The committee met at 8:38 a.m.

[Ward Stamer in the chair.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good morning. I’d like to call the meeting to order.

My name is Ward Stamer. I’m the MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson and the Deputy Chair of the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform, a parliamentary committee comprised of members of the government, official opposition and Third Party.

Today we are meeting on the legislative precinct here in Victoria, which is located on the territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people, the Songhees and the Esquimalt Nations. Today we will be continuing with presentations related to the first part of our mandate, regarding democratic engagement, voter participation and electoral reform.

In addition to these presentations, our committee is accepting written input until July 25. To participate, please visit our website at bcleg.ca/consultations.

Now I will ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.

Sheldon Clare: I’m Sheldon Clare. I’m the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Prince George–North Cariboo, and I am the Conservative caucus Deputy Whip.

Rob Botterell: Good morning. My name is Rob Botterell. I’m the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands and the Green caucus House Leader.

[8:40 a.m.]

Amna Shah: Good morning. My name is Amna Shah. I’m the MLA for Surrey City Centre and the Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Addictions.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): The first speaker this morning is Jean-Pierre Kingsley. Good morning, Mr. Kingsley.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: Good morning, Mr. Chairman.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): The process is that you’re allowed 15 minutes to speak, and then we have ten minutes for questions. You can start whenever you like.

Presentations on Voter Engagement
and Electoral Reform

Jean-Pierre Kingsley

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: Well, thank you very much, sir.

Normally, in Ottawa, I would have gone around and shaken everyone’s hands, but I guess we will just have to wiggle our faces. Good morning, to all the members. I appreciate this opportunity. I feel that it is a privilege, as I always did when I appeared before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa, to speak to representatives of the people who were elected by the people. So I feel very privileged.

I also wanted to thank Anton Boegman for having provided me with statistics to which I’ll be referring in my presentation — your Chief Electoral Officer.

My main thrust will be…. By the way, I should ask, Mr. Chairman: when there’s only one minute left, would you please notify me? I don’t want to extend beyond my 15 minutes.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yes, sir.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: My presentation will be principally with proportional representation, in a sense, and not with the transferable vote or the alternative voting systems, with which I know British Columbia is quite familiar.

Essentially, we’re talking about a representative democracy when we talk about an elected body. Under the first-past-the-post system, this works exceedingly well when there are, essentially, only two parties. However, when we allow other parties to come in…. To Canada’s credit and to all of the provinces’ credit, and British Columbia in particular, we’ve made it very easy to have other registered political parties. But what that does is that it starts to introduce some variations in the electoral system.

The simple fact is that under such a system…. There’s an economist who won the Nobel Prize, and one of his theses was that, statistically, you can never have perfect representation. His name was Professor Arrow. So if we start with the premise that one cannot have that, then one has to be concerned with one factor. Is the degree of compromise such that it affects the legitimacy of the results in an election?

Legitimacy is what is essential in a democracy. By the way, the electoral management bodies in Canada and around the world, their sole purpose…. It’s the only organization, the only group, whose mandate is to ensure the legitimacy of the elections. That is beyond the legality of the elections.

I thought I would provide you with an overview of election results in British Columbia and quite rapidly go over some of the results. In 2005, 46 percent of the votes gave 58 percent of the seats to one party. In 2009, 46 percent again gave 57 percent. In 2013, 44 percent to one party gave that party 58 percent of the seats. In 2017, 40 percent gave 49 percent. In 2020, 48 got you 66 percent. In 2024, 45 percent got you 50 percent, which is pretty close.

However, I went back to 2001, where 57 percent of the votes got you 97 percent of the seats. I think members may remember that.

Throughout all of this — and I did not want to put, solely, the emphasis on this — the Green Party at various elections got 9 percent, 8 percent and 8 percent of the votes and wound up with zero seats and zero seats. That 8 percent got one per…. When they had 17 percent of the votes, they got 3.5 percent of the seats. And so on it goes.

The other thing I did, then, with those results, was I went into — and I asked Anton to prepare — municipal agglomerations, which had in their agglomerations the equivalent of four ridings together — at least four. The results were as following.

[8:45 a.m.]

For Burnaby, 54 percent of the votes got you 100 percent of the seats. This is in 2024. So they got five seats with 54 percent of the votes. In Richmond, 50 percent of the votes got you 75 percent of the seats. Surrey was pretty close; 49 percent of the votes got you 60 percent of the seats. In Vancouver, 58 percent of the votes got you 11 seats out of 12. And in Victoria, 50 percent of the votes got you all four seats, which is a way of saying that somewhere in the province there were adjustments that were being made outside of the municipalities.

And what this raised…. There are considerations that came to my mind as I was preparing my notes. One, how important is it for all votes to count? There’s a feeling in the first-past-the-post system that if my candidate does not win, then I lost my vote; I’m not there.

Two, if we go for a proportional system with a mixed system, we wind up with two types of MLAs. I remember asking people on the international scene where this occurred. They felt that there was a difference between the two types.

If there are proportionately linked members of the Legislative Assembly that are elected, then it creates a different link to the electors. The electors do not relate to one MLA only at that time. Therefore, it also has repercussions for the political parties and the local riding associations in how they select the representatives in a multi-candidate riding. There are also implications about how service offices are allocated in the area covered by multiple ridings.

But the main issue that I wanted to raise with you before coming to a conclusion is that in the perception of many people, governability is affected. One of the features that people recognize of the present system is that even though we may wind up with fewer people voting, not the majority, getting a majority government, it facilitates governability. And that’s a point that has to be kept in mind.

Under a proportional system, with variations, it becomes much more difficult for one party to achieve the majority of seats, which drives one to a minority government or a coalition. And people are concerned about coalitions — the difficulty it is forming them. But at the same time, one is always working with a majority of the people, having voted for a majority of the candidates. And those are some of the…. That is a question that is related to legitimacy.

The different modes of proportional representation are…. There are different models. There are more than what I will enumerate quite rapidly. The first one is that the whole province, all 93 seats, are part of one riding. The one consideration there is that very small parties can gain access much more readily.

Another one is to have…. And this is something that occurred when I chaired a committee in Quebec. They had decided to split the province into five territories and have proportional representation in each as well as individual members in each, following the first-past-the-post system for the individual members.

The other one is to have a municipally based system where the 35 seats in the municipalities that I enumerated would be under a proportional system, and the other ridings, which are rural or remote — about 58 — would continue to have a first-past-the-post system.

And the last one that I’ll mention, even though there are more, would be to have the 93 seats right now as first-past-the-post and then to add additional seats to do proportional representation. The latter one is very hard to sell, but I thought I would mention it at any rate.

[8:50 a.m.]

To come back to the basic point, legitimacy of the elections is what is important. And legitimacy is established in the eyes of the electors. It’s my way of saying that the first-past-the-post system has served us well. We’re noticing that there are some disenchantments on the part of some people. Is legitimacy affected, or is legitimacy still maintained?

