Currently, Quebec's most important city Montreal has laughably porous conflict of interest rules that allow elected people to engage in potentially conflicting private and public activities as long as there is no direct monetary gain involved. Consequently, Montreal City Council allows an active real estate agent to sit as borough mayor, in the area where he works, while even chairing a secret zoning changes committee.. Meanwhile, other members of council are also real estate agents and, while not as high profile, nonetheless continue to participate in matters relating to zoning and even to vote on them in council. To consider the seriousness of this situation it might be useful to take a diversion to consider the nature and origins of our democracy.
Contrary to popular opinion, neither politics nor prostitution appear to be the oldest profession. The real estate profession, or the control and ownership of land (and how it is used), seems to pre-date both. Man's earliest felt organizational need was to control the use of land in order either to hunt, to farm or to build. The effective control of land by a small and powerful group enabled the domination of the many by the few and thus enabled the emergence of a political class. Politics simply put was originally conceived as the organized system that enabled those who controlled most of the land to direct the people who owned less and to ensure that those who had none could be entirely under their control.
The groundwork for the modern popular' political systems was laid by the ancient Greeks (about two-thousand-five-hundred years ago) with their invention of democracy originally a device for ensuring that only a few thousand people could have a say in running the Athenian city state and in deciding how other people's money and resources should be pooled and used. National' agreement was necessary because the newly organized and informed society was concerned with the protection and expansion of both personal and national' real estate interests that extended far beyond their immediate borders. Like a later Rome under the Republic, Athens discovered that public support and participation in pursuing common goals was more effective than the passing of imperial edicts when marshalling and directing national' resources.
While flawed, the democratic system worked relatively well and it was unquestionably better than the previous system of men literally fighting to the death for leadership positions. The old system did nothing to identify people ready to work for the public good, and get down to the everyday work of creating modern civilization, while the new system proved itself capable of adapting, improving and evolving.
Whereas the Greek system had been a direct' democracy with everyone eligible able to participate in debate and decision, later European democracies were mostly representative' meaning that only chosen spokesmen could participate and, unlike the Greek democracy, European democracies limited voting' to those who owned land.
In most countries it took two-and-a-half millennia, following the Greek innovation, before landless people could get to vote and participate directly in the choice of their leaders. And, in Canada, it is only within the last hundred years that women have had the right to vote.
However, since both political systems and democracy itself were originally invented to promote and protect the interests of both personal and national real estate and property ownership, it is hardly surprising that these interests are still deeply imbedded in our political systems.
In Ottawa lobbyists vie to promote the interests of various commercial entities while parliament constructs the rules and laws that control and regulate business. Not surprisingly, lobbyists are sometimes suspected of buying influence.
Meanwhile, provincial governments control the rules relating to the use of land and natural resources and are thus closer than the federal government to the traditional model of government in the interests of property owners.
However, the level of government still most closely aligned with the original democratic model is the town or city council since this gets to set the rules for real estate development within its area of control. A multitude of zoning rules protect existing property owners and other residents while piecemeal changes to those same rules can often lead to far greater profits for builders or promoters. As a result, builders now known as developers' have traditionally sought to control town or city councils in order to have the rules work for themselves and, until recently, this approach worked well for them.
However, with the general adoption of Master Plans' and stricter rules for the development of most towns and cities real estate promoters been forced to separate themselves from direct involvement in the political process. Consequently, they now fund politicians or political parties whom they see as weak or as self rather than public serving and whom they believe will be most willing to bend the rules for their advantage.
Development and zoning rules are hugely important for all of us since they protect or neglect the quality of the built neighbourhoods in which we have chosen to live. It's time to break the historical cycle and to exclude people engaged in the real estate industry (usually as sales agents) from participating in any part of the public zoning, real estate and land development process and to restrict them from voting on these issues. Actively participating in the making of the rules for the regulation of your own industry may not lead to any clouding of judgement but it more likely will.
Broader and more severe conflict of interest rules are needed now to ensure that those elected people working for the real estate industry cannot in any way, shape, manner or form be involved in the regulation of that same industry which they serve. What do you think ?
Jeremy Searle
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