In power to serve

We spend a lot of time with politicians.
When we’re not interviewing them, photographing them or taking notes as they present their points in council or Parliament, we’re thinking about them.
What will they do next? What is their agenda? What do we think the public needs to know about their position and the way they use their power?
And of course, we write about them. Sometimes our cartoonist lampoons them, as he did with MP Tony Clement and his government’s omnibus bill last week.
It’s our job to hold their feet to the fire and hold them accountable to the voting public.
But it’s also our job to shine a light on the positive things they do. It’s all part of balanced reporting: we’re nobody’s public relations mouthpiece and neither are we social satirists like Rick Mercer (our cartoonist excepted).
We believe our municipal politicians in particular took on the job to serve. They’re not it in for personal gain, and if they’re in it for their ego or personal glory, they soon learn that they have to put up with more criticism than accolades in a fairly thankless job.
We believe Mayor Paisley Donaldson to be honest, hard working and committed to our community. We wonder if she knew the depths of municipal muck she took on when she threw her hat into the ring two years ago.
It’s been a roller-coaster ride for Donaldson, as Gravenhurst goes through CAOs at breakneck speed and municipal staff seem to be spinning though a revolving out door. She has been roundly criticized for it. Could she have anticipated the murky complexity of an issue like the Albion balcony? Or the public perception nightmare that has been the Haight endowment?
We imagine that those we hold up to scrutiny get pretty sick of us now and again. But power corrupts. Fortunately our society has safeguards in place to keep the politically powerful in check. We are one of them.
And despite the tension inherent in our relative positions we really are both on the same side. Yours.
We both exist to serve the public and while we can sometimes seem adversarial our hearts are in the same place.
We celebrate our country and our freedom of the press. It is our great good fortune that we can take one of the most powerful men in Canada to task as we did in our editorial and political cartoon last week, and just days later photograph him as he brings more FedNor dollars into our region.
It isn’t the case in other parts of the world.
So a tip of the editorial hat to our local public servants – to MP Tony Clement and Donaldson in particular this week. He’s come through for Muskoka yet again and when she took on Gravenhurst, she inherited a tough job; we salute her resilience.
PS

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