One of my pet peeves about Internet information is the frequent lack of dates.
Given the rate at which sites get abandoned, there’s a lot of information floating around that is useless, because there is no indication of when it was written or posted.
I recently received a message referring to Nanaimo’s food charter. ‘What food charter?’ I replied, and got a series of references to some discussion on the old Foodlink site, which had led my correspondent to assume that Nanaimo has a food charter, which is not the case. Nanaimo Foodlink morphed into Vancouver Island Food Network about a year ago.
I was reminded of Peter C. Newman’s devastating comments on the Diefenbaker Cabinet.
The members were both able and well-intentioned and they would meet and have far-reaching, in-depth discussion on matters of national importance. Then they would go away, satisfied that they had actually done something.
As for a food charter, despite much talk about food sustainability, and a proposed bylaw change to support urban agriculture, it looks as though the concept of a food charter is not of interest to the City of Nanaimo.
I watched a TED talk (Technology Entertainment Design, www.ted.com) by Dave Meslin, titled The Antidote to Apathy.
His lead item was a slide of a notice of zoning application. As he pointed out, if Nike ran an ad to sell shoes as obscure and unreadable, they would soon be out of business.
But, as Meslin astutely noted, the zoning ad is merely inserted to follow the letter of the law, not to engage the public in a matter of some importance. He called this practice “intentional exclusion”, and, judging from the outbreak of audience appreciation, they agreed with him.
Meslin went on to suggest that a list of heroic books and movies miss the point of leadership in the real world because all the heroes are mystically appointed to their tasks.
Real leadership, he reminds us is collective, imperfect and voluntary, or self-driven.
What drives people to participate in collective decision-making? That’s not a hard question to answer: if people feel strongly about a matter of collective interest, and if they are not subjected to various tactics of “intentional exclusion”, they will participate.
Effective decision-making is not at all the same thing as taking a decision. Decision-making is a process. The more transparent and inclusive the process is, and the sooner it is thrown open for general participation, the better will be the decision that ends the process.
If you want to see these ideas played out here and now, attend one of the municipal-level discussions being held on a hot topic such as zoning for urban agriculture.
Marjorie Stewart is board chairwoman of the Foodshare Society and president of the new multi-stakeholder co-op, Heritage Foodservice. She can be reached at: marjorieandalstewart@shaw.ca.
