Public Leaders have a Responsibility to be Open with the Community When it Comes to Matters That Impact on All of Our Lives
A News Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter and publisher Doug Draper
Posted October 7th, 2022 on Niagara At Large
Mike Britton appears to need some lessons in what it means to be a public figure with a responsibility to be a good role model for others.
So Mike Britton – currently a St. Catharines Regional Councillor, and formerly a St. Catharines city council who is now running for mayor of that municipality in the October 24 elections – does not want to declare his vaccine status.
So much so that he is barred from attending Niagara Regional council and committee meetings in person – showing up online, in one of those annoying little digital boxes instead.
According to a front-page story in the Friday, October7th edition of The St. Catharines Standard, Britton, a right-wing conservative from a way back, continues to keep his COVID vaccine status in the closet.
“It’s been a very divisive thing for our community,” Britton is quoted saying in the story. “It’s putting one group of people against another,” he chortled on. And so this has been my philosophy from the beginning – I don’t disclose my status to anyone because the minute I say one thing or another, there’s a whole section of society that thinks they can’t talk to me.”
Now isn’t that interesting,
Is that the kind of “philosophy” he is applying to his campaign for St. Catharines’ mayor or the kind of reason he would continue to apply if he were to win and become mayor?
In other words, is he also refusing to reveal his status on such issues as property taxes, development fees, affordable housing and whether or not people should pay fees to park at community beaches because one section or another of voters or others in the city ‘might not want to talk to him’?
In 2015, while Britton was serving as a St. Catharines city councillor, he certainly didn’t seem to mind signing his name to a controversial memo, urging then St. Catharines Standard owner, Sun Media’s Paul Godfrey, to so something about that newspaper’s investigation into complaints that Carmen D’Angelo, then CAO at the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA) and later CAO at Niagara Region under the scandal-ridden leadership of Al Caslin, was undermining the core mission of the NPCA to conserve and preserve our natural resources in the Niagara watershed.
He doesn’t want to reveal his status around the issue of taking the COVID magazine. How about his status on other public issues?
Britton was one of 13 individuals, along with Al Caslin, Carmen D’Angelo, former St. Catharines federal ConservativeMP Rick Dykstra and others who signed that memo of complaint against the work the newspaper was doing to get to the bottom of what was going on at what, at that time, was a very dysfunctional NPCA that was being supported, to a large degree, by property taxpayers in Niagara.
Yet apparently it was just plain dandy for Britton to beat his chest when it came to taking a position on that issue.
On the issue of getting vaccinated against COVID-19, on what planet does Britton get a pass for calling that issue “divisive.”
The only ones that have made that issue one that is divisive are the same right-wing extremists in this country that still don’t agree that children entering public school should not have a measles or polio shot. They are the people who support the s0-called Freedom Rally gang and the ‘Fxxk Trudeau flag-waving nuts.
Even Conservative Party Premier showed some leadership by rolling up his shirt in front of cameras to take a COVID vaccine shot – all in an effort to encourage the rest of us across the province to do the same for the sake of our health and for the health and welfare of our communities.
Even Ontario Conservative Party Premier Doug Ford went out of his way to have the news media taking his photo getting vaccinated for COVID-19 as a way of encouraging all Ontario’s to do the same for the sake of their health, the health of others and everyone in our communities, including our businesses, who were suffering during this pandemic.
Taking the vaccines has not been about dividing people. It has been about keeping people from getting gravely ill and dying for God sake.
Over the past two-and-a-half years, we had had more than 600 people in Niagara alone dying from COVID-related symptoms.
If that many people died in Niagara in violent crimes, I am sure that the likes of Britton would have no problem coming out and calling for stiffer sentences, including possibly death sentences.
But getting vaccinated for COVID-19? Well that might alienate the Trump-like, FxxK Trudeau flag flyers.
Mike Britton is another individual – like Dave Bylsma, who is running to get re-elected mayor in West Linclo9n – seems oblivious to the idea that if you are going to call on people in your community to elected you to a key post as a public figure, that being a public figure comes with a responsibility to be a good role model, especially during times when in times of crisis that could mean the difference between life and death.
By every measure in science, COVID-19 vaccines have played a major role in keeping people\ from becoming gravely ill and dying from this virus. They are the reason why the likes of Britton can say we don’t need mandatory measures for this pandemic as much anymore.
Britton has shown once again that he, like so many other right-wing extremists these days, have a problem wrapping their minds around the concept of the common good.
If he doesn’t want to tell anyone if he has been vaccinated or not, they that is his business and those who share the same habitat with him. Just don’t sit in a seat in a theatre next to me and, by all means, don’t run for public office.
Surely the good people of St.Catharines will not elect Mike Britton to be their mayor.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
To read The St. Catharines Standard story on this issue, click on – https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news/niagara-region/2022/10/06/britton-mum-on-vaccination-status-siscoe-says-its-prerequisite-for-mayor-role.html
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