Challenging the Common Good

The trend of using social media to stoke discontent is serving to undermine the common good.

One of the things that makes a town an attractive place to live rests in certainty - the certainty that your water will be drinkable and flow in - as well as out, your garbage will be collected, your snow plowed and god forbid, the fire department will show up quickly in the event that you were unfortunate enough to have a fire.  You pay for that certainty through your municipal taxes, and you know that the system is working well when you simply take it all for granted. 

To ensure that certainty exists, every town creates a set of agreed-upon rules that help ensure that rights, and the corresponding responsibilities, are respected.  People and businesses trade off individual rights in return for certainty and the greater good.  This is the essence of a community, and indeed the essence of our democracy - a shared sense of being. 

So, in communities, provinces and in our country, democratically elected governments that are accountable at the ballot box develop rules that help ensure that individual rights are balanced with collective rights.   This is a basic and accepted principle of our democracy that provides certainty. Summarized succinctly:

 Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose

 My right to swing my fist ends at your nose

Human nature sometimes gets in the way when people challenge this social contract and insist that their individual rights are more worthy than the rights of others. 

The Ottawa Truckers Freedom Convoy was a case in point of people who were/are upset because they felt their rights were restricted by government-imposed COVID rules while the same group dismissed the fact that they restricted the rights of so many others because of their protest.  This all played out on social media.

Clarenville has had its own example of this classic rights debate - ours on a smaller scale centred around the keeping of farmyard animals ( Roosters ) on residential properties - it's the same argument of dismissing collective rights in favour of individual freedom. In our case, one side (The rules-be-damned rooster boosters) has also been playing out loudly on social media - and this was picked up and amplified in the mainstream media.   Their basic message is that community rules are wrong and the people enforcing them are wrong and outrage can be used to overrule democracy.  

So there's the rhetoric, now for the reality...

In the case of Clarenville, the perspective from the other side - the real majority - has been sorely missing. There has been little to no mention of the time consumed by the Town office staff and finances to deal with the appeal, or more importantly, the impact that the situation and the online rhetoric has has on neighbours and the bullish and hurtful online posts that have been regularly directed at them- or anyone else who disagrees with their cause.  This is unfortunate - but unfortunately typical in these types of manufactured outrage events.

Clarenville's rules relating to backyard farm animals, are not unique and reflect a standardized and tested set of rules that exist in municipalities across the country.  These rules are often coupled with (or replaced by) standard rules relating to noise & nuisance.  Generally, these rules establish two relevant criteria for the keeping of backyard farm animals: property size and animal type.  Property size needs to be sufficiently large and spaced to humanely accommodate the animals and a defined list of animals is permitted (or not permitted).  

Regardless of the nature of the issue, Clarenville Town Council's role (and in fact its legal mandate) is to ensure that all rules (bylaws) are developed and applied fairly.  As confirmed by the appeal ruling that upheld the Town's ban on roosters, our democratic system of law-making works in the best interest of the community as a whole.  A potential court review ruling - which I trust will favour the Town - will serve to further support collective rights.  

In our towns, our citizens demand good governance that brings certainty -  Our democratic system and laws work to protect the common good. That's what our citizens deserve and that's what they should always get.