Born in Chatham in 1961, the oldest of five children, Ward Ten Councillor Paul Van Meerbergen moved around a lot as a kid. His Dad worked for Canada Trust and was transferred around, from Chatham to Mississauga to London, with  even a one-year stint out west in Red Deer, Alberta. But mostly Van Meerbergen was raised in Mississauga, which means, he says with a laugh, “I was under the tutelage of Mayor Hazel McCallion for a good chunk of my early life. In Mississauga they look at things quite a bit differently, especially when it comes to road systems. They’ll put up a four lane arterial before the houses go in. In London we’ll put in all of these houses and we still have a two lane tow-path – ie: Southdale Road.”

Van Meerbergen’s interest in politics was sparked early. Though he was only in grade one at the time, he vividly recalls the giddy euphoria of the 1968 election of Pierre Trudeau, if only because his family home was the only one on the block with a Stanfield sign on the front lawn. A couple of years later he remembers ordering up a book through the in-school Scholastic Book Club service that contained short, potted biographies of Canadian Prime Ministers – not your typical eight year old’s reading of choice.

“Then the thing that really kick started my interest in politics was a teacher I had in grade five. He assigned us a project for Civics having to do with the 1971 provincial election. That was when Davis first got elected so we had to cut articles out of the newspaper and make up a scrapbook and then choose a party we wanted to support and explain why. I found it fascinating.

“That teacher was very willing to let us explore without shaping us or pointing us in a particular direction. I can clearly recall calling the NDP office up and the Liberal office up, calling the PC candidate’s office and getting the information, reading all the brochures and that sort of thing. And it just so happens that I chose the Conservative Party as the one I would back and I just kind of stayed with it ever since. Then in grade six I ran for the student council of our elementary school when all the other people running were in grade seven going into grade eight. So I’ve had a fairly long interest in the political realm.”

When Van Meerbergen’s family landed in London for good in 1981, he was studying history and economics at the University of Waterloo. By the age of 25 he was elected vice-president of the Ontario Conservative Party, a post he filled for four years and which brought him into friendly contact with colleagues like Tony Clement and John Baird who’ve gone on to have successful political careers at the federal level.

Leery of ever letting himself get totally engrossed in politics, Van Meerbergen warns that, “Political life can suck you in to the point where it becomes your everything. It becomes your whole way of being and your life. And I’ve seen that with different people and I’ve always made it a point to try and ground myself – with family and business interests. I still maintain that interest but I won’t let it dominate me to the point of control.”

Shortly after getting married Van Meerbergen moved to Ottawa for five years to serve as a parliamentary assistant with Terry Clifford when he was the Member of Parliament for London-Middlesex. “I worked at the House of Commons from the late 80s until the end of the Mulroney term.  The London-Middlesex riding took in the far east of London and went as far north as Lucan and then it went as far south as Glanworth. It was an interesting riding. There was a mix of urban and rural so you really got a full spectrum of issues. I took some of the more serious cases from constituents and helped with communications. It was a very close-up and personal look at how politics runs at that level – at least at that time, and I frankly doubt that it’s changed a whole lot. I actually believe it would be good for our democracy if almost every Canadian could do that. I think it was the ancient Athenians that every member of their society served in politics and they just rotated. Without some kind of hands-on involvement like that, it seems the whole essence of participatory democracy sometimes gets lost in our society.”

Back in London Van Meerbergen found work at Lamko Tool and Mold Inc where he now serves as their business development manager. “I work in automotive-related manufacturing. We build these big molds – some of them weigh as much as 50 tonnes and they’re made out of solid steel and we sell them to our customers who inject plastic into them and make plastic automotive parts. So for example the Ford F-150 pickup truck, every F-150 has a dashboard that comes out of our mold from London, Ontario, and there are other models too – like the Ford Focus and the Lincoln.”

He kept his hand in matters political by helping out with some local campaigns and served for four years starting in 2000 as the Chair for the London Chamber of Commerce Export Club, an association of businesses and firms in London that do a lot of exporting, “such as Lamko where we export 95% of what we make.”