So, Mr. Chairman, this is my presentation. I don’t know how I did with the timing, but certainly I’m open to discussion at this stage.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much, Mr. Kingsley. Yes, you did it in ten minutes instead of 15. Thank you very much for the presentation. Now we have an opportunity to ask you some questions in the next ten minutes.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Mr. Kingsley, and thank you for your service to Canada.

I want to ask about bicameral systems in the provinces. Now, I understand there are two provinces that can have bicameral systems, which would be similar to the federal system. How would that work in terms of electoral reform in British Columbia, say? Is that something that would assuage some of the concerns about regional representation along with proportional representation?

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: I had not thought of that one, but I’ll be pleased to elaborate on a few thoughts that occur to me at that stage — a number of them.

The first consideration would be: what would be the relevant authorities of both Houses? If one is a consultative body only as opposed to both being legislative, with perhaps the Upper House not having the right to introduce legislation, variations on that, that could be an interesting way. You could have one body, let’s say the superior one, which is usually equivalent to the Senate…. That could be done with a pure proportional system throughout the province. People would still maintain the first past-the-post system and have that direct link, to which I attach a lot of importance, between the elector and the elected and the ability of people to know and to be able to reach a particular member of the Legislative Assembly, being his or her member of the Legislative Assembly.

It is an interesting question. Thank you.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you for your comments on that. It’s one that has been a thought of mine in this process as I hear the disconnect between rural and urban. So thank you.

Amna Shah: Thank you for your presentation. I suppose I don’t want to get too much into the technical details of it, but I’m wondering: in your opinion, in the system of half proportional, half single member, what would you qualify as rural or remote, as you mentioned, versus urban? Is it purely by geographical characteristics, or does it also have to do with population numbers and areas?

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: I referred to rural and remote. In my mind — and this is the model that I presented at the committee that was set up to deal with this at the federal level — urban agglomerations would be where we would have proportional representation. The rest, because of the traditional way that they view politics and so on and so forth, their need to relate more directly to one MLA…. They feel that their ridings are large enough already. If they got lost with three, four rural ridings being tied together with three or four members but not one of them being specifically their member, I think…. This is the basis of my presentation, which was well received at the federal level, even though the Prime Minister disbanded the committee. But that was one model.

I’ve always attributed an importance to the traditional values that the rural communities attach in the electoral process and view it somewhat differently. People in urban centres view things very differently in terms of political representation, and they would be more comfortable dealing with a proportional system.

Now, in the proportional system that I recommended for urban centres — urban agglomeration is what I call them because they don’t fit perfectly in urban centres in British Columbia — it was an important consideration that it be a minimum of four seats that would be tied.

[8:55 a.m.]

If you have six seats in one agglomeration, then you may get a six-seat one. But if it’s ten seats, you make it a four and a six or two fives. Don’t go beyond six or seven maximum is the way I presented it.

By the way, this really makes it difficult for the much smaller parties to come into the process, which is one of the considerations that people have. They’re very afraid that the very small parties would come in and start gaining a lot more weight politically than they have in minority government situations.

Amna Shah: Great, thank you.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. Just picking up on MLA Shah’s question, a couple of things. If you were dividing up British Columbia into those ridings where we’d have an agglomeration of seats and those ridings that are rural or remote, in your presentation or work, how did you define “rural or remote”? If we’ve got 93 seats right now, how would you pick the rural or remote?

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: What I requested of the Chief Electoral Officer was to give me urban agglomerations where at least the equivalents of four seats are contained within them now. That would be my definition of an “urban agglomeration.” I identified the 35 seats, out of your 93, that would fit that category. The remainder, which is 58 seats, would be first-past-the-post. They would be remote, or they would be rural, by definition.

Rob Botterell: Great. Thank you. That’s really helpful.

To follow up on that, what we’ve heard in our travels around the province — to Prince George and Cranbrook and Kelowna, certainly in some of the presentations made here this week — is a concern that in a first-past-the-post form of election, those that didn’t vote for the winning candidate have no voice. For example, if you’re in MLA Clare’s riding and you get 51 percent of the vote, let’s just say, you’re elected as the representative for that riding, but there are 49 percent of the voters that voted for another candidate or another platform.

We’ve heard this debate going on around, “Well, MLAs represent all their constituents,” and then we’ve had presenters say, “Yeah, maybe in terms of constituency issues, like a specific health care issue or something. But in terms of my ability to have my view represented in the Legislature….” Say, on a policy issue like involuntary care, affordable housing or something like that, they don’t agree with the winning candidate’s policy and their party platform, and they feel that they have no voice.

I just wondered what your thoughts are on that tension in sticking with first-past-the-post in rural or remote areas.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: Well, you’ve identified very well, sir, the basic issue. It’s not everyone that feels that their vote didn’t count, but it is a goodly number who are beginning to feel like that. We see more and more reports in academia about that.

You’re also right in saying that the elected representatives represent all the people. At the same time — you made that point as well — there are issues on which it’s possible that there are two points of view that differ quite markedly. Therefore, it’s impossible for one person to represent the two sides of the equation when it comes down to the vote.

[9:00 a.m.]

You’re back to the nub of legitimacy. As long as we keep first-past-the-post for any of the elections for any of the MLAs, that question will remain. The only way that one can assuage that is if the elector is voting for the two types of candidates at the same time.

In other words, in the Quebec system, what they had identified by breaking the province into five regions…. Inside each region there would be proportional representation for a number of seats, and they would also be voting for provincewide candidates on a proportional basis so that the argument loses some of its effervescence.

People can say: “Well yeah, but you also voted for this person proportionately, and your voice is reflected there.” That’s one of the things that Quebec was trying to achieve. That system, by the way, was approved, agreed to — because I chaired the committee — by all the political parties except the Liberal Party of Quebec at the time. And then Premier Legault, just before the last general election in Quebec, said: “No, we’re no longer going with that.” In effect, he was reneging on what his party had agreed to, what he had agreed to as the leader of the party. But this is what they were aiming to achieve at the time.

Rob Botterell: Great, thank you. That’s really helpful.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I have a question, and we have a little bit of time. We haven’t touched on social media and communication between the voters and the elected officials and even the whole election process. That’s the other half of our mandate, to look at the good, the bad and the ugly, if you want to call it that, in our election in 2024. I think, as a committee we agreed that there weren’t any wholesale issues that were flagged for us, and we are just going to be able to go through the process in the spring.

What is your take on now…? I think it’s coming in from the States. You know, we don’t have a First Amendment right in Canada to basically lie. That’s, really, what’s happening across the line. And because half our population lives within 30 miles of the U.S. border, I think this is creeping into our system. When you’ve got platforms that are not under the gun, like they are in Europe, they’re able to control algorithms. They’re able to do a whole bunch of different things.

How are we going to navigate through this process when you’re talking about trust, you’re talking about people feeling that they’re disengaged from the system? How are we going to be able to properly educate people on exactly what has been going on? And if we do a PR, how are we able to properly effectively communicate with our electorate?

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: Well, I appreciate the question, because I have views. Some of the things that you’re alluding to are, effectively, trying to remedy something which is going on. As opposed to, in my view, solving the problem before it occurs, which is what the Europeans are trying to do.

