The committee met at 8:35 a.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Jessie Sunner. I’m the MLA for Surrey-Newton and the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives. I’m also the Chair of the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform, which is a parliamentary committee comprised of members of the government, the official opposition and the third party.

We are meeting today on the legislative precinct here in Victoria, which is located on the homelands of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

There are two parts to our committee’s mandate. The first part is to examine democratic engagement, voter participation and electoral reform. Second is to review the administration of the 2024 provincial general election. We’re currently holding meetings to hear presentations related to the first part of our mandate. The committee is also accepting written input until July 25. To participate, please visit our website at bcleg.ca/consultations.

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting with the Deputy Chair.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good morning. Ward Stamer, MLA, Kamloops–North Thompson, official critic for forests.

Sheldon Clare: Good morning, Madam Chair. Sheldon Clare, MLA for Prince George–North Cariboo, Conservative caucus Deputy Whip.

Rob Botterell: Good morning. Rob Botterell, MLA for Saanich North and the Islands and Green caucus House Leader.

Amna Shah: Good morning, Chair. Amna Shah here, MLA for Surrey City Centre and Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Addictions.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): We are also being supported today by staff from the Parliamentary Committees office and Hansard Services.

We will begin with our first presenter, who is Paula Waatainen from Vancouver Island University. Welcome Paula, thank you for being here.

Vancouver Island University

Paula Waatainen: Thank you very much for having me. Thank you, committee members and staff.

I am here today as someone who has been involved in democratic education for the last 30 years — 21 years as a high school teacher and nine years as an education professor. My doctoral work had me designing more authentic assessments of citizenship competencies that children would develop when engaging directly as citizens in a public engagement democratic process, in that case, in Nanaimo.

I’m one of the authors of the current political studies 12 curriculum, and I represent British Columbia on Elections Canada’s advisory circle of educators. I’ve had a passion for teaching elections and all kinds of things related to democracy because I have a background in political science. I’m here today to speak to how education at the K-to-12 level, but also as adults, can help us with democratic engagement.

I will start, I think, with a little story. I was in Montreal last year with my then 12-year-old daughter and my husband. We were in the Biodôme or Biosphere, and my daughter was looking at a penguin in the penguin display. She sent a photo of the penguin and a video of the penguin to her friend, and her friend said: “Fake.” We looked at this and said: “What’s fake?” My daughter’s friend said: “Fake penguin.” We said, “What do you mean it’s a fake penguin?” She’s like: “It’s fake.”

She had gotten to the point where I had to assure her that we were actually in a zoo, and this was a penguin. I think we often think of children and youth as being incapable of recognizing online information that’s false, but I think that the trends are much more complicated than that. What we’re seeing now is that there’s a lowering trust in information that we find online.

I looked over the transcript of when the Chief Electoral Officer spoke to your committee last week or the week before. He spoke to the role that civil society groups and universities and government and schools have in democratic education for democratic engagement and voter participation. I’ll just start with addressing something that he said.

[8:40 a.m.]

He thought that the civics curriculum in schools probably could focus more on some of the basics of our democracy that might not be taught as much as they should be. To an extent, I think he’s correct. But I think it’s very possible that adults who feel that they don’t have sufficient civic literacy sometimes may have been taught the basics in school, but in such a way that they

I think he’s correct, but I think it’s very possible that adults who feel that they don’t have sufficient civic literacy sometimes may have been taught the basics in school, but in such a way that they didn’t retain them, because they didn’t feel authentic or memorable.

Dutch researchers Biesta and Laue, some 20 years ago, wrote about how learning democracy should be a process that starts in early childhood and continues through adulthood, and that with our children and youth, we shouldn’t be preparing them to engage in democracy at some point in the future, but we should be actively engaging them as children and as youth. So we are taking every opportunity to practise.

The basics of how our democracy works — the systems of government at different levels, elections, etc. — are in the B.C. curriculum at grades 1, 2, 5, 6 and 10. Also, we have that political studies course. But the way that our curriculum is structured in British Columbia now, we’re not just focusing on knowledge basics.

When I started teaching 30 years ago, I thought much of our role was…. I was to impart knowledge on my students, and they would give that back to me, and as we went, I would teach them some research skills, etc. But now we know that we need to be building their competencies, and competency is based on knowledge but also skills and dispositions. When that comes to citizenship, the sense that you are prepared to vote, that you’re prepared and that you’re capable of participating in democracy, comes down to some dispositional feelings of confidence, open-mindedness and things, not just having basic knowledge.

Things have been changing very much. Democracy in Canada and the world is…. We don’t have the same needs that we did when I started teaching, or even when I started as a teacher educator nine years ago. I think schools, universities, civil society groups and government need to be responsive to changes. Those changes include the very complicated online information sphere that we have.

There’s been a decline — and this is something that’s global — of trust in institutions such as government and media. Even though, I think, a lot of Canadians, probably most Canadians, fundamentally agree on most fundamental issues, there’s a sense that things are more polarized and that it’s more difficult to engage in cross-cutting conversations with people who might have a different opinion than you.

I have a few recommendations for you. One relates to your work here. It will be interesting to watch, for me, where the work of your committee goes and ultimately what this leads to. If you’re making any recommendations to bring to the public about changes to our electoral system, etc., I would suggest that as you go along, and if there are going to be significant changes potentially, you invite participation more broadly from the community.

I have to say, sitting here in this committee meeting, knowing that what I’m saying is being transcribed and broadcast, and I’m at one end of the room and you’re all at the other end of the room…. Even though I have a doctorate and 30 years’ experience in this, it’s a little intimidating for me, as it would be, I think, sending in a written submission for people who don’t feel that they communicate as well in writing. So just like when the….

I did my master’s degree during the time of the B.C. Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. I actually wrote some learning resources for the citizens’ assembly.

[8:45 a.m.]

I think it’s important that you create opportunities for the type of engagement where, first of all, providing accessible information about the different proposals that you might be putting forward, and the potential benefits and drawbacks of them, or limitations — like: “If you want to have an electoral system that does this, this does this, but this doesn’t do that” — so that it’s accessible information.

Then I would suggest it would be very interesting if you could set up some sort of structures where people can come together, whether it’s online

or if you want to have an electoral system that does this — this does this, but this doesn’t do that — so that it’s accessible information.

And then I would suggest it would be very interesting if you could set up some sort of structures where people can come together, whether it’s online or in their communities, and sit down and have conversations with other citizens about how we can move forward a little bit together. People coming together from different perspectives and thinking: “Here are the options on the table. What are the benefits and drawbacks of them, and can we make a little bit of progress on these ideas?

I would ask that you also directly invite participation and make it easy for schools to participate. We’re in summer now, but if you had work happening during the school year…. I know that the city of Nanaimo, where I live, now directly sends invitations to elementary and secondary teachers to invite direct participation from their students in these processes.

Also, another thing…. If you want to look a little bit more broadly, another way that you can influence things beyond the immediate work of your committee is to have a look at the B.C. curriculum. I was on the writing team for the social studies curriculum that was implemented several years ago. The K-to-9 curriculum now came in, in 2015, so it’s ten years old, and the secondary curriculum three years later.

When we were writing that curriculum, we were told that it would be a live document, that we wouldn’t be waiting for ten to 15 years to update it but that, instead, there were going to be regular adjustments to it.

Right now the Social Studies 10 curriculum has been reopened for the purpose of…. They added learning standards related to teaching the Holocaust. You know, Hogan’s Alley is an example of historical injustice. But there are no plans. I’ve tried to look around for this in order to make any other changes. That curriculum is where you see the major emphasis in high school on teaching politics and government.

I think that there are some significant little nudges that need to be made to support teachers, particularly when it comes to building the evidence competency. Often teachers will work with historical evidence, but now I think that we need to encourage teachers to be up to date in the current research on civic online literacy.

For example, there’s research by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and at Stanford around the idea that we now need to be learning and teaching our students critical ignoring.

Where wisdom used to lie, we thought, in having as much information as possible, we now need to teach our students to quickly determine what information is less useful or potentially incorrect and move on to find better sources of information. That involves strategies such as lateral reading, where instead of…. We used to teach students to dig deeply into a particular source online. We now want them to open up a new browser and to be looking for other information about the topic and looking for the best source.

We also know that when students and adults try to determine the quality of online information, when they do it collaboratively instead of by themselves, they’re more successful. And when they do it with what Paul Mihailidis calls “civic intentionality,” that they’re doing this with an issue that they want to make a contribution to a local or national problem, then they develop less cynicism and lack of trust.

I think the curriculum could also use some tweaking in terms of the communication competencies that we built over time in the ten years since the curriculum has been out. We have seen that there are interpersonal forms of communication, like deliberation, that could be specifically mentioned in the curriculum.

[8:50 a.m.]

Your committee here is an example of this. You come from different political parties, but yet here you’re trying to make progress on an issue together, even coming from those different perspectives. There’s a lot of rich research, and that’s the area that I research in primarily, and giving teachers those

your committee here is an example of this. You come from different political parties, but yet here you’re trying to make progress on an issue together, even coming from those different perspectives.

There’s a lot of rich research, and that’s the area that I research in primarily. Giving teachers those twigs and those hints, those directions to go, by having it in the curriculum would be helpful.

I would also say — got just over a minute left — that I was asked to give a presentation on democratic education to a reception that the B.C. Library Association was having. There were a number of people there from the GLAM industry: the galleries, libraries, archives and museums. And for a lot of them…. They wanted to have those sort of roles of bringing the public into their spaces to have conversations about the issues of the day. But things feel divisive, and it’s a little intimidating for them.

So having resources that potentially the provincial government could distribute to support how you can bring people together to learn how to deliberate together, how to have positive communication together, how to make decisions together, I think would be very positive.

There are a lot of wonderful, rich opportunities for learning democracy, some up here at the B.C. Legislature and some elsewhere. The organization CIVIX has a lot of supports. Often Elections B.C. does during election time with their model elections, but they also create learning resources. And I just want to express appreciation for the parliamentary education office here for the teachers institutes that they do and as the mum of a 2025 intern for the B.C. legislative internship program.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much, Paula, for your presentation.

We’ll go to questions.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good morning, Paula. Hey, that was great. We need to speak more because obviously you have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to exactly what we’re talking about and such a fresh perspective and apolitical, quite frankly. I’d like to thank you for that.

When you mention nudging…. We’ve had this conversation in the last little bit about the curriculum. I’m somewhat familiar just being able to look at the K-to-9 or K-to-8 or however it was spread out…. Then you could just pick on the on the columns and you could see, as you said, that socials 10 is basically where it stops altogether. And then you can have, like you said, in grade 12….

Now, there are some things that I, personally, am concerned about because it seems like some of the teachers are able to be biased when it comes to teaching some of the differences between political parties. I’ve got examples on my phone of screenshots of what teachers are putting up on the blackboard that I’m quite sure if I showed you, you would suggest that that’s not the way it’s supposed to be taught.

How do we encourage basically a fairly rigid curriculum and make sure that we, as you said, nudge it all the way through? Because it seems like, as my counterpart has said, as soon as you add something to the curriculum, something drops off. It seems like there’s emphasis on certain things now where they’re starting from grade 1 all the way through because it’s very, very important, but then some of the other stuff seems to get pushed to the side.

So how do we have that opportunity to be able to nudge them?

Paula Waatainen: I’m collaborating with my colleague, Dr. Michael McKenzie, who is the Jarislowsky Chair of — what is it — Trust in Political Leadership. I always forget what it is at Vancouver Island University. He’s a political scientist, and we’re working on a future project to try to respond to a report from the organization CIVIX on civic education that throughout the years of schooling this should be something that…. Democratic education should be woven through different subject areas.

When we say — you’re absolutely right that — there’s not a lot of room in the curriculum…. People have a lot of priorities. When you look at social studies 10, you’ve got the 20th century history there also. So what happens is that sometimes teachers will spend most of their time treating it as a history course, and the political part of it gets limited.

[8:55 a.m.]

I think that there are a number of responses to that. First of all, you need some expertise in political science, not in all the teachers, but in more teachers in the school. The teacher regulation branch, in having its determinations

I think that there are a number of responses to that. First of all, you need some expertise in political science, not in all the teachers but in more teachers in the school. The teacher regulation branch, in having its determinations of what qualified you to teach different subject areas, used to require you to have a history or geography degree for social studies, and they’re in the process right now, this year, of making amendments to this.

I know some of us, including the UBC poli sci department, have asked that you have more people with a political science background coming in, because we need to create resources and knowledge in integrating democratic education — like if you’re teaching science, attaching it to learning how a body of science advisers might advise the government on a particular science issue.

In the curriculum, the way that it’s structured, there are learning standards that all teachers are supposed to teach, but it is open to interpretation for them, in terms of the case studies that they use and things.

I think ongoing teacher professional learning, like what we have at the teachers institute here, helps teachers to step back from maybe lecturing on these or on who the political parties are — which would cause them to potentially have their own perspectives or biases come forward — and instead, engaging students more directly in grappling with issues themselves and teaching the critical thinking related to attacking these issues.

Sorry, that was quite a long answer.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): No, I appreciate the answer. Thank you.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Professor. I appreciate your comments, as someone with a background in education myself. I had 32 years in post-secondary and five years in K to 12 before that.

A couple of things that were raised, I think, in the CIVIX presentation and in yours had to do with teacher training. I very much appreciate your comments that teachers teaching specialist subjects should have degrees in those subjects, rather than just have an MEd or a BEd.

I find that that seems to be the basis for a lot of teaching, yet when you throw someone into a history course, a social studies course, geography or any kind of specialty, they don’t have the depth to really teach it. I saw this in my post-secondary classes when people came in, ostensibly with qualifications, yet there was nothing there.

I think there’s a fundamental problem. Like you pointed out, professional development needs to be allocated for real professional development, not just for meetings with administration. There needs to be some quality assurance built in there. I think I know where you would be going on that, based on your response to my colleague, but what do you say about the need for more of this training, so that teachers are really qualified to be teaching what they are?

I want to just preface that by saying that when people are teaching politics — I taught this stuff myself — there’s a difference between teaching political theory and political parties, and sometimes people get those confused. You’ll see someone talking about the political spectrum, and they’re thinking that that is the same as political parties. Modern political parties and the traditional spectrum are not necessarily well aligned.

Paula Waatainen: Well, I’ve got to say, social studies is one of those subjects which is.... It’s like it’s everything. It’s all human history; it’s all geography; it’s various political systems. Anyone coming into teaching secondary social studies will have a degree in one of the relevant subject areas, but there’s a lot that you need to continue to learn over your career. For me, I had to pick up a lot of geography understanding over time, and history, in areas that I didn’t know as well.

[9:00 a.m.]

I think what we can just do is continue to connect with organizations, like CIVIX, that provide professional learning and what is provided by the parliamentary education office here, but I think things need to be a little bit more widespread. This is really great professional learning for a small percentage of teachers who are able to access it every year and so providing supports for in-service training.

Perhaps there are people who can go out to school districts and

the parliamentary education office here, but I think things need to be a little bit more widespread.

You know, this is really great professional learning for a small percentage of teachers who are able to access it every year. So providing supports for in-service training — perhaps there are people who can go out to school districts and offer in-service that’s paid for by the provincial government and can take place on those pro-D days — is something that, along with good-quality resources, can get to more teachers than just the really specialized ones.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you. I have a question as well. We’ve been hearing from a lot of presenters, and I think one of the things we’ve heard often is: “There’s not enough civics education. I don’t remember getting civics education.” And then we had folks say: “It’s not that you’re not getting it. It’s maybe how you’re getting it that you’re not remembering it.” That’s even a bigger issue, really, in the long scheme of things.

Hearing from you directly of what grades we have them in, like for myself, it makes me think: “Do we think that we’re not getting it because we’re far removed from the education system? What do students actually feel on the ground?” And I feel that’s actually a perspective I’d love to hear more of — the kids that are in school and if they feel like they’re getting that education.

Just building on the curriculum pieces that you’re talking about, what would be ways that you would suggest to help build these changes in where we’re learning on a regular basis, like throughout all of, you know, K to 12, in a way that we would be able to implement the changes to curriculum, which will take a long time, as we know changes to curriculum, but also things that we could do in the interim, suggestions from our committee to help fast-track those implementations of civics into everything?

Paula Waatainen: I think there’s a quick opportunity right now while social studies 10 is already being looked at, to see if there’s some way to also look at the learning standards that relate to democracy in that. Also, making recommendations to live up to that promise of having someone looking at and being able to make small changes to the curriculum instead of…. It’s great expense to open up the whole thing and to hire all those teams of teachers to rewrite. So I think finding ways to tweak it as we’re going, starting with socials 10, is great.

In the interim, just developing some curriculum for teachers that potentially is looking at what’s already out there but making sure that things are being shared to schools, like the civics resources, but also then potentially making some things that are made in B.C. that could be shared through in-service or just distributed to schools.

Amna Shah: Thank you so much, Paula, for your presentation. I think civic education is something that we’ve talked about amongst our committee quite a bit and the importance of it and some concerning patterns emerging about the lack of it in terms of a consistent way to introduce it to students in the K-to-12 curriculum.

One of the things that has been brought up is potential hesitancy of some teachers to engage in this type of education, instruction or engagement due to the polarization of the global political spectrum, actually. I don’t think it’s just us that are dealing with this.

I’m wondering, in your experience and engagements with educators in the past, do you see that hesitancy existing? And how do we encourage teachers to actually include that in some way to accomplish the indicators or the competencies?

Yeah, I suppose: how do you encourage? Because there are some teachers who are quite proud of the fact that they have this type of education within their classrooms, but those teachers are few and far in between. What I found in my experience is that that hesitancy is within the majority of teachers. I’m wondering if you have any comments on that.

[9:05 a.m.]

Paula Waatainen: Absolutely. First, I’ll direct you, if you’re interested, to a major research report written by CIVIX a year and a half ago called Civics on the Sidelines. It has some really good data about teachers’ feelings about teaching democracy and engaging students in those kind of conversations and also the opinions of students.

Students want to engage in political discussions. They want to do active political work. And teachers also want to

that has some really good data about teachers’ feelings about teaching democracy and engaging students in those kinds of conversations, and also, the opinions of students. Students want to engage in political discussions. They want to do active political work. Teachers also want to do it, but they feel pressured by time. They also feel, in some cases, that worry about what parents will think of what we’re doing.

So, as a teacher educator, I try to encourage my students to, first of all, use different types of discussion protocols. I think we often….

They will be worried about: “What happens if I just throw something open for discussion? So something happened on the news, and I say: ‘Hey, did anybody hear this? What do you think about that?’ The students are not…. Some may have heard of it, some not, so there’s an uneven playing field.”

And that invites maybe some of the stronger opinions that cause teachers to not know what to do with it. Or they have debates where it’s like this side versus that side, and you try to win the debate.

I suggest that we move past those types of conversation strategies and instead do things like having seminars where the purpose of the seminar is to try to make sense of an issue. So you are taking a step back from your own opinion and having to defend your opinion and instead talking with others about: why is this like this, and what might be happening here?

Or engaging, as I said earlier, in deliberations where small groups who are mixed or have different opinions will try to say: “What should we do about this?” That’s the central question, where they’ll try to make a little bit of progress together on an issue.

So I think what scares teachers most is those divisive debates or the unknown of the conversations that might happen. I think those are genuine concerns, because this happens among adults in toxic sort of online conversations.

But there are all kinds of strategies out there to make classroom discussions meaningful and to get students maybe doing things like designing or redesigning a policy.

I worked with a grade 12 teacher, political studies 12 teacher, who wanted to…. A lot of her students taking her course had been in model UN with her, and she felt like they were kids who liked arguing. They wanted to defend their country’s position and die in the ditch of whatever that country’s role was.

And she said: “Does democracy need to produce students who are doing this? Maybe not.” So what we did is we did a series of deliberations over six weeks with those students, where the way that she assessed them was on their ability to maybe change their mind if they heard better information or to understand perspectives and to make progress on an issue.

Those students ended up working on real-world issues. They actually decided amongst themselves and asked their teacher if they could write a flood mitigation plan for the Lower Mainland and send it to Minister Ma, who was in emergency preparedness then. And they did. And she actually came to their classroom two weeks later to hear about their proposals.

So imagine that sort of level of sense of efficacy of those students and that they had been doing work in their class that was building those competencies but also making them feel that they were making a contribution. They just weren’t learning about what is democracy. They were actually engaging in it.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): That’s fantastic. Thank you.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I wanted to sort of follow up on this great discussion with asking for your thoughts and perspective on a couple of items.

One is that we’ve heard from a number of presenters that curriculum development and curriculum rewrites take years and years, and then, to some extent, there’s also a desire to make sure that there’s an acceptance of the revised curriculum so that it isn’t seen as having — we’re in a particularly fraught area at times — a particular angle of attack or viewpoint embedded in the curriculum.

[9:10 a.m.]

So that sort of leads me to the question: if you were in our shoes, recommending steps to be taken in this area in the short term, like over the next year, what would be the top three things, or however many, you’d want to flag? And how

If you were in our shoes, recommending steps to be taken in this area like in the short term, like over the next year, what would be the top three things — or however many you want to flag — and how do we help to ensure that any changes to the curriculum are not undermined by a fear that they’re adopting a particular viewpoint like in the public sphere?

Paula Waatainen: Thanks, MLA Botterell. You’re absolutely right in that a full curriculum revision is a major process and does take years. The curriculum has these learning standards which are based on kind of concepts and competencies, and so they’re not that descriptive themselves. They allow different case studies, but underneath them, if you click on them, there are a number of suggested elaborations of different things that teachers may choose to do. I think the process of being able to add new elaborations should be something that could be easily done without opening up the whole curriculum. And so as a quick priority, I think that that’s an easier process: change or addition of elaborations.

The piece that I think where we need to move particularly quickly is civic online literacy. There’s a strong research tradition. I went to a conference in Berlin where some of the authors of the research about critical ignoring were presenting from the Max Planck Institute. The world and online information are changing quickly. Finland has brought in a whole curriculum that’s from K to 12. Right now probably the skills that most of us have, and most teachers have, are behind the times and need to be updated.

So there are good resources, like I keep mentioning the ones from CIVIX, for teachers to access. But I think that there is a low awareness of their existence and having wording in the curriculum that will nudge teachers to look for these things and define them, or having the province more directly involved in getting that information out to schools, supporting it through professional learning, etc., would make quicker progress on it.

We don’t want to be teaching our students strategies in dealing with online information that actually now tend to backfire. You know, we used to teach them to dig deeply into a source. Read, read, read. Go down. That started taking people down rabbit holes, right?

Rob Botterell: Great. If I may, just one follow-up. Sort of like a lightning round.

We’ve been having a variety of presenters recommending lowering the voting age to 16, and I just wondered what your thoughts are on that or the relationship between potential recommendation along those lines and civics education.

Paula Waatainen: I tend to be relatively supportive of that after 20 years of working with 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds.

I find what it does…. In jurisdictions…. I used to get, sometimes, students from Brazil as international students, and those students’ level of civic knowledge was much higher because they were learning about elections in a more authentic way because they were actually voting. And so it raised the profile and the sense of importance in schools and with teachers but also with the students. You’re catching them at an age where they can focus on this learning. Sometimes when you’re 18, life gets in the way and you’re off to university or something, and it’s actually harder to have that intense focus that first time that you’re going to vote.

Rob Botterell: Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you. I know we’re supposed to be moving along but I have a short question, and I think the Deputy Chair does as well.

[9:15 a.m.]

One of the points that actually the presenter from CIVIX brought up yesterday was…. They didn’t have a position on lowering the age or not, but they raised the potential concern that teachers already feel a pressure to not influence you know, how they’re teaching…. If the age was lowered to 16, there’s a potential further

the presenter from CIVIX brought up yesterday was that they didn’t have a position on lowering the age or not. But one of the things they raised was the potential concern that teachers already feel a pressure to not influence how they’re teaching, that if the age was lowered to 16, there’s a potential further pressure on teachers that people would accuse them of trying to persuade a student. I’d just love your thoughts on that.

Paula Waatainen: Yeah, it’s something I actually navigated as a teacher, because I was an active member of a federal political party at the time that I was a teacher. So I was always concerned about how I was going to make sure that I was going to be…. I had a perspective, like citizens or teachers have perspectives, but I was not going to unduly influence my students. So I just tried to be in communication with my colleagues and my principal and things about my plans for the nature of the types of assignments my students would do during elections, and the nature of the activities, to make sure that….

Ultimately, teachers’ decisions have a big impact. We curate the experiences that students have. It is something that teachers will need to be careful about, but I think they have to be careful about it now anyway. So the potential benefits may outweigh the challenges.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you. We’ll have a final question from the Deputy Chair.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Paula, we’ve been talking about proportional representation. That’s part of the reason we’re here. It’s interesting that the student voting election in 2024…. There was, I think, 175,000-plus students that participated in that in our election last year. Interesting again, when you look at the breakout. It came out, I think, 36.7 and 36.1 on the percentages — very, very tight. And the breakout was 43 NDP, 40 Conservative and ten for the Green Party.

When I’m looking through all the lessons, slide decks, handouts and student activities and all the different things that cover this portion, is this something that is being taught all through, or is this more specified in students that want to vote? It seems like there’s an awful lot of extra information here than what I can see in social studies 10 and what they use for parts of the curriculum.

Paula Waatainen: Which resource are you looking at? The one from Student Vote?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yes.

Paula Waatainen: Right. Yeah. Student voting exists across Canada in all the jurisdictions so they will have…. Sometimes what they do will align exactly with our curriculum, and sometimes they’ll have more on certain topics and less on others. Because my master’s was around teaching students electoral reform, I had a lot of people say, “They’re not going to be interested in that,” but they actually kind of were — looking at the different opportunities, the benefits and drawbacks.

Because every system that we have…. The first-past-the-post has some definite benefits, and it has some drawbacks. Proportional representation or majority balloting and things…. I think framing it around what you want your electoral system to do is a neat thing.

I actually had students during the citizens’ assembly learn about these different options for electoral systems and then have to go teach their parent or another voter what they had learned and use the resources from the citizens’ assembly, like the videos and things, to do that. Then I got the parents to write a note about how well they learned from their student. They really got into that, so I think that they’re capable and interested. You know, the teachers need to feel some confidence that they know enough to be prepared to do this work and that it’s important.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Great. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Paula. This was very insightful for us this morning. Thank you so much for being here and for being a part of our committee.

Paula Waatainen: Thank you very much for having me. If anybody was interested in this article about critical ignoring, I’m just going to leave this here. I’ll put my email address here too. I’d love to help out in any sort of way, if you can see a use for me at some later point. Thank you.

[9:20 a.m.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much.

Next up, we have Jody Bauche

Okay, next up we have Jody Bauche.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you for being here today, Jody, and thank you for your time. Just before you begin, a reminder you’ll have 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by ten minutes for questions.

Jody Bauche

Jody Bauche: Thank you, and I want to thank all of you for taking the time to organize this in the middle of the summer.

I’d like to acknowledge the lands that we’re on and what they mean to me. We’re sitting here on the traditional unceded lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən and the xʷsepsəm First Nations.

These lands have held significant meaning for me. They’re the place that held space for me while I finished my bachelor of social work in 2001 at the University of Victoria. They’re also the lands where I met my husband and had my two children, Marlin and Gregor. These lands are also what has helped inform my Indigenous methodology for how I work, for how I study and for how I live.

My own Indigenous ancestry comes from my mother. I’m Métis. Our family names are Tarion, Paranto, Trottier. I grew up in Edmonton, but my family lineage is from Saskatchewan.

I’d like to ask you all: how many of you here are parents or grandparents of children between the ages of seven and 22? Okay. Thank you.

I prepared a briefing note before I arrived, but I’m not speaking from the briefing note. That briefing note details a lot of research that was done and supported by SFU. I am also a storyteller and an artist, so I’m approaching my conversation with you today very much from a storytelling perspective.

Going back to 2019, during Trump’s first presidency in the United States, I was working at the Representative for Children and Youth reviewing critical injury and death of children in care. When the Trump administration was separating children from their families at the border, I grew very concerned about this and my lack of influence as a Canadian citizen to have any say in what was going on in the United States. I believe that some of this could have been a bit of a projection, as well, from what I was witnessing in the government for Indigenous children and youth being separated from their families. But needless to say, I began a journey in that Trump election for his first term.

I began to consider how voices can be heard across borders. I first grounded myself in the arts, recognizing that the arts are democratic in a lot of ways, because they allow a viewer to determine a meaning of a piece of art for themselves. That same thing exists in communication, and I explain more in a minute.

Part of the work that I did between 2019 and prior to deciding to go to graduate school at the School of Communication at SFU, I spent a lot of time talking to local politicians and provincial politicians on democracy for Indigenous people through movements that don’t necessarily exist within institutions.

[9:25 a.m.]

My focus was really on curiosity and exploration, recognizing that we have a large potential to hear from Indigenous voices outside of institutions, that can go beyond just protesting, that can actually be rooted in community knowledge and

exploration, recognizing that we have a large potential to hear from Indigenous voices outside of institutions that can go beyond just protesting, that can actually be rooted in community knowledge and community sharing. That’s how I ended up at SFU.

First and foremost, communication theory teaches us that meanings are created from images and words. We saw a huge increase in the study of communication following World War I and then World War II, with the influence of media, television, radio. And here we are on the cusp of something quite…. I’m not going to say World War III. I don’t necessarily believe that it will get to that point, but I do think that we need to acknowledge that globally we are witnessing something quite unique. And it is very much related to communication and how we are viewing messages and how we’re making meaning of those messages.

It’s no accident that the majority of how Trump gets his messages out is through social media that he has influence over. If we consider that the younger generation is not receiving their information about world events from sources that have been journalistically vetted, then what we’re witnessing are younger generations polarized based on algorithms on social media.

