We live in a world of instant gratification, in an age of just-good-enough products and at a time of impatience and distraction.
That doesn’t mean we have to cater to it. With many things we might think to alter – our democracy, for one – we have to get it done right, not just get it done right away.
The province’s attorney general, David Eby, has proposed phenomenal changes to the way our legislature might be comprised – some might say compromised. His government needs to dial it back to resist the temptation of expediency, but it is assuredly hell-bent.
Our political system is a core ingredient of our identity, and the three possible reforms Eby articulated are radical and deserve due consideration. But they also deserve prudence, not haste, and the clearest possible resolve and reflection of British Columbians for proportional representation (PR) to take effect.
Eby’s proposals to cabinet follow a consultative process that elicited the views of interested parties. Now the vastly more important task is to educate the less-interested parties. To do so requires time. No matter that the campaign will last five months, it has been set up as a fast-food drive-thru, not a sit-down slow-cooked meal.
The flaws of BC NDP PR are few but substantial.
There is no requirement for a minimum participation for the mail-in vote. There is no required majority of support in each region. The campaigns will be ill-funded: $500,000 for each side from government, stringent individual contribution restraints otherwise.
The proposals themselves are as easy to explain as Ikea directions yelled across the street. I tried to explain each in one sentence, but couldn’t. You’ll have to Google them with a Red Bull in hand.
There are no details of the new boundaries under one of the proposals, two of the schemes have not been tested elsewhere and one proposal is a blend of the two others.
The largest flaw is how easily the pro-PR forces can win the day. A simple majority of 50.1% among all three proposals wins – meaning one of the options with, say, 16.68% of the vote as a first choice could prevail over one with 16.67% and one with 16.66% to reshape our provincial chamber.
Couple that with the turnout, and a very small contingent can game-change. That’s more like disproportional representation.
To top it off, a legislative committee will work through the devilish details, and they may be considerable, so we are voting for broad brush strokes and not the finer part of the portrait.
If there are silver linings, they are two. Sanity prevailed to make it unlikely that the master race, flat-Earth, tinfoil-hat and radio-station-in-my-fillings crowds could, as parties, muster the needed 5% to earn a legislative seat. And in the event we are kicking ourselves over what we did, we get a do-over referendum some time around the 2029 vote – so, potentially, only a decade if this proves dysfunctional.
This is just no way to do democracy, but the NDP has a deal with the Greens, and it is their hill to supposedly die on – apart from climate change policy. Oh, and electoral financing. And child care. And housing strategy. And ride sharing. And, and, and.
Want disproportional representation? Think of it: three Green MLAs are essentially the engine of the rapid-fire uprooting of 150 years of electoral tradition.
It has been said that a more confident NDP government would have told the Greens to cool their jets and stop salivating with greed as they dream of a larger contingent in Victoria to mirror their vote. What this also suggests, though, is that the NDP will be willing sooner rather than later to cut their allies loose. There is no need with a 2021 vote to get all of this done in 2018 and early 2019, so perhaps the next vote will far precede that.
The irony is that a government that has so quickly threatened to kneecap our economy is also so quick to kneecap itself, for the days of majority governments would be few and far between in PR. But then again, this is a government majoring in unintended consequences. •
Kirk LaPointe is editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver Media Group and vice-president of Glacier Media.
