Tbnewswatch
ran a story on Thunder Bay City Council meeting attendance halfway through the
2014 to 2018 term. There were a total of
147 open and closed meetings over a two year period and the number of meetings
missed ranged from a low of 0 for Councillor Hebert to a high of 28 for Councillor
McKinnon according to the numbers presented in a Table. Of course, comparisons are often more striking when made using a graph.
Figure 1 shows the ranking of meetings missed from lowest to highest by city
councillor. Note that Tbnewswatch
mentions that Councillor Foulds missed 10 meetings during a leave of absence
taken from August to September of 2015 which would take his total from 27 to
17.
The number
of meetings missed does not seem that consequential when taken as absolute
numbers. However, if the number of
meetings missed are taken as a percent share of the total number of meetings
(see Figure 2) then the range is from zero to 19 percent meetings missed. When you hit 19 percent, you are getting close
to missing one out of every five meetings.
If you are
looking for a workplace comparison, in 2011 Canadian workers missed an average of 9.3 days of work per year. According to Statistics Canada, over the
period 2001 to 2011, 7 percent of all full-time employees were absent from work
for all or part of the week for personal reasons. Total work time missed also
rose, from 3.4% of the scheduled week in 2001 to 3.7% in 2011; this was up
slightly from 2010. Extrapolated over the full year, work time lost for
personal reasons increased from the equivalent of 8.5 days per worker in 2001 to
9.3 days in 2011. If we assume about
250 working days in a year, then the absence rate for the average worker (at 9.3 days missed)
is about 3.7 percent. Aside from Councillor Hebert, all the other
councillors are above this absence rate.
The reasons
for absence in the workplace according to Statistics Canada are as follows: “Absence for personal reasons differs among
various worker groups. Several factors are responsible, principally working
conditions (physical environment, degree of job stress, employer–employee
relations, collective agreement provisions and work schedules); adequacy and
affordability of community facilities like child care centres and public
transportation; family circumstances, especially the presence of preschool
children or other dependent family members; and physical health of the worker,
a factor closely related to age....”
Statistics Canada does not provide any elaboration on factors determining absence from representative democratic bodies such as city councils or parliaments.