This is not the end. This is actually an opportunity. Canada, and particularly B.C., is very well positioned to be a creator of innovation in social change. Thirty-one percent of all B.C. First Nations exist here in British Columbia. All those First Nations have their own unique values, their own unique ways of doing democracy, and they also are land stewards. They have a lot to teach us about how we can do social change.

One of the things I discovered through my studies was that we’re in fact living in a post-truth society. Being a social worker for 20-plus years in British Columbia, I had always known about post-structuralism, but I had never heard the term post-truth until I began my thesis research last fall. That took me on a huge journey to find the right sources cited, and most of them came from the U.K., which indicated that post-truth society is exactly related to Donald Trump and the introduction of Brexit.

So here we are. We recognize that truth is no longer vetted in our communication publications if they’re online. They’re based on opinions. They’re based on emotions. And we’re seeing public press in the United States eroded. I can’t say that the same thing is happening here in Canada.

I would actually like to credit a lot of our journalism, particularly in B.C. I think journalists are committed to social justice and social change. They’re committed to storytelling. They can’t publish without having proper facts vetted, and they need permission from their sources in order to publish.

My concern is how that information from news is getting to younger generations. When I survey my first-year university students, overwhelmingly they don’t get their news from print or radio. They get it from social media. I don’t see that as a disadvantage necessarily, because I am a professor and I’m there to teach them how to identify news sources and how to think critically about media and communication. But I do see there’s an opportunity to transform our considerations around democracy and the use of technology in communication.

[9:30 a.m.]

I should mention that currently I do research for SFU’s office of community-engaged research, and I’m also associate professor at Royal Roads University and Camosun College, and I’m really committed to teaching and education. I believe democracy will continue to exist in political structures in the future, but globally we must

I’m really committed to teaching and education.

I believe democracy will continue to exist in political structures in the future. But globally, we must accept that global democracy will exist digitally. It already is. We can no longer deny now that geopolitical interests are intertwined with social media and media. I question governing based on Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs. I think that’s pretty short-sighted in the grand scheme of things, considering we know that he’s using social media to essentially push forward an agenda.

My argument with communication theory is that messages can be disrupted. Canada has a potential to disrupt media and create other media that become global networks of exchange in response to what we’re witnessing in the United States and around the world, with oligarchs and fascism being very closely connected. I do believe Canada needs to invest in education like this. It needs to invest in education, in communication theory and in technology.

There is a growing interest in investing in artificial intelligence. We recognize that this is fast becoming part of our world. There are efforts to put limits on that or put policies in place. And, really, I think that the innovation that exists within human-centred AI is very much where we need to be focused on. Human-centred AI teaches transparency in algorithms. It also teaches the relationship between humans and technology where humans are primary interest.

I don’t think it’s possible to go backwards. I don’t think we can live in a society that doesn’t use social media, that doesn’t consider AI’s influence in a rapidly advancing world. But I do believe that education can be provided for innovation so that these types of technologies are focused on the interests of younger generations, particularly Generation Z, who has a notable disinterest in political structures and politics to meet their needs. What that means is that the sort of change that they feel they need in the world, they don’t think the government is going to provide that for them.

I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t encourage younger people to vote, for example, 16-year-olds. But I really think we need to figure out where they’re getting their information from. And instead of limiting that, maybe thinking about other ways that we can support them to create their own methods of communication.

B.C. is uniquely positioned to support innovation focused on social change. As I mentioned, 31 percent of all First Nations in Canada come from British Columbia. I can almost guarantee you, based on anecdotal research and 20 years of experience working primarily with Indigenous communities in B.C., that they want to find ways to support economic sustainability that is also inclusive of social, environmental and cultural sustainability.

The unique thing about that is that we have this younger generation of Gen Zs that are looking to provide social change. They’re not apathetic about social justice. They show up to protests, they care about the environment, they care about affordability, and so they are allies. They are very much allies in innovation for First Nations.

[9:35 a.m.]

We know that the youth unemployment rate is at an all-time high, I think it is in Canada, or hasn’t been this high for a really long time. And rather than focusing exclusively on data to change policy, I think what we need to do is start thinking about ways of engaging the younger generation in much like a feedback loop

Rather than focusing exclusively on data to change policy, I think what we need to do is start thinking about ways of engaging the younger generation in much like a feedback loop, where we’re creating the jobs that they want that are also meeting the needs of our current economic climate.

For example, how many young people would want to be part of a green tech movement? I would imagine quite a few. Some of the limitations of progressing with a green tech movement are political interests that are binding that are not their own.

Moving back away from electric vehicles…. I’m really baffled by that. I drive a 2015 Nissan Leaf that I got for $12,000. It costs me no money to drive it. I really don’t understand the hesitation around that. But I’m one person. If we had an entire younger generation pushing for that change through technology and communication, I bet we would see those changes.

The same exists for environmental sustainability in First Nations communities. We don’t even know what development they are considering currently, because we’re not engaging. Engagement is community-driven.

I don’t know where I’m at for time, so I’m just going to stop there.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Perfect timing.

Amna Shah: Great. Thank you, Jody, for your presentation. You mentioned that we live in a post-truth era and that there are messages that can be developed to disrupt some of the harms as a result. And you mentioned that Canada can be a leader in that by developing their own platforms and messages.

In a practical sense, what does that look like? I’m just trying to envision that.

Jody Bauche: In a practical sense, it would include investing in a pilot project.

For, specifically, innovation, there are movements happening in Vancouver already, and I really defer any further questions to the faculty of communication, art and technology, who can speak to some of the things that are developing.

I was not very well educated in technology, and I attended a conference a couple years ago that was put on by the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, which is part of the faculty of communication, art and technology. Their focus, amongst a lot of things, is on human-centred AI.

When I attended that conference, I was very surprised to learn that there are considerations amongst people who are well-educated in tech that things like the internet are broken. Social media is broken.

The reason they say these are broken is because they’re completely controlled by corporate-interest algorithms. Therefore, the way that they were initially constructed and made for use is no longer their function.

So really it’s not a simple solution, but there is the knowledge out there that can help inform a way forward so that we are centring some of these technologies back in a human-centred approach.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation, Jody. You mentioned earlier and you’re talking about the democracy within our First Nations and how they’re all unique and they all have different ways and structures and things like that.

That’s part of the process that we’re having right here, is trying to determine the level of engagement and the level of support for, say, a proportional representation versus first-past-the-post. The last referendum that we had on this — 2018 — the threshold was 60 percent. We didn’t meet that threshold.

Would you support encouraging our First Nations to be able to do the same thing in amongst those groups?

[9:40 a.m.]

Because I know they’re doing that. Some of them are doing it. Some of them…. The new constitutions, new proposals have been put forth to their membership, and they’ve been successful. And some that have been put forth to their band members have been not successful.

Is it something that we should be encouraging them to be looking at as well, knowing that there are areas of

the new constitutions, new proposals have been put forth to their membership, and they’ve been successful. And some that have been put forth to their members and their band members have been not successful. Is it something that we should be encouraging them to be looking at as well, knowing that there are areas of…? I’m not going to say discontent, but there are grumblings, just like there always is, that the majority is not listening to the minority and things like that.

Is that something that you would encourage our First Nations to do — to be able to make sure that they’re actively engaging with their band members and, as they move forward through their processes, that they would be putting the same type of lens on it that we are?

Jody Bauche: Yeah. One of my ideas that I’ve been working on since I did research for the dean’s office at the faculty of communication, art and technology was looking at ways that innovation can be informed by community and, specifically, within First Nations communities.

Their most important relationship is with the federal government. It’s with the Crown, first and foremost. So what we need to develop are technology tools that help provide a more complete picture of what the needs are in individual First Nations communities.

It can become complicated because chiefs and councils are elected based on the Indian Act, and some younger generations are pushing back against colonial limitations of the Indian Act. I’m not arguing that we get rid of it, but I’m arguing that we need community engagement to understand, holistically, the needs within each First Nations community. That includes social needs, includes environmental needs, cultural needs and economic needs.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Can I have a quick supplement?

Thanks for that. Can you see an opportunity where…? Because we’re having so many more government-to-government conversations, consultations, relationship-building with our First Nations in British Columbia, can you see where there should be a greater emphasis on having the provincial government be more responsible for some of the areas that the federal government is now responsible in the Indian Act and with our First Nations? Can you see, if we’re going to be shifting some of the responsibilities around, that the B.C. government should be taking a higher, greater lead role in those relationships?

Jody Bauche: Quite frankly, I don’t know if B.C. is well positioned to do that at the moment. I think there’s been a lot of trust broken with First Nations communities in British Columbia when Bills 14 and 15 were pushed through. I think that was particularly hurtful, because there had been relationships really developed for a long time. So I can’t say that, and I’m not a First Nations leader. I’m a visitor to these lands. I come from a long line of Métis women who supported Indigenous people, but I am not myself in that position.

The reason I’m framing this within the context of SFU’s faculty of communication, art and technology is because I know that they have the tools and the skills needed to develop some of these technologies.

I would also like to acknowledge Chris Lewis, who is our Indigenous lead for SFU, former council member for Squamish First Nation. He also has a vested interest in his Indigenous alumni and the interests of First Nations in British Columbia.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. Part of your presentation, and sort of a theme, is that youth and First Nations can be allies in innovation and that they can actually, through community engagement and through the types of approaches you’ve mentioned, outside of just voting, make a huge contribution to ensuring that that voice is heard.

I wondered, from your perspective, if you have some thoughts on how we build the linkage between that type of community-driven approach and the decision-making structures within the Legislature so that that voice is heard and acted on.

Jody Bauche: Well, one of the questions I would have to you is: where does parliament receive its information from public citizens?

[9:45 a.m.]

I’m wondering about the connection between, for example, media and how that influences parliamentary decisions. I think that that’s where I would go back to, and I would say that if there was an interest in parliament and government to

media and how that influences parliamentary decisions. So I think that that’s where I would go back to, and I would say that if there was an interest in parliament and government to understand First Nations youth interests, it might be through some bit of a similar thing where there’s a trusted media communication source that the government can utilize to help them understand what’s happening.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Great. Thank you so much, Jody, for being here this morning and presenting to our committee. I really appreciate your time.

Next up we have Sonia Furstenau. Good morning, Sonia. Welcome to the committee.

Sonia Furstenau

Sonia Furstenau: Good morning. So delighted to be here, and happy to be part of this very important conversation. Nice to see some familiar faces.

I’m Sonia Furstenau. I am the former leader of the B.C. Green Party. I was MLA for seven years for Cowichan Valley, and before that, I was area director of Shawnigan Lake from 2014 to 2017.

I had ten years in elected office, and I’ve been reflecting a great deal on our systems, on our democracy and on how I think we should all be really oriented always to finding ways to make it better and stronger. The years I was in here, I think there wasn’t a week that went by that I didn’t talk about trust and democracy. That’s going to be a lot of what I talk about today.

My favourite scene from the movie Christopher Robin is when Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher are on the train. Christopher asked Pooh Bear to amuse himself. Pooh starts saying: “House, clouds, house, tree, bush, a man, dog.” Christopher asks him: “Pooh, what are you doing?” “Oh, I’m playing a game,” says Pooh. “It’s called Say What You See.”

Your committee has been tasked with examining and making recommendations related to democratic engagement and voter participation and models for electing MLAs. As much as I can, I’ve been reading the transcripts of the proceedings, and like Pooh Bear, I’d like to say what I’m seeing and what I’ve seen, not just as it relates to this committee but to democracy generally.

Most, certainly not all, but most of the presenters — definitely a bigger majority than any party ever gets in this province…. Most of the people who’ve presented to you have indicated that they would like to see electoral reform that results in a system that is more proportional in its outcome than first-past-the-post, a system in which the votes of everyone count towards some representation in the Legislature.

Many have outlined the problems with first-pass-the-post — mainly that if you’re a voter who did not vote for the winning candidate in your district, then your vote does not translate to representation in the Legislature. I think one of the presenters described this as “voters who are orphaned by this system.”

The presenters advocating for change express hope and optimism that our electoral system could adapt in order to better enfranchise people who make the effort to show up to vote. They’ve expressed concern about the rise of authoritarianism, just as Jody did just now, and concern about the strength and integrity of our own democracy.

We should be worried about democracy. When I’m not watching Winnie-the-Pooh movies, I’m reading Anne Applebaum, whose most recent book, Autocracy, Inc., is a harrowing dive into the cooperation and collaboration of autocrats around the world, the methods that they are using to stifle democratic activity not just in the countries where they rule but in countries all over the world, including ours.

Democracy is an exception to the historical rule of how people are governed. We don’t get it and we don’t keep it by being passive or laissez faire. If we want democracy, we have to continually work at protecting it.

[9:50 a.m.]

One of the reasons I care as much as I do about democracy is because I had an experience as a child. My father, who was born in Germany in 1939, escaped with his mother and sister from what became East Germany after World War II. Twenty-five years later he had the opportunity to attend a psychology conference in Leipzig, and he brought me, his

is because I had an experience as a child. My father, who was born in Germany in 1939, escaped with his mother and sister from what became East Germany after World War II. Twenty-five years later, he had the opportunity to attend a psychology conference in Leipzig, and he brought me, his ten-year-old Canadian-born daughter. We entered East Germany together at the height of the Cold War in 1980.

Nothing has instilled in me a sense of duty and responsibility to protect democracy than my experience as a child of the opposite of democracy. Our passports were taken away from us, people were assigned to follow us everywhere we went, and we were under constant scrutiny. The hope and expectation my dad thinks that the government had, seeing that he was born in the boundaries of East Germany, was that he would trip up and they would have a reason to keep him there.

We can’t take the freedoms and the rights that democracy gives us for granted. Right now, we’re witnessing the failure of a democracy in the U.S. in real time. We should not feel smug or self-righteous about this. We should be thinking very seriously about how we actively strengthen and deepen our own democracy in public institutions.

Many of the presenters have recommended, for example, citizens’ assemblies. This is an example of how we can strengthen democracy by bringing people together to work through big issues that matter.

A constitution, the rule of law, the division of jurisdictions, free and fair elections, an independent press, the rights and responsibilities of citizens — all of these are ideas created by people as a means to how we organize our society. They’re ideas. They’re not something made in nature. So we have to protect them. In the best case, most of us don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking about these ideas. We have been able to take them for granted. That’s what it feels like when our democratic system and institutions are functioning well.

But we know that trust is what makes those ideas have strength. When trust is decreasing…. We know, by numerous measures, that trust in liberal democracies is decreasing around the world. There are consistent efforts being made to erode that trust, both by internal and external forces. When our trust starts to slip, it’s a signal. I said this so many times: that trust is the fabric of democracy. Once the fabric weakens, so too does our belief in the ideas that are the foundation of democracy.

Breaking the constitution in the U.S., as we’re seeing happen over and over again, is breaking an idea. Once that idea is broken, it’s very hard to hold that democratic system together.

What happens when people stop believing? First of all, they stop showing up. Let’s take the most recent provincial election in Ontario. Earlier this year, 45 percent of eligible voters showed up to vote. Less than half of the people who can vote showed up. Just under 41 percent voted for Progressive Conservative candidates. The Progressive Conservatives got 83 out of 123 seats — 67 percent of the seats. That 67 percent of the seats in the Legislature was delivered to that party by 18 percent of eligible voters.

Imagine trying to sell that as a legitimate electoral system. Imagine trying to make the case that one in five voters giving basically a supermajority to one party is a legitimate electoral system. I don’t think you can make that case.

Who would choose the system? People and groups that benefit from concentration of power. Lobbyists. Big industry. Big corporations. Political parties that benefit from these outcomes. People and groups that are focused on power as the outcome of elections. The fewer hands that power is in, the easier it is to influence it.

[9:55 a.m.]

Bill Tieleman loves first-past-the-post. He loves it. This man loves first-past-the-post more than anything. What is Bill Thielman doing? He is a lobbyist. He’s a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry.

hands that power is in, the easier it is to influence it.

Bill Tieleman loves first-past-the-post. He loves it. This man loves first-past-the-post more than anything. What is Bill Tieleman doing? He is a lobbyist. He’s a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry. What makes a lobbyist’s job easier? To be able to speak to as few people as possible in order to influence government decision-making. If a lobbyist has to consider that there are more than one political party that are sharing the responsibility of governing, it makes that lobbyist’s job much harder.

Back to saying what I see. The people who have presented to you who are opposed to democratic reform have leaned into the same tactics that we see more and more in election campaigns — fear. “Here’s what you should be afraid of.”

The people who have been in favour of electoral reform who have presented to you have come to you with hope and optimism. They truly believe that we can make our electoral system, our politics, our culture of governing better in B.C. I hope this is a contrast that you will reflect on: that the people who are advocating for change feel hopeful, want to be a part of making things better.

In addition to all the great ideas and the input that you’ve heard, I’ll add this. Governments need to engage with people in ways that are authentic and truly empowering. I’ve been on the citizen side of so-called engagement, when I knew that the deck was stacked and the outcome was all but determined, and I can tell you it was not an experience that made me feel confident about our democracy and our government.

So the question I hope you will wrestle with as a committee, as elected officials, is this. How do we make sure that the public is at the centre of the work of legislators?

We can start by ensuring that everyone who shows up to vote can know that their vote is part of shaping the distribution of representatives in the Legislature. We raise the bar of the work being done in the Legislature by moving away from the game that I came to call in here Vanquish the Enemy that is the outcome of a winner-take-all first-past-the-post electoral system.

The elections are about a political party trying to win the place of government. But in between the elections, the game that gets played in here too often — not always, but too often — is score points against your enemies, score points against the other side. The public gets lost in this. The public gets forgotten.

When I look back at my time as MLA and area director, it is the work that I did across party lines and across jurisdictions that was the most satisfying and the most effective. I don’t mean being friendly in the hallways or even sitting on committees like this, as much as I appreciate committee work. I mean actually working on things that would deliver outcomes in my riding or in other MLAs’ ridings.

I mean working with the MP, the mayors, the Chief of Cowichan Tribes in the Cowichan Leadership Group. I mean focusing work on how we deliver outcomes. That work was most effectively done across party lines.

I worked with people in the NDP. I worked with people in the B.C. Liberals. I worked with people across every political stripe because I was focused on delivering those outcomes, and that was satisfying work. That is the work that I am most proud of, of what we did while we were in here.

The culture of our current political system and our electoral system is geared towards conflict, getting people to focus on things they disagree on. But when we actually focus on things that we agree on and work towards solving them, we can achieve a great deal more in a great deal less time than what our current political system offers.

A proportional electoral system delivers election results that make people work consistently across party lines, and then the work that is done, collaboratively, has longer staying power.

[10:00 a.m.]

We know about the swing that happens when one party is in power, and they implement a whole bunch of legislation and policies. They get out of power. I know my colleague Elizabeth May has talked about this a lot. The other party gets into power. They undo all the things that the previous party did. They do all of their own things. And then it swings back. We have this consistent policy swing.

When parties work

and a whole bunch of legislation and policies. They get out of power — I know my colleague, Elizabeth May, has talked about this a lot — and the other party gets into power. They undo all the things that the previous party did, they do all of their own things, and then it swings back. We have this consistent policy swing.

When parties work together to determine the best course forward, to determine the best legislation and the best policies, we get far less of that swinging. All the time and energy spent on undoing previous work, doing new work and that getting undone — that is not an effective governance strategy.

We’ve heard a lot about a rural-urban divide on this committee. I want to say that I travelled all over this province as leader, and what I heard from rural communities and what I heard from urban communities was the same. What do the people want, in those communities, from government? They want reliable health care. They want buses. Oh my goodness, if you want to connect rural and urban communities, literally and figuratively, it’s buses. Everybody loves buses.

They want access to good-quality education, early childhood, post-secondary, skills training, and they want protection of water. There’s not that much dividing the people. When you ask them what they want from government, they want the same basic things. Let’s focus on that, not on division but on what people want.

I’ll end with this. A more proportional representation model would ensure that there are representatives and voices, from across party lines, who can advocate for regions more effectively. It can reduce division. Our society, our institutions and our democracy are not static. They shift and change and evolve and transform over time. A 19th-century electoral system is not meeting the challenges and needs of our very complex 21st century. I encourage you to embrace the hope and optimism of the many presenters who have advocated for proportional representation and help our democracy to mature and deepen.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Sonia, for your presentation. We’ll go to questions.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Sonia, for your perspective and information. One question I have to you. You were using Ontario as an example in the last elections. One of the things that we’ve been talking about in the last week or so is voter disengagement and voter numbers, when in reality our numbers are still quite healthy; in the last election, they actually went up.

When you look at other jurisdictions — Scotland comes to mind — they had a significant drop, when everyone likes to use them as an example for proportional representation and of what it can bring for more people to actually be engaged. If your numbers are right, you said that the governing party in Ontario has 67 percent of the seats and that that represents only 18 percent of the actual voters that voted for that as a majority. Is that what you said?

Sonia Furstenau: It’s 18 percent of eligible voters. You only had less than half of voters come out; 45 percent of voters came out, and 40 percent of those voted for the Progressive Conservative Party. What that translates to is 18 percent of the total eligible voters — not everybody who voted — elected a party with 67 percent of the seats.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I understand. So if that was that significant, were there any protests? Were there any significant calls for election reform after that election? Were all the papers and all the legacy media and everybody online, fighting to say that this is totally ridiculous and that we have to change? I’m just asking the question.

Sonia Furstenau: Yeah, this is.... I mean, there was some. The reality is that our baseline is shifting. So no, there wasn’t a big shout for that, but that’s worrying to me as well. I looked at some of the headlines after the Ontario election, and they were like, “Hey, it ticked up slightly from the previous election, where we only had 42 percent turnout.”

Celebrating a 45 percent turnout should be a five-alarm fire bell for us. That is not something that we should be complacent about, shrugging our shoulders at, or saying : “This isn’t that much of a worry.” That, to me, is a signal that our baseline of what we expect from democratic engagement has fallen so low that we aren’t really paying attention to the signal.

[10:05 a.m.]

Consider our society as a body. If we look at symptoms, say that if your heart rate was down around 35 beats a minute, and you said, “Well, you know, I’m kind of used to

our society as a body. And if we look at symptoms…. Say your heart rate was down around 35 beats a minute, and you said: “Oh well, you know, I’m kind of used to that baseline. I don’t really need to get this checked out.” That would be ignoring a very important signal of perhaps a serious health concern in your body.

A 45 percent voter turnout that doesn’t elicit a kind of alarm isn’t: “Oh well, people are okay with that.” It’s: “Uh-oh, we’re not really engaged or caring enough about the health of our democracy.”

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I ran this question before, so if part of the process….

As you’re saying, we’re not getting enough voter turnout, voter engagement, and I think it’s unfair when we start comparing ourselves to Denmark or other European countries that have a fairly strong 80 to 85 percent voter turnout. I don’t think that’s a fair comparison, because it’s not apples to apples. But let’s just say for argument’s sake that we went through the process, either through legislation or however the mechanism is, we bring in a proportional representation of some form, and we do not increase the voter turnout. Would that be a failure, in your eyes?

Sonia Furstenau: Yeah, having campaigned in a couple of elections, often what I hear from people is: “Why would I vote? My vote doesn’t count anyways.” So I would hope that knowing that your vote is actually going to result in determining the representation in the Legislature, that your vote will count towards something, would give people the encouragement they need to get more engaged. I don’t think…. This is not…. Electoral reform is important. It’s not a silver bullet.

You’ve heard about all manners of things, citizens assemblies. I went to the final session of the amalgamation citizens assembly. The people there had spent their weekends, their Saturdays, getting together and looking at amalgamation of Victoria and Saanich. The speeches that they gave at the end of that work made me cry. I mean, they were so enamoured, so excited that they had been part of this process as citizens being asked to contemplate this very serious question about whether there should be amalgamation.

They said that it restored their hope in democracy, that it restored their hope in their community, that it restored their hope in humanity. We benefit so much from positive civic engagement, and under first-past-the-post, our elections are not particularly positive. There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of anger. There’s a lot of telling people that they shouldn’t vote this way. You’ve heard it all.

I would hope that we would see an increase in voter turnout, but I don’t think electoral reform should be seen as the one thing. You’re looking at democratic engagement generally. And you’ve heard a lot from educators, from groups that are advocating for all sorts of ways to improve and increase democratic engagement. People are smart and savvy, and they kind of know when they’re not being engaged legitimately or authentically, and elections feel more and more like that for a lot of people.

What I’ve heard from people over the years is: “I don’t want to waste my vote. I don’t feel like my vote counts. I’ve never voted for the candidate who wins.” It’s very discouraging for people, election after election, to feel this way. So I would hope, yes, that we would see an increase in voter turnout.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Sonia Furstenau. I do want to say I appreciate your service to this province and the many years that you’ve been bringing up really, really good questions in the House and working across party lines to accomplish things for the general public in British Columbia.

[10:10 a.m.]

My question is around referendums and your thoughts about the past, where we are now, some of the questions that have been brought up by presenters and also some of the statements, and where we we’re heading or where we should head. I’ll provide some more detail. We’ve heard from presenters who’ve said implement a proportional

where we are now, some of the questions that have been brought up by presenters and also some of the statements and where we’re heading or where we should head. And I’ll provide some more details.

So we’ve heard from presenters who’ve said: “Implement a proportional representation system. Ask the experts which one’s best for B.C., and just do it. Don’t ask. We don’t want another referendum, because in the past, we’ve had a referendum with 58 percent, and then the last one was way too confusing for everybody.”

My understanding is the voter turnout was very low for that too. So one could argue, well, was it just that confusing that nobody wanted to put a mark on that ballot? Or was it maybe because people didn’t care enough about electoral reform?

So I’m wondering what your thoughts are on bringing it to voters in a very-much-so simplified manner. Because I think what’s evident is we’ve learned a lot from the way that the last referendum rolled out. Or whether you think it’s even necessary and where to go from here and just your general thoughts about that.

Sonia Furstenau: I’ve seen a lot of comments about political culture. MLA Stamer just said: “It’s not fair to compare us to Denmark.” There are countries and jurisdictions that use referenda very commonly. Switzerland, a lot of the U.S. states put referendum questions on their ballots. The population is very used to engaging politically through referenda.

We don’t have that political culture. And one of the things about representative democracy is you elect people to then go and do the work of governing, to do the work of understanding complex policy, understanding legislation. You’re saying, as a society: “Hey, we’re going to send a representative to do that work on behalf of this group of individuals — the people that you all represent.”

So putting a complicated and complex referendum question on electoral systems, as we’ve seen, isn’t, I would say, an effective way to approach changing our electoral system.

I think the analogy that I saw in one of your early presentations was if you want to get a bridge built, you don’t then go out to a referendum. You don’t even get the politicians to weigh in on how you’re going to build that bridge. You get the experts to come back with plans for building that bridge, and you proceed with that.

And then, I think, after a couple of elections under a proportional system, once people have had the chance to be able to compare and try it out, then asking the question: should we continue this way? You’re getting a far more informed response.

But there are other ways of measures. Do we see increased turnout? Do we see better civic engagement? Do we see elections that are more about visions and ideas and platforms and less about fear and anger and the kind of elections that we’re seeing more and more?

So short answer: no, I don’t think we should have a referendum. The longer answer is, you know, we should always be considering the questions, as I said in my presentation, of how do we deepen the connection of public to the work of legislators and government in ways that are really authentic and really empowering of people.

A citizens’ assembly is such a great example of that, because people get to become very informed and experts on a topic and then get to give advice. That is an example of really empowering engagement. Asking people to tick boxes or rate one to five on an online survey does not feel like particularly empowering engagement.

So finding ways that we’re actually strengthening and building the fabric, that trust, that connection, community. Democracies really are meant to be about: how do we have people the most engaged they can be in the decisions that are made about how we coexist in society?

[10:15 a.m.]

So always asking that question of ourselves: are we effectively engaging and embracing the wider public, the people we serve, when we’re doing the work in here and the work on policy and legislation?

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Sonia, for your presentation and for your service to the Legislature and to the public. One of the things you were

people we serve when we’re doing the work in here and the work on policy and legislation.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Sonia, for your presentation and for your service to the Legislature and to the public. One of the things you were pointing out was that many people are concerned about the same issues.

Now, when I knocked on my 14,000 doors in Prince George–North Cariboo with my team, the current things we were hearing, of course, was health care, as you pointed out. But a big one that we were also hearing was infrastructure, road and bridge construction, resource extraction, and making resource extraction much more easy — getting shovels in the ground, getting people to work — because it was economy and jobs as a priority. Part of that would be ending DRIPA. That came up over and over and over again at the doors. It was a huge, huge thing.

Yet when we look at the structure of our Westminster parliamentary system, which has basically two sides of the House, you have government, and you have opposition. That’s what you have. So you don’t have, really, anything but a choice in that: aye or nay. In developing legislation, certainly you have the opportunity to tweak things and collaborate and discuss and have committees and meet with people to determine views.

So given the structures we’re in, given the divergence of views on some of these things from region to region — and I would postulate that they are significantly different in different regions of this province — how do you parse that? Especially in a system where if you have the public with a centre mushy middle, where people are this or that, against a political structure where people are not in the mushy middle, but they are increasingly at the edges, when you have proportional representation structures, you can end up with the same kinds of problems you have with first-past-the-post, I would say. I think history supports that, and I wonder what you would say about those points.

Sonia Furstenau: Yeah, a couple of things.

I’m interested…. Like Suzanne Anton’s presentation when she talked about how our economy is struggling and when you point out that people are concerned about infrastructure, all of that is under a first-past-the-post system.

I would take this back to the comments I made in the presentation. When we make big decisions…. Look at the Massey Tunnel. The B.C. Liberal government made the decision to replace that tunnel with a bridge. This is such a concrete example when we’re talking about infrastructure. And then the B.C. NDP government came in and said: “No, we’re not going to do the bridge replacement. We’re going to go back to expanding the tunnel.” And now here we are — what is it, nine? — eight years later, and we still have the same tunnel. We still have the same infrastructure gridlock that we had ten years ago.

