Not All of Us Can Be Acclaimed Mayor For Life

We have been very fortunate for the election gods to have blessed us with a gauntlet of elections throughout the island of Montreal this season. We are bombarded with messages about how it is our chance to exercise our democratic right to elect people we have no idea who they are. It allows us to show off our amazing eeny, meeny, miny, mo skills as those of us who do bother to show up usually pick our candidates more on a lark than on actual knowledge of the issues. That is unless the mayor is running unappossed which makes things easier. If it was up to Dollard Des Ormeaux mayor Ed Janiszewski, nobody would be running against him.

Municipal campaigns generally favour the incumbent, solely on name recognition alone. Unless the incumbent has done such a bad job that someone feels compelled to run against them and defeat them. Rarely do these things come down to two strong candidates battling out over the issues. Usually it’s only two scenarios: the veteran politician with a name versus the no-name guy (or gal) facing an apathetic electorate or the bumbling politician who can’t even pass the salt during dinner without losing a couple of points in a public poll against a community leader who wants to shake up city hall.

Now while the mayoral campaign for Montreal is a big deal in the sense that local news covers it but not many people actually care about it, the mayoral campaigns for the independent cities littered throughout the island are barely a concern in anybody’s mind except for the people actually running in the elections. Most of these cities are running fine that nobody wants to waste their time or money to run against an incumbent politician. In the event that the cities are not running smoothly, the local politicians usually do a good job at blaming external sources like the Montreal Agglomeration Council that nobody holds them accountable.

When elections do occur they happen, it’s usually because you have a backlash against the current administration and changes need to be made. Then there are the times when you have someone who believes that elections should happen regardless and that the victor shouldn’t be acclaimed.

This brings us to the city of Dollard Des Ormeaux. I grew up there and outside of the fact that the moving around the city by bus is near impossible, I really had no complaints. There were lots of parks and greenspace to use as jogging areas and it was a peaceful place to live. Centennial Park is probably the best municipal park on the island and probably in the province. There’s a good reason why the mayor, Ed Janiszewski has been at the helm of running the city for twenty-five years. There is very little to complain about. In fact, he has run unopposed in the last three elections because everything was running so smoothly.

This time around it’s a different story. The city is still doing just fine but someone is challenging Janiszewski. Shameem Siddiqui has decided it is his civic duty to give Janiszewski an opponent. Siddiqui isn’t looking to end the years of ineptitude at Dollard’s city hall. The focus so far it seems is to give Janiszewski a challenge. Little is known about Siddiqui’s campaign. If there is an internet site for it, Google must have something against because I can’t find it. In fact, there are only two articles that I could find that even mention him but don’t offer any insight to his platform.

So Janiszewski thinks that the election should not take place.

Janiszewski charges that Siddiqui has no chance at all of winning and that the only thing is going to come out of this election is a rather large bill for the city. Janiszewski is most likely going to win the election so it’s understandable why he’s so boastful about his future. Siddiqui, who was a federal candidate for the NDP in two elections, had given little opposition to Janiszewski. However, even in federal elections, they still let people who have no hope in winning a chance to run. That is what our democratic system is all about. It is about giving a voice to those that differ from the mainstream.

Janiszewski has been pretty callous in showing of his displeasure that he has an opponent this time around. He felt it necessary to summon Siddiqui to his office to try to get them to stop running in the election. Janiszewski claimed that it was going to cost taxpayers $15 000. However, with the city having a surplus of $11 million (according to councillor Errol Johnson), why would Janiszewski be moaning over $15 000?

There isn’t a straight answer to the question. I’ve never been a fan of Janiszewski and I think he’s been lucky to have such a strong infrastructure at city hall and a resource of community leaders who help organize events and make strong contributions to the city. Dollard is a place where the people involved in leading the community actually do some good rather than just use it to pad their resumes. As long as you don’t decide to spike taxes, allow infrastructure to waste away, or get your hands taking money from the city, it’s not hard to stay elected as mayor of a small city. Janiszewski has avoided all three: the only major tax hike that people complained about was after the city demerged from Montreal and that was blamed on the whole demerger mess so Janiszewski got off clean for that. He has greenlit proposals for parks (one which bears his own name, by the way) and other projects that have kept the city growing and running smoothly. His greatest skill is that he hasn’t gotten in the way of progress.

Forget the part where Janiszewski isn’t exactly the nicest guy. I remember that back when I was in Scouts, we were doing fundraising for something to do with our troop by bagging groceries at a local supermarket and asking for donations. Janiszewski came to the cash I was working at. I bagged his groceries and he dumped the change from his transaction into our donation box. He must have dropped about fourteen cents in the box. That’s fine. Any little bit helps and he didn’t have to give us any money. It’s not like being the mayor of Dollard pays seven figures. However, he looked at me and said with a chuckle that he hopes that his donation buys us a lot of equipment (or something along those lines). His tone and demeanour was just offensive. Shortly thereafter, one of the scout leaders said to me that he couldn’t believe that someone who is the mayor of a city would act with such disrespect.

Then again, that would explain why Janiszewski doesn’t want to run a campaign. Maybe dealing with the public is not his strong suit. I remember going to city council meetings where citizens were asking the mayor questions over the spraying of pesticides in public parks and he reacted to those people poorly. It seems like he has no people skills (which is surprising for a politician). Maybe he has changed in eight years I’ve been gone but I can’t remember a time when he was endearing to the public.

Then again, everything is doing just fine in Dollard and he’ll probably be elected again even if he doesn’t set one foot out on the campaign trail.

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Canada News

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