some dollars.  That is why she was invited to listen to an internal up-date on the status, as I remember.  It wasn’t to curry favour or get positive reportage.  The paper had already committed to supporting the bid.

To suggest that Ms. Pike, in her role as publisher of the paper and a booster of the games, used an in-camera meeting inappropriately is to do her a disservice; and it is to not understand the distinction newspapers make between their reporting and business arms. Publishers do not interfere with what is reported.  And reporters don’t interfere with the management of newspapers.

As to Jagoda Pike rushing out to ‘report’ on the in-camera meeting, I’d like to see the article she penned to support that claim.  The irony of course is that it is true that the Spectator and other Hamilton media always know what happens at closed-door, in-camera Council meetings, even ones not attended to by their staff.  The source of this knowledge is almost always, if not absolutely always, council members who listen and blab with sometimes record PanAm speed.

I hope that Councillor McCarthy was just speaking in the heat of the debating moment about an issue she feels is important when she spoke against the PanAm expenditures. She did raise a good point that it wasn’t wise for the city to empty its Future Fund resources on this one project.  But, it wasn’t necessary to raise old names and old processes without giving an accurate context.  I wish Margaret McCarthy well in her remaining days on Council; and I hope for the best in whatever she decides to do with her life beyond politics.  I do hope for the sake of the city and the community in Flamborough that its citizens send us a great replacement for Ms. McCarthy to complement the improvement the city received when Robert Pasuta replaced the tired and ineffective Dave Braden.  I also hope that the Marxist-Leninist tendencies in CATCH can be curbed towards more positive ends.  The former hope has a chance of being realized in October.  The latter has about as much chance of coming to pass as a snow-storm occurring in Vancouver during the winter Olympics!