When you have more…. I’d say that our electoral system has a lot of influence on the culture of governance and the culture of how we operate in here. So if there was a requirement that there be more cooperation and collaboration across party lines, you would get less of this, you know, one party makes a decision while they’re in government, the other party undoes that decision. You’d have longer-term thinking.

And this is some of the research that comes from longitudinal studies of proportional governments versus first-past-the-post governments. You do get a longer-term view of decision-making that brings you less of the backing and forthing and toing and froing that we see.

When it comes to what you’re talking about, the mushy middle and people being pushed to the sides, I think often people get pushed to the sides when they feel a real dissatisfaction. That’s what generates kind of more extremist views. And I think that what we should be asking ourselves is: are we creating the conditions in which people feel like their government is delivering effectively on what they want? Are we creating conditions where we can have truly informed conversations?

[10:20 a.m.]

Jody was just talking here about misinformation and disinformation, about the communication strategies that are happening. And we get people who have algorithms that push them

on what they want, right?

Are we creating the conditions where we can have truly informed conversations? Jody was just talking here about misinformation and disinformation, about the communication strategies that are happening, and we get people who have algorithms that push them further and further and further into corners where they’re starting to see the world from a very specific perspective.

And again, I would highly recommend Anne Appelbaum’s book on autocracy because she has a whole chapter on the ways in which autocratic forces are actually using media and social media to drive this kind of extremism and polarization in democratic countries like Canada. Having forums where we can all be in spaces together, be hearing information that is reliable, that is honest, that is truthful, that can help pull people out from those edges and back to a place where we might have some disagreements on some pieces of things, but we can find a lot of consensus.

We can actually recognize that acknowledging that Indigenous people have human rights and that we should be operating from a human rights starting place that DRIPA starts from for Indigenous peoples. That’s an important piece of who we are as a country and as a province. We should be proud that we’ve made that kind of progress in our society, in our democracy, in our recognition of history, in our recognition of the harms and in shaping together a vision for a future that ensures that our economy is actually effectively serving the communities where those resources are being extracted.

From my point of view, I think when we look at the volume of extraction that’s happening and the very small revenues that come to government from that extraction…. Mining, oil and gas and forestry combined account for less than 4 percent of government revenues. So, you know, that’s a question we should be really asking ourselves. Where is the wealth going? Whose hands is that wealth going into? Is it staying in communities? Is it moving out of communities?

When we look at the foreign ownership of so much of the resource extraction, companies that are operating in B.C., we should be having serious conversations about that. How do we ensure that the benefits of our resources are first and foremost going to the communities where those resources are coming from, including Indigenous communities, but also all communities.

When you see a kind of impoverishment that’s happening in areas where enormous wealth of resources are being extracted, and that happens again and again, and once that wealth is extracted, the mill shuts down, the mine shuts down, the mess is left for taxpayers to clean up. We have so many examples of that. We should be asking ourselves: what’s wrong with this system? How do we collectively come together to make sure that we’re operating far more effectively as a province and as a community?

What happens is we get polarized. These people are against resource extraction. These people are for resource extraction. They can’t talk to each other. There’s no mushy middle left, and we’re just going to stand in our corners and yell at each other. That doesn’t serve the public or the province in the long term. It harms. So how do we be less harmful? One of those ways, I used to call it, everyone to the table. Let’s hear from people who disagree with each other. Let’s try to find that middle ground, that consensus that actually moves us to a better place.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you for your answer.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): We just have one final question from MLA Botterell.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for the presentation.

Earlier we talked about voter turnout. Of course, we’ve had from presenter studies that show that voter turnout increases under proportional representation systems compared to first-past-the-post. But it strikes me in listening to the presentation, the discussion, that there’s another benefit, even if turnout didn’t increase. Certainly we’ve got studies received on this too that the degree of polarization is reduced and the degree of collaboration is increased under proportional representation.

[10:25 a.m.]

Then we’ve heard from some MLAs and some presenters, “Oh my gosh. You can’t look at Europe. You can’t look because it’s not the same; it’s different culture,” and so on. So the question I have is could you reflect on your time

the degree of collaboration is increased under proportional representation.

Then we’ve heard from some MLAs and some presenters: “Oh, my gosh. You can’t look at Europe. You can’t look, because it’s not the same. It’s a different culture.” And so on.

The question I have is: could you reflect on your time in the Legislature, in both a majority government and in a government where the Green caucus was in an accord with the government, and what your experience was of collaboration under those different scenarios?

Sonia Furstenau: Yeah, thanks for the question. I’ve reflected so much on this.

I’m going to give some specific examples of the 2017 to 2020 period, when we were in a minority situation, and this Legislature faced some pretty significant crises during that time.

One being that the Speaker of the Legislature released a report on the Clerk that had some very serious allegations about wrongdoing by the Clerk of this House. As members of the Legislature — and I was one of the House Leaders — we had to…. I remember so many times in this room. This room was, like, the only time I’ve ever seen LAMC meetings being held with the entire press gallery at the back of this room with their cameras on.

We had to navigate some very complex challenges through that time. But what the three House Leaders agreed on…. We actually — historically, I think, the first time that this ever happened — the three House Leaders, held press conferences together. Mike Farnworth, Mary Polak and I would stand together and hold press conferences about our commitment to protecting the integrity of this institution and to making sure that we were proceeding in a way that was as open and transparent and accountable as possible.

I think we navigated that incredibly well. I think the benefit of that period and what you all benefit from is the extraordinary leadership of your current Clerk, Kate Ryan-Lloyd, who has really put the well-being of this Legislature at the forefront of her work, and she’s bringing the public in at the forefront of her work. I’m so delighted.

The next crisis we faced was — well, we faced a lot of crises — the pandemic. So March 2020, you all remember, everything shut down. We had a one-day legislative session in here with 12 MLAs in the chamber, all of us sitting as far apart as we possibly could. We passed, in the course of one day, a $2 billion supplemental spending bill so that the province could respond to a global pandemic in effective and efficient ways. I’m moved even thinking about it, the way that across all three party lines, we stood up and spoke to our commitment to protecting the people of B.C., to ensuring that health care workers and frontline people had the best supports they could possibly have, that we would navigate this in a way that was really putting public interest at the forefront of everything.

People at that time felt so proud of this place. There are news stories, and there’s a lot of things on the record, where people express, like: “I’m so proud that this is how this Legislature is navigating this. Look at these people working together on my behalf.” That sense of collaboration, I’ve talked to MLAs from both of the other parties about that. We feel really proud of that.

That was a time, I think — you know, satisfaction with government at the time, people feeling like they had faith in their government and their democracy, was quite high. Then we came back in a majoritarian situation, where the NDP had 57 percent of the seats.

[10:30 a.m.]

It was so devastating to me to see all of that foundation, that culture of collaboration and cooperation, just gone. Just gone. And it made me so sad that we so quickly slip back to what a first-past-the-post system

that culture of collaboration and cooperation, just gone. Just gone. It made me so sad that we so quickly slipped back to what a first-past-the-post system delivers, which is the game of vanquish your enemy.

There was even a conversation I had once with a minister where I was proposing that we, as a caucus, could help specifically on a topic. He said: “Oh, we used to do that in the minority, but we don’t collaborate or cooperate that way anymore.” But we got better outcomes. We got longer-lasting outcomes. We had a public who felt better about the decisions that were being made.

I’m one of the rare people that has existed in both of these scenarios, that sat at both of the negotiating tables after two different elections, and I am convinced that if we have an electoral system and a political culture that actually engenders the best in people, that brings out the best in people, we will do such good work.

But when our political culture and our electoral system is really about winner-take-all — we have a lot of winner-take-all in the world right now, and it’s not working so great — it pulls us to our lesser angels. I think, ideally, it’s our better angels that should be guiding us in the work we do on behalf of the citizens that we represent. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Sonia. Thank you for your presentation today, for taking our questions and for your service in this Legislature and to the people of British Columbia.

Next up, we have Jason and Jerry Song from TwinTalk Politics. Welcome, Jason and Jerry. If you could just introduce yourselves as you speak, so Hansard knows who’s on which mic. Thank you.

Jason Song: I’m Jason.

Jerry Song: I’m Jerry.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): You can begin when you’re ready.

TwinTalk Politics

Jason Song: In 2017, two young boys trailed behind their immigrant mother as she stepped into a polling station — her first time voting as a Canadian citizen. That day they witnessed something sacred: democracy in motion. Hundreds of constituents lined up shoulder to shoulder, bound by nothing but a single shared belief that their voice mattered.

Jerry Song: And so the boys stood there, eyes wide, hearts full, believing that one day they too would step behind that booth and help shape the future. But one year passed, then another, then another, then six more — no vote, no voice. Those two boys were us.

Jason Song: Good morning, hon. Members of the Legislative Assembly and all those in attendance today. We wanted to take a moment on behalf of youth across B.C. to thank you for this incredible opportunity to come here and speak with you today. Our names are Jason…

Jerry Song: …and Jerry Song, and we’re the co-directors of Vote16 B.C. As you guys can probably guess, we’re twins, unfortunately. To save you guys furthermore from the struggle of guessing who is who, I am the unanimously agreed better-looking one. That’s Jason, the poor-looking one. Yeah, there we go.

We’re here to speak about an issue that we, alongside countless youth across the province, are so passionate about, which is extending the voting age to 16. To be more concise and clear in our speech today, we’ll focus on three key sections.

[10:35 a.m.]

Jason Song: First, we’ll share how we became involved with Vote16 and why empowering youth in Canadian politics isn’t just important but essential to a stronger democracy. Second, we’ll delve into the structural case for extending the age to 16- and 17-year-olds in terms of voting. Finally, we’ll outline our recommendations to the wonderful MLAs here and the Legislative Assembly as a whole, steps we believe can help make democratic inclusion a reality for thousands of youth across B.C.

Jerry Song: But first, how did we get here? Our passion for politics and giving back to the place we’ve called home culminated in the immense privilege of volunteering at our local MP’s office

here and the Legislative Assembly as a whole, steps we believe that can help make democratic inclusion a reality for thousands of youth across B.C.

Jerry Song: But first, how did we get here? Our passion for politics and giving back to the place we’ve called home culminated in the immense privilege of volunteering at our local MP’s office, where we got to see, firsthand, the inner workings of government up close, whether it be through reading correspondence, analyzing policy documents and tracking constituent concerns.

But what stood out was a glaring gap: the absence of youth. No emails from young people. Few issues raised on their behalf. Their voices and opinions were largely, if not completely, absent from any political conversation.

Jason Song: And that absence raised a deeper question. Why aren’t there more youth voices at the table? And I think that question sparked our non-partisan podcast, TwinTalk Politics — twins talking about politics — where we interview parliamentarians all across Canada and all across the political stripe on the issues most prevalent to youth. In every conversation, we ask a simple question.

Jerry Song: How can young people play a more active role in our democracy today? After interviewing 25 elected federal officials across four different parties and across five different provinces and territories, one answer rises above the rest: extending the voting age to 16.

Jason Song: So that leads us to our present, today, where we’re leading municipal and provincial campaigns to foster a more inclusive, youth-engaged democracy.

But I want to note that this movement far, far extends beyond just the two of us here today. Over the past few years, Vote16 B.C. has worked tirelessly across British Columbia, launching municipal campaigns from Vernon to Vancouver to Saanich to Victoria. And the result?

Jerry Song: Fourteen municipalities — with Squamish voicing their support just yesterday — and school boards have passed motions supporting the right of 16- and 17-year-olds to vote.

In fact, support already spans every level, from a majority vote at the 2019 UBCM convention to a Vote16 bill raised three times in the Legislature to 77 federal MPs and Bill S-222 in the Senate right now from Senator McPhedran.

Jason Song: The momentum is undeniable. Key endorsements listed in our submitted joint statement range from the B.C. Federation of Students to Fair Vote Canada to Surrey Board of Trade to the B.C. Federation of Labour and many, many more. The message is clear that youth deserve a voice now.

Jerry Song: And we’re not alone on the world stage. Seventeen different countries, from Austria to Argentina to Germany to several cities in the States, have already trusted 16-year-olds with the right to vote at some level of government.

So why not Canada, and why not B.C.? At this point, we know that it’s possible, and we know it’s being supported locally, provincially and also globally. Now, the question becomes: why does this even matter?

Jason Song: Because Vote16 isn’t just about changing and lowering a number. It’s about strengthening our democracy by empowering youth. And make no mistake, young people are engaged right now. Elections Canada found that 16- and 17-year-olds are just as politically interested, if not more so, than today’s eligible voters.

So if that’s true, that begs the question: why is it the case that in recent years, Canada has seen such a significant decline in youth voter turnout rates?

Jerry Song: The answer isn’t apathy, laziness or that we’re just too lazy scrolling on our TikToks all day but rather a problem with motivation. When 16- and 17-year-olds are locked out of the democratic process and their concerns ignored by an arbitrary age limit, there’s very little incentive for youth to engage or speak out on the issues that matter to them.

Jason Song: And importantly, this exclusion creates a vicious, self-repeating cycle where youth feel unheard, they begin to disengage, and then, ironically, they’re blamed for their very own silence. But you see, they didn’t stop caring. The system stopped caring about them.

Jerry Song: This exclusion doesn’t just delay their participation. It erodes it. According to Elections Canada, 16- and 17-year-olds are now less likely to believe voting will make a difference, more likely to feel that the government doesn’t care what they think and less inclined to vote later in life. This arbitrary line doesn’t protect democracy; it completely erases its future.

[10:40 a.m.]

Jason Song: Let’s take the 2021 federal election as a case in point. Voter turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds was just 47 percent compared to 75 percent for those aged 65-74. It’s been a couple of weeks off school, but if our math is still right, that’s a staggering 28-point gap.

Jerry Song: And that gap has real consequences, evidenced by the political agenda leaning heavily towards the concerns of the older voters, while the youth concerns, like post-secondary costs and mental health, were largely neglected.

To be clear, every issue matters, but so does every voice.

That’s a staggering 28-point gap, and that gap has real consequences, evidenced by the political agenda leaning heavily towards the concerns of the older voters, while the youth concerns, like post-secondary costs and mental health, were largely neglected. To be clear, every issue matters, but so does every voice.

Jason Song: What we’re trying to say here is that keeping the voting age at 18 completely sidelines a generation who is ready, eager and informed to vote now.

Jerry Song: With that, we’ll transition into the second part, the structural reasons why we should extend the voting age to 16. But first, we need to challenge the very lens through which this debate is often conceived.

Jason Song: When a critic says, “Oh, I just don’t see enough of a reason to lowering the voting age,” they’re putting the burden of proof on youth to justify their inclusion. But that’s not how voting rights work in Canada. We’re going to show, through two arguments, why the default should be presumed inclusion and why the burden should always rest on the state to justify exclusion.

First of all, section 3 of the Canadian Charter guarantees that every citizen has the right to vote in an election. And intuitively, 16- and 17-year-olds are citizens — full stop. But secondly, and probably more convincingly, in the 2019 Supreme Court case of Frank v. Canada, which challenged the exclusion of long-term expats from voting, the court ruled decisively in favour of inclusion, stating…

Jerry Song: …“Voting is a fundamental political right. Any limit must be subject to the strictest scrutiny and justified by compelling reasons.” And that ruling set a powerful precedent.

In Canada, the electorate is presumed to have the right to vote. The default is inclusion, not exclusion, and the onus is on the government to prove why 16- and 17-year-olds should be excluded, not the other way around.

But let’s, for some time, neglect the law and just assume that’s not true and present four independent arguments as to why 16- and 17-year-olds actually deserve a right to vote.

First, 16-year-olds are equal to adults in terms of maturity. And you don’t need to believe us. Believe science. Dr. Steinberg, a world-leading expert in adolescence, found that by age 16, the maturity and judgment needed to vote are fully developed. But it’s not only science. Our government already implicitly agrees that 16-year-olds are competent. At 16, if you can drive, marry, pay taxes, be tried as an adult, even vote in party leadership races at 14, and in some cases 12, you can vote.

Jason Song: But secondly, just on a level of intuition, I think it makes a whole lot of sense. Wouldn’t we all agree that people should have a say in things that affect them? Well, issues like student loans will impact us the most. Climate change will impact us the most. The housing epidemic and the evolving job market aren’t just some distant issues for youth. They’re our daily lived realities. And I think it’s only fair that those most affected at least, at the very least, have a voice in the decisions that disproportionately impact their lives.

Thirdly, 16-year-olds aren’t just ready to vote. They do it well and competently. In countries like Austria, Belgium and Germany, where the voting age is 16, research has consistently shown that youth match adults in the quality of vote, casting their ballots just as thoughtfully and independently. In fact, they often make choices that much more closely align with their values and long-term interests.

I think the evidence is beyond clear. When given the chance, young voters rise to meet and often exceed the democratic standard.

Jerry Song: Fourthly, lowering the voting age to 16 strengthens democracy by amplifying youth voices and boosting total voter turnout. Let’s look at our neighbours in Takoma Park, Maryland. When the voting age became 16, turnout among the under-18-year-old voters was four times higher than any other voting block — four times. And this influence doesn’t just stop with youth. It ripples through households and hallways alike.

There are two powerful domino effects that stem from Vote 16. First is the trickle-up effect. When young people vote, they talk about it with their parents, with their grandparents, teachers, around the dinner table, in car rides home. And those conversations boost turnout across entire generations.

Jason Song: Secondly, the trickle-down effect. In classrooms, at lunch tables, group chats, voting becomes contagious. When youth are enfranchised, they engage their peers, inspiring even the quietest, most disengaged student to actually start paying attention and, more importantly, show up at the ballot box.

[10:45 a.m.]

We’ve seen this happen before. In past student vote programs, 90 percent of parents said that the program gave their family more opportunities to learn about elections and politics. Fifty-eight percent reported a boost in their own interest in politics, and 28 admitted that their child’s participation directly influenced their own decision to vote.

percent of parents said that the program gave their family more opportunities to learn about elections and politics, 58 percent reported a boost in their own interest in politics, and 28 percent admitted that their child’s participation directly influenced their own decision to vote.

Jerry Song: But this impact wasn’t just felt at home. A hundred percent of teachers said that they would participate in a student vote again, and 96 percent said that it made them more confident in teaching government and civics.

Jason Song: And all this, sparked by a mock ballot in a smelly old school gym.

Now imagine what a real one could do, when it actually decides their future.

Jerry Song: Lastly, it fosters lifelong voters.

You might have the question, why should we lower the voting age when many 18-year-olds are now not even voting? The answer lies in the first-vote effect. Those who cast a ballot in their first eligible election are dramatically more likely to become lifelong voters.

At 16, youth are grounded in their communities. They actually understand their local issues and have the support networks that make those sometimes difficult voting conversations much easier. Contrast that with 18-year-olds. Many are in transition, away from home, disconnected, not even on the voting list of their new riding and exponentially more likely not to vote in that first election, and then the second and, with it, the habit of voting for life.

Jason Song: Finally, we’d like to turn to our recommendations.

We hope this committee will recommend the extension of voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds in school trustee elections, municipal elections and ultimately provincial elections. However, we want to take a step back and, in all honesty, recognize that immediately extending the voting age to 16 at the provincial level may feel like a leap for some citizens who may still remain skeptical.

Jerry Song: While full provincial enfranchisement remains our long-term vision, we believe that meaningful change can actually begin at a smaller scale. Just like Toronto is now exploring, we propose initially allowing 16-year-olds to vote in city-level decisions. This looks like neighbourhood polls, school trustee elections and municipal council elections. As communities witness and grow comfortable with youth participation, expanding this right provincial-wide will not only become feasible but, I think, inevitable.

Jason Song: Notice that just seeing Vote16 in action changes minds. When citizens see young people firsthand at polls energized, informed and engaged, something shifts.

I mean, just look at Scotland. In 2011, fewer than one-third of adults supported Vote16. But after 16- and 17-year-olds were allowed to vote in the 2014 independence referendum experimentally, public support from adults doubled to 60 percent. In fact, the experiment was so successful that the Scottish Parliament voted unanimously to make the change permanent and extended it to all future Scottish elections.

Jerry Song: What’s even the worst case? This could just be a trial period. Try it for one election, where in the unlikely event that youth don’t turn out, they feel more disempowered or see that their concerns are ignored, then yes, the system can be re-evaluated. But we cannot measure support nor understand its true impact if we never even have the courage to try.

Hon. members of the special committee, although youth may only be 30 percent of our current demographic, they are 100 percent of our future.

Jason Song: Please, council, don’t let a policy of our past dictate our future. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Jason and Jerry — really appreciate that.

Do we have any questions?

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Jason and Jerry, for your enthusiastic and highly coordinated presentation. I’ve seen many presentations from young people in my time as a post-secondary educator, and I’ve got to say it’s nice to see one, and it’s refreshing to see one, that’s so well prepared. So kudos to you.

A couple of points I wanted to raise and ask about…. Of course, this is all about the restriction under section 3 of the Charter, which is that people under 18 aren’t able to vote. That was put before the Supreme Court of Canada. It was not heard; it was refused. I think it was 2004 or 2006, something like that.

Now, one of the things about elections is they don’t happen every year. Even were the electoral age lowered to 16, it might well be a four-year gap before someone who was 16 in the year of an election, assuming before the election…. They wouldn’t be voting until they were 20 anyway. That would be the case for most people who are 16.

[10:50 a.m.]

What do you say to that? I mean, it’s the same with any age level. There’s this distance between elections. And of course there are staggered things like some municipal and regional district, school district and all this. Sometimes these are staggered; sometimes they’re not.

We recently had some issues where, because of how our structure works, in which you can call an election at any time in our Westminster

same with any age level, there’s this distance between elections. And of course, there are staggered things like some municipal and regional districts, school districts and all this. Sometimes these are staggered; sometimes they’re not.

We recently had some issues where because of how our structure works, in which you can call an election at any time in our Westminster parliamentary system, fixed election dates aren’t really a real thing. That’s more of an imitation of an American-style system, which this is not.

Anyway, I just wondered what your comments were on that. I’ll address them to Jason or Jerry.

Jason Song: Thank you for that great question. As you said in your comment, as well, obviously, it’s not up to our control, and obviously, if you’re 18, you might have to wait four years until you vote again.

But as we sort of stated in our speech, towards the end, we wanted to outline, again, what the first-vote effect does and why it’s so important, as Jerry said — why voting at 16 is so exponentially better than voting at 18. Because when you’re at 16, you’re much more likely to be in your home community, and then, what that means is that you have support networks like parents, teachers to talk to.

What the conclusion of the argument is, is that you’re much more likely to vote when you’re 16 compared to 18. When you don’t vote in that first election, you’re unlikely going to keep voting in future elections.

I want to supplement this with some material that we have. Research shows that those who cast a ballot in their first eligible election are 13 percent more likely to continue voting and dramatically more likely to become lifelong voters. The conclusion of this is that it doesn’t just help the youth; it’s a benefit towards all democracy.

I want to look at right now…. Even if you don’t lower it to 16, let’s look at the difference between 18- and 19-year-olds. A study in Denmark found that even between 18- and 19-year-olds, every extra month of age resulted in a significant decline in the first-vote effect. So even if we look to our current demographic, not voting earlier is a huge detriment to fostering lifelong voters.

Jerry Song: And yeah, just to supplement this. As Jason said, it’s been a couple of weeks since school has come off, so our math is a bit rusty still. But just mathematically speaking, you are much more likely to actually cast a ballot in an election if you lower the voting age to 16.

So let’s just say an election happens every four years. Right now, you have like a 25 percent chance of following it on if you’re 18. But now, from 16 to 18, now you have like a 50 percent chance of actually being able to cast a ballot.

Supplement that with everything Jason just talked about. The first-vote effect — it’s exponentially more likely you’re going to be able to vote in an election, and you’re exponentially more likely to vote in every subsequent election.

We completely understand that it’s out of our control to decide what year elections fall on, but we’d much rather have the possibility of 16-year-olds voting, in the case an election falls on a year that 16-year-olds do actually get the chance to vote, than not.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): I take it that your campaign is municipal, provincial and federal. So should the age change at all levels, then if you miss one opportunity, usually how it works is every year there’s another election. It’s something.

So my question is that earlier today, and actually throughout this committee work, we’ve been talking to folks about the school curriculum and what kids are learning and: are people learning what they don’t remember? What really set with me is a lot of us folks talking about it have been out of the system for decades. So we might not have that front-line experience of what you’re actually learning.

So, I’d love to hear from you about what you feel about the civics education that you received in high school and what you would see as improvements that we could suggest to make to help students learn about civics better.

Jason Song: Sure, and Jerry, you can come in whenever you want.

I think we’ve definitely been tuning into a lot more of the committee, and we heard a lot of people speaking about the area of civic education, and we just wanted to share a few thoughts.

In our opinion, Vote16 and civic education actually go hand in hand and we’re going to make the argument that if you extend the voting age to 16, civic education and the quality of education goes up dramatically. When youth are trusted with a vote, schools are likely to take civics a lot more seriously. Right now in BC, civic education is often treated as optional or secondary.

I’ll present a fact here. In fact, over 60 percent of youth aged 18 to 29 say that they don’t even remember being taught how government works or how to engage in their communities.

Jerry Song: Lowering the voting age completely changes that, because suddenly, students are no longer part of the future voters and think: “Oh, I’m not going to be voting, so why should I even listen to any of the content that happens?” They’re current ones. And when that shift happens, teachers have to step up. They feel empowered, supported and responsible.

[10:55 a.m.]

As we shared earlier, there’s a crazy statistic: 96 percent of teachers said that it made them more confident teaching civics in government when their students could actually cast a vote. And remember, that vote was just a fake vote. That didn’t actually contribute to anything. So that’s a crazy statistic just to put into perspective how important teachers seeing that the students are actually voting in real life can make.

said it made them more confident teaching civics in government when their students could actually cast a vote.

Remember, that vote was just a fake vote. That didn’t actually contribute to anything. So that’s a crazy statistic just to put into perspective how important teachers seeing that students are actually voting in real life can be.

Jason Song: We’ve seen this work elsewhere as well. In Austria, after the voting age was lowered to 16, schools responded with a lot more structured, rigorous civic education. Teachers reported greater motivation and a stronger sense of duty to actually prepare their students for participation in democracy.

Jerry Song: Just through tuning into other conversations that the committee has hosted before, we know one of the major questions about civic education is: how do we ensure that we get rid of the biases that teachers can implicitly project onto students?

But the truth is that teachers in B.C. are already obligated to remain non-partisan. Yes, like parents, peers and social media, they will still inevitably carry personal perspectives. But that’s not a reason to avoid teaching civics. I would often say it’s a reason to do it better. In fact, the very nature of teaching them about civics makes them less prone to the misinformation or the personal biases that may come off implicitly when the content literally being taught them is how to effectively discern between real and fake news or biases and whatnot.

I think for what content is being taught, this committee provides a perfect blueprint for this: people across different political lines, setting aside partisanship, bringing in experts and working together to determine what is the most effective curriculum for students of all ages. I think that’s a model we should probably see in classrooms, and Vote 16 is definitely the catalyst to make it all happen.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I want to circle back to and follow up on a question my colleague MLA Clare raised and you discussed. You’d mentioned in your presentation the idea of phasing it in, I guess.

You’ve also mentioned the fact that by knowing that the voting age will be reduced to 16 for a particular election, that increases the student interest in learning about their responsibilities and so on. So I just wanted to understand what your thoughts are on another scenario, which is that the committee could recommend that we move the age to 16 for all future elections, whether they’re local or provincial. In doing so, the first opportunity of 16-year-olds to vote would be in next year’s 2026 local government elections and then the provincial and so on.

What do you think of that approach, given the importance of civics in preparation for that?

Jason Song: Thank you for that question. As we stated in our presentation, obviously the big goal and the most wonderful outcome would be to extend the voting age to 16- and 17-year-olds in all levels of government. That’s municipal, local and provincial.

But sort of the facet that we had there was we understand that it’s a very contentious issue, as we’ve seen in all levels of government. We understand that constituents and citizens might be very opposed to it. So the progress of…. If we were just to say, “Let’s lower it at all levels of government,” it might face a huge amount of backlash.

That’s why we think…. If there is a huge amount of backlash, we think it actually might be more feasible and more realistic to start off with more local elections and for constituents and people to see that youth are engaged, they’re willing to vote, and they’re informed to vote. Then, using that support, build that up to provincial and also federal.

But if we want to start provincial and federal, that would also be amazing.

Rob Botterell: Well, I think we’re not making recommendations to the federal government yet. But I guess we could. I don’t know. Our terms of reference are pretty broad.

But we could recommend, for example, legislation that would reduce the voting age to 16 and 17 for the next local elections, and then we could make the decision to expand it subject to a review afterwards.

[11:00 a.m.]

But we could put in the legislation, just like you said. Who’s got the onus, where we say it will proceed provincially unless the government decides not to. So then the onus is to demonstrate why not to do it.

Jerry Song: Yeah, that would be wonderful.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): A final question from MLA Shah.

Amna Shah: Thank you so much, Jason and Jerry, for your presentation.

provincially, unless the government decides not to. Then, people, the onus is to demonstrate why not to do it.

Jerry Song: Yeah, that would be wonderful, yeah.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you. A final question.

Amna Shah: Thank you so much, Jason and Jerry, for your presentation. Are your parents in the gallery today?

Some Voices: Yes.

Amna Shah: Oh, hello.

Well, I’m sure they must be very proud of the way that you both present yourselves and the content and the thoughts behind your arguments. I found it to be very insightful, and I’m so pleased to see that you both, at your age, are so invested in this cause. Thank you for that.

I have two questions for you. The first one is a very brief one. How did you find out that you could volunteer at your MP’s office?

Jerry Song: I guess I can give the very long back story to why we started volunteering at our MP’s office. Despite the fact that we seem very harmonious right now, in our youthful past, we used to argue quite a bit. When we were very young, we used to argue about anything. It would range from who would get the last cookie to who needs to take out the garbage. I guess that’s a perk with living with a twin.

