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A city councillor says she’s worried “the minority vote” could be silenced at some committee meetings because of a new measure approved Tuesday that will allow debate to be short-circuited.
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In an 8-6 vote Tuesday, city council approved the use of a call-the-question motion, or to call a vote to halt debate, during committee meetings of all 15 members of council. Full council attends meetings of the budget committee and strategic priorities and policy committee.
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“Committee is the place where we’re supposed to have the discussion and the debate,” Coun. Susan Stevenson said. “I’m very concerned that on either side of political arguments, we will have the minority vote silenced.”
She, along with councillors Anna Hopkins, David Ferreira, Hadleigh McAlister, Jerry Pribil, and Steve Lehman voted against the move that requires two-thirds support of councillors, while Coun. Sam Trosow was absent.
Stevenson said she’s had the motion used against her twice since being elected, and she’s worried about restrictions against freedom of expression, including her own as a ward representative.
Calling the question is already permitted at regular council meetings with a two-thirds vote of council, but cannot be used on debates about expenses of more than $1 million. A councillor who has already spoken in the debate cannot call the question.
Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis, one of the proponents of the move, argued councillors still have to vote to end debate, and they can vote against calling the question if everyone hasn’t spoken yet.
He pointed to recent budget meetings where politicians debated some repeat funding pitches for hours only to arrive at the same vote as during February talks, or pitches which only had one or two members in support.
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“I don’t think that anybody should presume that (calling) the question is necessarily going to guarantee that council is going to vote in favour . . . they may or may not depending on how the debate has been going,” he said.
Mayor Josh Morgan said he doesn’t believe approving the use of the move at committees-of-the-whole will change much.
“(It) has only been used, in my time on council in the last 10 years, about a handful of times, and I would be transparent that I was actually on the receiving end of a number of those . . . and didn’t have an opportunity to speak,” he said in an interview.
Calling the question has “a high democratic threshold,” Morgan said, and has been present in different levels of governance for decades, including locally, and still rarely has been used.
The change was part of a handful of tweaks to council’s procedures that were passed, including mandating committee service, and clarifying that letters and delegation requests must be related to agenda items.
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