I’d like to highlight some of the thoughts that I have. Number 1, I would eliminate anonymity on social networks. Number 2, any social network has to have Canadian majority ownership with members. Number 3, penalties for breaching the laws by these people should consider having jail time for the president of the corporation.

I’ve found that in our system, jail time is a big motivator in getting a law respected. This occurred at the federal level many times. Therefore, my basic thesis is that there’s no such thing as a right without an equivalent responsibility. If you’re going to go out and spew all sorts of misinformation, I want your name on it so that the people who are being maligned can sue you. Or I’d like your name on it so that we can denounce you by name for feeding false information in the system.

Those are initial views that I have. And by the way, we could achieve this with the Canadian Radio-television Commission by expanding the mandate to make sure that the people who come into this country respect our laws, instead of our having to count out their way of doing things. I’m not talking about a particular country; I’m talking about all those corporations.

[9:05 a.m.]

I remember once at a conference, one of the representatives — I forget if it was Meta or somebody else — was saying to us, the electoral administrators: “Well, we’re happy to share with you how you can dovetail into our system.” I raised my hand, and I said: “Sorry, you’ve got it upside down. You’re here to learn how you can fit into our electoral system. We’re here to protect democracy, enhance democracy. You’re here to make money.” And that’s the difference.

So I’m sorry if I’m being so categorical, but I’m very happy about it.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): No. Thanks very much for your interpretation and your perspective. I appreciate it.

Sheldon Clare: I just wanted to point out that section 2 of the Charter does protect freedom of expression as a fundamental freedom, and it provides that everyone has freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.

However, it does permit the government to enforce reasonable limits censoring speech. It’s the right of everyone to hold opinions without interference. The right of freedom of expression is also protected by other things, such as the universal declaration of human rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

I did want to flag that. Although we don’t have an American republic-style constitution, we do have the Charter, which does have some protections.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: If I may add, sir, I agree with you entirely. My comments were meant to dovetail with our Charter, but there are ways of achieving that. I’m convinced of that, because we are tied to reasonableness.

Sheldon Clare: Yes, of course.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: What I’m trying to achieve is: how do we achieve reasonableness in a system which has no bounds at the present time? None whatsoever.

Sheldon Clare: And yet, there should be, in some respects.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: Yes. I think Europeans…. The Chair alluded to the Europeans achieving things. I think you may have as well. I agree with the way that they’re doing it in Europe. They’re letting these companies know: “You’re not going to ruin our democracy.”

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation this morning. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Have a fantastic day.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: I’d be more than happy to go and join you at any time in Victoria.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Appreciate that. You’re more than welcome. Thank you.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley: Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it. To all the members, thank you very much for this opportunity once again.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good morning, Maxwell. I just wanted to let you know that you have 15 minutes for your presentation, and then we’ll follow it up with ten minutes worth of questions. Maxwell Anderson from VotingBC. Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Anderson, we look forward to your presentation.

VotingBC

Maxwell Anderson: Good morning. Thank you for holding these meetings.

By way of introduction, my name is Maxwell Anderson. VotingBC was launched in 2003 under a somewhat longer name, the Committee for Voting Equity in B.C. My personal background includes having been a research scientist, a professor of statistics, and later, a businessman. I was also on the board of the official proponent of the yes campaign on B.C.’s 2009 electoral reform referendum.

As you know, some in the electoral reform movement complain that their candidates never win, and so they feel insufficiently represented. I don’t have that excuse. I’m joining you today from a B.C. island, but my wife and I live at UBC in Vancouver–Point Grey, a district won by the Premier. So probably we have the strongest representation in the whole province. By the way, David Eby encouraged me to work for proportional representation. Of course, that was before he got elected.

[9:10 a.m.]

As you’ve heard, many British Columbians view the issue of electoral reform chiefly as a matter of a lack of fairness. Some British Columbians have even joined with others at the national level to launch a Charter challenge, hoping to convince the Supreme Court that our old first-past-the-post system no longer provides the equal, effective voting they believe is required in the modern world under our constitution. I say “old” because Canada and British Columbia are among the oldest continuous democracies in the world, while much of the world has moved to modern proportional voting systems.

In terms of your mandate on voter participation, our last B.C. election had a decent turnout, at 59 percent. Nevertheless, some 1,010,799 voters cast a vote that did nothing to support a candidate or party of their preference. That’s 48 percent or half the votes. In many elections, it’s worse [inaudible recording.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Let’s take a five-minute recess and see if we can get this through.

The committee recessed from 9:11 a.m. to 9:14 a.m.

[Ward Stamer in the chair.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): All right, so we will resume the meeting with Mr. Anderson. We have about 12 minutes on your presentation left, Mr. Anderson.

[9:15 a.m.]

Maxwell Anderson: Okay, I’ll skip a little bit just to speed it up there because of that.

When voters are asked about this mysterious thing called electoral reform, surveys, including my own surveys, say they want a simple and easy-to-understand ballot, producing a strong and stable government, able to act decisively or hold steady as needed.

Looked at in detail, proportional representation is actually better at both of those. It’s simpler because you just vote for what you want without worrying about strategic voting, wasting your vote or vote splitting. On average, proportional systems provide somewhat slower, more thoughtful decisions that create more stable long-term policy. Their parties can cooperate and act quickly and decisively in an emergency, as they proved during the pandemic.

However, most citizens aren’t too concerned about the voting process. The bottom line is they want the best government possible. That’s why today I’d like to emphasize the importance of proportional representation and good governance.

Two big arms of that are, firstly, economic growth and, secondly, effective politics. Most studies have found economic growth is higher with proportional representation. A very robust study by Carl Henrik Knutsen, which you can find through the votingbc.ca website, found that proportional representation increased economic growth by an average 0.98 percent or 1 percent per year in terms of GDP per capita.

So 1 percent doesn’t sound like much but remember that it compounds. If we had implemented proportional representation in 2005, when it got 57 percent approval, we could expect our annual prosperity per person to now be about 22 percent larger. That’s huge.

Secondly, consider electoral models and effective politics. Here, the definitive work is found in Arend Lijphart’s quantitative studies outlined in his 2012 book Patterns of Democracy, second edition. His overall finding was that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there is no trade-off at all required between governing effectiveness and high-quality democracy.

After statistically controlling for population size and development level, the countries with proportional representation’s consensus democracy had clear advantages on almost all measures, including government effectiveness, control of corruption, inflation, employment, violence, accountability, political participation, women’s representation, voter turnout and satisfaction with democracy.

To sum up, we need a modern voting system for its practical outcomes. I have grandchildren and more on the way so family well-being is especially important to me.

The study of overall family well-being, based on safety, happiness, cost, health, education and time, was made of 35 countries of the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is composed of advanced countries. A link to the study is on our website: votingbc.ca. They found that the top countries to raise a family all use proportional representation. By contrast, the countries with first-past-the-post were below average, with Canada ranking 19th, U.K. 23rd and the U.S.A. 34th.

Similarly, a 2021 study involving more than 2,000 scholars finds that countries with old voting systems like ours, instead of modern proportional representation of voters, tend to have more negative campaigning, higher income inequality, deeper ethnic fragmentation and a news media preference for sensationalism. Other studies indicate proportional representation is better for life satisfaction, life expectancy, environment, housing. The list goes on and on — even lower trade tariffs.