Then my parents, obviously — especially my mom, sitting over there — didn’t really want our debates to happen inside the house. She kind of threw us into debate. That was when we finally.... We really fell in love with it. It gave our arguments a more formal manner. We weren’t just screaming at each other to see who could scream louder than each other. Much to my mom’s delight, probably, we were arguing with each other, instead of against each other. That was another positive, definitely, for her.

It was through debate that we really faced a lot of different issues, like prevailing societal issues, philosophical problems. What sparked the most interest for both Jason and me were government issues — specifically, recommendations to how we can alter how our government is functioning as of the moment.

Through that, I guess, as I mentioned a little bit in our speech, I think our parents, my mom and dad over there, really instilled in us just to give back to our community as much as possible. I think that culminated in us volunteering for our local MP, which has been the catalyst for all our political work, whether it be our podcast or our advocacy right now.

Amna Shah: That’s great. Thank you. I would say you’re very lucky to have grown up in such a supportive household. That has really challenged you to step outside of the bickering and the arguing and to constructively work on certain items. There are a lot of kids who actually don’t have that opportunity, and many of them may not feel like they’re informed enough to make a decision — which means that sometimes they are then vulnerable to misinformation, disinformation, all sorts of information that could alter their decision.

We had a presentation, from a previous presenter, about a teenager’s hot cognition ability. You’re nodding, because you probably know what that’s about. I’m wondering.... I’ll frame the question this way: why not make civic education mandatory in schools, within the K-to-12 curriculum?

Then once that’s done — and students have the opportunity to be able to learn about or acquire various different types of competency, including critical learning skills, the types of deliberation skills that you both have, and the debating skills you both have — they can get into a ballot booth with confidence and feel like they can do that. Or do you think that youths, 16 years old and up, already have that?

Jason Song: Yeah, for sure. I think definitely our stance would be to start off with Vote16 and extend the voting age to 16. I think Mr. Dave Meslin spoke on this as well. I guess, coming back to our previous answer, we believe that if you extend the voting age to 16, that has implicit and trickle-down benefits to the civic education curriculum, in and of itself.

[11:05 a.m.]

I wanted to take a moment to address your concern — or the concerns of many people: the idea that 16-year-olds are often impressionable to vote. You know, they might be influenced by third-party sources and make the wrong vote. We sort of wanted to address that.

Some argue that 16-year-olds are just too impressionable to vote, but I think influence has never disqualified anyone

I wanted to take a moment to address your concern or the concerns of many people, which is the idea that 16-year-olds are often impressionable to vote, you know, they might be influenced by third-party sources and make the wrong vote. We sort of wanted to address that. Some argue that 16-year-olds are just too impressionable to vote, but I think influence has never disqualified anyone from participating in democracy.

I can make the same argument that the majority of adults today have very little idea of what is happening in government, yet they’re still allowed and eligible to vote. Adults are influenced every day by party loyalty, by media outlets, by peers or even misinformation, yet no one questions their right to cast a ballot. So I think the issue was never about influence. And I think the myth that young people are less informed just simply doesn’t hold today.

Jerry Song: I’ll just say, just because I think we would consider most youth to be growing up as digital natives almost, we were raised in an environment that’s so saturated with information and misinformation, on the other hand, and contrary to many stereotypes, I think we’re very adept at navigating it.

In fact, the statistic is adults over 65 are nearly seven times more likely to share false political content than young people online. Meanwhile, over half of young Canadians, so age 18 to 29, are discussing politics regularly through text, social media and by following politicians online. No more than 40 percent of older Canadians are doing any of these things.

Jason Song: Yeah, I think even offline, if you’re talking about offline, as we said in our discussion today, youth are very much engaged. Even offline, 70 percent of youth report engaging in political conversations.

And I think…. If you want to talk about influence and if influence and impressionability is the metric by which you qualify or disqualify voters, 77 percent of adults vote the same as their spouse. I think following that line of logic, we would ban them too.

Even if we take up the argument of competency and everything I said, I think that raises the question…. If it is a case that we do care about competency, we do care about how much knowledge they know about the world, we must be prepared to ask: are we willing to make every voter who goes to the ballot box….? Are we willing to make them sit down and take a test to prove they’re not influenced by their spouse, that they have their own rational decision, that they know what minister is in charge of what department?

Obviously not, right? That’s not how democracy works, and I don’t think it should be any different from young people.

Jerry Song: Just to finally just add something, I don’t think there is necessarily a wrong vote.

Amna Shah: Thank you. Yeah, I’m certainly not suggesting that youth are not informed, nor am I suggesting that impressionability should be the metric by which you measure who should be allowed to vote. Because I agree with you. There are a lot of adults that are quite impressionable. So I just want to correct the record for that, but thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Jason and Jerry. Really appreciate your time this morning and for being flexible with our timing this morning as well, so thank you again for taking the time.

We’re going to take a very short break till 11:15.

The committee recessed from 11:08 a.m. to 11:16 a.m.

The committee recessed from 11:08 a.m. to 11:16 a.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Welcome back to the committee. Next up we have Beatrice Sharp from the Young B.C. Greens. Beatrice, just to remind you that you have 15 minutes for your presentation and 10 minutes for questions. And we are a bit behind, so I’m going to make sure we stick to those lines as well.

Young B.C. Greens

Beatrice Sharpe: Well thank you for having me today. I will actually be presenting on the same topic of extending voting rights to 16 and 17-year-olds. I hope that hopefully this presentation solidifies some of the points already made and shows how important this is not just to Jerry and Jason, but to other youth across B.C. as well.

So good morning. My name is Beatrice Sharp. I am 17 years old. I speak to you today as the chair of the Young B.C. Greens, as a representative of Vote 16, as a youth who fiercely wanted to vote in last year’s provincial election, and on behalf of all 16 and 17-year-olds who cannot yet vote in BC.

I acknowledge that I am speaking on the traditional and ancestral territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples, the Songhees, and W̱SÁNEĆ Nations. As a colonial political system, we each play a part in empowering all actors and cultures as the future unfolds.

Today, I present to you a motion that is long being considered in the halls of parliament and is ever more important to enact today: extending voting rights to 16 and 17-year-olds. Let’s begin with a simple truth of the challenges facing British Columbia today. Climate change, a housing market out of reach, a tight job market, underfunded public education and mental health systems struggling to meet demand. These are not temporary concerns. They are structural, long-term issues. The people who will live with their consequences the longest are youth. So 16 and 17-year-olds are already navigating the effects of these crises daily, living at home with their parents longer, and factoring climate change into their plans for the future.

The policies created today to address these issues will impact the youth in 50 years, not the adults. Our futures are being shaped by policies decided without our input. That is not democratic. That is disenfranchisement. And youth want to participate. Young people across B.C. are engaging in climate strikes, community activism, volunteerism, and student governments.

They work part-time and full-time jobs. They pay the same GST, HST, PST, motor fuel tax, EI premiums and user fees as adults. Many of them care for siblings, contribute to their communities and shoulder adult responsibilities, including budgeting for education and transportation fees, volunteering for NGOs and caring for grandparents. So 16 and 17-year-olds are already active participants in our society.

Additionally, scholars have found that 16 and 17-year-olds are just as politically knowledgeable as adults, knowing just as much about institutions, promises and candidates. They are politically hungry for action on affordable housing, climate policies and Indigenous relations, just to name a few.

[11:20 a.m.]

But the formal democratic process doesn’t yet include them, or in some cases, even hear their cries for solutions to these issues. The result? A growing disconnect between young people and institutional politics. We see it in the numbers.

affordable housing, climate policies and Indigenous relations, just to name a few.

But the formal democratic process doesn’t yet include them or, in some cases, even hear their cries for solutions to these issues. The result? A growing disconnect between young people and institutional politics. We see it in the numbers. Youth voter turnout is low, hovering around 47 percent for youth aged 18 to 24 in provincial elections. In 2022, the overall local turnout barely scraped 30 percent.

We’re not hearing from youth, and one reason why is that we wait too long to start. Studies show that voting is habit-forming. If people vote the first time that they’re eligible, they’re more likely to keep voting throughout their lives. Furthermore, extending voting rights to younger members of society is not without precedent.

When the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in provinces across Canada, from 1945 to 1992, it reflected a recognition of the growing responsibility and political awareness of young people, especially those serving in the First and Second World Wars. Over 30 years ago, in 1991, the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform considered further extending rights to 16- and 17-year-olds, citing both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the practical benefits of engaging youth while still in school.

Today the reasons to support lowering the voting age echo those historical arguments but with even greater urgency. Youth today face existential threats to their futures. They are informed, capable and already participating in civic life in countless ways. What they lack is a vote.

If you aren’t convinced, let’s look at the global precedent. As of July 2025, 17 countries around the world have extended voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds for at least one level of government. These include democracies like Austria, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, Finland and Germany, along with a growing number of cities across the United States. These nations are not just lowering the voting age on a whim. They are doing so because it works.

They have chosen to invest in democratic resilience, and the results are clear. Enfranchising youth at 16 increases voter turnout, not just in that first election but for years to come. It improves civic knowledge and has no negative impact to election quality.

Why does this happen? Well, the answer is simple. Voting is habitual. When young people are allowed to cast their first ballot while still rooted in their communities, living at home, surrounded by teachers, classmates and families in civic education, they are far more likely to continue participating in elections as they grow older.

At 18, many are in transition, moving out, starting university or work, disconnected from familiar civic supports. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds, in contrast, are well positioned to engage in school-based voter education and turn that learning into real-world action. The Chief Electoral Officer of the Northwest Territories summed it up well. In jurisdictions that have lowered the voting age, 16- and 17-year-olds not only vote at higher rates than 18- to 24-year-olds; they are more likely to keep voting in future elections.

The concern that younger voters may not be ready for such responsibility does not stand up to evidence. Scientific consensus tells us that by the age of 16, young people have fully developed what psychologists call cold cognition, the ability to make deliberate, informed decisions using reason and logic. Canadian political scientists have found that 16- and 17-year-olds are just as capable as adults of understanding political systems, campaign issues and candidate platforms. They deliberate. They weigh options. They engage with the issues.

The notion that they are somehow less capable or less informed than older voters isn’t just outdated. It’s contradicted by the facts. Here in Canada, the research tells a different story. According to Elections Canada, 16- and 17-year-olds are just as interested, if not more so, in political participation than older age groups. Evidence from Austria, Belgium and Germany shows that their vote choices are just as sound and considered as those of older adults and are made independently of their parents.

Even our own political institutions recognize the value of youth voices. In British Columbia, the B.C. NDP, Conservatives, and Greens already allow teenagers to vote in leadership elections and on party direction. The B.C. NDP allows voting membership from age 12, the B.C. Greens and Conservatives from age 14. If political parties trust young people to help shape their internal governments, why should our democratic system deny them a role in shaping our province?

[11:25 a.m.]

This isn’t just about developmental capacity. It’s also about civic readiness. As the most online generation, 16- and 17-year-olds are exposed to more information more quickly than any previous generation. But this means that they are also taught to

them a role in shaping our province.

This isn’t just about developmental capacity. It’s also about civic readiness. As the most online generation, 16- and 17-year-olds are exposed to more information more quickly than any previous generation. But this means that they are also taught to fact check, to question, to engage. They are participating in school debates, climate movements and civic volunteering. They are forming opinions based on lived experiences and future stakes.

When we exclude them from voting, we are not protecting democracy. We are limiting it. The foundation of any healthy democracy is that those who are impacted by decisions should have a voice in making them. If we trust young people enough to drive, work and contribute to civic life, surely we can trust them to vote. Extending the right to vote in British Columbia to 16 and 17-year-olds would not only empower a generation. It would strengthen our democracy, making it more inclusive, representative and forward-looking.

I urge you to consider what it means to build a democracy that reflects the voices of all who are impacted by its choices, the people who will be more impacted by the affordability and climate crisis than any other generation in this room. As Jane Goodall once said: “Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.”

Indeed, young British Columbians are not just preparing to lead in the future. They are ready to participate today. So why continue to deny them a voice? When young people show up ready to contribute to democracy, the job isn’t to block the door. It’s to open it.

Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Beatrice.

Are there any questions?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation.

I was 18 when I voted for the first time federally, and I’ve never missed either a federal or provincial election in my lifetime, so I appreciate your passion.

Do you think that voting should be mandatory?

Beatrice Sharpe: Mandatory voting is a different concern to what I’m talking about today.

As I just mentioned in my speech, that might be a personal anecdote from you, but the research shows differently, that if you do not vote in your first election, then you’re less likely to vote in any election at all.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): All right.

If I may, as a quick follow-up, what’s your take on proportional representation? Your main focus has been on lowering the age to 16. Do you think that proportional representation is going to increase the overall vote totals?

Beatrice Sharpe: Again, that is not the issue that I am presenting today.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I’m just asking your view personally.

Beatrice Sharpe: Me personally, well, I think that the first-past-the-post system is a flawed system in some ways. It does not take into account all of the concerns of people who might be marginalized in some communities. Their voices just aren’t heard because the dominant power always wins in those ridings.

A proportional representation system would allow for more voices to be heard on an equal level. So I would have to do my research on that, but it is definitely something to look into, because first-past-the-post is not working for everyone, and it is time to maybe look internally and see if reform is necessary to hear more from those marginalized groups.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Great. Thank you.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation.

That’s my question.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Appreciate it.

Amna Shah: Thank you for your presentation, Beatrice. I have to say that you’re very eloquent in your arguments and, especially, your current involvement in a political party. That is what my question is related to.

In your experience as a young B.C. Green, have you seen any particular trend of youth either becoming more involved or maybe not becoming more involved in your Young B.C. Greens, I guess, group? And based on your conversations with other youth, what are their current attitudes towards the political spectrum that we have here today? Yeah.

[11:30 a.m.]

Beatrice Sharpe: That’s a really good question. So your question was, what are the attitudes of youth currently towards government and also what their current involvement is? Yeah, so have you seen a trend in more youth getting involved in...

Beatrice Sharpe: That’s a really good question. Okay. So your question was: what are the attitudes of youth currently towards government and also what is their current involvement?

Amna Shah: Yeah, so have you seen a trend in more youth getting involved, for example, in the Young B.C. Greens, or are you seeing a downward trend in involvement over the years that you’ve been involved?

You’re 17 years old, and you mentioned that Young B.C. Greens can participate at 14, for example, so I don’t know how long you’ve been a Young B.C. Green, but in your time, have you seen a trend of involvement, whether positive or negative?

And then the second question is: how do you feel about the political spectrum? So not necessarily government, but the political atmosphere that we have in British Columbia.

Beatrice Sharpe: There has been a growth in membership to the Young B.C. Greens. The Young B.C. Greens is a relatively new organization. It was only set up a year ago, and that was me with other members of the party. But yeah, we grew from zero members to about 20, if that answers your question.

There’s definitely an appetite for getting involved in politics. I am the public relations coordinator on the City of Victoria Youth Council. Since I joined two years ago, those numbers have increased from six to about 27. So definitely more youth are getting involved.

More youth volunteer than, I think, 30 years ago for sure. I mean, I wasn’t alive back then, so I can’t say. But I know every single one of my friends has at least one volunteering position. And they are definitely ready to get involved in the civic process because they have shown that they have the skills and the knowledge and they are ready for it.

And the second question was…. Sorry, just repeat that again.

Amna Shah: Their attitudes towards the political spectrum that we have here today.

Beatrice Sharpe: The political spectrum. Can you…?

Amna Shah: Yeah. Is it polarized? Is it not polarized? How do they feel about our state of affairs today in terms of the different political views and how they’re communicated?

Beatrice Sharpe: I think the issue is less polarization; it’s more actually getting stuff done. A lot of my friends are passionate about environmental issues. For example, old growth logging, climate change. We haven’t seen much movement on those in the past few years or even decade. I know that B.C. is not going to reach its 2030 target of reducing emissions by 40 percent. It’s actually looking more like 18 percent, which is not sustainable.

Many of my friends are concerned and looking towards their futures with greater anxiety and anticipation because the wildfires in Kelowna are happening every year instead of every few years. And while they are a natural occurrence, it is terrifying to watch the province that we want to grow up in and raise a family in quite literally burn in flames.

So we would like to see more action taken. And that starts with giving the youth a voice and allowing them to vote in municipal but also provincial elections.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): I just have a quick question for you as well. Being a high school student, I take it, what do you have to say about the level of civics education that you’ve experienced and that you’ve seen throughout your education career?

Beatrice Sharpe: This is something that I’m very passionate about. I actually recently just graduated high school, but I think there is definitely a need for civics education. Not that youth are not ready to vote today. I think they’re just as capable as adults. But there needs to be more of a presence of local governments, and also actually telling kids how to do their taxes properly.

Currently, taxes are only a part of a specific foundations course, which is math. That’s foundations 12, I believe. So even if you take foundations 11, you’re still not learning how to do taxes. And I know this is kind of a tangent, but I think that we go and we graduate high school without really knowing what the adult world is actually like. High school is about preparing us to be able to be ready for adult life with a base level of education, but we aren’t even taught about taxes.

[11:35 a.m.]

I only know about political systems and institutions of government from taking AP comparative government in grade 10. Our career-life education course, which would be our civics course, just doesn’t cover those things. They do a very short project on budgeting, and that is about as much as we get about

systems and institutions of government from taking AP comparative government in grade 10. And our career-life education course, which would be our civics course, just doesn’t cover those things. They do a very short project on budgeting, and that is about as much as we get about civic life and engagement.

So to answer your question, there does need to be a more mandatory presence in high schools, and that would make for much better and well-rounded citizens graduating high school.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): And did you ever participate in the student votes campaigns that we’ve heard about?

Beatrice Sharpe: Yes, I did. Yeah. Every single one. It’s actually mandatory at my school. Is it…? No. It’s not mandatory at my school, but it is highly encouraged, and many people do participate. It does show that the student body doesn’t favour any one political party. I know a lot of the concerns are that if you start to vote, then there’ll be a lot more left-leaning. But that’s actually not the case; we had a variety of votes from across the political spectrum.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Beatrice, for your presentation today. As MLA Shah said, you’re very eloquent in answering our questions and in your presentation. And we really appreciate the involvement of youth in this process.

Beatrice Sharpe: Well, thank you so much. It was an honour to be here today to present to all of you. I hope you take my words into consideration and make a statement to the general caucus.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you.

Next up we have Bill Darnell. Welcome, Bill. Thank you for being here this morning with us. As you get settled in, I’ll just remind you that you’ll have five minutes for your presentation followed by five minutes for questions. So when you’re ready, you can begin.

Bill Darnell: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning. Chairperson, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. Also, thank you for your efforts, your attention and your willingness to be part of this effort to improve the way we make decisions together.

Earlier in my life, I was an elected school trustee in Vancouver. It gave me an insight and appreciation for the efforts, energy and commitment you bring to your lives of public service as MLAs. We have come together to listen to each other, to determine how we can improve the way we elect our representatives.

As we’ve heard earlier today, our world is rapidly changing. We need to change the way we elect our representatives in response to these new circumstances. We need the experience and the abilities of all to make the best choices. We must invite every voice into the circle so that we make the best decisions. Then we can take the most appropriate actions for ourselves, for our future generations and for our more-than-human kin. Our present electoral process is not sufficient for our present and future circumstances.

I spent much of my working life as an educator with adults, youth and children. Successful learning required that a large part of my time was listening to all the voices so that everyone agreed that they had their share of the available resources that were needed for their success. When everyone was heard, which takes a long time, I’m sure you’re aware, the path ahead was clear and obvious for all of us. People didn’t need to be persuaded or sold on the outcomes. They had participated and understood the decisions and supported the actions required.

We need an electoral process that understands everyone’s voice is important and ensures that everyone’s voice is heard. We need a cooperative, not an adversarial approach to electing our representatives. The present first-past-the-post and ranked ballot systems result in a winner-take-all decision that perpetuates a polarized two-party system. Losers withdraw and see that their vote didn’t count. Cooperation and participation by the whole community is lost.

[11:40 a.m.]

We are one of the few industrialized countries that does not have a proportional representation where all parties negotiate the actions society requires.

losers withdraw. They see that their vote didn’t count. Cooperation and participation by the whole community is lost.

We are one of the few industrialized countries that does not have a proportional representation where all parties negotiate the actions society requires. In fact, we are here today in this review process because of negotiations between two political parties. We do not need a referendum on electoral reform. British Columbians have already voted in favour of electoral reform. What we need is action. British Columbians are worried, as our social and environmental conditions deteriorate. The next five years is the time to act.

The present electoral process discourages my children’s participation in the electoral system. We all have young ones in our lives. Our young people often end up voting on what they are against, what they fear. They often don’t vote for what they think would be best for them, their future and their community. It’s a discouraging process.

After a series of disappointments, voting statistics show that my children’s generation is withdrawing from the process and its negative emotions. This discouragement is passed on to my grandchildren’s generation. I shouldn’t be telling them to suck it up and hang in there. We should be celebrating that their vote counted in any election outcome.

On behalf of my generation, my children’s generation and the following generations, I urge you to be courageous future ancestors and recommend adopting a system of proportional representation for British Columbians. Let us listen to each other and work together for a liveable future.

In conclusion, I would just like to say that what I hear in my presentation was echoed by what I had heard earlier. I think there is a willingness among the citizens of British Columbia for change. Thank you very much for this opportunity to appear.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Bill.

Are there any questions from the committee?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Bill, for your presentation. We’ve asked many of our presenters the same question. If we were to look at proportional representation, do you have any particular type that you prefer?

Bill Darnell: I don’t. I think it has to be a true proportional representation. I was around when the original citizens’ committee did those long deliberations. I haven’t done all the research that would be necessary. I trust that the citizens and their representatives could come up with a system that would allow everyone to see that their vote has, in fact, been counted. It would require, as we often see now, negotiations sometimes between the parties to put together the best interests of the whole community.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Can I ask a supplemental question? This is going to be the second part of our mandate, but I’ll ask you this question. Do you have faith in our election integrity?

Bill Darnell: I do. I do. I’ve been on the scrutineering side. I have been involved in working in elections, and I see how diligent and how hard those people work and how carefully it’s been thought out. I have faith in the system.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I appreciate that. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Bill. I don’t see any further questions. Thank you so much for being here this morning and for taking time to present to our committee.

Bill Darnell: Thank you very much.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Next up, we have Patricia Lane-Maclure. Good morning, Patricia. Thank you for being here.

Patricia Lane-Maclure: Good morning.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Again, as you begin, just a reminder that you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by questions.

[11:45 a.m.]

Patricia Lane-Maclure

Patricia Lane-Maclure: Thank you very much, members of the committee. I’m a lawyer, and I’m also a journalist, and I’m also a mom. Today I’m here for my son. He’s in his early 30s, and when he was preparing for his first election that he was eligible to vote for, he told me and my husband that he did not intend to vote. We were gobsmacked.

It turned out he’d been spending a lot of time with friends whose parents tend to vote right of centre. We live in ridings, all of his friends and us, where right-of-centre candidates are rarely elected under first-past-the-post.

He told me and my husband that he did not intend to vote. We were gobsmacked. It turned out that he’d been spending a lot of time with friends whose parents tend to vote right of centre. We live in ridings, all his friends and us, where right-of-centre candidates are rarely elected under first-past-the-post, and his friends’ parents had told them, “Yeah, you probably should vote, but it’s not going to matter.”

I contrast that with the attitude of his Irish cousins, who were excited when they came out to their first election, because they knew that their vote was very likely to shape the future of Irish politics. They found our first-past-the-post system very difficult to understand.

Now, they’re no dumber or smarter than my own kid. They couldn’t understand how there could be a system that would disenfranchise so many people, and we found their system, the single transferable vote, very easy to understand. And we’re no dumber or smarter than most British Columbians. So from my perspective, it’s all a question of what you get used to.

As a result of the conversations in our house, I began to think: “Well, why don’t we have proportional representation? Most industrialized countries do.” My research took me to the end of the First World War. At that time, the Allies imposed PR, modern PR, on the vanquished countries, because they didn’t want fascism to rise to govern the world again.

I understand, from past remarks this morning, that you’ve been told not to think about what goes on in Europe and that it has different cultures. You know, really, we’re the only.... I think there are only about six countries in the world that still have first-past-the-post. We can’t be that different, and I know we’re not that different than my Irish nieces and nephews.

What happened after the Second World War was that the Allies required the vanquished countries to adopt PR, and they did not require that of their own countries. Why not? Well, there were two reasons for that. One was that we had just fought a war against fascism, and they couldn’t imagine that people would vote for it, but there’s a second more human reason.

I sat on the board of Coast Capital Savings for ten years. Coast Capital is the third-largest credit union in the country and the second-largest in the province. One of the reasons it’s big is because we oversaw a lot of mergers. It was axiomatic that it didn’t matter how good the merger was for either credit union or the community; if you didn’t sort out who was going to be the CEO and on the board, it was going to get stopped. As we got better at doing mergers, we learned to deal with that problem right up front.

I understand that Fair Vote has proposed a system, or will propose a system, to you that will allow MLAs at least as good a chance of getting re-elected as they would have under first-past-the-post. I would strongly encourage you to consider that, because otherwise it’s a poison pill. You might be prepared to give up your seats for the good of the whole — and good for you — but some of your fellow MLAs will not be able to think about doing that.

I’m very interested in efforts to block fascism. It’s a strong through line in the culture of my family. My grandfather was embedded as a journalist with Norman Bethune’s brigade in Spain. My husband’s uncle died in Spain fighting with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. And my dad, although he was Irish, signed up with the Allies because he couldn’t stand the idea of fascism ruling the world.

I want us all to remember that what’s going on in the United States would not be happening if they had proportional systems. So my perspective is that you have a duty and an obligation to represent the people of British Columbia, who have consistently supported proportionality, and to help protect us against rising fascism in this country.

In closing, I’d like to ask you to adopt a PR system. You don’t need a referendum. My written submissions go in depth into the reasons why you don’t. That will allow my son and his friends, and their Conservative-leaning parents, to know that their votes count. We can’t afford to disenfranchise large blocs of people, especially young men.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Patricia. We have a question from MLA Clare.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Patricia, for your presentation, and thanks for that interesting history in your family about the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion and all that. It’s rare to run into folks with that background. I’ve taught about it extensively.

[11:50 a.m.]

One of the things that I just wanted to make sure you understood is that the 1919 Weimar Republic’s constitution was a proportional representation system with a party-list system, which is the most common type of it. Under that system, there were several unstable governments through the 1920s — two majority governments; one only lasted a year.

things that I just wanted to make sure you understood is that the 1919 Weimar Republic’s constitution was a proportional representation system with a party-list system, which is the most common type of it. And under that system, there were several unstable governments through the 1920s — two majority governments, one only lasted a year. With the passing of Stresemann, things got a bit worse. Then the coalitions that were formed in the 1933 election under proportional representation did lead to what came next, as we’re well aware. So I did want to just….

Patricia Lane-Maclure: Actually, I think you’ve got your history wrong. I know Bill Tieleman’s been here telling you this.

Sheldon Clare: No, I taught this.

Patricia Lane-Maclure: Oh, you did? Okay.

So my understanding is that it was actually imposed by the King. Proportional representation never got 50 percent of support in Germany ever. So it’s really important that we understand that that system of PR was much more like the system that is in place in Israel — look what’s happening there — without the guardrails that modern PR systems carry.

Sheldon Clare: Well, actually, no.

Patricia Lane-Maclure: And nobody is proposing that we adopt PR systems without those guardrails.

Sheldon Clare: There were no guardrails. The system was from 1919, after the King had abdicated.

Patricia Lane-Maclure: I know there were no guardrails. I understand that.

Sheldon Clare: Then or now.

Patricia Lane-Maclure: But I’m saying the PR systems that we adopt today and that are in place and that the Allies required of the vanquished countries were that they have PR systems with guardrails because that’s the way to be the best safeguard against fascism.

Sheldon Clare: Well, I’m afraid I disagree with you on that.

Patricia Lane-Maclure: We’re allowed.

Sheldon Clare: And I think we disagree on the history of it. We can chat some other time about it. But thank you for your answer.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. When you look to the future and compare it to other jurisdictions and approaching it with PR in this part of the world, you mentioned the idea of proceeding and proceeding now.

How would you see that unfolding over the next, say, couple of years? Would you see proportional representation being in place for the next election?

Patricia Lane-Maclure: That’s what I would recommend. You have the legislative authority to do that. You don’t need to have a referendum. There is a prominent politician on the New Democratic side who says: “Well, we’re the New Democratic Party. We need to be democratic.”

My written submission argues very strongly, and I hope persuasively, that referendums are in fact not democratic. Now, 49.5 percent of the British Columbia population are functionally illiterate. They can’t be expected to understand how to vote in a referendum, especially the kind that we had the last time.

So if you need more cover, which is really what we’re talking about, if you don’t have the courage to do what you have the legislative authority to do and, I say, the obligation…. Because the polling consistently supports proportionality amongst the British Columbia public. After the last referendum, exit polls interviewed people, and they still wanted proportionality. They were voting against the particular system that had been put in front of them, or they were saying they didn’t understand it.

But if you require more cover — and, of course, politicians sometimes do — then a citizens’ assembly is the way to do it. But be careful. Make the citizens’ assembly recommendations binding. Require supermajority perhaps, make it binding, and then test it after two cycles, if you must.

There’s never been, as far as I know, a return to first-past-the-post after a country has gone into proportional systems. That’s why I’m confident in saying go ahead and test it, because the experience is that people really like having their vote count.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Patricia, for being here this morning with us. I really appreciate your time.

Next up we have Naomi Devine. Good morning, Naomi. Thank you for being here today with us. Just a reminder as you get settled in that you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Naomi Devine

Naomi Devine: Thank you. Good morning, members of the committee, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Naomi Devine, and I’m someone who has spent a lot of time listening to voters across the province.

