– by John Tamming

Government cannot do it all. That includes, perhaps especially includes, local government. Yet local citizens call upon this small chamber, what I call our little parliament, to do more and more for them.

In his oft-quoted essay, The Loose Individual, Robert Nisbet describes modern men and women as untied by those ropes which once held our communities together.

Those ropes have largely dissolved.

The parish used to provide citizens with a sense of belonging, churches bestowed charity as needed. But the pews of a Westside United or of a First Baptist are now largely empty.

Our residents were once tied together through the factory unions or guilds of a Black Clauson Kennedy, whose workers would pass the hat for the recently widowed or orphaned. But the BCK edifice has now been rendered a field. Owen Sounders used to be supported by the philanthropic impulses of a company owner such as John Harrison, who, rather than lay off his lumber crews in the slow months, paid them to create the park bearing his name. But that kind of corporate largess is also largely a thing of the past.

The family of course has also lost much of its traction. Children once took care of an aging grandmother to her end, siblings supported a younger brother who fell on hard times, parents kept firmer reigns on a troubled youth. But the family has largely outsourced those responsibilities to strangers called personal support workers or mental health workers or police officers.

Those ropes of faith or of factory or of union or of family have largely frayed. And in the words of Nisbett, the citizens are now rendered loose. Without recourse to the social scaffoldings which once supported the needy and the troubled, they turn to the government for sustenance, for support.

They write letters to the editor demanding that council fund this or that. Their advocates have attended this chamber, stood at this podium, asking – demanding at times – that we or Grey County “do something” and do it now.

And all of that is entirely understandable.

But government cannot begin to tether those who have been left untethered. It cannot possibly make up for these social deficits, it does not have the means pay to house or to transport about town those who find themselves without a roof or a vehicle.

You will never extract enough property taxes to fund this. You will never pull enough money from our industrial parks, from the professional shops on Second Avenue West, from the houses on Beattie Street.

I have learned over the last four years that the hardest word for a politician to say appears to be “no”. That must needs change.