No voting system can stop the voters from making bad choices. Yet proportional representation is better at everything. Why? The answer is simple. It gives true majority rule. So a legislature’s incentives are more closely aligned with the most people. It’s as simple as that, as Lijphart’s team documented quantitatively over decades of study.

Thank you for your time and attention. I’ll be glad to attempt to answer any questions you might have. You may be wondering: what were the citizens assembly flaws? You may be asking: why did the referendums fail? You may be thinking: if proportional representation is so great, why aren’t politicians themselves clamouring for it? Or there may be specific criticisms of proportional representation that you’d like me to address. Thank you.

[9:20 a.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Anderson, for your presentation.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Anderson. I know that a previous presenter, Keith Poore, is forwarding us the study he referenced on PR reducing polarization. I note that in your presentation, you’ve mentioned various studies that are on the website or that you’ve referenced to make your points. We’ll work through the Committee Clerk, but if you can do so too — to make sure we have copies of those studies so that we can review them — that would be very helpful.

My question really relates to how you would see proportional representation, if the committee recommended it and the government acted on it, being implemented. Would you see another referendum? Would you see a citizens assembly? Would you see proceeding to work with experts to implement it and then have a referendum? There has been a whole variety of proposals around the how, and I’d be interested in your perspective.

Maxwell Anderson: Well, I have to admit that I have no objection to the idea of another referendum or to referring to experts or other possibilities. But historically, in most places around the world, electoral reform has happened by a Legislature simply passing a new law. Here in British Columbia, as I’m sure you know, that has been the case here in the past.

For example, the franchise, the right to vote, was taken away from the First Nations people by the Legislature. It was later given back to the First Nations people by the Legislature and given to women by the Legislature. These important changes are normally just made by the Legislature, and I think that is probably the proper way to go.

We had various difficulties with the previous referendums, and I’m happy to address what the problems were with those referendums, if you’d like me to expand on that.

Rob Botterell: Sure, if you’d like to — fairly briefly, so that we don’t eliminate the opportunity for other MLAs to ask brilliant questions.

Maxwell Anderson: One of the problems…. I read some years ago when I was in marketing that a company found it profitable to spend $72 per person to convince a person to switch their toothpaste brand — imagine. Now with inflation, it would be more than that.

The government spent about a dollar or two to inform British Columbians about the referendum. It’s a ridiculous amount. When you consider that the Legislature has a budget and that the MLAs are managing billions of dollars, that an improvement in the management should only be allocated such a small amount of money is ridiculous. So there was not enough money.

To make things worse, of course, money was also granted to the opposition to reform, which chose to put on a fearmongering campaign that made all kinds of ridiculous assertions, with some reasonable opinions and some outright lies.

For example, you can see on our website that one of their lies was that the systems that were on offer on the last and third referendum would allow political parties to choose which people were elected as MLAs, yet none of the three systems on offer allowed anybody but the public to choose which people got elected as any of the MLAs. Those are some of the faults that we had with those referendums.

[9:25 a.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Not seeing any more questions, thank you very much, Mr. Anderson, for your presentation.

Next we have Shanaaz Gokool from the Leadnow Society.

Good morning, Shanaaz. You have 15 minutes for your presentation and ten minutes for questions. Please start whenever you’re able.

Leadnow Society

Shanaaz Gokool: That’s great. Thank you to the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform for inviting me to present today.

I’m calling in from Tkaronto — Toronto, Ontario — which is home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

Leadnow is a national people-powered movement of over 600,000 supporters advocating for a better future. We envision a country where the rights to justice, dignity and a healthy environment are billed and upheld by the democratic power of an engaged public.

I’m here today in my role as the executive director and, more personally, as an immigrant to this country and a human rights activist. I have a strong belief in the power of civic engagement and that as a country, at both the national and regional levels, we still have far to go to create a more robust, representative and inclusive democracy.

Electoral reform is a key step forward that continues to stymie governments across our country. While Leadnow has a long history of advocating for electoral reform, I must be transparent with this committee that we are not currently campaigning on this issue. We are not experts on electoral reform. However, we felt that this was a critical opportunity to bring the thoughts and opinions of our supporters in B.C. to help inform this committee’s deliberations.

Over the years, Leadnow supporters have taken tens of thousands of actions specifically on electoral reform and improving the structural conditions of civic engagement at the ballot box. We know our supporters care deeply about this issue. Of our 600,000 emailable supporters, 90,000 are in B.C. And while we generally have an active supporter list of under 70,000 at any given time, over 17,000 of our active supporters live in B.C.

Following the last federal election, we launched a community-driven petition calling on the federal government to reform our voting system to make it fair and proportional and to move ahead without any additional referendums. Of the 13,030 signatures, 3,367 are petition signers residing in B.C.

Last week, in anticipation of this presentation, we sent out a short survey to our supporters in B.C. We received over 2,300 responses. I’ll share some of those responses.

On the question of “How important is electoral reform to you?” 96 percent of our supporters said that this was either very important or important.

When we asked, “Do you believe B.C.’s current voting system of first-past-the-post engages and motivates people to vote?” 79 percent said “no” or “not at all.”

On the question of “Do you believe B.C.’s current voting system allows voters to choose a candidate who truly reflects their values?” 85 percent replied “no” or “not at all.”

When asked, “Do you believe electoral reform in B.C. could lead to a better democracy and help motivate and engage the public?” 95.4 percent of people stated “very much so” or “yes.”

I’m going to share some of the feedback we heard from our B.C. supporters as it relates to various themes I will touch on in my remarks. Our supporters left over 1,500 comments, so parsing through them was quite an exercise.

The vast majority of comments were in support of some variation of proportional representation, and fewer than 25 supporters were opposed to any form of proportional representation. As Dave from B.C. stated: “Making proportional representation a key element of reform is not a silver bullet, but it is the most crucial element to enhancing democratic reform in B.C.”

I believe this committee is at an important crossroads with these hearings, and you have an opportunity to recommend and initiate the legislative implementation of meaningful reform. After years of study, consultation, recommendations and referendums, it’s time we move beyond the eye-rolling and the platitudes we hear during and after a national election that we really do need to do something about electoral reform.

B.C. can seize a historic moment and lead the way for the rest of the country. As our supporter Murray shares, “Canada needs at least one province to implement PR to show it works. Eventually other provinces will get on board, and public pressure will be placed on the federal voting system to change to PR. So go for it B.C.,” which I will concede is much more easier said than done.

[9:30 a.m.]

Scott shared:

“Electoral reform can be an important antidote to political polarization. By providing British Columbians with a more nuanced ability to reflect their values in their votes, they will feel more represented.

“This should also lead to a more representative and diverse Legislative Assembly, which will hopefully encourage parties to engage and work together to come up with solutions, rather than partisan bickering and cynical actions that only serve to underscore and score political points.”

In the current political landscape, the winds of change are upon us from coast to coast as Canadians have weathered new threats from our former BFFs down south. While there has been much discussion about maple syrup — which is delicious — and hockey, at the heart of our collective reaction is the need to protect and strengthen Canadian democracy.