[11:55 a.m.]

My grandfather, my papa, Duncan Nelson was a British commando, a No. 4 commando with the SAS. He fought fascism in Europe during the Second World War.

In Holland, during an operation where 12 of the 13 men in his unit were killed, he was shot and presumed dead. They loaded him into the dead truck, the one carrying the bodies. But he wasn’t dead. He woke up, he crawled over the bodies of his fallen comrades, and he banged on the glass of the cab. The driver was so shocked that he drove into a ditch.

My papa clawed his way out of death many times during the war.

during an operation where 12 of the 13 men in his unit were killed, he was shot and presumed dead. They loaded him into the dead truck, the one carrying the bodies. But he wasn’t dead. He woke up, he crawled over the bodies of his fallen comrades, and he banged on the glass of the cab. The driver was so shocked that he drove into a ditch.

My papa clawed his way out of death many times during the war. He came home to Scotland, and he brought our family to Canada. He taught me that democracy is sacred but never guaranteed. It must be protected, and it must be worthy of protection. That belief has shaped almost everything I’ve done in my professional life.

I grew up with these stories, not as folklore, but as warnings. He told them to me so I would remember what happens when democracy fails and so I would understand my responsibility in keeping it alive. They were his way of passing the torch. These stories bring me here today because I cannot know what he and so many others fought for and allow the democratic decline I’m living through without doing all I can to help fix it.

I’m a climate policy expert. I was appointed by Premier Campbell to B.C.’s 2007 Premier’s climate action team, as well as a trained public engagement practitioner. I’ve spent 20 years designing democratic processes and writing climate action plans that have been passed across partisan lines in both Canada and the United States. I’ve worked in the trenches of democracy.

I’ve also had a significant hand in reshaping the B.C. political landscape as the campaign strategist who led the B.C. Greens to their historic first win. I know what it takes to get a third party elected in our system. More recently, I managed a campaign that elected Will Greaves as the MP for Victoria, one of the very few candidates in the country to win with a true majority and 54 percent of the vote.

I’ve spoken face-to-face with thousands of voters, and I can tell you that faith in our political system has, in fact, eroded. People are disengaging, and many of those still participating are doing it with gritted teeth because we’ve normalized a system that makes them guess. First-past-the-post is a system that demands that they strategically vote in the dark, trying to reverse engineer the outcome just to get the representation that’s even close to their values. That’s not democracy. I would submit to you that that’s an insult. It is deeply disrespectful of citizens and they know it.

There’s ample evidence — I’m sure you’ve been hearing lots of it, and I’ve heard some this morning — that FPTP suppresses turnout because in a shocking number of ridings, people feel that their vote does not count. That’s why voter turnout is low. That’s why people are tuning out. In Victoria, of course, we saw a small bump in the last election, the federal one, But we needed the looming shadow of fascism to the south just to accomplish that.

There is already enough erosion of trust in our institutions, and we do not need to compound it by forcing people to participate further in a system that is entirely broken and clearly doesn’t work. Let’s be honest. Most Canadians have never voted in an election at any level that uses proportional representation. They don’t know what it feels like to have a vote that actually counts. They’ve just been told this is how it works.

In the last referendum on proportional representation in this province, they were cynically told by the no side that the reform will, in fact, bring Nazis. That’s not just false; it’s offensive. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. We could have a system that reflects who we are; where votes lead to power, not frustration; where elections build trust and greater turnout. We almost had that.

Twenty years ago, B.C. led the world. The 2004 citizens’ assembly was democratic innovation at its finest. British Columbians studied the options, they heard from the public, and they recommended STV. In 2005, 58 percent of British Columbians voted yes for that. But a government elected with only 47 percent said no.

In 2018, we were handed a deliberately confusing referendum, so poorly communicated it felt designed to fail. There’s a reason that lobbyists love it when things are confusing. It drives people out, it erodes trust, and it gives them the outcome that they want.

Meanwhile, the world has moved forward. In New Zealand, they of course replaced first-past-the-post with mixed-member proportional representation and never went back. Ireland used STV and citizens’ assemblies to pass marriage equality and abortion rights. France used a citizens climate convention to shape national policy. I could go on.

No country that has adopted proportional representation has ever gone back, because people trust the reforms that they help shape. Once they see how it works, how all votes count, they don’t want to give that up because democratic innovation is contagious and because what starts in one place spreads, and it started here.

Why can’t B.C. benefit from what it gave to the world? Are we afraid of the very innovation that we exported? B.C. sparked a global movement and then stopped short, but that was a mistake, and it doesn’t have to be our legacy. This is our moment of choice. We can continue defending a system that insults voters and erodes trust, or we can lead again. We can invite British Columbians back into democracy in a meaningful way and let them shape what comes next.

My papa believed in protecting democracy so much so that he was willing to give his life for it, and he wanted me to help make it better. So that belief lives in me, and it brought me here. Let’s let it guide us forward, and let this be our call to reform. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you for your presentation, Naomi. Any questions? MLA Shah.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Naomi, for your presentation. You just mentioned, and I didn’t catch all the words, to the effect that people have faith in a system that they help shape.

[12:00 p.m.]

Do you think that the question should be put to voters — of course, after learning lessons from prior referendums and in a very simplistic fashion — as to whether our electoral systems

that people have faith in a system that they help shape.

And so do you think that the question should be put to voters as to — of course, after learning lessons from prior referendums, and in a very simplistic fashion — whether our electoral systems should change?

Naomi Devine: I think that 58 percent of British Columbians did vote for change, and I don’t think we’ve really honoured that. I don’t also agree, though, that referenda are good democracy. In fact, I’ve written an op-ed sort of about this, and I’ve included that in a written submission.

My apologies too — my notification to come to this committee ended up not in my regular mail. I just found out yesterday that I was coming today, so I will be submitting my submission after this. I couldn’t get it in ahead of time.

We have representative democracy, and then we delegated a form of that representation to the citizens’ assembly. And those citizens took that responsibility very seriously, as we see in everything that they did. They heard from experts, they heard from British Columbians, they weighed the options, and they made a very strong recommendation, and a majority of British Columbians supported it.

I’m tired of the cycle of the referendum question. I would like us to adopt a system and try it out. As has been mentioned by previous speakers, we can put safeguards in place to try it out because, again, we haven’t tried this.

As one of the members of the committee mentioned, and the earlier speaker as well — and I voted from the first time I could, too, when I was 18 — our behaviour, once we do something, helps shape further behaviour. That’s a really powerful position that you are all in, to recommend that, so that British Columbians can have that experience.

I think rather than ask another referendum that can be gamed by lobbyists and other special interests…. That’s often captured by interest in society that I think people are becoming increasingly cynical about. I know because I’ve had these conversations at the doorstep with many voters in several elections. I don’t want to see that erosion continue.

I think we already have a sense that British Columbians do want to try something new. We led on it, and it sparked…. Our citizens’ assembly went on to spark thousands of citizens’ assemblies around the world, which I think is quite a legacy to be proud of.

I would love for us to get the shot at actually doing it and seeing if we actually like it. I don’t think we have to do it and then it’s a runaway train. We can put the safeguards in place to find out how people feel about it. That’s really the missing piece to me, that we’ve had the referendum question, but we’ve never had the opportunity to try it out and see what it feels like.

Thank you for the question.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation. You were talking about safeguards, and I think in the previous…. We talked about guardrails, and two things come to mind.

Do you think that if you have proportional representation, that allows extremism to be able to be represented depending on the thresholds that we instil in voting numbers, one?

And two, as an example of safeguards, the latest election in Austria…. For the first time, a far-right party got the majority of the votes — not overall votes, but I think the breakdown was like 53, 51 and 40. So for the first time, now an extreme party is actually the majority of the seats of the actual voting public in a country in that neck of the woods. Do you think that can…? Can you explain what those safeguards would be so that we wouldn’t have the same situation here?

Naomi Devine: I think that the citizens’ assembly report covers this really well. I think a lot of that has been sort of taken into consideration and answered by a representative body in this province that is satisfactory to me.

I think there’s also more than one factor in place, not just the electoral system, that contributes or does not contribute to the so-called rise of extremism. The example that you give is an interesting one, and I’m not as familiar with it.

But you can still have…. You can have a system like ours, where, arguably, you could be actually inciting more extremism because you do have an element of the voting populace that never finds itself represented, and therefore it moves to frustration and it moves to a type of organization where it could also continue to grow and infiltrate within the system that we currently have.

There’s nothing in first-past-the-post that inherently dampens so-called extremism. It does exist already in our system. I would argue that the PPC is a form of that in Canadian democracy itself. Sometimes you could incite, I guess, more of it just through pure frustration.

When only 30 percent or so of the voting populace can get the majority or winner-take-all situation, that’s pretty frustrating, I think, for a lot of people. That’s something that I’m worried about and I think is a major contributor to the erosion that we find ourselves democratically facing.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Naomi. I don’t see any further questions.

[12:05 p.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Just because we have…. I was waiting for somebody else to ask a question.

Further to that, I would argue that with first-past-the-post, there are opportunities to inhibit extremism. If you’ve seen, in past history, when some of these things occur, those far views can be excluded from those

with first-past-the-post, there are opportunities to inhibit extremism. Because if you’ve seen in past history, when some of these things occur, those far views can be excluded from those prime parties. So, would you have a comment on that?

Naomi Devine: Going back to the multiple factors, I think, that exist when we’re talking about any type of democratic or electoral system, is that, also, views need to be aired, and then once they’re aired, other people decide whether or not they’re persuasive, essentially, enough. So this is less about even the stifling of that.

You could have a situation where, essentially, an extremist group tries to advance a point of view, and what that does is that signals to the other members of the voting populace whether or not they would like to consider that or not and are they essentially persuaded by that. How good your media ecosystem is sort of contributes, of course, to the discourse in democracy and how people show up, essentially, and vote.

You mentioned earlier…. You asked a question about faith in our system, like Elections B.C., I would imagine, or Elections Canada, and how we’re actually running our elections. I see a discourse, and I’m sure you do too, rising, questioning whether or not there’s validity and safeguards in that system.

The truth is dying a pretty horrible death in front of us right now in many ways. And I worry that the accusations that our system is not safe are actually what’s going to erode it, rather than the fact that it’s unsafe. Having worked with several folks in Elections B.C., of course, as a campaign manager, and with Elections Canada, I can say I have great faith in what they’re doing, but I actually don’t have great faith in how we are defending that they are doing good work. And that worries me quite a bit.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Naomi. We truly appreciate your time this morning and answering all of our questions. Take care.

Next up, we have Elizabeth Bettenson.

Elizabeth Bettenson

Elizabeth Bettenson: Thank you very much for having me here. I’m very happy to be here.

A little introduction about me. My name is Elizabeth Bettenson. I’m 18 years old. I was born and raised in Campbell River on north Vancouver Island. I graduated from Timberline Secondary last year, and I will be returning to Nova Scotia to study at Acadia University to finish my studies in Canadian history and political science in the fall.

So I’m coming to this. I would like to make a disclaimer: I am not an expert. I do not know everything. I took one year in political science, but I’d like to share my views.

One big issue I see nowadays is that young people, specifically — we heard a lot about the 16- to 17-year-olds — in the 18- to 24-year-old age, are disengaging in electoral politics because they…. I think there’s two main factors behind this that I’ll explain.

One of the ones is that a lot of people don’t understand the political system. I see that a lot with people I know, and as well, a lot of people do not feel as though our current first-past-the-post system represents their views properly, and they get…. I can’t think of the word, sorry.

The first one I’ll talk about is that people do not understand the government system enough. I’ve heard, I’m sure you guys have heard, a lot about civic education. I’ll come from it from a personal perspective. I learned about the division of responsibilities in governments when I was 11, and no one ever said anything else about it again. That’s a lot to expect an 11-year-old to remember until they turn 18 and are allowed to vote.

What I find is that often I’ll talk with friends who are in university who don’t understand that health care, education, transportation are provincial responsibilities. I think that impacts, especially, provincial elections. If you do not understand what you’re voting for, why would you vote? Right? If you think provincial politics isn’t important to you, you’re not going to go take the time to go vote.

So I think making sure that, in the future, we add into the curriculum more establishment, maybe even year after year. Kids will get tired of it, but the more you tell them, the more it’ll implant in their head. “It’s important to vote because look around you. The school you’re in: provincial. All these things.” Making sure you really teach people, because even I’ll have people….

Even our current political system is confusing. In the last election, I have a friend of mine who has taken a university-level political science course, who when she got to vote in the federal election, walked up to the booth, grabbed her ballot and wrote her own name at the bottom and checked it off. Because she’d never voted before, she had no experience in it, she was not prepared, and when she got up there, she froze and panicked.

So I think — I’m sure you guys have heard lots about that before, as well — increasing student vote opportunities and opportunities to learn more about politics is good.

[12:10 p.m.]

I’d also advocate, like mentioned before, for a single transferable vote, proportional representation system. The current first-past-the-post system, like mentioned before, disenfranchises a lot of people. For example, in my home riding of the North Island, in the 2024 provincial election, our MLA was elected with 47 percent support. Opposition got 44 percent. That’s only 3 percent difference and not a majority.

So the argument for me is the majority of people are not happy with who’s representing them. That’s

in my home riding of the North Island in the 2024 provincial election, our MLA was elected with 47 percent support. Opposition got 44 percent. That’s only 3 percent difference and not a majority. So the argument, for me, is if the majority of people are not happy with who’s representing them, that’s going to make people distrust the election. Well, my choice didn’t win, not good.

I would argue that if you advance a single transferable vote system, at the very least, the majority of people will have said: “Yeah, I put their name down on my ballot.” I guess that works. I think the more people see their choice represented, the more willing they’ll be to go take their time out of their day to go vote.

Even young people…. In my political science class last semester, my professor asked: “How many of you guys have voted before?” Everybody should have had a chance to vote. There’d been multiple provincial elections before this question had been asked, so people from all provinces should have been able to vote. Six of us put up our hands in a class of 50.

When asked how many people signed a petition, participated in a protest…. Lots of young people are politically active. they just do not believe the change they want to see will be brought forward with the first-past-the-post system.

So that’s why I would advocate that with a single transferable vote system, we get to keep the riding system. I think in a province as diverse as ours geographically, culturally, ethnically, it’s important to have a riding system to keep MLAs accountable to their constituents and connected to local issues, but it also means that, no matter what, you’ll have a candidate that’s supported by the majority of people, and I think that will help improve people’s participation in politics, particularly young people.

That’s all I have today.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for your presentation.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Elizabeth, for your presentation. I wish you the best of luck in your future studies.

I may have missed this, but you had just given the example of people in your class, a very small minority having actually voted, yet you said the majority of them were politically active. Can you help me make that make sense? I mean, if you’re politically active, I’m assuming you would know a little bit about government systems, because you would kind of know…. So help me understand why they don’t vote if they’re politically active.

Elizabeth Bettenson: Yeah, totally. So I have two different groups of people that I kind of talk to about politics. I have my people from university, and those are the people who are politically active in non-electoral political actions, such as protesting, petitioning. They don’t vote because they do not believe they’re going to see any change. It’s like was mentioned before. They don’t believe that voting will do them any good because they don’t feel as though their vote counts.

The other group I mentioned before who’s not voting, the large majority…. That’s more people, I find, from Campbell River, where I was born and raised. We don’t have a lot of political education there because we’re very disconnected from political life down here in Victoria, right?

Lots of Victoria teenagers I’m sure are engaged in political life and, I’m sure, come here all the time. People in Campbell River don’t have the opportunity. Schools don’t take us to learn anything about politics. We’re kind of separated and almost forgotten about, and political groups don’t talk to us. Nobody really acknowledges us. So I would say, among my university-educated friends, it’s more they do not think the system’s working, and among my home friends, it’s more that they don’t understand how it works.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): I don’t see any further questions. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for taking the time to be here.

Next up we have Brian White.

Good morning, or I guess afternoon now, Brian. Thank you for being here today.

Brian White

Brian White: In the last federal election, I voted for the Liberal candidate, because my first choice, the NDP candidate from Sooke, was behind in the polling. And in first-past-the-post, if I had voted for her, it made a win for the Conservative more likely, and I was terrified that Pierre might end up Prime Minister. But it’s an awful gamble because the polls could be wrong.

In single transferable vote, that awful choice is never necessary. You vote one, two, three, etc., in order of your choice. I would have voted one, the NDP lady; then two, Green; three, Liberal; and four, Conservative.

[12:15 p.m.]

Everyone would have known who the real choices were, and the Liberal might have still ended up winning with my vote going to her, but at least they would have had no illusions that I was happy with them. I was just less happy with the Conservative in that election.

everyone would have known who the real choices were. The Liberal might have still ended up winning, with my vote going to her, but at least they would have had no illusions that I was happy with them. I was just less happy with the Conservative in that election.

I was lucky it worked out this time, but in single transferrable vote, no luck is needed. I grew up in Ireland under single transferable vote in multi-seat ridings. It made it worth going to vote, because my vote counted.

As a politician, what’s in it for you? Because it has to be worthwhile for the politician, or you’ll never bring it in. If you like being a politician, if you’re good at it, you could make it a long-term job, and it could be a family tradition too.

I looked up Irish political families, that’s families which have several politicians in the family through the generations. On Wikipedia, there were 7,299 words in that little story.

I looked up Canadian political families on Wikipedia. Canada, which is something like six times the population now, had 4,500 words. So if you’re a politician in Canada, you’re not going to be ahead too long.

Another advantage of single transferable vote is your party might lose an election, but your party is extremely unlikely to go from government to annihilation, as happened to the NDP about 20 years ago. STV is much more stable than first-past-the-post and rewards people who are community-builders, not community-breakers. It typically elects centrist governments.

It also makes for a more cohesive society. An NDP politician will need some second and third preferences from conservative voters to get elected, so he or she cannot alienate them with hate speech. This leads to far more measured politics than what we have now in B.C. and in Canada and in first-past-the-post south of the border.

I do have a story. I went to high school with a guy called Edward Timmons. He was extremely good at math. His father, Godfrey, was a politician for Fine Gael, which is a right-wing party in Ireland. He first won a seat in 1968, when his father retired as a politician after nearly 30 years as the equivalent of an MP in Ireland.

How many of you have been MPs for 30 years?

A Voice: Some of them are just 30 years old.

Brian White: Well, he started younger than he ended up, too. Edward’s brother managed to win the seat and held it for almost 20 years. Eventually his brother Billy disagreed with his party about policy, lost a party Whip and lost his seat. He eventually returned to the party but hasn’t won again. Edward became a politician for Fine Gael, and he won the seat in 2024, after a short run with no Timmons in Parliament.

So this is what can happen with politicians here. You can become really, really good at it, because you’re less likely to lose your seat with a slight change in how the people view you after a couple of elections.

There are many political families in Ireland. People learn on the job how to be a good politician and learn from campaigning with their parents and brothers and sisters. We never have anything like the time the B.C. Libs won all but two of the seats, turfing out a government full of skilled politicians with a great knowledge base and replacing them with a bunch of inexperienced people.

Regardless of whether you’re NDP or B.C. Lib, the loss of experience is a terrible thing, whenever it happens.

[12:20 p.m.]

From the foundation of the state in Ireland until the 1980s, Ireland was governed by either Fianna Fáil, a centre party or a coalition of Fine Gael, a right-wing party, with the Labour Party, which was left-wing. Government

happens. From the foundation of the state in Ireland until the 1980s, Ireland was governed by either Fianna Fáil, a centre party, or a coalition of Fine Gael, a right-wing party, with the Labour Party, which was left-wing. So government in Ireland has always tended towards the centre, which is much safer than what’s currently happening south of the border here and potentially here, too, now that people have a roadmap to go to fascism under first-past-the-post. The right and left cancel each other, and you end up with a centre government.

From the 1980s….

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Brian, we’re just up on time, if you could wrap up, please.

Brian White: Okay, yeah. I’m sorry.

Extremist parties have moderated over time in this system, and I have seen that over my lifetime.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Brian.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Brian, for your presentation. Just a little curious. When you were talking about your own personal situation in Sooke and you say you were less happy with one particular party, was it the party and their policy, or was it the candidate that was running for the party?

Brian White: Well, in that situation, I would…. I’m traditionally, I guess, an NDP voter, but I was scared of voting for…. If you vote for the wrong person, your vote doesn’t go to a winner, in this system, so you’re voting, as the lady said, blind strategically. It’s like bluffing in poker. You shouldn’t have poker as how you elect people.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Understood. Yeah, thanks for that.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay, I don’t see any further questions, Brian. Thank you so much for being here with our committee this afternoon.

We will now take a break until 12:55.

The committee recessed from 12:22 p.m. to 1:16 p.m.

The committee recessed from 12:22 p.m. to 1:16 p.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): All right. Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back this afternoon. We’re going to get started with Bob Bright.

Welcome, Bob. Thank you for your patience this afternoon. Before you begin, just a reminder that you’ll have 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by ten minutes for questions.

Bob Bright: Thank you. And thank you to all the members of the committee for the opportunity to share some of my ideas this afternoon.

I’ll start by filling in a little bit of my background. I have a BA and an MA in philosophy from the University of Alberta and a PhD from Dalhousie University. I was a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Manitoba for 17 years before I moved to Victoria in 2004.

Throughout my academic career, I’ve been interested in social choice theory. It’s been one of my main research and teaching interests. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the jargon, social choice theory is the formal study of how to combine individuals’ preferences or values into a social choice or some kind of collective decision. As I said, that’s always been an interest of mine, so I have a fairly extensive background in the theory of electoral systems, and that’s what brings me to the table today.

While I was preparing for this presentation last week, I spent a little bit of time reviewing my own personal voting history. It’s not something that one spends a lot of time on, normally, but I thought it might be useful in this case. I’ve voted in a total of 28 federal and provincial general elections since I turned 18, which was way back, for those of you who are counting, in 1976. That’s 15 federal elections, two elections in Alberta, one in Nova Scotia, four in Manitoba, and six so far in B.C. I hope to see a few more of them before I’m done.

My vote contributed to electing someone in just ten of those 28 elections. As an aside, in only four did I actually manage to vote for the party which won the election. I’m not really very good at picking winners. In any case, two-thirds of my votes over the years didn’t accomplish much of anything. They got added to the popular vote totals for the party I voted for, and there they sat, collecting dust forever, while the business of government carried on as though I had never voted at all.

The thing is, in most of those cases — and I’m not unusual in this — I knew when I walked into the voting booth that my vote was not going to accomplish anything. There are many thousands of people in British Columbia who are in exactly that position. Imagine that you’re a Conservative or a Green voter in a safe NDP riding. You can know with virtual certainty that when you vote, it isn’t going to make any difference to anything. Voting, for these people, is basically an exercise in futility.

I know that all of the reasons and excuses you can provide for why it’s still useful to vote, but at the end of the day, for those people, their vote doesn’t make any difference to the political process. Or certainly, if it does, it’s an extremely tenuous one. Democracy is supposed to be about all citizens having an equal say in how they’re governed. People shouldn’t be forced to move to a riding where there are a sufficient number of like-minded people in order to have a voice.

[1:20 p.m.]

Proportional representation aims to make every vote count, in every riding, in every election, to the greatest extent possible. It’s not just a pretty idea. It’s deeply embedded in the very concept of democracy. But unfortunately, our democracy really doesn’t measure up very well. We can do better

aims to make every vote count in every riding in every election to the greatest extent possible. It’s not just a pretty idea. It’s deeply embedded in the very concept of democracy, but unfortunately our democracy really doesn’t measure up very well. We can do better, and I think we must do better.

What I want to talk about for the next few minutes is a system of proportional representation, which I call weighted-member proportional representation. It’s been around for a long, long time. The idea is not original to me. It came up repeatedly in presentations to the federal Special Committee on Electoral Reform in 2016. There were at least half a dozen submissions to that committee which featured this idea prominently.

I recall discussing the idea with some of my colleagues 20 years ago in the lead-up to the referendum on B.C. STV. So the idea has been around for a long time, and I don’t think that it’s gotten the purchase that it deserves, so I’m here today to try and convince you that it’s worth considering.

I said a few minutes ago that we can do better, and we must do better. It turns out that not only can we do better, but we can do so quite easily. We don’t have to change the way we vote. We don’t have to change any electoral boundaries. We don’t have to adopt multi-member districts or regional districts on top of our usual single-member districts. We don’t have to substantially increase the number of MLAs. We can achieve a fully proportional system by keeping our current system intact and making one simple change.

The change is to weight MLAs’ votes on legislative matters by their party’s share of the popular vote. The weight is determined by dividing each party’s share of the popular vote by the share of seats that their party won in the Legislature. For example, if the NDP won 40 percent of the popular vote but 50 percent of the seats, then their MLAs’ votes would be weighted by 4/5ths. On the other hand, if the Greens won 6 percent of the popular vote but only 3 percent of the seats, then their votes would be weighted by 2. They would effectively have twice as many votes because of the weighting.

The total number of votes in the House will always add up to the number of seats. So in the current House, there are 93 seats. There are always going to be 93 votes in total. But instead of those votes being apportioned on the principle one MLA, one vote, they’re allocated on the basis of the party’s share of the popular vote. That makes every citizen’s vote count, and count equally to the greatest possible extent.

There are a couple of just relatively minor details of implementation that I’ll go over quickly. It’s standard in proportional representation systems to adopt an electoral threshold, which is meant to prevent excess fragmentation of the parliament. Basically, what you’re doing is trying to set the threshold so that the so-called fringe parties don’t have an undue influence on political goings on. And 5 percent is often thrown out as a good place to set the electoral threshold, 5 percent of the popular vote.

I don’t know whether that’s the right place to set it. I’ll maybe talk about that a little bit later if I have time, but it seems like a good starting place for discussion, at least. And 5 percent of the popular vote, I’ll remind you, in the general election last year would have been over 105,000 votes. A party that’s getting 105,000 votes surely ought to be represented in the Legislature.

Assuming we adopt an electoral threshold of somewhere around 5 percent, maybe a little bit higher, maybe a little bit lower, we have to deal with the not-inconsequential fact that a party can achieve that electoral threshold and fail to elect a member under our single-member plurality method of voting, which we currently use. Again, I’m suggesting that we don’t need to change that voting method at all.

So what do we do if a party has 5 percent of the vote and they don’t elect a member?

[1:25 p.m.]

An obvious solution is simply to declare one of their members elected. I personally favour declaring up to two members elected for any party that gets at least 5 percent of the popular vote. That would have the effect of ensuring not only that those votes

members elected.

I personally favour declaring up to two members elected for any party that gets at least 5 percent of the popular vote. That would have the effect of ensuring not only that those votes were represented in the House but that every party that achieves the electoral threshold gets official party status, which strikes me as the right sort of outcome.

In any case, I will observe that if that rule was adopted, then in the last eight elections, going back to 1996, so 30 years ago, basically, there would never be more than two of those top-up seats handed to a party on the suggestion I just made. In three of the eight elections, no top-up seats needed to be awarded at all. So it’s not as though we’re adding a castle of members to the House on this proposal.

I’m going to turn now to some of the advantages of this system, which, again, I call weighted-member proportional representation, or WMPR. Every time I say that to myself, I think it sounds like the call letters for an American radio station — “WMPR, bringing you proportional representation all day, every day.” Anyway. WMPR makes gerrymandering, whether it’s intentional or accidental, impossible.

Of course, we don’t have to worry about gerrymandering to anywhere near the extent that our neighbours to the south do because we have non-partisan electoral boundary commissions, but accidental gerrymandering does sometimes happen under our current system; that is, the boundary commission can redraw boundaries in a way which accidentally favours one party over another. That’s a complete non-worry in the case of WMPR because every vote in the province counts as much towards a party’s popular vote as every other one does, and it doesn’t matter where that vote is cast.

A related point. Under WMPR, there’s no need for the Electoral Boundaries Commission to worry about compromises between keeping the size of electoral districts in sparsely populated areas manageable without giving them more weight, essentially, in elections. Under WMPR, it doesn’t matter, because the weight of an MLA’s vote in the House has been decoupled from the MLA’s mere presence in the House.

It doesn’t really matter that some MLAs are elected with just a few thousand votes and some are elected with 10,000 or 20,000. What matters is the popular vote of the party and hence the weight that those MLAs will have in the House. Weighted-member PR would likely encourage parties to campaign seriously in all areas of the province and not only in ridings that they thought were winnable.

The reason for that is that a Green vote, for example, in Peace River South counts just as much toward the party’s popular vote as a Green vote in West Vancouver–Sea to Sky. So you don’t want to ignore ridings where you don’t think you can win the seat, because doing so would sacrifice votes that could be added to your weight in the House. Essentially, that’s what it amounts to.

You might wonder just how, say, the Green Party is going to manage to mount an effective campaign in Peace River South. The answer to that, in part, has to do with something that’s related to what I called earlier the futility of voting for voters that live in safe ridings and don’t favour the dominant party.

It’s quite hard for the Greens to find good candidates in Peace River South, and it’s hard for them to find volunteers to run an effective campaign, because the likelihood of winning that seat is so low that it’s just really difficult for people not to recognize the futility of participating.

[1:30 p.m.]

I think if we adopted a system like WMPR, you’d find that that changed pretty quickly. As soon as people realized that a vote anywhere, regardless of whether you elect an MLA or not, is worth just as much as a vote anywhere else, we would see people more fully engaging in the political process, and that’s an important advantage.

Whereas other proportional representation systems merely tend towards proportionality, the version of proportional representation that I’m recommending

more fully engaging in the political process. And that’s an important advantage.

Whereas other proportional representation systems merely tend towards proportionality, the version of proportional representation that I’m recommending is, essentially, perfectly proportional. It’s as proportional as a system can be. And I think that’s an important advantage of it.

