A threat to democracy

A threat to democracy:
Bedard amalgamation proposals would not only hurt anglophones, but also replace human-scale government with impersonal bureaucracy:[Final Edition]

Critics have justifiably attacked the Bedard report for endangering anglophone rights without even holding out the prospect of tax savings. The notion that in one flick of a bureaucrat's Bic, so many tax-paying citizens could lose their access to services in the language of their choice is appalling.

But an even more important reason for both anglophones and francophones to reject the municipal-consolidation plan is that it constitutes a direct assault on one of the keys to making democracies work: having at least some manageable, accessible, human- scale government in our age of mass bureaucracy.

The fact that such a dramatic change can be implemented by bureaucratic fiat rather than by electoral majority reflects the plan's dangerous, anti-democratic nature. The proposed consolidation inevitably would result in more centralization and a more elaborate bureaucracy - the two banes of modern democracy.

Bigger and more complicated government often makes citizens feel anonymous. Centralizing power too often fosters a sense of arrogance among too many bureaucrats. And the resulting alienation of the citizenry from their leaders and from what is supposed to be their government weakens democracy itself.

Most municipalities in the area function relatively well, if a bit quirkily. We rarely hear about wide-scale corruption. Many citizens have an opportunity to participate, to lobby, to politic. In these smaller, more manageable, units, you really can fight city hall - at least sometimes; on good days, your voice can be heard.

Even more important, many of these municipal governments foster a sense of community. They cultivate a sense of civic pride. Many of the smaller municipalities shine as harmonious havens in a polity where the decades-long debate about separation casts a heavy shadow over provincial and federal politics.

Democrats have long understood that small is beautiful. It is no coincidence that democracy was born in the Athenian city-state, an intimate polity where individuals could express themselves and shape their destiny. In North America, the New England town meeting offered an inspiring model of intimate, engaging and effective government - one that still survives in some municipalities today.

America's founding fathers struggled with the challenge of bigness. Could a teeming, heterogeneous population scattered over a sprawling land mass function as a democracy, they wondered. In his classic analysis of the problem, The Federalist No. 10, James Madison weighed the pros and cons.

"It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie," the father of the American constitution acknowledged.

If your polity is too large, and there are too many citizens, "you render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests." You lose the necessary intensity and intimacy between the leader and the led.

But if you make the polity too small, you render the representative "unduly attached" to parochial interests "and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects."

The solution, to this and other dilemmas, was a "happy combination" of large and small, with different levels of government, like the different branches of government, checking and balancing each other, serving citizens in different ways.

Yes, having 111 municipalities in the greater Montreal region and 29 municipalities on the island of Montreal is somewhat redundant and inefficient - but so are periodic elections. No doubt the bureaucrats licking their chops at the thought of their power grab can generate beautiful organigrams showing how they will be able to make the municipal trains run on time. But can they factor into the equation such intangibles as civic pride and community spirit? Is there room on their flow charts to track a sense of belonging or a feeling of involvement?

Democracies exist to serve the people, not their clerks. For many of us, municipal government is the only level of government that comes close to working. How fitting that the provincial government would come after it.

It is terribly ironic, though not surprising, that a Parti Quebecois government would strive to consolidate and centralize smaller units. Wouldn't it make more sense if separatists showed an appreciation for parochial attachments, for citizens' strong sense of localism?

Once again, it seems that the PQ considers only the province of Quebec to be a coherent and holy entity, while venerable municipalities (like the longstanding federal structure) are exchangeable and expendable.

As the argument heats up, federalists, too, may find themselves skating on thin ice; the bureaucratic monolith in Ottawa is in no position to start chirping that small is beautiful.

In government, as in so many other arenas, we need a balance, Madison's "happy combination." How odd that, here at least, it is Americans who could be teaching Canadians about the joys of moderation.

Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University. His latest book is Affairs of State: the Rise and Rejection of the Presidential Couple Since World War II.

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Photo: Baie D'Urfe's historic town hall would become an empty symbol if the Bedard proposals are adopted and towns merge. ;