Meaningful reform could be a powerful response to polarization and what feels, especially after the last federal election, like a default two-party national electoral system. In this, we have an opportunity to reform and align our collective values to stand apart and against threats to our democracy.

Varinder in B.C. shared with us:

“It is imperative that we move to a more representative democracy. As we have seen with our neighbours to the south and even here in Canada, both federally and provincially, the current electoral system can allow political parties to have majority governments without the majority of votes. It also means that parties could have a large percentage of votes but not be represented proportionally. This leaves many people feeling their voices will not matter or be heard, and thus they don’t vote.”

Avril added:

“With the ever-increasing polarization of our political climate, it’s becoming less and less feasible to vote for my preferred candidate. Our current system actively encourages us to vote not as positive measures but as a preventative tool against the candidates we feel are most damaging.

“This further fractures our country’s political landscape, alienates fellow Canadians and makes interparty cooperation less and less beneficial for those in power. The last ten years have turned me into a jaded voter. I want to feel as if the government had the people’s best interests in mind.”

Hayley sums this up with a sober reminder:

“I often feel as if I have to choose the lesser-of-evils choice rather than the individuals I truly believe will make my life and other lives better. It’s an incredibly sad position to be in when living in a country that is one of the more free and humane countries in the world.”

I know that you’ve heard from Springtide, Fair Voting B.C. and others about how the current first-past-the-post system creates inequality and promotes strategic voting — as opposed to voting for policies, candidates and parties that folks may believe in — and how their proposed model of regional representation closes that gap and provides space for minority opinions and values within the government.

Just a couple of thoughts from some of our supporters. Jim writes:

“The first-past-the-post system motivates voters towards strategic voting outcomes. Strategic voting entails voters supporting a candidate that will have the greatest chance of prevailing over a perceived inferior but potentially winning rival, rather than for a candidate who best represents their values.

“Ultimately, the parliamentary system devolves into a polarized two-party system, with a loss of middle ground and unrecognized minority viewpoints, representation and debate. This result creates dysfunctional political gridlock or compromise that unfairly hurts marginalized and disadvantaged people.”

Cate writes:

“As a woman who has worked on political campaigns, I have seen the misogyny that is rampant in our political culture. I’ve heard accounts that are similar to sexuality, gender and race.

“Our political bodies in Canada have low representation in terms of the diverse communities they serve. Although these prejudices are caused by systemic and historic ideologies, first-past-the-post worsens the experience of hate in all politics by creating an entirely competitive, hostile, winner-take-all approach.

“In proportional systems, though there can still be experiences of these prejudices, there can at least be some cooperation between parties, and there is less incentive to dehumanize political rivals.”

You know, in reviewing the Hansard for these hearings, I have observed the theme of some discomfort related to the ideas that MLAs may or may not represent everybody in their riding. Of course you’re elected to serve and represent all the people in your district. In my opinion, there’s an important distinction between serving the constituents in your riding and representing their collective and diverse values in policy and legislative decision-making.

For example, I have on occasion had to reach out directly to my MPP, here in Ontario, for assistance — and once for a provincial matter related to a student loan. I didn’t vote for this MPP, and that didn’t matter. They and their staff did their jobs, and they advocated and represented me when they found and corrected the source of the problem.

I’m still grateful today for that intervention many years ago, and I did not vote for that MPP in the next provincial election afterwards, despite that help, because I knew that my values were not aligned with their support of various provincial policies and legislation.

[9:35 a.m.]

Kelsey’s comment in our survey really hits the nail on the head on that one when she writes:

“I’m so fortunate to finally live in a riding where I feel like I can vote for the candidate that best represents my values. This would likely not be the case if I lived anywhere else in B.C., and I would feel the need to vote strategically instead. It feels good to know that there is someone representing my values in the Legislature and not to have to compromise for fear that they will not be elected.”

I know that you’ve heard from some presenters that proportional representation is risky, dangerous and something to be wary of. With all due respect to those folks, I think that B.C. has a real advantage here, in what we can learn from other models to implement a system that mitigates risks and concerns, one that is tailored to the needs of communities and people in B.C.

Fear, misinformation and distrust of reform, which aims to create stronger democratic engagement and processes, are not, in themselves, valid reasons for this committee to not move forward with a clear plan. Many progressive advances in this country were staved off for decades due to fear, yet once we moved forward, most of us ask ourselves now: “How could it have been otherwise?”

This committee can move forward with recommendations and a plan to institute a B.C.-specific electoral system that requires regular review intervals and necessary adjustments. I urge you to review and reference the submissions and the work of Fair Voting B.C., Springtide and Fair Vote Canada for clarity and nuance on what that plan could look like.

As I mentioned earlier, most of our supporters support PR, and some of them are fine with ranked ballots, as long as it’s not within a winner-take-all system.

Leanne shared: “We must retain some form of geographical representation. Without that, the Lower Mainland and Van Isle will run the province. There are many generalized issues with highly urbanized populations, especially regarding a common lack of deep understanding of ecosystems and human-caused climate crises and impacts.”

Wayne wrote: “The proportion of seats in the Legislature allotted to a party should mirror the proportion of votes attained by that party — simple. So we need some form of PR.”

Ray also wrote to me: “Do not recommend a specific form of PR. Just demand the broad principle of seats for votes.”

Murray wrote: “Any form of proportional representation, except for a winner-takes-all ranked ballot, will be an improvement. I believe the government should make this happen without any more referendums.”

A lot of our supporters believe that PR will create the structural and systematic conditions that will force parties and elected politicians to work together. Instead of having minority governments, we would create majority coalitions comprised of politicians who share and reflect a multitude of different values and beliefs and who, most importantly, are tasked with serving all Canadians in legislative and policy decisions.

If that sounds harder than our current system, it should be. That, as they say, is the real work.

Roberta shared: “Proportional representation results in parties getting the same percentage of MLAs as the percentage of votes the parties got. It’s much more fair. PR is less likely to elect a false majority government and results in two or three parties working together.”

Alice says: “The current system promotes polarization. What we actually need is a system that promotes cooperation. People can make decisions together even if they disagree.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that several supporters want to see a fuller package of electoral reform that includes lowering the voting age to 16 years old. Alex shared that lowering the voting age to 16 will help engage youth still in high school, and his understanding is that if someone votes at least once, they will continue to do so.

Where does that leave us? I think the time is right to forge ahead, as do many of our supporters.

Susan shares:

“I think even one cycle of a more proportional system would make a significant difference, because it would give smaller parties more MLAs, with a voice in the Legislature. That in itself would give more people a reason not just to vote but to vote the way they really want to. Over another couple of election cycles, we could see some real momentum for democratic engagement in support of the policy changes we so desperately need.”

From Jean: “Whatever model might be selected in the future must be seen as straightforward, and there must be a strong educational component to it.”

Anne wrote: “Look, in the latest poll, of January 2025, 68 percent of Canadians want a PR system. That’s clear enough. Let’s move forward with it.”