Now involved with raising four kids of his own, Van Meerbergen re-entered the political fray in 2003 at the municipal level because he didn’t want to be away from his family for weeks and months at a stretch. He defeated incumbent Ed Corrigan by 1,000 votes to become Councillor of Ward Seven, which had its boundaries reconfigured as Ward Ten for the 2006 election, in which he handily won re-election.

Central to Van Meerbergen’s political philosophy is the answer to the question, why do politicians exist? “We are here to represent the people that sent us. It’s not the other way around. Too often in the political sphere I see politicians who think their role is to take the top down approach, that they know best, that government knows best, and thou shalt do this because government says so. And I see it the complete opposite. At the municipal level is really where you can put that into practice and put that into play; that the people who elected me are saying ‘x’ and ‘y’ and that is what our agenda should be.”

Van Meerbergen represents the area of Westmount and Norton estates. “It’s a middle-class area and it’s the middle-class that’s paying the freight for everything. What are the issues that I hear about from my constituents? They’re concerned about economic growth and jobs, that’s a big one. Hazel McCallion has always been very good at broadening out the tax base. Obviously, if you can bring in more industry and more commercial activity, you’re broadening out that base and you can alleviate pressure. That’s an area in London that I think we haven’t done a very good job with.

“We have all these natural attributes – our geographic location, we have the NAFTA superhighway that runs right through our door and yet here we are seeing major economic development taking place in other cities around us. Why can’t it be here?

“I look at what happened two or three years ago with Sun Life. Instead of being grateful that they were looking at coming to London just south of the 401– and the jobs to go with it and the development – all we heard about was an imaginary line known as the ‘urban growth boundary’ being violated by a few feet. And ‘Oh, the sky would fall. We can’t do that.’

“Rather than saying, ‘Let’s make it work,’ we dug in our heels. When that sort of reaction takes place, it’s noted throughout the business community. People hear about it. I know there are other large organizations that are looking to set up shop in London and they’re either having second thoughts or they’re having these roadblocks thrown up in their way. It’s almost like economic development in London is seen as something to be shunned.

“Our Council as a whole doesn’t fully appreciate how wealth is created. They don’t have a realistic appreciation of how that happens. It’s not done by government spending, it’s not done by the government opening up the coffers and saying, ‘Here, we’re wealthy.’ The reality is it’s created by the private sector, it’s created by private initiative through companies and businesses and industry, and all government can do is redistribute that and set the table to encourage that kind of activity. And I really think there are some Councillors who think the government creates wealth. And if you hold that view, that would explain a lot of what goes on.

“I work in manufacturing and we’ve gone through just a horrendous time with markets deteriorating, with unemployment. I’ve had to watch friends and co-workers be laid off, lose jobs, get hours cut back. When you’re in that environment and see it, day in and day out, you appreciate how important it is to try to keep encouraging business, to try to entice more business to London. The real way to prosperity is jobs. The best social program is a job. When you see that up close every day and you live it, and you see how hard it is to create that wealth, to create jobs, to sell your products, make a profit and employ people, it lends itself to being very careful about taxation levels and spending.”

The second major concern of his constituents, Van Meerbergen says, is “Roads and traffic. It’s all well and nice and good to talk about the bus and, ‘Oh yeah, we’re all going to be saved by the bus.’ But the fact of the matter is that, yes, the bus is an important secondary means of transportation but at least for the foreseeable future, our community runs on its roads. And – dare I say it? – the bus runs on roads too.

“Our road system has to keep up. This idea that we should pull back on roads and focus on buses, it’s not making a lot of sense because even the buses can’t run properly if the roads aren’t up to snuff. And with the area I’m in – with a lot of families and the type of lifestyles that people lead in terms of multi-tasking and having to drop off a child at skating, a child at Scouts, and take another child to the library – the bus is not going to be the wave of the future. It’s just not feasible. I’ve been pushing for the last few years about Southdale Road. It’s still two lanes, even though there’s been all this development. Fortunately it’s slated to be widened in 2012 but the road system, the condition of the roads and the widening of the roads is a big one.”

