Debates in campaigns are hit-and-miss in determining voter outcomes.
Consider last Thursday’s (November 8) debate – Premier John Horgan supporting proportional representation, BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson opposing the proposal – a hit more than a miss.
A partisan would consider this Wilkinson’s finest hour – or more precisely, half-hour – in which he would not take bromides for an answer. He was the aggressor and the interrogator, frustrated and talking over the premier when he could not get Horgan to satisfy the question.
Horgan, too often, tried to dismiss and deflect and pivot from the central unanswered worries about the process that would bring British Columbia some form of proportional representation (PR). He was a teensy bit evasive.
He oversimplified the murky post-vote process. He suggested PR would somehow create more diversity in our political representation, but offered no evidence to back that claim. Nor could he.
He had an opportunity to clarify what would be pursued after the referendum – how many MLAs there would be, how they would be chosen by parties, how they would be better representatives than what we now have – and he didn’t deliver. Nor could he.
He may have a point that our system needs to be fixed, but he asked for the kind of trust in the post-vote process that isn’t something any political leader could possibly deserve.
(As an aside: his faux-hipster use of “woke” and “lit” in a rejoinder to his debate opponent was the groaner of the event. It must have come from the kids in the BC NDP backroom as a feeble sop to millennials, but it landed with the same patronizing thud as the music recommendations I make to my children.)
We are in an era in which defending the way it has always been done is not optimal. But Wilkinson, as an uncomfortable defender of the status quo, was wise to find a third option: a path to possible change through another citizens’ assembly, a non-partisan effort to identify a system that would produce a clearer choice in a referendum ballot than what we now have to mail by month’s end.
Face it: one of the problems with this campaign is that self-interested politicians are the champions of the causes. It is difficult to discern the referendum from a general election, which should not be the case.
Wilkinson didn’t hammer this option as much as he could have, but he made the point.
The first-past-the-post system might very well need fixing, but the process Horgan has enlisted is his own worst enemy. I was at a debate on the subject earlier that day, and even the pro-PR speaker acknowledged the process could be legitimately critiqued.
It is the inverse of what would give British Columbians the most informed path. If not a citizens’ assembly, then at least a legislative committee could study and identify a proposal, then set in motion a public campaign of education to then lead to a vote.
Instead the path to PR would see a vote, followed by a committee, followed by cabinet decisions. That’s a lot of trust to invest in something so significant, and hardly a product of the people.
Horgan chose often to not look at Wilkinson, and the body language was unhelpful to whatever convictions he possesses on the matter. There remain some questions about the degree of conviction Horgan has about the prospect of change. He served the advocate’s role in the debate, but there was a serenity about his station that suggested Horgan might not have his feet both in.
If there is something I think we can all agree on, it’s that the two leaders talking past each other on TV is a royal mess. It didn’t make me want to change the channel as much as hurl the TV over the side of the balcony.
It indirectly made the case for less partisanship. I can only hope that these characteristics of our historically polarized politics subside in the years ahead, because they are principally heat and precious little light. The last thing we want is to be drawn into the cable-news shout-fest vortex, and thankfully we only had a half-hour’s taste of it Thursday. My TV set is safe for the time being.•
Kirk LaPointe is editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