Susan writes:

“With a democracy, as we know, hanging in the balance in the USA, I think we need to have the fairest and most transparent system for voting in the world. We need to stand up as a country, with each voice being heard. Let’s generate a system where everyone feels connected and their voices are counted.”

Pat: “Get it done. Way overdue.”

[9:40 a.m.]

Garry: “Let’s stop studying this issue and just adopt the reforms. Many democracies successfully use the system of proportional representation to reflect the views of our population.”

Dave: “By respecting and implementing this PR, you are truly serving the people of British Columbia. You will demonstrate your courage by doing so. Thank you.”

Lastly, this gem from Lois: “Don’t mess it up like last time by offering different options. Come up with an understandable, workable, preferably proven-in-other-places system.”

I want to thank Fair Vote Canada, Fair Voting B.C. and Springtide, in particular, for challenging this issue in the courts and the countless tens of thousands of Canadians who have been advocating for meaningful reform for decades.

Thank you, members of the committee, for allowing me some time to share the thoughts and opinions of our supporters today.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much for your presentation. Now we have ten minutes, and first up, we have MLA Botterell.

Rob Botterell: Thanks for your presentation. I’m hoping we’ll…. I was writing madly as you were presenting, and I haven’t looked to see if you’ve provided the details of the survey work that you did. That would be really helpful to just see on paper, so I can understand the scope of the survey and learn more about Leadnow.

One of the things you mentioned in the comments was reducing the voting age to 16. As one who’s looking at that as part of this committee, I think it’s important for everybody to know that the U.K. government just introduced legislation today to allow 16-year-olds to vote in the next election. So the U.K. is moving on this today.

What I wanted to ask you, based on your experience and your membership in relation to both proportional representation and voting age at 16 and 17…. What do you see is the role of public education and making sure voters, in particular youth…? What’s the best way to make sure they’re familiar with the system and the choices to be able to vote?

Shanaaz Gokool: Thank you for that. Just on the question of youth voting, I’m really glad to hear that the U.K. has moved ahead with this because, just as a contrast, in our country, mature minors, youth who are 16 years of age, can already make life-ending decisions as it relates to their health care. Surely we can entrust them with the right to vote. So I think that’s an important step forward.

I think the issue of public education is huge, because what we’ve seen every time there’s been a referendum on this issue….

And I remember in 2007, in Ontario, when the former McGuinty government put together a citizens assembly. They came up with a recommendation, and it went to referendum. The government made sure that nobody knew what was being presented.

And what I found really fascinating is that days before that election, TVO, the public broadcaster in Ontario, commissioned the Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson University, in one of their media studies classes, to actually put together a video to explain what was on the table.

I remember watching that — I wasn’t engaged in politics in this way at that time — and thinking that that should have been shown in every school across the country and in the province, in universities and accessible places.

I don’t know what the curriculum looks like these days, but when I went to high school, understanding our voting system, understanding how the political systems work in Canada at the local, regional and national levels is not something that’s taught in a meaningful way.

Maybe that’s changed, and I certainly hope it has, but I think that people — and you’ve heard it from our supporters — are really clear that…. Pick a system that we know will work, that could be adjusted based on a mandated review at a later period but that there’s enough education in a variety of different places. I think if we’re trying to reach young people today, we’re not looking at just traditional places.

We’re looking at schools, looking at colleges and universities — sure. But we’re looking at places where people are consuming information. We’re looking on social media platforms.

[9:45 a.m.]

We’re looking at Reddit. We’re looking at Instagram. We’re looking at TikTok, short bytes digestible enough so that it should be simple enough that people understand what is being presented and how we are going to vote together, going forward — hopefully, the province of B.C. — so that that will reach and cut through all of the noise that comes our way, in particular for young people, and might make a difference in how they vote.

So I think the education component of this is as critical or probably one of the most critical things once this committee puts forward, I hope, recommendations to move forward with some form of proportional representation.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Shanaaz, for your presentation, and I appreciated hearing the voices of your members.

My question is around the measures that you talked about that could be implemented in a system which could mitigate risks and concerns that some previous presenters have expressed about a pro rep system. I’m wondering if you have any specific examples of what those mitigation measures look like.

Shanaaz Gokool: Yeah. Thank you for the question. Just to remind you, I’m not an expert on electoral reform. I did, though, in preparation, review the submissions from Springtide and from Fair Vote B.C. I do think that they’ve done a very thoughtful and helpful approach, provided a helpful approach with the regional representation model that they’ve put forward and how that might work.

Don’t ask me to give you those details now, because I don’t know them off the top of my head. But I just remember, though, as I was reading through them: this makes a lot of sense because it answers a lot of the concerns of ensuring that you have local and regional representation. It answers some of the questions around the diverse geography within the province of B.C. It still ensures that one vote will be weighted equally in terms of representation in the Legislature. I think that there’s….

I found their submissions, as a non-lawyer and as a non-expert, quite compelling, because it really sort of identified what they were trying to put forward and the values that they were trying to achieve and then the mitigation strategies that have traditionally been associated by people who do not support pro rep.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much. I have a couple of questions. In your presentation, it was kind of rapid fire, and there was a lot of information, so thank you for that. You said…. One of them was that a poll says 68 percent of the people wanted PR. Which poll was that?

Shanaaz Gokool: It was quoted. I quoted directly from one of our supporters. I can certainly pull it and share it with the committee afterwards. Sorry, I pulled the quote directly. She felt quite compelled that there was enough evidence that the majority of Canadians do want PR, but I’m happy to pull that afterwards and share it.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay. I’m just looking through the profile, and one of the things that you’re saying in your organization is that most people do not feel at home joining political parties. But you said, also, that your supporters vote for various political parties but not all political parties. Is that correct?

Shanaaz Gokool: No, not exactly. What I shared were quotes from some of our supporters, one in particular who shared that they found that it’s the case, from what they’ve experienced and what they’ve read, that women, folks of diverse genders, of different racial and ethnic backgrounds may not be comfortable participating in politics because of the degree of hate that is directed and levelled at them.

I think that we know that from many different media stories of politicians sharing their experiences. So I wouldn’t say that’s broadly how our supporters feel, but that’s how that particular supporter felt around the kinds of divisiveness that comes from the first-past-the-post system and that having proportional rep would encourage representation of different groups of people so that that would be reflected in the legislatures.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thank you. Not seeing any further questions, thanks very much for your presentation and being with us today.

Shanaaz Gokool: Thank you so much. It’s good to…. I’m really glad that you’re doing this work. I think it’s vital, and I really do want to underscore that you do have a historic opportunity here. I really hope that you engage, as you have been, in putting forward some meaningful recommendations. Thank you so much for your work. Cheers.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

Next up we have Adam Bailey from Dogwood.

Just a reminder, Adam — good morning — that you have 15 minutes for your presentation and ten minutes for questions. Please start when you’re ready.

[9:50 a.m.]

Dogwood

Adam Bailey: Thank you, committee members.

What do you call a place where 17 percent of the population votes in a government whose decisions are then directed by unseen lobbyists and bureaucrats? How about a province where citizens pay taxes which our politicians then turn around and give to multinational oil and gas companies? If British Columbia plans to keep calling itself a democracy, then it desperately needs to improve the systems of governance that underpin that democracy.

