Jonah Degas, the CEO of MuTrust Inc has a few politicians he’d like to sell you. MuTrust is the oldest and largest of a new breed of personnel agencies offering ready-made politicians for hire across the North American market.

“We’ve found that with declining voter turn-out — especially in local municipal elections — our firm can provide better, cheaper and more efficient politicians who can get the job done for just about any community”.

In the wake of the York Region transit strike, there have been numerous calls for the Region and it’s 9 municipalities to privatize more and more services. According to Degas, MuTrust is there to help: “We can provide individual candidates to run in ‘problem’ areas or we can source entire councils to run your town”, said Degas. “Our trained professionals can be hired to stand for traditional elections, but in many cases our people are simply appointed for three or four year terms.”

Degas noted the Chair of York Regional council is already headed up by a non-elected “CEO” who has been repeatedly appointed by sitting council members. “Why not appoint a privately operated professional council that can get the job done for less than half the price of the current system,” Degas wonders.

“We could devise a package deal with two dozen professional politicians — give or take — to run all of York Region for a fixed yearly fee.”

By eliminating the cost of municipal elections, Degas claims “Our politicians practically pay for themselves.”

While he’d be happy to provide enough councillors to fill every seat of York’s 10 governing councils, Degas wonders whether the Region really needs almost twice as many politicians as the city of Toronto supports.

“Some jurisdictions have even tried to drive prices lower by hiring politicians from competing firms — there are a lot of ways to get the job done”.

Still, Degas insists that single-sourcing an entire council from a company like his ensures members work together more efficiently.

The affable CEO added: “We just want our clients to enjoy a complete ‘politics as usual’ experience — only cheaper.”