It was obvious that something unusual was going on at city hall because the parking lot was full of cars with media logos, as was the meeting room, with a wall of video cameras and reporters with notebooks vexing the short people behind them who couldn't get a view of the proceedings.
Media aside, the 50 seats normally provided for the public were nowhere near enough for the assembled throng of concerned citizens.
And why were the cameras of the Lower Mainland trained on Richmond City Hall?
Why was it standing room only in the Anderson Room?
Because the first item on the agenda was the presentation of a petition signed by 1,000 people asking council to require that English and/or French cover at least 70 per cent of all signs in Richmond with the remaining 30 per cent available to the owners' language of choice.
There are so many layers to the signage issue in Richmond, it's tough to choose one.
We could look at signage as a strictly commercial matter. We could look at it as a constitutional, freedom-of-expression issue.
We could look at it in terms of whether it delays the integration of newcomers into Canadian society.
We could look at it in terms of whether the absence of English or French on signs makes a place somehow un-Canadian - they are our official languages, after all.
And if that is true, we could have a long, serious debate about how following the logic of complete equality could lead to a dismantling of the very structures that try to bind us together in our brave (but possibly foolhardy) experiment with multiculturalism.
But because this is a community newspaper, I'd like to focus on how badly this opportunity for civic engagement was handled by city council.
Look, I understand that this is a quagmire and no politician wants to get within sniffing distance of a quagmire.
And I know there is no immediate solution to this problem that would make everyone happy.
However, happiness is not the only desirable outcome in an exercise of democracy.
The presenters went to the trouble of gathering 1,000 signatures (only 800 of whom lived in Richmond, as the mayor was at pains to point out, repeatedly).
The signers are not the only people in Richmond who feel signs that are opaque to them make them feel unwelcome in their own home.
But to city council, it was nothing more than a hot potato they wanted only to procedure through as quickly as they could.
Council's effort to race through the formalities without permitting any serious discussion of the issue just cries out for the coining of the new verb "to procedure."
Coun. Chak Au moved the matter be referred to staff to see if there are any dimensions to the signage question that the city ought to engage with - issues for first responders trying to quickly identify a location with no English signage, for example.
But aside from a spirited rebuttal from Coun. Evelina Halsey-Brandt touching on both businesses' freedom to choose their target customers and the right of every immigrant to integrate themselves into Canadian society at their own speed, everyone else sat silently, looking first uncomfortable, then relieved, when the motion was defeated.
Council instead accepted the petition "for information".
I think there was a round container in the corner of the room labelled "Information", but I might have misread it.
Maybe I'm expecting too much of council.
Maybe they have better things to do than debate seemingly intractable questions; even ones that ripple through the community
over and over again and attract throngs of reporters from both mainstream and ethnic media.
Though I disagree with their position, I thought the presenters deserved better than the bum's rush.
All is not lost for believers in civic engagement, however.
Richmond Intercultural Advisory Committee will be using the signage issue as a catalyst for a public debate and forum toward the end of May - the last in its series on the theme of "Does Richmond Welcome All Cultures? Do All Cultures Welcome Richmond?"
We may not be able to sort everything out there, but at least we'll have tried.
Dr. Joe Greenholtz is a regulated Canadian immigration consultant and a director of the Premier Canadian Immigration Co-op. He also sits on the Richmond Intercultural Advisory Committee. Email him at [email protected].