I am here today representing Dogwood, B.C.’s largest citizen action group, and it is my privilege to be speaking to you from Mowachaht/Muchalaht territory. Dogwood focuses on environmental issues, but time and again we run into fundamental issues of governance, where the interests of capital outweigh the interests of the people who live here.

The climate emergency is just one example of where the money and machinery of the state is currently being used to make the problem worse, and we have to turn that around. Democratic reform is also necessary to reduce the harm our colonial institutions do to Indigenous nations, lands and people. The 1858 proclamation of the Crown Colony of British Columbia was based on a legal fiction, and yet the power of our government is real. Immigrants and descendants of settlers have a responsibility to rein it in and to make amends for the damage that our leaders over the generations have facilitated.

I’m speaking to you today to suggest that we must reform our electoral system and continue to expand voting rights, that we must grow beyond our European democracy and that real democracy is about literal power at a time when B.C. is once again at the centre of a global oil and gas boom.

Barely half of registered voters in B.C. cast a ballot in the 2020 election, to give a recent example, and registered voters accounted for only 68 percent of the population. That suits the corporations and wealthy families that run our province just fine. In the end, 899,388 people voted for NDP candidates out of a provincial population of more than 5.1 million in that election. That means that just 17 percent of people voted for the governing party, even though all of us are affected by their decisions.

In fact, you could argue that under the first-past-the-post system, only voters who supported NDP candidates in ridings where they won actually contributed to the makeup of B.C.’s majority government. That would bring the number down to 13 percent, including people who held their nose and voted strategically.

It’s tempting to be cynical about a legislature that doesn’t represent 87 percent of the people they rule over. There’s a meme on the internet, incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain, that says: “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.” But this is contradicted by B.C.’s long history of systematically denying exploited populations the right to vote.

Voting is a collective mobilization that makes the most powerful people in society nervous. There’s a reason they don’t want us doing it. Even under a dysfunctional system, it’s important to break down barriers to engagement and get as many people voting as possible. That’s why Dogwood staff and volunteers make non-partisan get-out-the-vote phone calls during elections.

We must continue to expand voting rights. White women, whose unpaid labour allowed the colony of British Columbia to establish itself, didn’t win the right to vote until 1917. Chinese, South Asian, Japanese and Indigenous people, who made up the large majority of workers in the province’s early years, were barred from voting by racist laws until 1947 and 1949.

B.C. still allows hundreds of thousands of people to work here and pay taxes here while denying them any say in the laws that govern their lives. Permanent residents and other non-citizens quite literally keep the province’s economy functioning but have no voice at the ballot box.

The same goes for teenagers, who did things like stocking grocery shelves throughout the pandemic or served food or operated cash registers while being screamed at by unmasked customers. They can work at 15, they can drive a pickup truck or marry an adult at 16, but they are not allowed to touch a ballot until they turn 18. This allows policymakers to ignore the most easily exploited workers in the province.

It also helps keep voter turnout low. Although 18-to-24-year-olds face many barriers to voting in Canada, jurisdictions that have lowered the voting age have seen a rise in overall turnout. Voting in high school seems to help demystify the process and turn more people into lifelong voters.

[9:55 a.m.]

We must also grow beyond European democracy. Let us not forget that there are Indigenous systems of government that have been operating in B.C. since long before the creation of the English Parliament in 1215. For example, I was invited to attend the feast hall at Hagwilget and witness a government that has stewarded the land and cared for its people far longer than our Westminster traditions.

While elected band governments have jurisdiction on reserves under the Indian Act, traditional or hereditary systems continue to govern some Indigenous territories. Those off-reserve territories are what comprise Crown land, the vast tracts of forests, rivers, lakes and mountains that define the place we live and house the natural resources sought after by corporations. Letting industry call the shots has been a disaster for both ecosystems and human communities. The good news here is that there are older, more successful systems for managing the relationships between people, other living beings and land.

So long as there are non-Indigenous people living in B.C., we need our own laws and systems to govern our activities. But settler democracy will have to step back in many areas as Indigenous communities reassert their jurisdiction. That’s one reason why Dogwood supports the B.C. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and the important work of updating our laws to comply with UNDRIP. This, too, is part of reshaping our democracy.

But real democracy is about literal power. Just as Indigenous systems of government are challenging the Crown’s supremacy over the land in B.C., we need to regain control of the energy that drives our economy and our daily lives. When it comes to mega-dams or pipelines, power is no metaphor. The people who control our energy control us, and they know it.

Allow me to introduce to you the case of one Lt. Gen. David Petraeus. When TC Energy sold their stake in Coastal GasLink Pipeline, the American corporation KKR swooped in to make a profit. They hired General Petraeus, former director of the CIA and architect of the troop surge strategy in Iraq, to give the company what they called an “internal CIA” to ensure they got their projects done.

It is no coincidence that the gold commander and bronze commander of the RCMP special unit policing the CGL pipeline route served with General Petraeus training police and paramilitaries in Afghanistan. When RCMP officers were unsure of how to approach Indigenous land defenders along that pipeline route, they did not call Crown lawyers for advice. They called CGL’s lawyers. That does not sound like the police force of a healthy and thriving democracy to me.

The people who control our energy control us. The climate emergency requires us to find affordable, abundant, local, renewable energy so we can electrify buildings and vehicles and stop giving the oil and gas cartel taxpayer money. Reducing demand and displacing fossil fuels can disrupt the financial assumptions of these companies. It also cuts into the money and political capital they have to lobby and, in the abstract, to blackmail politicians.

Big oil can’t threaten to turn off the taps, pull investment dollars or throw people out of work if we build distributed, decentralized energy systems that allow people to put down roots in the places they live.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Hey, Adam, sorry to interrupt your presentation, but remember this: we’re having this committee for democratic reform and electoral reform, so I’d like you to be able to stay on point with that and not just talking about oil and gas.

Adam Bailey: Understood, and allow me to summarize.

In summary, we must decarbonize, decolonize and democratize. These are three pillars when thinking about different ways to face the challenges in our province. They’re interrelated and interdependent. We think that democratizing in B.C., democratic reform, requires also decolonizing and decarbonizing our province at the same time.

I believe the B.C. government has been hijacked by big polluters, which now suck $1 billion a year in subsidies out of us, the public. That’s twice what we spend on climate policies and programs put together. Unsurprisingly, greenhouse gas emissions are going up. Reversing that trend means reforming our democratic system so that the long-term needs of the people and the land are valued more than the short-term demands of capital.

Equally important is the work of decolonizing our province. The reason we’re in this mess is because the Crown claims ownership of 95 percent of the land in this province and jurisdiction over all the timber, fresh water, wildlife, gold, coal, minerals, gas and oil. It leases that out to corporations and protects them with police.

We can’t opt out of colonialism, just like we can’t opt out of the climate emergency. It affects all of us. Settlers, in particular, have a responsibility to use our property and privileges to combat both.

[10:00 a.m.]