I’m in favour of proportional representation of any kind, but one of the virtues of this particular kind of proportional representation is that every single voter who votes for a party which exceeds the threshold for being proportionally represented in the House will know with certainty that her vote is making a difference. A small one, sure, one two-millionth of a difference in the last election, roughly speaking, but a real difference. As I said, every single voter can know that. That’s an important consequence.

As you might guess, the biggest advantage of MPR is that it’s by far the simplest means of implementing proportional representation available. It doesn’t require any big changes to our electoral system. It could be implemented very quickly at almost no cost. It doesn’t require a citizens’ assembly or another referendum. All that’s required is the political will to make it happen. In fact, it’s not even clear that it requires a legislative change, but if it does, then it would be a very minor one.

And along those lines, I just want to comment briefly on the last slide of Elections B.C.’s presentation to the committee, which was posted on the portal a little while ago. The last slide says: “Changing electoral systems is a complex and lengthy process.” And I just want to run through the bullet points, which are an explanation for why it’s a complex and lengthy process.

Legislative change. Well, yeah, maybe it requires a legislative change, but it’s not a big one. And maybe it doesn’t even require a legislative change. Redistribution of electoral districts. No, WMPR doesn’t require changes to electoral districts, unlike the other forms of proportional representation. Voting and counting processes: no change. Technology requirements: no change. Election official training: no change.

The two biggies, the last two, are communications and voter trust, and I don’t want to minimize the importance of those two things. But in comparison to implementing the kind of proportional representation that I favour, the other systems of proportional representation don’t fare anywhere nearly as well.

How am I doing for time, Madam Chair?

Jessie Sunner (Chair): You are out of time.

Bob Bright: I’m out of time. Oh, I’m sorry.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Bob. That’s okay. We’ll go into questions, and we can elaborate a bit on a few points there.

Sheldon Clare: I have a couple of things I’m wondering about. This is an interesting presentation. It’s the first time I’ve heard something new about proportional representation. One of the concerns that is in some of the larger northern ridings is the importance of regional representation where there are fewer voters in larger areas who are concerned about resources being removed, the money leaving and it being spent elsewhere.

How would such a system provide regional representation, or would it have to be conducted in conjunction with adding another House perhaps, a bicameral system?

Bob Bright: If I understand your question correctly, there are absolutely no differences in regional representation between our current electoral system and the one that I’m recommending.

Sheldon Clare: Well, there are, because if I have 43,000 voters in my riding and John Rustad, say, has 32,000 in his riding and, say, one of the ridings in Surrey has what, 60,000, then those ridings are not equally weighted.

Bob Bright: No, the ridings are not equally weighted. The members are equally weighted.

Sheldon Clare: Yes, but the ridings are not. So a vote, for example, in Prince George–North Cariboo would technically count for more than a vote in any of the Surrey ridings. What do you think about that?

[1:35 p.m.]

Bob Bright: I’m not seeing it. So one of your members is elected in a riding with a fairly small number of registered voters, and one is elected in a riding with a fairly large

What do you think about that?

Bob Bright: I’m not seeing it.

One of your members is elected in a riding with a fairly small number of registered voters, and one is elected in a riding with a fairly large number of registered voters. They’re both members of the same party. They both partake of the popular vote, so to speak, in exactly the same measure. So they both have exactly the same weight in the House.

How does that privilege one?

Sheldon Clare: But the popular vote by riding.

Bob Bright: No, this is provincial popular vote.

Sheldon Clare: I’m looking at riding popular vote. It has a different weight.

Bob Bright: It does, but it’s not riding popular vote that’s at work here. It’s provincial popular vote.

It’s the popular vote in that very first chart on the statement of votes that the electoral officer delivers.

Sheldon Clare: Okay.

My next point is: if you had three small parties, each getting about four percent of the popular vote, how would those votes be represented in the House? Or independents?

Bob Bright: Independents, the best way to accommodate independents under this scheme is to just give them one single vote, not weighted in any way. Then you have to reduce the allocations to the party-members MLAs just slightly, but very slightly.

We’ve only had two independents in the last 30 years, so it’s not a huge concern, I don’t think.

Sheldon Clare: Well, what about the smaller parties?

Bob Bright: The smaller parties, if they don’t achieve the electoral threshold, are not entitled to proportional representation in the House. So they can certainly elect a member, but the member will effectively serve as an independent.

They would have one single vote, not weighted up or down, because they’re not entitled to be weighted up or down. In the case of a real independent, there’s no basis for moving their weight up and down, because they don’t have a party popular vote to motivate that.

Sheldon Clare: I’m talking about if they don’t elect anyone at all but have a vote of, say, 4 percent each, but there’s no one elected. How does that 12 percent of the votes count?

Bob Bright: It doesn’t, in short.

Let me just say as a theoretical matter that it is impossible to make a system perfectly proportional without restriction, because fringe parties, sometimes extreme fringe parties, which only get a few hundred votes, can’t be represented in the Legislature without unduly fragmenting things and making everybody’s vote worth less, in effect. It would interfere with the business of the House.

That’s why we have an electoral threshold. If parties don’t meet the threshold and don’t elect a member, then those votes are effectively wasted. We can never completely get rid of wasted votes because we can’t prevent people from voting for the Let’s Kill All of Humanity Party or some other looney-tune party, right?

Sheldon Clare: So it isn’t a perfectly proportional system.

Bob Bright: It’s as proportional as it can possibly be, as any system can possibly be, and much more proportional than others.

I would maybe just like to add that, typically, in B.C. elections, the size of the wasted vote is around 45 percent or so. I don’t have firm numbers here, because it would take me several weeks to actually compile them, but this is a ballpark figure. There are roughly 45 percent of the votes that are cast in any given election which don’t count towards electing anyone. They just sit there on that pile of percentage of popular vote and do nothing, just collect dust.

Under weighted-member proportional representation, the average wasted vote over the last eight elections, going back to 1996, would be 4.48 percent, so roughly a tenth of the size of what our normal wasted vote is. That’s a pretty huge gain, I think.

Sheldon Clare: Just to let the Chair indulge me for one quick thing more….

That could lead easily to circumstances where you have more physical members in the House in your party, but the other party might have fewer members but form government. Is that correct?

[1:40 p.m.]

Bob Bright: Absolutely.

Sheldon Clare: Okay.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation.

I wondered if you could just speak to two questions. One is: can you just explain how this would or would not

government, is that correct?

Bob Bright: Absolutely.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I wondered if you could just speak to two questions. One is: can you just explain how this would or would not affect strategic voting? And then secondly, is this in use in any other jurisdiction?

Bob Bright: Good questions, thank you. The answer to the first one is that it does have a very direct bearing on strategic voting, as does any form of proportional representation. One of the advantages of weighted-member PR is that it makes what I just said really, really clear.

If I have a concern about another party electing a member, that would be a fairly typical sort of circumstance in which I might resort to a strategic vote. If I don’t think my favourite candidate has a decent chance of winning, I’ll ship my vote to another candidate to try and prevent the one that I don’t like from winning.

In the case of weighted-member PR, a vote for any other candidate than the one that you’re concerned about is equally as effective. So there’s no motivation at all to switch allegiances, so to speak.

And your second question was? Remind me, Rob, please.

Rob Botterell: Is there another jurisdiction you can point us to where this is in place?

Bob Bright: Another jurisdiction? No, there isn’t.

As I said at the outset, one of the main reasons that I’m here today is that this idea has been around for a long time, and it keeps getting reinvented by people, but it hasn’t developed the purchase that I think it deserves. So I’m trying to get more people thinking about it and recognizing the advantages, not only over our current system.

With just this very minor tweak, we can go from a system that performs quite miserably representation-wise to as full a proportional representation as possible, and we can do it almost costlessly. So people ought to be thinking about this more.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Bob, for your presentation. It’s very novel ideas, and thank you for bringing them to the committee and answering all of our questions today.

Next up we have Andrew Petter. Welcome, Andrew, and welcome back to the Legislature.

Andrew Petter: It’s a little scary being back in this place again.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Just as you begin, a reminder that you’ll have 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by ten minutes for questions.

Andrew Petter

Andrew Petter: Well, thank you very much, and thanks to the committee for providing me an opportunity to contribute to your important work on democratic and electoral reform. It’s an issue I have come to care deeply about, both on personal experience but also on study.

As you’ve already heard from many others, there are serious deficiencies with our current first-past-the-post electoral system. It’s a system that disenfranchises thousands of voters by wasting the votes of those who support candidates who don’t finish first and aren’t elected. But it also wastes votes by diminishing the value of votes cast for candidates who receive more support than they require to be elected, those additional votes being wasted as well.

It creates legislatures that do not accurately reflect the views of the electorate, often granting majority power to parties supported by a minority of voters, while reducing or denying representation to voters who support smaller parties. And it creates a bias for one-party governments, in which decisions are made behind closed doors and with limited accountability.

The result is a system in which many citizens rightly feel their votes don’t count and in which legislatures don’t fairly represent the views of the people they serve.

This reality became crystal clear to me in 1996 when I ran for re-election as an NDP MLA. In that election, the NDP formed a majority government with less than 40 percent of the popular vote, despite receiving 37,000 fewer votes than the opposition Liberal Party. The outcome gave the NDP a legal mandate to govern on behalf of all British Columbians, including the more than 60 percent who voted against our party. But it raised a troubling question, both to my mind and to many others, about fairness and about legitimacy.

[1:45 p.m.]

Put simply, how can a system that enables a party that secures a minority of votes — in this case, less than the votes received by the opposition party — to form a majority government…? How could that system purport to be democratic?

The flaws of the first-past-the-post system were again on full display in the subsequent 2001 election, in which the Liberal Party gained over 97 percent of the seats, 77 out of 79 seats, with only 58 percent of the vote. This left

to form a majority government. How could that system purport to be democratic?

The flaws of the first-past-the-post system were again on full display in the subsequent 2001 election, in which the Liberal Party gained over 97 percent of the seats, 77 out of 79 seats, with only 58 percent of the vote. This left the NDP with just 3 percent of seats, 2 out of 79, to represent the 21½ percent of voters who cast ballots for them, while the Green Party, with over 12 percent voter support, got no seats at all. As a consequence, the province, for the first time in its history, was left without an official opposition to hold the government accountable.

The numbers for official opposition parties in those days were a little higher than they are today, and the government wasn’t prepared to yield on that point. This result gave rise to yet another troubling question. How can a system purporting to be democratic deny meaningful voice in the Legislature to the 42 percent of voters who did not support the governing party?

These two elections expose first-past-the-post for what it is: a system that distorts democracy, discourages voter participation and promotes one-party rule. Today, however, I want to focus on two further features of the first-past-the-post system that concern me and I believe should concern us all, namely, its destructive tendencies to amplify regionalism and to exacerbate political polarization within our province.

The first-past-the-post system rewards geographically concentrated support, and it penalizes geographically dispersed support, leading to significant distortions in representation. We saw this clearly in the 2024 election in which the Green Party, despite receiving over 8 percent of the vote across the province, won barely 2 percent of the seats.

But first-past-the-post’s amplification of regionalism doesn’t only impact smaller parties. It also distorts how major parties are represented across different parts of the province, exaggerating regional divides. Let’s take Vancouver as an example from the 2024 election. The NDP received about 58 percent of the vote in the city but won 11 of 12 seats, over 91 percent of the total. Meanwhile the Conservatives, with nearly 33 percent of the vote, secured just one seat, barely 8 percent of the total.

Now compare that to the Interior, where the Conservatives received roughly 50 percent of the vote and won 21 of 26 seats, over 80 percent, while the NDP, with more than 35 percent of the vote, won just 5 seats, less than 20 percent. What this means is that votes for the NDP in urban areas and votes for Conservatives in rural areas carry far more weight and exert much greater influence than urban Conservative or rural NDP votes.

As a result, the Conservative caucus is disproportionately rural in its makeup and perspective, despite the 83,000 Vancouver voters who supported Conservative candidates but only got one candidate elected. Similarly, the NDP caucus is disproportionately urban, despite the 192,000 Interior voters who cast ballots for NDP candidates. This leads to three serious consequences.

Distorted political incentives, where parties are encouraged to cater to their strongholds and to neglect regions where they lack representation. I know that all parties will say that they’re trying to respond to all parts of the province, but the reality is, within a caucus where you have that kind of distortion in representation, it’s inevitable that regional concerns will be reflected in some relationship to the distortion of MLA representation.

It also contributes to a sense of regional alienation on the part of rural voters who are underrepresented in a government in which urban voters are overrepresented, at least in the current Legislature. It contributes to a Legislature more regionally riven than the province itself, in which regional divisions are aggravated and amplified. Regional divisions are a serious problem that we face as a province in terms of trying to maintain cohesion and political stability.

Let’s then turn to political polarization. In addition to entrenching regional divides, first-past-the-post also exacerbates political polarization in at least three ways.

First, by enabling parties to form majority governments with far less than a majority of votes, it encourages them to pursue electoral strategies that appeal to a smaller set of voters with a narrower set of views, often at the expense of broad, unifying policies.

Second, it pressures voters into strategic voting, often compelling them to make a binary choice between two major parties, even if their true preferences lie elsewhere.

Third, this binary logic incentivizes major parties to drive strategic voting by running highly negative campaigns that seek to vilify, and, by vilifying their opponents, to scare people into strategic voting, promoting a simplistic “us versus them” narrative.

[1:50 p.m.]

Together these dynamics drive parties further apart, reducing the space for consensus and increasing public frustration with a political system that seems more preoccupied with fomenting conflict and scoring political points than it does with governing responsibly.

Are there alternatives?

narrative. Together these dynamics drive parties further apart, reducing the space for consensus and increasing public frustration with a political system that seems more preoccupied with fomenting conflict and scoring political points than it does with governing responsibly.

Are there alternatives that better protect democratic values and address other deficiencies of the first-past-the-post system? The simple answer is yes. Proportional representation systems, including mixed-member proportional and single transferable vote systems, provide structural remedies to the problems I’ve described. They’re not perfect, but they’re certainly better.

They offer better geographic balance by translating votes into seats more accurately across all regions and within all parties. They provide incentives for collaboration through coalition-building and consensus-driven policy-making, and they reduce voter alienation by ensuring that most votes cast count towards representation. PR systems are used in most democracies around the world, and the evidence shows that they support higher voter turnout and more stable policy outcomes.

In sum, the first-past-the-post system is inconsistent with the values of a province that is committed to a democratic form of governance that is inclusive, functional and fair. Moreover, by amplifying regional divisions and reinforcing political polarization, it undermines trust in our institutions and the sense of common purpose that democracy requires.

I respectfully urge this committee to recommend replacing first-past-the-post with a proportional electoral system that more fairly reflects the distribution and diversity of voter support, encourages cooperation over confrontation and ensures that all British Columbians, regardless of geography or political preference, see themselves reflected in the Legislature.

In 2005, British Columbians were denied this opportunity in a referendum in which over 57 percent of British Columbia voters, comprising a majority in 77 of 79 constituencies, supported the recommendation of the B.C. Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform to implement an STV voting system in the province.

Sadly, the government of the day, having committed to an electoral reform process before it was elected, ensured its failure afterwards by imposing a 60 percent threshold for approval and refusing to campaign in favour of the reform recommended by its own process. Today you have a chance to reawaken that conversation.

British Columbians deserve a truly democratic electoral system grounded in values of fairness, inclusion and shared responsibility — not one that promotes conflict and seeks to divide us by region, but one that brings us together as citizens engaged in a shared enterprise to build a better province for the benefit of all British Columbians.

I thank you for your time and consideration, and I would welcome any questions you might have.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Andrew.

Are there any questions? MLA Botterell.

Rob Botterell: Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks for your presentation. The question I have…. Your presentation is very clear on the benefits of moving to a system of proportional representation. How would you see that unfolding?

We’ve heard everything from “have another referendum” to “implement proportional representation and have a referendum after a couple elections” to “have a citizens’ assembly and make the recommendations of the citizens’ assembly binding on the government to implement.” Have you thought…? Do you have any thoughts about — say we decide to recommend — what the trajectory might look like over the next couple of years?

Andrew Petter: Well, I think that is a difficult question, frankly, and one that troubles me. It’s hard to come back to the electorate after you’ve gone through a serious process like the citizens’ assembly, and the subsequent referendum, I think, suffered as a result. The most recent one suffered as well because some exotic options were provided that I think muddied the waters.

But I think the answer is this. I think you do need voter validation, but I think you need the support of political parties who have to look beyond short-term self-interest, who have earned the seats they have earned in the Legislature based on first-past-the-post, whose political operatives are used to gaming the system and driving strategic voting. It’s going to take leadership.

[1:55 p.m.]

And if all of the major and minor political parties in the Legislature said, “Look, we agree that this earned system is not acceptable. We cannot simply allow wasted votes, votes to be thrown in the trash can to the extent they are, people to be disenfranchised, regional divisions to be exacerbated, polarization to be fomented. We have decided to put aside the self-interest we have in the system that elected us, and we support change and will vote for it and advocate for it,” then set up a citizens’ assembly or some kind of deliberative process and get behind it

regional divisions to be exacerbated, polarization to be fomented. We have decided to put aside the self-interest we have in the system that elected us, and we support change and will vote for it and advocate for it. Then set up a citizens assembly or some kind of deliberative process and get behind it. That’s the one hope I would have.

I think what’s happened too often is that there have been commitments made, maybe before an election. Suddenly, after the election, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea, both federally and provincially, and then the parties back off. At best, they say they’re going to take a neutral stance, or they put forward muddied options and won’t declare which one they prefer.

It’s going to take political leadership by you and your colleagues and others who are prepared to admit that the current system is a major problem to us being successful as a province and who are prepared to take the courageous stand of saying you support change and then turning it over to citizens to decide what form that change should be.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your spirited presentation, Andrew. Really appreciate it.

A couple of questions I had. One of them was…. When we look at other jurisdictions — let’s use Scotland for an example. Back in 2004, they did exactly what you suggested. They came up. They had citizens assemblies.

Interjection.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Scotland, 2004. They went through the citizens assembly. They decentralized a lot of the decision-making powers in some of the smaller regions, added more representation to a new House. The party in power at the time, the SNP, thought it was the right thing to do. Twenty years later, SNP has basically been wiped off the map, and now Scotland is looking for more representation in their regions because they don’t feel that they have the control that they used to have.

What do you have to say to that?

Andrew Petter: No electoral system is going to inoculate parties from falling out of political favour, nor should it. It should in fact be a system that increases accountability and holds parties to account so when the public, as it sometimes does, becomes dissatisfied — I’ve been in that situation, as you may be in the future — they should have every right to make changes.

The system is not there to…. The success of the system is not measured by whether or not those who advocate the system retain power for a long period of time but whether the system serves the purposes that it’s set up to serve, namely to increase accountability, improve policy-making, and the other values that I’ve identified in this presentation.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): If I may add to that, then. What is your take on the argument, inasmuch as elections are run on platforms, if we start having coalition governments time after time after time, is there really accountability to those platforms when compromises have to be made to maintain the government? What you’re suggesting is that that’s actually going to increase accountability. Yet honestly, the platforms and the policies can get thrown right out the window, depending on the coalitions that have to be formed to keep a majority in the seats.

Andrew Petter: No, I think in proportional systems, it’s true, there is very frequently the necessity for coalitions that require trade-offs to be made. But those trade-offs are made in a more transparent way, often the trade-offs that are made in majority governments that are elected by a minority of citizens. We in Canada, of course, have minority governments which have operated in that way as well.

I think the question here is transparency. If we have coalitions that are formed in which policies are traded off in order to try to find a ground that represents the views of more people in the province, I see that as advancing accountability. If I and the party get elected with 40 percent or less support and I hold to my positions, I don’t think I’m being accountable to the majority of electors in the province. If I’m elected with that 40 percent and I have to compromise that 40 percent to get the support of a party that got 20 percent, we now have a policy that both parties believe can appeal to 60 percent of the province. That I think is a far more accountable result than that of holding to the 40 percent and being accountable only to them.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Oh yeah, I just…. If I may, you’re stretching the assumptions where, if the threshold is only 5 percent, now you’re expropriating it to 20 percent. But I get your point. Thank you.

Andrew Petter: No, I’m saying that we have very commonly…. It’s uncommon for a government to get elected with a majority with a majority of votes. It’s much more common for a government to be elected with a majority with a minority of votes. So the views that they are representing are a minority in the province. Yes, they may hold to their positions in a way that satisfies that minority, but what’s that to say about the majority in the province who didn’t vote for those positions?

[2:00 p.m.]

That’s not accountability. That’s a very strained and distorted view of accountability. Much more accountable to require the party that got the 40 percent to have to be able to bend a little bit to show that it can accommodate the views of that 60 percent or 55 percent that voted against them.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I appreciate that. But at the same time, we’ve also discussed about more free

That’s a very strained and distorted view of accountability. Much more accountable to require the party that got the 40 percent to have to be able to bend a little bit to show that it can accommodate the views of that 60 percent or 55 percent that voted against them.

Ward Stamer: I appreciate that, but at the same time, we’ve also discussed about more free votes in this House. You’ve experienced it yourself. Is that a possibility where, if you were elected under a banner and your constituents are dead against something and you don’t have to toe the party line and it’s not a non-confidence vote, in other words, allowing more flexibility in the way we run this place and not have the opportunity to have a non-confidence vote any time leadership would decide…?

Do you think that that would help?

Andrew Petter: I think the issue of free votes in the Legislature is a different issue altogether. There’s ample room for allowing or disallowing free votes in either system.

I could go on about my views on parliamentary reform as well, and you and I might end up agreeing on a lot of stuff. I think there’s far too much power in the executive, in parliamentary systems, traditionally, and we should look at ways in which Members of Parliament or members of the Legislature have more say, and free votes may be one instrument for that.

But I don’t think that cuts one way or the other in terms of the electoral system we’re talking about here.

Rob Botterell: A couple questions. One is concerns that have been raised by some presenters about proportional representation in Europe leading to the advance of extreme parties. Your views on that would be helpful. And then the second part is…. A question would be….

Sometimes I get accused of asking a leading question. Given that you’re an esteemed former Attorney General and a lawyer, I feel no compunction at all in resisting the temptation.

But isn’t it true that voters in a proportional representation system would understand when they look at the platforms of parties that there very well could be a need to build a coalition where not everything in the platform gets done?

Andrew Petter: No, I think that’s true. I think we often made the mistake of evaluating proportional systems through the lens of a first-past-the-post system. A lot will change if we go to a proportional system: in voting patterns, in expectations and in understanding. So I think you’re absolutely right.

People, when they vote in a proportional system, will know that in all likelihood, the party they’re voting for will not be able to rule as a majority by itself. It will have to seek the support of others. And that’s more likely…. It’s not impossible, of course, as we know even in this province and federally, that that’s the case even under a first-past-the-post system but more likely to be consistently the case.

But it’s also one of the reasons there’s more policy consistency under a proportional system. In a proportional system, the centre will have sway. Whether it’s a party that leans one way or the other, the centre will tend to have more sway. So there’s more policy consistency.

In a first-past-the-post system, when you go from one party that has 40 percent of the vote on one end of the political spectrum — and I don’t like to use the word ideological as it’s cultural as much as political these days — to a party that holds 40 percent on the other side, you’re going to get much more radical swings in policy.

If you require that middle 20 percent to have to be there to support one or the other of those two voting blocks, you’re more likely to have that centre produce a more consistent and stable policy outcome.

Now, the first question you asked…. Again, I don’t want to pretend. Proportional systems will not prevent extremism. There are certain things you should build into a proportional system to prevent very small parties with extreme views from controlling the agenda. I know those who oppose proportional representation like to trot out Israel or Italy in the past and that kind of thing. The person who spoke before me talked about the kinds of thresholds that most PR systems build in to prevent that.

But the reality is that under a proportional system, there’s nothing to stop extreme parties from running and trying to see voter support, as there is in a first-past-the-post system.

But as I say, under a proportional system, you’re more likely to have some gravitational pull from the centre, even if those parties gain a significant share of the vote, whereas on a first-past-the-post system, you can see how two parties at one end of a political spectrum could get together and pursue an agenda that’s more likely to be much more extreme even though it commands only 40 percent of the popular vote.

[2:05 p.m.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): All right, that’s all the questions. Thank you so much, Andrew, for being here this afternoon and for all your service to our province.

Andrew Petter: Thank you so much. It’s nice to be back in the Douglas Fir room.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Come by any time.

All right, next up we have Sharath Hiremagalor.

being here this afternoon and for all your service to our province.

Andrew Petter: Thank you so much. It’s nice to be back in the Douglas Fir Room.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Come by any time.

All right, next up we have Sharath Hiremagalore.

Before you get started, just a reminder that you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions. So please get started when you’re ready.

Sharath Hiremagalore

Sharath Hiremagalore: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. My name is Sharath Hiremagalore. I’m an immigrant to Canada, and I currently live in Burnaby. I do not come here as a political scientist. In fact, I have a doctorate in computer science. I come here as an ordinary citizen to see how we can improve our electoral system.

Today I’m here to plead before you a case for reforming our electoral system, and I urge the committee to implement a fairer system, one that better reflects the choices of all British Columbians. I would leave the choice of a proportional representation system to experts, but any PR system, whether it’s MMP, STV, rural, urban, would be a far better choice than the first-past-the-post system that we have.

There have been experts — Fair Voting B.C., Fair Vote Canada and several others — who have suggested excellent models that would work well with their provinces’ rural-urban differences by preserving the regional representation and adding a few top-up seats that would work very well for us.

Before moving to Canada, I lived south of the border in the U.S. for about 12 years, first for going to university and later for work. Looking back, those have been some of my formative years, and I’ve had the opportunity to see the political landscape south of the border transform but people becoming more polarized.

During that time, I got around and talked to people around the neighbourhood during election cycles, and I came across several couples. They said they never vote, and they would say: “Both of us vote for different parties, and our vote does not count.” They, in fact, cancel each other out, so there’s no point in voting.

This disengagement is because people feel that their vote does not matter. It can be fixed with a change to a proportional representation.

I’ve also had the privilege of being in the U.S. long enough to see the polarization lead to policy lurch. When there’s a change in the party governing the country, each government undoes the last one’s work only to be undone again. So it’s bad.

We have seen in other parts of the world that cooperative models for government puts them on a path for consistent and incremental growth, and that’s what I wish to see in B.C. — more collaboration, more consistent policy and growth.

Before the federal elections this year, I spent time talking to several neighbours in Burnaby, in North Burnaby particularly, about the upcoming election. Some of them were undecided, and others had made up their minds, but many said that they were voting strategically, not for somebody they truly supported.

[2:10 p.m.]

When I asked if they’d heard of proportional representation, they answered that they didn’t know what the term means, but they clearly understand that there is a problem and that we need it fixed.

This lack of detail or understanding of proportional representation can be fixed with education and talking to people — a campaign.

be needed fixed. This lack of detail or understanding of proportional representation can be fixed with education, talking to people, a campaign. We do not expect the general public to know every detail of proportional representation. Experts can help with that.

Several polls have shown overwhelming consensus that citizens want electoral reform. Let’s not have another referendum. B.C. can be the first province in Canada to modernize our democracy. We can show the rest of Canada what fairness really looks like. Thank you for your time.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Sharath.

Do we have any questions?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation. Personally, do you have any personal choices when it comes to PR?

Sharath Hiremagalore: I do not personally have a choice. I’m open to any expert committee…. We already had a citizens assembly choosing one for us. I’ll let the experts decide on a PR system.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): All right, thank you for that.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Any further questions? All right, I don’t see any further questions.

Thank you so much, Sharath, for taking the time to present your committee this afternoon.

Okay, next we have Reed McIlwain. Welcome, Reed. Thank you for being here this afternoon. Just a reminder, you’ll have five minutes for your presentation followed by five minutes for questions. Please get started when you’re ready.

Reed McIlwain

Reed McIlwain: Hello and good afternoon. My name is Reed McElwain, and I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to be here today.

I can introduce myself in a lot of different ways, but politically, I’m a non-partisan young voter. I’m 27 years old. I was born and raised in Kamloops, and for the past nine years, I’ve split my time between there and here in Victoria. I voted in every federal, provincial and municipal election I’ve been eligible for, both in Kamloops and here in the CRD. I’m a highly engaged and passionate voter, but I know that’s not the norm among my peers.

I’m here today to express my full support for electoral reform. I believe proportional representation has the potential to both increase youth democratic participation and strengthen the health of our democracy in the face of rising polarization and complex challenges.

My engagement with politics began in 2015. I was 17, and it was big year — the federal election in Canada, where the Liberals promised electoral reform, and the U.S. primaries, where I was watching two very different visions of democracy play out. Even then, proportional representation just made sense to me. A party gets 25 percent of the vote; they should get about 25 percent of the seats. It’s simple, intuitive and fair. That promise of reform in 2015 felt like a turning point, a hopeful moment. But when it was abandoned, it left voters of all ages more cynical about how they engaged with politics.

Since then, I’ve stayed politically engaged, but I’ve also spent that time trying to understand those who aren’t. I’ve had dozens of conversations with people who don’t vote, especially young people. What I’ve learned is this. Young people care deeply about the issues — climate action, housing, affordability, Indigenous sovereignty, mental health and addiction, jobs and economic growth. They’re not apathetic. They are passionate. But many are disillusioned and don’t see the point of voting.

The most common things I hear are: “I just feel like my vote doesn’t matter,” or “Voting won’t actually change anything.” The first speaks to the math of our system. Unless you live in a competitive riding, the outcome often feels predetermined. But the second reflects something deeper, a belief that no matter which party wins, the policies stay more or less the same or fail to reflect the urgency and diversity of what people are asking for.

Both of these sentiments grow in a system where parties are incentivized to chase a narrow band of swing voters rather than truly reflect the full range of political perspectives across the province. And both are corrosive to trust. Personally, despite voting in every election I’ve been eligible for, only once has my vote helped elect a representative — just once.

[2:15 p.m.]