The third item on his constituents’ list of concerns, Van Meerbergen says, is the ever-increasing level of taxation. I ask him how it is that Windsor keeps bringing in zero budget increases year after year and we don’t. We assume we’re sitting prettier than Windsor.  How can they do that and we can’t?

“Because there’s a political mindset on our City Council that it’s just  not doable. And if you enter into a budget thinking that it’s not realistic or doable, then it just is not going to happen. I very rarely hear any proposals to try and cut something back or ‘Hey, that’s a program that we could do away with or certainly reduce.’ I never hear that.

“I only hear about all the areas where we need to spend more. And what saves our bacon typically is we end up getting either a surplus that all of a sudden shows up, or we suddenly get a grant or a new funding formula from other areas of government. It’s not so much what we’re doing from a macro-economic standpoint. We just don’t find areas of the budget to reduce.

“I’ve been through seven budget cycles now and it just doesn’t happen. And the sad reality is that when you include compounding we’ve had a 45% property tax hike since the year 2000 until now and I’ve just had that confirmed by the Finance Department. That’s the reality for people out there. They’ve had to fork out 45% more in the last decade. And I would dare to say that most people have not had a 45% pay hike so this is coming out of disposable income. When you hear people say, ‘The taxation levels are too high,’ you have to believe it. It’s not just because people want to complain or be negative. The sad reality of it is that taxes are chewing away at their pocketbooks at a time when other things are going up in price like utility costs and so on.

“And over and above the property tax is the sewer surtax and that’s gone up by about 126% since the year 2000. You have all of this burden foisted upon the people of London and we hear things like, ‘Oh well, we’re not that much different than other municipalities. We’re more or less in the middle or the upper middle of the average when it comes to the tax hit.’

“But here’s the part that’s never talked about and that is that the ability to pay is not there in the City of London. There are other municipalities that may have similar taxation rates but their average household incomes are higher. This is an eye-opener to a lot of people because there seems to be still this kind of thinking that we’re a well-to-do city but the reality is that we’re below average for Ontario for household income. And when you hear about cities like Windsor that can do a zero – of course it’s doable. It’s like my parents taught me when I was quite young, it’s not what you make; it’s what you spend. It’s the spending that you’ve got to get under control. We could’ve done it this year.

“The way it typically works is the budget draft shows up and then people look at it, people make noises about it and then a couple months go by and we vote on the budget and it’s about the same as the draft was. This year came at a 1.8% increase. To get that to zero is doable. But when we’re forking out like $200,000 to pottery groups and things like that – I mean, nothing against pottery – but I don’t think the property tax was ever designed as an instrument to fund that kind of thing.

“Property tax is supposed to look after property – ie: the roads, sidewalks, snow clearing, emergency services, all those basics – but unfortunately along the way we’ve been diverted by the frills. The way I look at it, it’s basics versus frills. There are some in political life who think that if you provide people with frills, they’ll love you forever. The property tax was designed for a certain reason and because it’s broadened itself out in so many different directions trying to please so many different people, it’s resulted in this behemoth that we now have.”

No small part of Council’s reckless spending on inessentials is due to what Van Meerbergen calls creeping ‘nanny stateism’. “That manifest itself in various ways, shapes and forms. I recall not that long ago when there was an effort to try to ban drive-throughs. Clearly that was not the agenda of the people. In very short order I think about 55,000 names were signed on a petition, saying, ‘Don’t do that.’

“I was getting e-mails and calls galore on that particular issue and they were wondering, ‘Of all the issues and problems we have, why would you be trying to get rid of drive-throughs?’ And of course McDonald’s and Tim’s and the fast-food industry all got involved. But the bottom line is, when you get that many people to sign something – not just say it but sign it – clearly we were not working in the interests of people who elected us.

