The municipality of Baie-des-Hérons in turn plans to prohibit the recording and live broadcasting of its meetings by members of the audience.
Tuesday evening, during its committee meeting, the Baie-des-Hérons municipal council read the draft of a resolution that it intends to adopt next Monday during its monthly public meeting.
This resolution concerns the ban on members of the public photographing, filming and/or broadcasting live on social media (live stream) council meetings.
According to the council, this trend has gained momentum in recent months, especially since the start of its process of modifying its municipal plan aimed at including a new zoning category (resource), a gesture perceived by many as intended to facilitate the establishment of a mine exploiting pozzolan in the Dalhousie sector.
Previously, barely a handful of citizens took part in the various council meetings. But since last spring, many have taken the initiative to attend regularly. Among them, some have developed the habit of broadcasting them live using their smartphones.
Tolerated until now, this behavior will soon be banned since the City has acquired the necessary equipment for live broadcasting. In addition to being broadcast in real time, the meetings will also be archived for several weeks on YouTube.
According to the wording of the proposal, the ban aims to ensure transparency while maintaining order during council deliberations and at meetings as a whole. Someone who contravenes these regulations – therefore who films the meeting – could be expelled from the room.
The deputy mayor of Baie-des-Hérons, Denis McIntyre, admits that the presence of large numbers of citizens filming the meetings had become a source of distraction and made the council uncomfortable.
“And now that we broadcast our meetings ourselves, we no longer see the point of seeing people from the public taking out their cameras to film us. From now on, the entire population will have access to the entire meeting, and not just a few parts,” he indicates, specifying in passing that this decree has reached consensus within the council.
Mayor of Baie-des-Hérons, Normand Pelletier was not present when his council made this decision. However, he fully approves of it.
“I’m happy we’re going in this direction. I believe that this will improve council meetings and the public will not lose out since citizens will be able to access our meetings via the web. The broadcasting of our meetings was also a request from the public,” he says.
Solution?
Baie-des-Hérons is not the first municipality to legislate on the issue. A few months ago, the city of Saint-Quentin adopted a similar measure in order to clean up the climate at council meetings. In a message, the mayor, Nicole Somers, confirms that everything has been going well since then.
Invited to comment on this way of doing things which seems to want to gain momentum, the president of the Association francophone des municipalities du Nouveau-Brunswick, Yvon Godin, first recalled that his organization did not have to endorse or not the decisions of its members (the municipalities). That said, he concedes that there is unease in many municipalities.
“We have counselors who experience harassment or intimidation, and they try to find ways to counter that. And we see that a policy like this helps ensure that meetings are managed more properly. Is this the best way? This will have to be evaluated in the future. But already, we see that it seems to be working in certain places,” underlines Mr. Godin.
But by limiting citizens’ right to film in this way, is there not a risk of eroding democracy and increasing cynicism towards politics?
“I don’t believe that putting similar rules in place goes against democracy, on the contrary, I think it helps to maintain it,” he believes.
“In any process, there are risks. But, in my opinion, the risk is lower in taking such a step rather than letting things get out of hand. When someone films part of a meeting to use only an isolated excerpt in order to distort
the facts and serving your interests, I don’t call that democracy or free expression.”
A mixed first attempt
Tuesday’s meeting also marked a first attempt by the municipality to broadcast its meetings live on the internet. For the moment, only one camera has been installed and it is aimed at the municipal council. However, we are studying the possibility of also having a camera pointing towards the room.
This first test, however, was marred by technical difficulties while the sound was absent for the majority of the live broadcast. Spectators were only able to hear the last minutes of the match. However, the source of the problem has been identified (malfunction of the laptop used).
“We had carried out tests a few days earlier and everything worked perfectly. It’s a shame that a problem like this occurred on our very first broadcast, but it’s part of the learning process. Everything will be settled for our next meeting,” says Mayor Pelletier.
The next meeting in question is scheduled to take place this Thursday (November 14) when council will conduct the second reading of the amendment to its municipal plan.