Whether it’s a conservative voting in Victoria or a progressive voting in Kamloops, your vote rarely feels meaningful to the outcome. When that happens, when people feel like their vote is symbolic at best, it’s no surprise that participation and engagement drop.

a representative — just once. Whether it’s a conservative voting in Victoria or a progressive voting in Kamloops, your vote rarely feels meaningful to the outcome. And when that happens, when people feel like their vote is symbolic at best, it’s no surprise that participation and engagement drops.

Proportional representation would change that. It ensures that every vote contributes to the outcome no matter where you live. You vote for a party, and your vote helps determine how many seats they get. That’s real representation and a system people can believe in.

It also offers us a safeguard against something more dangerous to our democracy — polarization. I’ve watched the U.S. grow more and more divided under a two-party system that rewards division and punishes cooperation. While Canada isn’t there yet, we are not immune. Our ability to elect minority governments, to work across party lines and to have more than two serious political voices in the room — that’s helped us stay more stable.

Proportional representation would protect and reinforce that strength. It promotes compromise instead of winner-take-all politics. It rewards diversity of thought instead of forcing voters into strategic binaries.

Now, I want to be clear. I don’t think PR is a cure-all for the challenges our democracy faces, but I do believe it’s better. I believe British Columbia is in a unique position to lead the country on this issue. If we’re serious about building a stronger democracy, we need to stop asking voters to solve this alone through a referendum.

This isn’t a question of marketing; it’s a question of leadership. I want to see political parties and leaders come together across differences and commit to reform. I’m less concerned about the specific model we choose and more concerned that we choose something. What matters most to me is that we move toward a system that’s more fair, more inclusive and more reflective of the people it serves. That’s the kind of democracy I want to grow old in.

Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Reed, for your presentation.

Are there any questions?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks so much, Reed, for coming today. Is there any particular PR system that comes to mind? Are you more inclined with a single transferable vote or multiple opportunities? Do you have anything in mind personally?

Reed McIlwain: I truly don’t have a ton of preference. I think for me it comes down to the outcomes. I think it’s about how you sell it to people, honestly. Again, being from the Interior, I know how important local representation is to people. I think there have got to be compromises in whichever system you go with, that you’re making sure that people still feel they have that representation, that it’s something they can understand and they can get behind.

So I certainly would want to leave that up to the experts, but I think there are a lot of good systems that can find that balance between still providing representation but also accomplishing this goal of achieving a more proportional to the popular vote outcome.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): If I may…? Thank you. Okay. You also mentioned that only once have you felt that you’ve made a difference in the vote — the person that you actually voted for got elected. So what would you say is missing in whoever that person is that’s represented in your constituency regardless of the political party that they are part of?

What is missing from…? Is it the lack of engagement or the opportunity to be able to speak to the MLA? Is it just total thoughts and ideology or party policy? What has stopped you from believing that that person may be the best candidate but didn’t support that party?

Reed McIlwain: Maybe just to clarify my point, when I’m saying that my vote only helped elect a representative once, it’s just that it was only one time that I voted for the winner.

Those other times, I still voted — voted happily and proudly — for the candidate who I thought would do the best job but often walked into that voting booth knowing that they were not going to win. Still felt it was important, because I do feel that in a first-past-the-post system, that raw vote count total matters, and so if I show up for any party, hopefully that maybe convinces them to put more resources into that riding in the future.

And that’s the kind of persuasive argument I make to peers and to other young people who feel this way, but at the end of the day, people, I think, want to be able to see that outcome when they vote, myself included.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Any further questions? I don’t see any.

Thank you, Reed, for being here this afternoon and making the time to present to us.

Reed McIlwain: Thank you so much.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yeah, good presentation, Reed. Thanks.

[2:20 p.m.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay, next up we have Tom Mitchell.

Welcome, Tom. Thank you for presenting to our committee today. As you get started, just a reminder that you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Tom Mitchell

Tom Mitchell: Thank you.

Welcome, Tom. Thank you for presenting to our committee today. As you get started, just a reminder that you will have five minutes for your presentation followed by five minutes for questions.

Tom Mitchell

Tom Mitchell: Thank you. My name is Tom Mitchell. I would like to thank this committee for the opportunity to voice my thoughts on our electoral system. When I arrived in Canada as a 24-year-old immigrant from Scotland, I believed I was experiencing a working democratic system where parties competed for votes at election time and cooperated between elections. Sadly, I find that no longer seems to be the case in Canada. I also naively thought that the world was just naturally moving towards more democratic systems because of favouring global trade.

I lay a large part of the blame for Canada’s situation on our present FPTP method of electing political parties and their representatives. I see our current voting method through the lens of addressing climate change and presently despair at the disunity in parliament, both federal and provincial, which waffles in seriously addressing this issue. David Suzuki, speaking to Stephen Quinn on CBC’s Early Edition, made the point that we have already surpassed seven of the nine parameters of tipping points and are already at 1.5 degrees Celsius increase.

I realize this committee is to discuss the situation in B.C., but I feel the need to highlight some of the shortcomings caused by first-past-the-post in federal elections. In the 2019 election, the Bloc gained approximately 1.4 million votes in Quebec and gained 32 seats in parliament, while another party, the Green Party, received approximately 1.2 million votes and received only three seats. That is clearly not a fair or democratic result, especially as that made the Bloc, which only had to run candidates in Quebec, the official opposition.

In our present system, if you live in a safe seat for one particular party and you did not vote for that party, your vote is essentially wasted. Alternatively, under proportional representation system, every vote counts, and parties would no longer gain false majority results where they win the majority of seats without a true accounting.

Duverger’s law in political science states that first-past-the-post electoral systems will result in a two-party system. And we can witness the failure of that system in our neighbour to the south, where the two main parties are extremely hostile to one another and very little cooperation is in place. Some extremists even speak of a possible civil war. Clearly, that’s not a direction we want to follow.

The United Kingdom, which first introduced the original first-past-the-post at a time when there were only two parties, Whigs and Tories, is also becoming a land of two main parties, Labour and Conservative, with the concerns of smaller parties largely ignored.

In B.C. we have had three attempts to bring in PR, and a citizens’ assembly in 2005 resulted in a vote of 57 percent in favour, but the goal was set at 60 percent in 60 percent of the ridings. This at a time when Quebec could have separated from the rest of Canada with just 51 percent. An example of unjust parameters.

Under first-past-the-post, parties will form an alliance with other parties when necessary but are likely to abandon these cooperative effects when politically expedient. In B.C. under our present system we also see a widening gap in cooperation between political parties and a drift to never-ending electioneering and name-calling. In the last provincial election the two main parties were almost evenly matched in the election results, reinforcing what Duverger’s law states.

Under first-past-the-post, it is very, very unlikely that any single ruling party would bring in the possible hard but necessary measures needed to address climate change in fear of facing a public and business backlash aimed solely at them with an almost certain negative result for them in the next election.

In B.C., a PR system would lead to a stable legislature and avoid the collapse of some parties, liberals, and the scramble they have to rebrand themselves. My choice of system would be MMP such as New Zealand has adopted. In this system, several ridings amalgamate which gives voters more choice and shares the workload between representatives. New Zealand also had an agreement that for two election cycles PR would be used, then an opportunity would be given to voters to stay with PR or return to first-past-the-post. They chose to stay with PR.

That concludes my presentation. I thank you again and sincerely hope that some tangible benefit will result from these proceedings.

[2:25 p.m.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Tom.

Are there any questions for Tom?

I don’t see any, Tom.

to first-past-the-post, they chose to stay with PR.

That concludes my presentation. I thank you again and see the hope that some tangible benefit will result from these proceedings.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Tom. Are there any questions for Tom? Okay. I don’t see any questions, Tom. Thank you so much. Just a deep thank you from the committee for taking the time to prepare your presentation and to share that with us.

Next, we have Norm Ryder. Welcome, Norm. Thank you for joining us today.

Norm Ryder: Thank you for the opportunity. I guess in full disclosure, even though my MLA has just left the room, I should mention that he is safe, actually, in that sense.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Can you change your presentation?

Norm Ryder: Well, I have no criticism. How’s that sound?

But I will say that I guess everyone in the room probably somewhat agrees with what I thought was a very good summary of the problems that Andrew Petter presented a few minutes ago, that the current system is not working. We all know that.

However, I disagree with his solution and, I guess you could say, everyone else’s solution. We should return to how the original Westminster model of Parliament worked and actually was in B.C. until, depending, 1905 to 1912.

I think that really is better that…. So much now is being devoted to what the party thinks, or the cult of the leader, as I refer to it. I had one leader actually tell me that he doesn’t get to do what he wants because the board of directors tells him what to do. So that, to me, doesn’t make a lot of sense today.

Also, at that point, I wonder why we have MLAs. Why shouldn’t we just let the board of directors appoint the local representative in the constituency, and they can do whatever constituency work…? None of that seems to make a lot of sense to me, especially when you go into the ballot box and you’ve got…. Do I vote for the person that would be the best Premier, the party politics I like the best, or the local representative that I feel will represent me the best and work hardest for me?

Well, the answer is we should only be voting for the local representative that we feel would work the hardest and the best for us. When they get into the Legislature…. Well, with two of the last three elections, it’s taken probably two weeks to determine who was actually going to be the Premier of the province. So instead, why not elect everyone as independents? They can go in, go back to the original and choose who they want as the leader, which is the basis for confidence of the House.

It’s not the confidence of the political party that happens to be sitting in the big seat. At that point, the elected representatives would have more of an impetus to represent the people and work for the people in their individual riding. They’d be so much more responsive. To that end, I’d like to see political parties banned.

Some people may say: “Well, I need the party to get me elected.” It seems to me, if a candidate cannot get enough people to follow them and support them to do the work to get elected, they failed in the pre-qualification round to be a leader. That would also be a lot cheaper, because it wouldn’t be the, shall we say, leader campaign going around the province, which is very costly, and all these other costly things going on. It’d be a local focused effort to put forward the best representative.

[2:30 p.m.]

It’s not necessarily the one that you agree with their policies. It’s the one that will represent and work for me in the Legislature, in the constituency, the best.

I could probably go on a lot longer, but I think we’ll leave it at that.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Norm. Thank you so much for your presentation. There’s a question from the Deputy Chair.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Norm. We’ve talked a little bit — or, actually, at length — about

the best.

I could probably go on a lot longer, but I think we’ll leave it at that.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Norm. Thank you so much for your presentation.

There’s a question from the Deputy Chair.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Norm.

We’ve talked a little bit, or actually at length, about if we were going to be implementing a PR system of any form, how we would get that information out to the public. One of the things that came out of these discussions was the fact that municipally, a lot of our cities and towns operate very similar to what you’re suggesting.

There aren’t slates. You have six or eight councillors that are allowed, basically, free votes on any given time, and you have the flexibility as an electorate to be able to choose up to eight different times for eight separate candidates, say, in…. Let’s use Kamloops for an example.

Do you think that we should be allowing our municipalities either to have the opportunity, if they wanted, to run an STV or a ranking-based system? That way, instead of everybody having to vote eight times…. A lot of them don’t; they only vote two or three times. But also having the opportunity for the mayors to be picked the same way? Because we can argue that in many of our regions, we have mayors that are sitting with less than 30 percent of the total vote of the voters that have voted.

Do you think that that’s an effective way of informing the public of other alternative ways other than first-past-the-post?

Norm Ryder: I think a transferable ballot may help in that situation, but I don’t like any idea of a proportional representation because that puts too much of the power into the board of directors to select who is in. They’re not responsive, they’re not reacting to the people at that point.

We should take more and more power away from the political parties and return the power to the people. That’s what the whole game is all about, is power to the people. Right now, as a person that’s voted in, well, for 53 years, it’s disturbing to find out that most of my votes have been put in the “wasted” category. I just…. It’s probably one reason why you’re having lower voter turnout: “Why bother? I’m not going to get what I voted for anyways.”

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): All right. Thank you for that.

Sheldon Clare: Norm, thank you for your presentation.

I am a grand adherent to the Westminster parliamentary system. However, the reality of the party system is fairly heavily entrenched, and I think a lot of what you’re talking about would be reform of the party system.

I would postulate to you…. What would you think about a situation where there are no more leadership reviews, or no more of these fancy American-style contests where the leader is touted around the province, and it’s used to raise money and sell memberships, but it doesn’t necessarily turn into anything but a popularity contest? And if the caucus, like in the old system, actually chose the leader of their group in the House?

That group has become a political party, of course. So if the caucus picked the leader, that means every backbencher has power in that caucus. The caucus is actually best poised to recognize who the most talented person to be the leader, of that either opposition or government, would be within their caucus. I think this is how you get Churchill elected in World War II, for example.

Norm Ryder: Well, first of all, I think there should be a leadership review every day, to be quite honest. Yeah, not workable, but…. We’ll skip that.

You refer to the caucus as the party. No, if the caucus goes back to being allowed to, the members can leave the caucus and sit on the other side of the House from day to day. That would change a lot of the dynamics there where you, in the House…. But I’m sure you’ve had…. There’s a piece of legislation that may not quite be the best for your constituency, but it’s party policy. So the Whip gets out, whips you into shape…

Sheldon Clare: That’s what I do.

Norm Ryder: … and you vote the way you’re supposed to.

[2:35 p.m.]

That, shall we say, doesn’t work properly. You’re not representing your constituency. You’re representing what the party wants to the people.

Turn it around. Represent the people.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Well, thank you very much, Norm. It’s a very interesting perspective.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yeah, I like it.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much, Norm, for your presentation today.

Norm Ryder: You can tell them you can come back

properly, you’re not representing your constituency. You’re representing what the party wants to the people.

Turn it around. Represent the people.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Well, thank you very much, Norm. It’s a very interesting perspective.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much, Norm, for your presentation today.

Norm Ryder: You can tell him: you can come back in now.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay, next up, we have Jake Zimmermann. Welcome, Jake. Thank you for joining us in our committee this afternoon. Just before you get started, a reminder you will have five minutes to present followed by five minutes for questions. Please get started when you are ready.

Jake Zimmermann

Jake Zimmermann: All right. Hello. My name is Jake Steven Zimmermann Simmons. I would like to express my strong support for proportional representation.

Over the past 90 years, wealth and endless entertainment has led to a sense of our society being a little bit complacent with regards to its democratic rights. It is clear to me, and I think all of us, that this time of historical complacency is over. We have, then, with us, a choice. Either we build up our democratic systems, or we will eventually lose the democratic nature of our systems. Proportional representation, in my opinion, is a huge part of defending and building the democratic nature of our systems.

Proportional representation of one kind or another is used all over the world. Examples include Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, a lot of places in Europe, especially. It’s functional in those places. I don’t see why it can’t be functional here.

A study from Cambridge stated that countries that have proportional representation of one kind or another are far less likely to lose faith in democracy in the modern era, where we are having a lot of political shifts.

Although I did not cite this in the little essay that I submitted, I found another study that talked about the outcomes of proportional representation actually being measurably more democratic — with the possible exception of Australia, not that that system is quite proportional representation in the way most people define it — more democratic, in the sense that it achieves the outcomes desired by the people, than a first-past-the-post type system.

It is rare to have proportional representation in America and the Commonwealth, but these things are constantly being pushed for and will not go away. I am not in favour of an Australia type system or the type of system used in Alaska that is a winner-take-all ranked ballot type of system. It is my view that this still leaves a lot of room for improvement, to the point of being not optimal with regards to championing our democratic rights.

A mixed-member proportional type system, I like more. I like that it has the philosophy that people vote for the party instead of…. I like that it recognizes that people tend to vote for the party instead of for individuals. However, I am still in favour of a more single transferable vote type system, a little bit more like Ireland, where there are larger districts, and in those districts, you have proportional representation as well.

I am not a huge fan of referendums. Referendums, I feel, in the past have failed British Columbians. I think that referendums for a bureaucratic issue, like proportional representation — it’s far easier for negative polarization to affect this issue than other issues that are maybe a little bit more naturally hopeful. It’s far easier for people who don’t think about this very much to champion the scary change or destruction of our systems as opposed to how proportional representation could benefit our systems.

[2:40 p.m.]

That’s a very important aspect to this conversation, and I think that for that reason, I would much rather it be the case that legislatures got together and enacted proportional representation without a referendum.

I would like to say, furthermore, that I am not in favour of a particular proportional representation, though I do prefer

to this conversation, and I think that for that reason, I would much rather it be the case that legislatures got together and enacted proportional representation without a referendum. I would like to say furthermore that I am not in favour of a particular proportional representation, though I do prefer STV. I want proportional representation more than anything.

I’d like to end on saying that this is a topic that really affects me and the young people I see around me. I had a very sad conversation with my friend Daniel after the last referendum, where we were both very affected by how it failed, and we felt like it was not effectively communicated. I have a friend who left for Australia, and that was part of it.

Leadership takes courage, and I hope that you support proportional representation.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Jake, for your presentation. I will go to the committee for questions.

Okay, we don’t have any questions, Jake, so thank you so much for taking the time to present to our committee today.

We will take a five-minute break now.

The committee recessed from 2:41 p.m. to 2:53 p.m.

The committee recessed from 2:41 p.m. to 2:53 p.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay. Welcome back. Next up we have Bruce Murdoch.

Welcome, Bruce. Thank you for presenting to our committee this afternoon. As soon as you are ready, please go ahead. You’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Bruce Murdoch

Bruce Murdoch: Thanks very much. My name is Bruce Murdoch.

I’m calling in from the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa Nation in the city of Cranbrook.

In the last three years, I’ve been a financial agent in campaigns three times. What I want to do today is mainly address some of the ways that we can improve democracy by reforming campaign and party regulations, which tend to skewer against the democratic principles.

First of all, I’m coming from the point of view that I see the quality of democracy is best achieved when the Legislature looks like us. In other words, the diversity of society is matched in the Legislature so that we are governed by the broad spectrum.

[2:55 p.m.]

Sure enough, in the voting mechanics system, we have a serious deficit in democracy with the first-past-the-post system. So 35 percent to 40 percent of the people are represented in government nowadays, but if we did move to PR, it would go to 50 percent to 60 percent, which is a nice improvement, but it’s not the full answer to fully democratizing our governing system.

What I believe we need to do is…. In order to make the Legislature look more like us, we need to encourage more small parties, independents,

which is a nice improvement, but it’s not the full answer to fully democratizing our governing system.

What I believe we need to do in order to make the Legislature look more like us is we need to encourage more small parties, independents, new parties, so that we can see the full spectrum in the Legislature. We need a deep reform of election and party rules to open the door for more independents and new parties and small parties.

Two of my experiences with the financial campaign was in municipal elections. When I went through that, I thought the rules were pretty good. But then when I did the provincial campaign last fall, I was horrified that just how skewed their rules were against small parties and independents. I was working for a small party, and we ran into a number of difficulties that wouldn’t have been run into by the larger, entrenched parties. I believe that the rules are heavily skewed against independents and small parties.

I just want to give a few ideas as to where some of these problems lie and what we can do to fix it. We definitely need PR, proportional representation, but we need to change some of these other rules. For instance, to change or end public financing for political parties during a campaign. Right now, you need to achieve 10 percent of the vote to get a campaign rebate, and that very much disadvantages new and smaller parties and independents, and it makes it hard for fresh voices to enter the political arena.

I think I’d like to see as well…. After the election I know there is a per vote allowance given to parties, and I’d like to see that changed as well so that it’s not skewed against the small groups.

I’d like to see lower campaign spending limits. Excessive campaign spending fuels identity politics and drowns out substantive policy debate. I’d like to see tighter limits per electoral district and per contributor to level the playing field. No need for massive spending now with websites that can give us all kinds of detail as to what the platforms are.

I’d like to see during a campaign, a banning of paid advertising of party names. This will shift the focus away from party branding towards policy discussion and candidate quality as well. I’d also like to see party names removed from ballots, encouraging voters to choose candidates based on merit, not just on party affiliation, but foster a more thoughtful and representative democracy.

And then finally, I’d like to change the audit threshold. Right now, if you collect more than 10,000, you need to spend $4,500 on an audit. And we got caught with that sort of in a negative position with a small party this year.

In summary, while PR is a good step forward, the root of Canada’s democratic deficit really lies in the structure and incentives of the party system itself. Addressing these deeper issues is essential for building democracy that truly reflects and serves all Canadians. I’d like to see a much more open system for independents. We’re going to see extremes, but that is how our society looks. I’d like to see these rules changed.

That’s all I have.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Bruce. I’ll go to the committee for any questions.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Bruce, for your presentation. Do you think that most people in your riding know the names of the candidates that are actually on the ballot and what they represent? If they know that Bruce, Ward and Sheldon are on the ballot this time, would they actually know what our stances are, what our platforms are? Wouldn’t you think that having some form of party identification would help in that information process?

Bruce Murdoch: Well, I think that the candidates themselves should present the platform of the party, and they’re quite capable of doing that. Every candidate typically has a website, they’re out talking to people, they’re totally able to express the platform of their own party — or, if they’re independent, their own platforms. I just don’t see any advantage. Most people will tend to just vote party. They don’t look at the candidate, and they don’t look at the quality of the candidate and what they can deliver for people in the riding.

[3:00 p.m.]

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Bruce, for your presentation. I ran as an independent in 2015, and I ran as a Conservative in 2024.

and they don’t look at the quality of the candidate and what they can deliver for people in the riding.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Bruce, for your presentation.

I ran as an independent in 2015, and I ran as a Conservative in 2024. I found that running as a Conservative was much more effective because the party recognition, party platform and all of that was a considerably large support.

What I found in both elections was that people were voting for party over person. The person itself affects a very small percentage of the vote, and that’s regardless of who it is in some ridings. I just wonder how you respond to that when the party system is extremely well entrenched in Canadian society and voters are very much expecting to be able to support a party when they choose a candidate.

Bruce Murdoch: Yes, and that’s…. One of my major concerns is that the larger entrenched parties have a certain power over the people, you might say. As you pointed out, it gave you a great advantage to run under the banner of the Conservative Party versus running independent. I’d like to see that change so that we do encourage more independents and that…. I’d like to have seen you more successful in 2015 than….

Sheldon Clare: Me too.

Bruce Murdoch: Right, for sure. We need more of that fresh type of thinking. We need to have younger people coming in. If the doors are open for younger people, with simpler rules and less overwhelming party advertising and so on, we’re going to see that demographic change as well.

Right now, a younger person is unlikely to be successful in a larger party. They tend to be more middle-aged people and longer years involved with the party. I just think that we will get much better representation if we can tamp down the influence of party politics.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you very much, Bruce.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): All right, I don’t see any further questions.

Thank you so much for your presentation, Bruce. Take care.

Next, we have Kyle Empringham. Hi, Kyle. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. Just as you begin, I remind you, you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Kyle Empringham

Kyle Empringham: Lovely. Well, thank you so much, and thank you for taking a moment to listen to myself.

My name is Kyle Empringham. I’m the co-executive director of the Starfish Canada. We’re a national charity that supports young people in their endeavours to be good climate leaders. We are a non-partisan organization as a charity.

What we really believe in is just good policy that will favour people in the planet. We work with a lot of young folks who are really interested and engaged in climate matters and are often looking to understand democratic process and civic process as a key function of how decisions get made in relation to climate matters.

You probably well know at this point, there are lots of folks who believe that the voting age, particularly in British Columbia, should be lowered to the age of 16 to allow more folks to engage early and often in democratic processes. There’s a lot of research there that shows why that is advantageous in terms of how to navigate through understanding the civic process by engaging in that process early and often. It creates lifelong leadership that is related to being a good, civically engaged human being, particularly in British Columbia.

When we met with Premier Eby on May 29, 2024, this question was asked to him, and Premier Eby said, “We will not be changing the voting age” and “We will not be lowering it to 16.”

When asked about why, effectively the answer was something to the tune of understanding that lowering the voting age to 16 might favour the NDP — that there’s evidence of the time that says that there are a lot more young folks are maybe more left-leaning, and so it might look bad that you’re trying to favour the party in power in order to shift the tide in your favour.

While that’s understood, it’s clear that new research, especially from the last federal election, shows that if just young folks had voted in the last federal election, we actually would have a Conservative minority. So it kind of shows and debunks this myth that lowering the voting age to 16 is something that maybe favours one particular party over another.

[3:05 p.m.]

It’s actually — and young people just understand and are indicative of the time and the pressures that we’re maybe facing — recognizing that there are climate and affordability crises that are intermixed at this point.

We can’t forget about the climate as young folks are scrambling to figure out cost of living, how to afford a home. So by the nature of what is so important to young folks, my recommendation for this committee is to consider lowering the voting age to 16, to recognize that there are young climate leaders that

affordability crises that are intermixed at this point. We can’t forget about the climate as young folks are scrambling to figure out cost of living, how to afford a home. So by the nature of what is so important to young folks, my recommendation for this committee is to consider lowering the voting age to 16, to recognize that there are young climate leaders that are so passionate, so engaged in this work, and they want to be able to have a voice in how we elect our civil servants to be able to do really incredible things.

I’ll yield the rest of my time. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Kyle.

Are there any questions from the committee?

Sheldon Clare: Thank you for your presentation, Kyle. Now, you said that climate matters are non-partisan or that your position is non-partisan. Have you found that there are different political positions on climate matters within the Canadian political spectrum and in British Columbia’s political spectrum?

Kyle Empringham: Yes, absolutely. I think the nature of what we’ve seen and witnessed through young folks, particularly as folks are maybe engaging in different ways civically…. Young folks are a diverse group of people. There are certainly young folks who are thinking about it from a maybe even more conservation- or advocate-oriented lens. But there are also young folks who are looking to be climate leaders as business leaders and thinking about how we understand our finance systems as a strong component of the nature of the work that we do.

Of course, I’m speaking in broad terms, because there are so many young folks under the youth climate umbrella that are really interested and engaged in this work. But I think it would be a misnomer to say that maybe those young folks who take left-leaning ideologies care substantially more about climate than those who maybe follow right-leaning ideologies.

What we have found and what a lot of research has shown is that many folks…. Despite what the political spectrum may look like for folks, everyone cares about it. There are just different ways in which we care about it. I think that’s what’s so important and really is why it’s so important to think about how we lower the voting age to allow those voices to be a part of our civic processes.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Kyle, very much for your presentation. I’m just having a quick look at the website. I don’t disagree with you that lowering the voting age to 16…. I voted in my first election at 18, and I’ve voted in every single election ever since. So I’m quite sure that after taking social studies 10 when I was 16, I would’ve been up to speed just as much as I would’ve been when I was 18.

Do you think that the younger group…? When we talk about proportional representation as an opportunity to hear more voices in the room, do those individuals understand compromising? I’m just curious. When we when you’re under the environmental umbrella, we’re always making compromises.

For example, let’s just say that in this province there is no way that we’re going to be able to have electrification with vehicles by a certain target date if we don’t look outside of the box, because hydroelectric, wind and solar are not going to cut it. So then we have to start talking about other forms, whether it’s thermal, whether it’s natural gas, whether it’s nuclear, if we want to go just strictly clean.

Are you confident that those individuals understand what compromising actually means?

Kyle Empringham: Awesome. Great question. I’ll say, generally, absolutely. I think the nature of what youth climate leadership often looks like, maybe sometimes by how it’s portrayed in certain contexts or spaces — and potentially media just really depends on the nature of it — is that sometimes there are young folks who have really strong opinions, as you’re mentioning. Like, we need to divest from fossil fuels right away in order to meet climate targets.

There are, of course, folks who are young folks and not young folks who believe in that sentiment. I would say that there is a lot more of the majority of folks who understand that there are just transitions to be made — that in order to actually create a clean economy, we need to be able to navigate through that stepwise, not in drastic black-and-white sorts of scenarios.

We see that a lot of the time in the nature of the work that we do with young folks that there are folks, and particularly in British Columbia, where they want to be able to engage with civic decision-makers and elected officials about how we actually are navigating through this space to understand the complexity. Even if they do think that you need to make transitions really quickly, they want to understand why we can’t.

By the spaces we’ve built, both with the B.C. government through the Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions, and even through Elections Canada, when we held a mock election in Squamish, British Columbia, for 75 national youth change-makers, the incredible piece that we find is that people are so curious. They want to learn about things more than they want to sort of start opposing each other, which is maybe a little bit more portrayed in certain contexts.

[3:10 p.m.]

Appreciate the question. In the blunt way…. I think a lot of young folks want to learn how to navigate through decision-making in a very robust way.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, that’s refreshing.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much for your presentation today, Kyle. It’s been

a little bit more portrayed in certain contexts. So I appreciate the question in the blunt way. I think a lot of young folks want to learn how to navigate through decision-making in a very robust way.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, that’s refreshing. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much for your presentation today, Kyle. It’s been great to hear from you.

Next up, we have Corey Walker. Welcome, Corey. Thank you for presenting to our committee this afternoon. As you begin, just a reminder that you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Corey Walker: No problem. Thank you very much.

Thank you, hon. committee members for allowing me to speak briefly to you today. My name is Corey Walker. In my day job, I’m a chaplain for the Salvation Army. In my private life, I’m a citizen of this fine province who’s concerned about the inherent challenges that voters face when trying to participate in elections under the current first-past-the-post political system.

Now, I want to preface my brief presentation today by acknowledging I’m not an expert in political science or elections. I’m sure you hear from many such people too, but I want to share my voice as a citizen who has actively engaged and voted in every provincial election since 2001, the first provincial election held after I reached legal voting age.

My concern to present to you today is about what we call safe seats. I actually came across a blog by a writer named Maria Dobrinskaya from the Make Every Vote Count Society, who wrote a blog on the Sierra Club website back in 2018. I think it still holds true today.

What she said is that we have over 60 safe seats in the province in B.C. — this is not a quote; I’m putting in my own words here — including my current writing at Peace River South in my former riding of many years, Prince George–Mackenzie.