“And I look at the ban on bottled water – when you can still buy Coke in plastic bottles and all of these sugared drinks. And the two-minute limit on idling, and, of course, using public health officers to stare at tailpipes to see whether they’re going above two minutes or not, while we have all these restaurants that may be having infractions in terms of health – I mean shouldn’t they be focusing on that instead of tailpipes?

“That whole idea about that two minute idling law was another one of these green-washing activities. It looks good, sounds good. ‘Hey, look at us, we’re doing something.’ But we don’t think it through to the next step. Are we really going to ticket a Mom who’s dropping off a school-aged child and she’s got maybe two screaming toddlers in the back seat and she happens to have the car running for three minutes?

“It’s that kind of action that leads to really poor public policy in my view. And it’s not supported by the public. You know it, from the feedback, the e-mails and the phone calls. We have to do a better job of responding to what the majority of Londoners want and get away from special interest politics. When 30 people show up in the gallery at a Council meeting and start yelling and screaming with their posters, we have to learn that there’s 300,000 others who maybe disagree with that. But that’s unfortunately the dynamics at play quite often. We can’t confuse that with the public will and we have to start focusing on how do we do the most good for the most people and start listening to the average majority interests of Londoners.”

Like most Londoners of a conservative persuasion, Van Meerbergen laments the impending loss of Board of Control.

“The Board of Control served a very useful purpose. During that whole debate everybody got hung up on the name. ‘Oh, nobody else has one.’ Well, every other town does have a Board of Control, they just don’t call it that and they don’t get to elect it. Like all of the other committees that are appointed from within our Councillors, that’s what’s going to be happening with our Board of Control or our Finance Committee in the future. And that’s a far cry from a citywide democratic election.

“To see that go by the wayside, especially for some of the arguments I heard – like it was going to save money – was farcical. What we spend on our local democracy is just a drop in the bucket compared to the overall City budget of about a billion dollars. And Board of Control was getting paid part time wages. I’ve been hearing lately that this will just serve to justify why Councillors all need to become full time and get paid more – a lot more, and that we’ll need ward offices with paid assistants. How much is that going to cost? That’s going to be huge. The cost of Board of Control will pale by comparison.”

Finally, I asked Van Meerbergen if anything has surprised him from his Councillor’s perspective about the way the city worked or didn’t work. “Yes. I think that would be the power of the bureaucracy. They basically generate the agendas at the committees and therefore at Council. By and large those are staff-generated agendas. And that struck me, that we weren’t getting more direction politically.

“Staff has a very important job and they’re absolutely essential to running any level of government. They’re very capable, proficient professionals. But their job is not to lead. Their job is not to give political direction. They need political direction. I’m not sure how it evolved here. Has it just been by default? But quite often here the bureaucracy leads the politicians.”

Does anyone else on Council see this? “A few.”

Is there any way to counter it? “We end up having to say ‘no’ to things in order to change directions. Quite often, in a sense, we’re too agreeable. The hands go up, everything’s agreed to. There’s very little pushback. And this is not to say that staff is wrong or right; it’s just not the direction that we’re getting from our constituents.

“I’ll give you one example – the overnight parking issue. Of course staff isn’t thrilled by that because from their perspective it’s a loss of revenue. And what bureaucrat is thrilled by a loss of revenue? So I don’t blame them for that. But that’s where our job comes in. Hey, the people are telling us, ‘Give us a break, in the summer months. Let our relatives and friends park on the road.’

“Even going to a permit system – why should we have to create all that? Just do what we did last summer. It worked great. We can find $350,000 to buy a computer program to count trees. We’ve got – I think it was $1.5 million for hiring a consultant at Western to see how global warming is going to affect our sewer pipes. We’ve got money for all these things yet we can’t say ‘no’ to $140,000 from overnight parking fines. Should we really be balancing our budgets on something like a parking fine? Clearly, we need to get beyond that.”