Off to another convention; is it worth it?

SATURDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — Just in case you wondered why there are fewer politicians on the streets than usual, it’s because quite a few of them are in Niagara Falls.

Not a bad place for a convention. It’s the annual Federation of Canadian Municipalities confab, on now through the weekend. It got started on Thursday with some regional caucus meetings, then officially opened Friday. It will officially close Monday around noon, but by then a good many delegates will have left to catch their planes home. Green Party leader Elizabeth May will speak to a partly filled room at the closing breakfast.

What do delegates do there? They listen to a lot of speeches, such as May, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, and Transport Minister Lisa Raitt. They attend policy sessions and have a choice of workshops this year such as disaster recovery, taxes, transportation and crime prevention.

It’s quite worthwhile as long as delegates don’t get too distracted by study tours — one year a couple of TNRD directors famously took off on a spouses’ tour of local wineries during one FCM convention in Ontario. And, yes, there’s a winery tour this year, too. Better to stick to the entertainment in the convention centre venues, like Rick Mercer who will be featured at a luncheon.

Questions are always asked about whether such conventions are worth our tax money. The answer is that they aren’t worth it if delegates treat them as a paid vacation. It’s easy to get away with that, since they’re far from home with little accountability for how they spend their time.

If they view the convention as a chance to learn how to do their jobs better, however, it’s well worth the investment.