In both those ridings, as in many others, the outcome of the election is pretty much guaranteed. Prior to the suspension of the B.C. United Party campaign in the past election, both these ridings elected B.C. United Party candidates by a large margin. In the 2024 election, both ridings elected B.C. Conservative Party candidates to similarly large margins.

Since we have single-member ridings with a winner-takes-all system, people who vote for other parties in these and other safe ridings feel like their votes never count. In Peace River South, 3,101 people voted for somebody other than the winning candidate. People who consistently vote for B.C. NDP, B.C. Greens or another party in these ridings consistently feel like their votes are wasted no matter who they vote for, because the same party or successor is always going to win.

The same can be said for ridings like in Vancouver Island, for example, or a couple of ridings on the Lower Mainland that always elect NDP. People who vote for the B.C. United or the B.C. Conservatives will feel like their votes never count because it’s always guaranteed it’s going to be the same party, regardless of the candidate.

In Peace River South last election, close to 8,000 registered voters did not vote. Some of these people likely went to vote regardless, and that’s true. But I suspect that if people thought their vote counted, they’d be more likely to participate.

I don’t have enough time to give an extensive presentation today, but I would argue that if we adopt some type of proportional representation system, such as the B.C. single transferable vote system recommended by the B.C. citizens’ assembly back in 2005, more people would feel like their vote would count and would be encouraged to come and vote.

When MLAs know that no seat is safe, they’re more inclined to vote how their constituents want them to vote instead of how their party wants them to vote. That’s because they need to support the electorate to keep their seat and to keep their job. This is true democracy. Right now, they basically vote along party lines, regardless of how their constituents feel, in many ridings, because they know they got, like, a 95 percent chance to win the next election regardless of how they perform.

We had a record number of independents running in the last provincial election, many of whom were well-known to voters, as they were former B.C. United MLAs. In Peace River South, 24.6 percent of voters voted for the independent candidate, yet none of those votes counted. People are afraid that a vote for an independent candidate will result in a party getting elected to government that they don’t want.

With proportional representation, independents will finally have a chance of getting elected, especially those who previously enjoyed strong support while running on a party ticket in the past. There have been times in the past when I liked the candidate who was running but not their party. With proportional representation, multi-member ridings, I would have at least two votes, so I could vote both for the party I like and the candidate I like for another party — the first time I’d feel like my vote counted.

[3:15 p.m.]

To wrap things up, provincewide we had 59.4 percent voter turnout last election. This is higher than some previous elections, but still a huge number of eligible voters that didn’t participate in the democratic process. That’s sad, given the people that have fought and died for our freedom. I feel if we adopt some form of proportional representation that we will get, not 100 percent ever, but we will get a higher voter turnout, as people will feel like their vote is counted and they won’t feel like their vote is wasted

democratic process. That’s sad, given the people that have fought and died for our freedom.

I feel that if we adopt some form of proportional representation, we will get not 100 percent ever, but we will get a higher voter turnout, as people will feel that their vote is counted, and they won’t feel like their vote is wasted. I think that would encourage more people to participate in the electoral process and take advantage of their democratic rights and freedoms.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Corey, for your presentation.

Do we have any questions? No.

We don’t have any questions from the committee, Corey, so thank you again for your presentation, for taking the time out of your afternoon today.

Next up, we have Nadine McDonnell.

Good afternoon, Nadine. Welcome, and thank you for presenting to our committee. So as you get started, just a reminder that you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions. So please get started when you’re ready.

Nadine McDonnell

Nadine McDonnell: Okay. Well, thank you very much for undertaking this process. Five minutes is a challenge, and I hope to make but two points of the myriad of points one could make.

The first one is that electoral reform is a process, and it’s not a place. It’s never done, and it hasn’t been done since we first, as a society or culture, began this experiment in democracy.

The second point is that, in my personal opinion and experience, multiple-member proportional representation, a form of PR, is much, much more fun than FPP, first-past-the-post.

To begin, I have a statement here I want to read, and if I’m speaking too quickly, please slow me down. I have practised it at a certain rate, and it is five minutes. So beginning….

There’s an undeniable movement afoot for electoral reform these days. As in the 1830s, 1870s and, of course, culminating in 1970 with suffrage for women, change was the climax of a long period of agitation by many people for a better democracy. But it was led by a cadre of people and politicians for reform.

Many of the reforms of the 19th and early 20th century focused on suffrage and procedures like the secret ballot and so on. But they’re driven by societal demand. The laws changed to reflect social expectation and, of course, technologies of the time and should again today.

One constant that has to be acknowledged is change. As Churchill and others have noted, democracy is a flawed process, but it still remains better than the others. Electoral reform, in my opinion, is now needed. So 60 percent to 70 percent of registered voters may have voted in the last provincial election, but this means 30 percent to 40 percent have sat out. And given the age profile of the voters, the numbers not voting will likely increase.

With or without changing laws, the political process changes with every electoral cycle. And without electoral reform, without the energy put in by legislative and professional politicians into making the system better, participation, even interest in politics, will continue to wither.

As one politician noted, when thinking about proportional representation, it is important to compare PR to the alternative. The question is whether PR represents the needs of 2025 in a B.C. of five million people better than first-past-the-post.

Critics may point to examples where PR seems to fail. I’ve read that some note that experiences such as the Weimar Republic or even Israel of modern day demonstrate the risks of PR. But why not also point out that 100 years later, Germany still uses proportional representation. In fact, they use MMP. And Israel has little in common with B.C.

Why not refer to the experiences with proportional representation in countries such as Australia or Norway? And what about the experiences of countries who cling to FPP, such as the U.K. or the U.S.? Are they examples of vibrant democracies? Why not look at countries where PR works and ask if we would rather be like them, an aspiration to make our democracy better rather than pretending that there’s no alternative to the continuing current economic decline.

And we have recycling just outside.

I often wonder if opponents of PR — if their critique is based on maybe an assumption that elections serve merely to allocate power. And what is more, they believe or maybe assume that FPP quickly provides the stability and certainty needed by business investors, even if power is obtained with a minority of votes.

[3:20 p.m.]

If, however, the electoral process is viewed as a property of the people, as a mechanism of public participation in the allocation of power, then I would argue that proportional representation is an obvious and necessary reform.

My second point is that MMP or proportional representation in general is not perfect but is much better than first-past-the-post. I like MMP. Since the mid-1990s, when they

you that proportional representation is an obvious and necessary reform.

My second point is that MMP, or proportional representation in general, is not perfect but is much better than first-past-the-post. I like MMP. Since the mid 1990s, when they had a referendum and a vote to change the system and then select a new system, New Zealand has used MMP to elect its parliament. Multiple member proportional is the system used. And without getting into the history and details of the system, I have to say that I believe it works much better than first-past-the-post.

Everyone gets two votes, one for the member of the geographical constituency and the other for the party. This means that voters can vote for the best candidate or even strategically for the candidate they feel has the best chance of winning, but they can still vote for the all-important party vote which levels out the numbers and representations in parliament. This means they can vote for the platform or ideology or change that they actually desire.

Over the years, most governments were formed relatively quickly, with one major party, being the national party of the right or the labour party of the centre left, forming a coalition with a minor party to maintain — it was often necessary to maintain — the confidence of the House.

When the system was adopted, a strong majority of New Zealanders approved of the changes. The referendum and choice of system were well-explained, and the outcome was clear. The process was well-thought-out and explained in cartoons, avoiding the ridiculous confusion and complexity of the B.C. referendum of a couple of years ago.

Of course, after 30 years, there are proponents of further change and some even want a return to FPP. The point is that the system isn’t perfect and that as folks, including politicians, learned to work with the system and, I argue, even game the system, further reform has always been demonstrated as necessary. But again, change is constant. No system is perfect.

In conclusion, I would like to argue that the electoral system is but an idea; it is made up by people. It is made up by people for people. And it will always, always require an investment of energy and interest. And like the U.S. right now is finding out, some really good ideas, like a balance of power between the three branches of government, work until they no longer work.

FPP has worked for B.C. and Canada and the U.K. for over 200 years, but it is very old, very tired and has discouraged a lot of people from continuing to be interested in politics. I believe that it’s time for change, and it is really time to reinvigorate our political process before it’s too late.

Those are my points. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Nadine, for your presentation.

Are there any questions for Nadine?

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. You mentioned the New Zealand system. Do you have experience with that system? What do you draw on to make your observations?

Nadine McDonnell: I’m a lawyer by training. In 1990, I went and did a master of law in New Zealand. They had a labour government in the late ‘80s that was roundly defeated in the early ‘90s. Then in the 1990s, they had a very radical neoliberal government. And the changes were so horrendous. They abolished trade unions. They did immense damage to the social safety net. By 1996, there was a group of people and quite a well-structured movement for electoral reform. I was in New Zealand in the early ‘90s, and I taught at a law school down there when the motion began. I returned to British Columbia for a period of time.

In later years, I’ve gone back to New Zealand. When I was there, I got citizenship and was able to vote whether or not I lived there. I have been living on and off in New Zealand, and I voted in a number of these election cycles. I was heavily involved in some electoral politics in B.C. in the ‘80s. Then in the ‘90s, I was very peripherally involved in election practices there.

Overall, the experience in terms of encouraging people to participate is much easier. There’s not this sense of: “Oh my God. I live in such a right-wing neighbourhood. There’s not even a sense of opening my mailbox.”

[3:25 p.m.]

I live in an area where the member is extremely right-wing and a neoliberal member of a small party that got 6 percent of the vote. And the thought of actually doing anything at all was rather discouraging, to think that you’re in that environment. But when you do have the party vote and you can cross town and meet with people, whether they’re with another party that you prefer, and discuss

member of a small party that got 6 percent of the vote. And the thought of actually doing anything at all was rather discouraging to think that you’re in that environment. But when you do have the party vote and you can cross town and meet with people, whether they’re with another party that you prefer, and discuss politics with them and work with them, you continue to be involved.

And I met, in the course of that, a number of young people who really felt party identification and the possibility of participating in politics. Of course, here one has a chance of meeting people who are enthused about politics, but I think MMP offers that ability to be involved in a way that you may or may not….

In New Zealand, there’s a threshold that you have to achieve before you can…. You need one constituency seat or 4 percent of the popular vote, the party vote, before you get a seat in parliament. Some people recommend it be increased, and some people recommend it be decreased. There are discussions on it. There have been some changes over the years. But 4 percent is doable for groups if they actually can form a viable and strong committee to work with.

The other thing about MMP is that it forces the coalitions that every political party has, from currently the Conservatives and NDP in B.C…. It forces their coalitions to the outside. They have parties that…. For example, the Greens and New Zealand First in 2017 worked with Labour, and then in 2023, New Zealand First went with National. And it became very clear the reasons why they did this and the pressures that they were putting on the government.

But as always, the politics of any moment requires people of integrity and honesty and commitment, etc.

Rob Botterell: Great, okay, thank you.

Nadine McDonnell: I could go on for a long time, but my time is nearly up.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you. Are there any further questions?

Thank you, Nadine, for your presentation. Truly appreciate you being here this afternoon.

Nadine McDonnell: Okay, well, thank you. I really wish you well.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): We will take a short break to 3:45.

The committee recessed from 3:27 p.m. to 3:48 p.m.

The committee recessed from 3:27 p.m. to 3:48 p.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Welcome back, everyone.

Next up, we have Therin Rhaintre. Welcome, and thank you for joining our committee this afternoon. Before you get started. Just a reminder that you have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions, please. Start when you’re ready.

Therin Rhaintre

Therin Rhaintre: Okay. Thank you. Hello. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I realize it’s been a long day for all of you. My name is Therin. I’m a lawyer in rural B.C., so I live out here in the trees.

Really, I never have strongly aligned with a particular political party, but I do often find myself swaying towards a bit right of centre on policies, so whatever that makes me. What I care about most is just somehow getting results from our democracy. That’s what I care about most. Right now, it seems to be failing, in my opinion. I would like to see better results.

For the purposes of this committee, I think the story from my life that really keeps coming up is just how disappointed I was as a young person when I realized strategic voting was something I needed to consider seriously. I was idealistic, I guess.

[3:50 p.m.]

An elder of mine, a person I respect, urged me not to vote for the candidate that I really believed in but to vote for someone that was more likely to just beat someone else. That was a disappointing reality. It was a shock to my system. It felt like a betrayal to me from everything I had been taught about

for the candidate that I really believed in, but to vote for someone that was more likely to just beat someone else.

That was a disappointing reality. It was a shock to my system. It felt like a betrayal to me from everything I had been taught about democracy. And it felt like a betrayal to my own values as well. I mean, I believed that voting was supposed to be about sending someone that represents my values, who resonates with my values, and not just gaming the system. I still have hope in that.

Although that story started out for me 20 years ago, not much has changed. I definitely do vote strategically these days. I, to some extent, no longer expect my values to be taken seriously, which makes me sad. I just instead try to avoid the worst case scenario. And I don’t believe that’s how democracy should feel.

In our last election, because this is so disappointing to me, I decided to just go door to door in my community and talk to people about the voting system. I visited hundreds of my neighbours’ houses, not talking about any issue that I wanted to press on them but just to discuss with them how they feel about voting, how the voting system works — have a conversation about that.

It felt good to have a conversation about something that we could all agree upon, because not one of my neighbours whose house I visited and who I talked to…. Not one of them said that they were happy with first-past-the-post or with the winner-take-all system.

It was something we could agree upon — that we would like a change — when today there’s not a lot that we all agree upon anymore — or maybe there never has been. What I’ve heard from people is that we want a system that reflects our diversity as voters and where decisions are made through dialogue instead of through adversarial power grabs.

So I would be happy to see any form of proportional representation. I just really hope that you can collaborate to get this done, whatever form it is. I believe that you’re taking it seriously, and I appreciate you for that, everybody on the committee.

Another thing I’d like to put a plug in for is that, according to Democracy Index — I think there are different democracy indexes online, but the World Population Review’s Democracy Index looks at civil liberties and democratic participation in various democracies throughout the world — the strongest democracies in the world all have proportional representation electoral systems.

They don’t all use the same one, but each of them — Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland — uses one that’s appropriate for their country, because proportional systems do lead to more stable economies, better climate policies and more inclusive governance. Countries that use PR consistently do outperform winner-take-all systems.

Look at the turnout to vote in Germany in their last election. Whatever we think of the results, 82.5 percent of the population turned out to vote because they know that when they vote, it matters. And I would like that for my life here in Canada.

So no referendums. No excuses. Please implement a PR system that you can build support around.

That’s all I have to say.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Therin, for your presentation. Are there any questions?

No questions from the committee. Thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts with the committee this afternoon.

Next, we have Susan Young.

Thank you for being here this afternoon. As you begin, a reminder you will have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions. Go ahead when you’re ready.

Susan Young

Susan Young: Yes, yes, thank you. Good afternoon, committee members. I am speaking to you from Vernon in the unceded territory of the Okanagan Syilx people. I would thank you very much for the opportunity to present today.

[3:55 p.m.]

My presentation focuses on two questions that should be central to any discussion on electoral reform. First, what is the purpose of an electoral system? And second, which electoral system would best accomplish that purpose?

In a representative democracy such as ours, it seems a no-brainer that the purpose of an

that should be central to any discussion on electoral reform. First, what is the purpose of an electoral system? And second, which electoral system would best accomplish that purpose?

In a representative democracy such as ours, it seems a no-brainer that the purpose of an electoral system is to produce a result in the Legislature that accurately reflects the wishes of all voters. In other words, the percentage of votes cast for each party ought to equal as closely as possible the number of seats each party wins in the Legislature.

There can be no question that our current system fails at accurately translating votes into seats. All it takes is one vote to win a riding, one riding to win an election, and with that, government swings from one party and one set of voters to another. Voter minorities electing seat majorities, wrong-winner elections with government being formed by parties who came second in vote count. This is neither representative nor democratic.

Only one family of voting systems can fairly represent voters, and that is proportional representation, or PR. How proportionality is achieved is irrelevant as long as it meets certain criteria. What does matter is that Conservatives in the Lower Mainland and the Island, New Democrats in the Interior and the North, and Greens across the province have their values and ideas represented in the Legislature.

I would note that ranked ballot in single-member ridings, commonly called alternative vote, is not a proportional system and would only exacerbate what is wrong with our existing voting system.

Because no one size — or, in this case, one form of proportional representation — fits all, British Columbia’s form of PR would certainly differ from those boogeymen, Israel or Italy or the Netherlands, that opponents of proportionality continually trot out. Based on previous recommendations, a made-in-B.C. system would include local representation, allow voters to vote for individual candidates and require a minimum threshold of votes before a party could obtain Legislature seats.

Over 100 countries use some form of PR. These include 85 percent of OECD countries, whose members are generally regarded as developed countries with high income and successful economies and a very high human development index. Most of these countries have achieved PR through a negotiated multiparty agreement. There is no reason why this current government cannot do the same and before the next election. COVID and Trump have shown us that we can achieve change quickly when we want to.

Responding to previous committee questions on referenda, there should be none. Before, they are too easily manipulated by vested interests. Historically, there is a very low turnout and interest, and research shows they almost always favour the status quo. After, we know from the New Zealand experience that PR is a culture shift and takes time for parties to figure it out. If parties and politicians knew there would be a referendum in two or three or whatever number of elections, rather than make the effort to change, they would most likely sabotage the process.

To conclude, I have voted in every election, provincial and federal, since age 18. I am now 74. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times the person I voted for won. I am tired of having no representation in our legislative bodies, tired of voting strategically for one candidate to block another. Most of all, I am tired of the vitriol and divisiveness that our current voting system rewards and perpetuates. We are not as divided as this voting system would have us believe.

I ask that you recommend a system of proportional representation appropriate for British Columbia, to be negotiated by an all-party committee of the Legislature with the help of experts and public input, and that it be implemented before the next election. Our electoral system should not favour party elites or lobbyists, two of whom you have heard from, or sitting MLAs, whose predicament in a PR system has been described to you. Surely the interests of voters should be paramount.

[4:00 p.m.]

To repeat, and this is my last sentence, in a representative democracy, the purpose of an electoral system is to accurately reflect the wishes of all voters in the Legislature, and the system best able to do this is proportional representation.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Susan, for your presentation this afternoon.

Are there any questions for Susan?

Susan, no questions from the committee, so thank you again for joining us.

really reflect the wishes of all voters in the Legislature, and the system best able to do this is proportional representation.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Susan, for your presentation this afternoon.

Are there any questions for Susan?

Susan, no questions from the committee, so thank you again for joining us.

Next up we have Larry Whaley. Hi, Larry. Great to see you. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. So a reminder, you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions. Once you are ready, please begin.

Larry Whaley

Larry Whaley: Okay. I’m Larry Whaley, and I have no particular expertise in this subject whatsoever. So I was somewhat surprised when the notice came that I would be given this time to speak, and I want to say thank you for hearing me.

What I want to offer today is, because I have no particular experience, I want to offer you my own point of view and how I came to the point of view that I have. There are two reasons why I support proportional representation. One is personal, and the other is political.

The committee, in my view, should recommend getting on with proportional representation and not dawdle around with more referendums or public input of any type. This should be sufficient, and you should move forward with that, establishing a proportional system. And that, in my mind, does not include anything that results in first-past-the-post and the false kind of majorities that we have so often in this country.

How I came to this conclusion from a personal point of view is that in the early 1980s, I was working with farmers and business people in Dawson Creek, Fort St. John area as the banks were foreclosing interest rates in August of 1980. Prime rate hit 24 percent or 23¾, I think. People were losing their homes and farms and naturally resisting, and I was helping to organize that.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but it became pretty obvious that I and the others who were in this battle were politically isolated. And we were isolated because there was one representative for the area, and that representative didn’t represent by any means all of the points of view in the area. So I think that needs to be corrected. There needs to be some system where everybody can feel represented.

Just to continue with that example as to how that changed for me, I moved from Dawson Creek, Fort St. John area over to the Edmonton area. At that point, I was living closer in to the city — I was also getting a lot of coverage in the news — and suddenly there were lots of politicians available to talk to me. So I had lots of representation and felt really like I was part of the system rather than being excluded. So that’s my personal reason.

The political reason is this. About the same time, there was a federal election. The issue was free trade, and the huge false majority that resulted was of the party that supported free trade with the U.S. In my view, the majority of people did not support that. They voted for other political parties.

[4:05 p.m.]

In my view, that resulted in us heading down the path that got us to where we are now and why we’re in the situation where the economics are

in my view that resulted in us heading down the path that got us to where we are now and why we’re in the situation where the economics are governed by and threatened by the American president. We have to put ourselves in a position where the government actually represents the majority wish of the people and not leave it to, again, false majorities to make those decisions.

So I think those are my reasons for supporting proportional representation. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. I hope you will get on with it and not leave government to dance around the subject anymore.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Larry, for your presentation this afternoon.

Are there any questions for Larry?

Larry, we don’t have any questions from the committee. Thank you again for your time. Take care.

We’ll take a short recess until the next presenter is ready.

The committee recessed from 4:06 p.m. to 4:25 p.m.

The committee recessed from 4:06 p.m. to 4:25 p.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): All right. We are going to continue the committee’s work now with Jonathon Wenzoski.

Hi, Jonathon. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. Before you begin, just a reminder that you’ll have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions. You can begin when you’re ready.

Jonathon Wenzoski

Jonathon Wenzoski: Sounds good. Perfect. Okay.

We’re planning to let you guys make a decision on whether single transferable vote would be a better voting system than first-past-the-post. I’m obviously of the opinion that it’s better, and I feel like it would benefit most of the population and the government if we changed how the citizens are able to vote. It would be much more representative of the population as a whole and of people’s opinions.

The way it works is that each person would have their standard voting card, and instead of having just two candidates and you just pick your one, you have your vote ranked. So, first pick, obviously, would be the one that you want the most and then you rank the rest of the candidates second, third, fourth, whatever in your district. Whoever wins the district or, say, gets 60, let’s say 34 percent of the votes, so a majority in a three-candidate district, their votes would then be transferred to their second-highest-ranked candidate. Yeah.

Trying to think of where to go with that, but.... Essentially, this allows for a more representative democratic election. People would actually be able to get candidates that they care about in, and there wouldn’t be as much voting just to not elect a certain person, let’s say.

Yeah, that’s essentially it. I’m not sure if you guys have any other information on single transferable vote, but it’s by far the best voting system that I’ve managed to research up to this point.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay. Do you have any other thoughts on this?

Jonathon Wenzoski: No other thoughts. If you guys have any questions, I can answer them. Better at answering questions than laying out the entire premise.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay. Thank you Jonathan. Are there any questions from the committee?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Jonathan. We’re talking about single transferable vote. There are other proportional representation models out there. Is there any one that comes to mind that you would prefer?

[4:30 p.m.]

The second part of the question is…. There are different stages in how we can implement it when we have the legislative power. We can, as a group, refer to the Legislature. We can get input from a citizens assembly or not. We can do it, or we can turn around and say the next election or the next two elections are going to be something different and then we have the opportunity to go back. What would you prefer?

Jonathon Wenzoski: I do think that’s a good idea to kind of test out the system and possibly go back if people don’t like it, and I think it is

next election or the next two elections are going to be something different, and then we have the opportunity to go back. What would you prefer?

Jonathon Wenzoski: I do think that’s a good idea to kind of test out the system and possibly go back if people don’t like it. And I think it is by far the most representative form of voting that we could have.

Sheldon Clare: How do you feel about a bicameral House in addition to such a system or as part of electoral reform, like putting a…? Since we have a unicameral house now, would you be interested in the bicameral one?

Jonathon Wenzoski: What’s bicameral?

Sheldon Clare: Oh, it means like a Senate or a House of Lords, like two provinces in Canada currently have the capability of doing and the federal government has. We have a House of Commons and a Senate in the federal parliament. But in the British Columbia Legislature, we only have a commons, basically.

Jonathon Wenzoski: Yeah, that’d probably help with the representation.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay, I don’t see any further questions, Jonathon. Thank you so much for being here today.

The next presentation is from Ian Gartshore.

Welcome, Ian. Thank you so much for being with our committee this afternoon. You’ll have five minutes for your presentation, so please feel free to get started when you’re ready.

Ian Gartshore

Ian Gartshore: Thank you very much. It’s my honour to be able to sit and present to you today. My name is Ian Gartshore. I live in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

I’ve been involved politically probably most of my adult life. I just want to observe what is happening as a result of what I believe to be our first-past-the-post system, which, as I’ve experienced increasingly, is the amount of anger and animosity being expressed toward people who have a different opinion. This is not the kind of the world that I had in my younger years. This has been really escalating in the last, probably, five, ten years, particularly the last five years.

What is the cause of this? Well, I think there are many societal changes and difficulties that that are going on that are contributing to this. But when I hear people say, “You’re voting for party X? Why, you’re actually voting for party Z” — I hear that a lot — and “You’re wasting your vote by voting for party L,” it doesn’t matter to me what the party is. What matters to me is that people have this increasing vitriol toward anybody who would vote for a party or a person that they themselves see as being the best fit for them.

As a result of this, fewer and fewer people are actually turning out and voting. If you look at the number of people that are adults who are citizens in this province and compare that to the number of adults that show up and vote for a party or a person, that is coming closer and closer to 50 percent. This is not truly representative of the will of people, and I can tell you that because of the vitriol, because people are being told you’re wasting your vote by voting for party L, fewer people are actually bothering in participating in the political system, in the process of not only voting but being involved in getting candidates elected and supporting their MLAs.

As a result of this, I see a declining rate of turnout and also a declining rate of participation in the democratic process, which is a far superior system to any other that I’ve ever seen anywhere around the world. Most of the countries that exercise a proportional representation, where every vote does count, have a much better chance of electing people who are more closely aligned to their values, their hopes, their aspirations, what it is that they would like to see.

[4:35 p.m.]

More importantly, those elected officials are more likely to work with others to come up with solutions that work for their jurisdiction, in this case British Columbia. I yearn to have the opportunity to see people working together more, rather than being so divisive. And the only hope I see for that, that we can, as

to come up with solutions that work for their jurisdiction, in this case. British Columbia.

I yearn to have the opportunity to see people working together more rather than being so divisive. The only hope I see for that — that we can, as a province, do — is bring about proportional representation. Otherwise, my fear is that the wasted vote, so-called, by voting for party L or whoever it might be, is going to continue to drive the mandate and in vitriol, resulting in fewer and fewer people willing to even participate at the most minimal level.

That is my concern. That’s my hope. I endear you to, encourage you to, consider seriously this possibility of embracing proportional representation, because then every vote will count. There will be no wasted votes. In fact, I think the only wasted votes are those who don’t actually vote, which is close to half the eligible adults in this province, many of whom are not registered. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Ian, for presenting to our committee this afternoon. Are there any questions for Ian? Deputy Chair.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Ian. Just looking at the turnout…. You made a comment about voter turnout going down. It’s going down in other jurisdictions, even in Scotland, as an example of proportional representation. They’ve seen a fairly steady decline in their voter turnout.

Ours has changed. Like, if you go back to 2009, it was 55 percent. Then it ticked up a bit. Then it was 61 percent in 2017. And 2020 was just under 54. Now we’re just about up to 58½. Do you honestly think that proportional representation will bring out more voters and more people engaged in the system?

On the second part of that question, if it doesn’t encourage more people to vote, do you think that that would be a failure?

Ian Gartshore: Thank you, Mr. Stamer. You’re asking a very good question. You’ve got the stats right there in front of you. I think that the turnout has turned out higher recently only because there’s such a divisive vote between one side and another side. I don’t think that that’s truly representing people’s wishes. I think that they’re voting against rather than for.

As a result, while the voter turnout theoretically — or actually, practically — has gone up, and it may go up a bit higher, it’s a voter turnout that is not reflecting what people value. That’s my concern.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): All right. Thank you.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation.

You mentioned the level of vitriol increasing, and I just wondered if you could maybe describe in a bit more detail what you saw in the last couple of elections, the federal and provincial elections. In the riding I’m in, Saanich North and the Islands, I saw that too. But I’d really appreciate understanding or just a bit more on what you’ve seen. I gather you’re expecting that proportional representation would reduce that, but maybe you could talk a bit more about that.

Ian Gartshore: I’m not going to comment much about the federal, because I wasn’t very involved. But in the last provincial election, I was highly involved. I can tell you that I was supporting a candidate who took way more time in getting a form filled in…. It was an Elections B.C. form. It was not a political form. It was not a political party. It was a form that is necessary to say, “This person is a human being, and I’m willing to say, ‘Yeah, they can run.’”

That used to be a very simple, straightforward process. Most people would participate. They wouldn’t be asking very much. They’d see the candidate and say, “Well, you look like a decent bloke,” or whatever, and then they would sign the paper.

[4:40 p.m.]

This time it took us, I’d say, three times longer than the previous time I was involved in the B.C. elections. At least two, probably three times longer. Why? It’s because just about everyone said: what party is the candidate running for? If it was not a candidate or a party that they could personally endorse, that they were prepared to vote for

I was involved in the B.C. elections. At least two, probably three times longer. Why? It’s because just about everyone said: “What party is the candidate running for?” If it was not a candidate or a party that they could personally endorse, that they were prepared to vote for…. Which is not the purpose of that form…. The form is just to say they can get enough electors to sign the form to say that yes, they have enough to run as a candidate. So many people said: “No. I don’t support that party or that candidate, so I will not sign the form.”

Well, the whole process took way longer. Not only did it take longer but then we would get the vitriol sometimes: you’re wasting your time, you’re wasting your vote, you shouldn’t do that, this is the party, you should…. Whatever. Or they’d be angry and just walk off. All we’re doing is asking them to sign the form that Elections B.C. has given to us.

Rob Botterell: Okay.

Ian Gartshore: That’s just an example.

Rob Botterell: Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Ian Gartshore: You’re welcome.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay, I don’t see any further questions. Thank you so much, Ian, for sharing your time with us this afternoon and for answering our questions.

Ian Gartshore: I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you.

Move to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:41 p.m.