This requires a reinvigoration of our democratic institutions, electoral and democratic reform, which begins with made-in-B.C. electoral reforms that forge consensus out of more than just 17 percent of the people.

I’ve got another 4½ minutes over here, which I’m sure you folks won’t mind getting back in your day. Thank you very much for your time. I’m available for questions.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. You’ve tied the reforming of democracy as a key link to decarbonization and decolonization in B.C. One of the concepts that one of my colleagues MLA Clare has raised is the concept of — he’s raised it in the context of regional representation — having a bicameral House. I’m wondering what thoughts you may have in terms of setting up a bicameral House where one of the Houses would be Indigenous.

Adam Bailey: Thank you very much.

Certainly, that is an idea that has a lot of interest, I think, across British Columbia. I’m glad to know that folks are open to the idea of increased Indigenous representation in this province. [Inaudible recording.]

Rob Botterell: Oh. This is what happens whenever I ask a question.

Adam Bailey: Is there a technical issue?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): We’re back now. Yeah. That’s great.

Adam Bailey: Great. Thank you.

The short…. [Inaudible recording] serious engagement with Indigenous nations about how that representation would work in a bicameral House.

I do also know that there are many nations who have opted not to participate in the colonial government because of the impacts of colonization. I believe there would be a lot of work that would need to be done in order to make that House truly representative, although I definitely think it’s a laudable theory or a laudable sentiment behind that idea of constructing a bicameral House — absolutely.

Sheldon Clare: I just wanted to emphasize that my suggestions about a bicameral House were not intended to represent only one group but to provide regional representation. Thank you.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Not seeing any further questions, thanks very much for your presentation, Adam, and have a fantastic day.

Adam Bailey: Thank you all for your time.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): We’ll take a five-minute break.

The committee recessed from 10:03 a.m. to 10:10 a.m.

[Ward Stamer in the chair.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Next up is Dr. Cutler from the University of British Columbia.

Good morning, Dr. Cutler.Just a reminder that you have 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by ten minutes for questions. Please begin when you’re ready.

Fred Cutler

Fred Cutler: Okay, thank you. I’m going to read some remarks and stay on track. I haven’t delivered a written submission. I really want to leave you with one message about local representation and the number of members we have in each district representing us.

My name is Fred Cutler, and I’m very happy as a citizen to be able to present to the committee. As a number of the presenters have said, it’s a hallmark of democracy to devote time and resources to examining our democracy, to checking in on how we’re doing in an open and transparent way like this.

I’m a citizen first. I’m also an associate professor of political science at UBC, where I’ve taught for 24 years. I grew up in Ottawa. I’ve lived in four provinces, both in cities and in the country. I have a PhD from the University of Michigan. I was trained as a political theorist, somebody who considers what we should do in politics, but also as a quantitative political scientist.

I teach and do research on public opinion, elections, political psychology and electoral systems. I see that you got introduced to the word “psephology” by a previous presenter. That’s what I do, but we haven’t used that word in about 40 years. We don’t want to confuse people with a crazy word. We just say we study elections and public opinion.

Some of the things I’ve studied that I think are relevant to what we are talking about in all the deliberations of this committee: voting behaviour, in the B.C. referendums, in fact; how voters incorporate information from their local context as they make decisions in politics; how Canadian voters cope with federalism; and how the number of parties and voices in political dialogue affects citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. I was one of the principal investigators on the Canadian election study team from 2011 to 2015.

I’ve thought about this stuff and done a lot of research, on many of the things that have been part of the great conversations you’ve been having, for many years. My own research and the literature in which I participate leads me to believe that we can do better in B.C. than the single-member district electoral system; that is, I’m not going to talk about proportional representation.

I’m just going to say we need to have more than one member representing each district. I think we get better politics, better policy and, most importantly, more citizens satisfied with the democratic process if we have more than one member per district. We can keep the Legislature around 100 members. I’ll get to that.

I want to focus on a particular aspect of this, and that’s that I think it’s kind of a lazy myth that first-past-the-post is better than the alternatives for representation of local interests. Those who want to keep first-past-the-post often paint all other electoral systems as having these distant representatives chosen by parties unattached to actual places.

I’m going to say that’s just a crazy characterization, and there are lots of systems that deliver more proportionality — that is, party proportionality — but keep very strong links, and I’m going to argue better links, between the local district, the local area, the regions and the policy process that happens in the capital.

I think multi-member districts are better for local representation. I think they’re better for getting more cooperative behaviour by politicians across party lines. I think they’re better for individual representation of citizens and their own satisfaction with democracy, and I think they’ll produce better election campaigns as well. So I’m talking about an electoral system that keeps geographically defined districts but just has more than one person elected in each district.

[10:15 a.m.]

The BCSTV that we voted on was like this, but there are other ways to elect, and simpler ways to elect, multi-members per district. Again, you were told by Fair Voting B.C. that they support a simpler system like this, and that B.C., in fact, had such a system for a short time. Some B.C. ridings, of course, had two members up until the mid-1980s.

Again, I want to put proportional representation aside. When you have multiple members per district, you get a more proportional result, but PR is a criterion that’s related to party representation. I just want to say: let’s represent people in local areas but do it with more than one member. Just to fix the idea in your head, I’m talking about something like maybe 35 three-member districts in B.C., representing between 100,000 and 200,000 people. Keep in mind, federal ridings represent over 100,000 right now with one MP.

Let me just delve into some details here. Really, it’s a thinking exercise. I mean, there’s research behind a lot of the things I’m going to say, but I’m going to paint it in general terms but get specific about the ways that we will get representation in a multi-member system, as opposed to how we do now in a single-member district system.

I want to talk mostly about local interests, not about constituency service. I think with multi-member districts, everybody knows that we’ll still get the constituency service role of Members of Parliament. There will be multiple people going and doing the work in the constituency that you folks on the committee do and is so important. So I’m really talking about how our representatives take what they understand the local interest to be and act on that and communicate that in the policy process, both in the Legislature committees and outside of the Legislature in debate.

I’m probably going to raise your hackles here a little. I’m going to say that in the first-past-the-post and single-member system, the MLA, as a member of a party, typically has to tow the party line in our Westminster system, with strong party discipline as we’ve had in Canada, and they’ll have their own political convictions. The idea is that at some level, you put that aside, and you do work inside and outside the assembly promoting the interests of your constituency.

MLAs and MPs say they do this, and they do a little, and the research shows that they do it a little. But of course, we have to understand they have many of these other motivations for how they act as representatives. They’re good, reasonable motivations — being a member of a party and having ideological commitments and so on. I just challenge the members of the committee to go back to their district and ask their constituents how realistic those constituents think it would be for an MLA under these constraints to represent the whole riding much of the time.

Let’s go into a little more detail on how MLAs figure out the local interest and then how effective they are in getting that local voice heard in the government caucus and in committees and the Legislature, and then in debate outside the halls in Victoria. I think here’s where it gets unequal, unfair and ineffective, and it produces much weaker representation than if we had multiple members per district — remember, only three. It could be three. It could be four. It could be two. BCSTV had a range of them, but I think it’s nicer to have the same number of members per district across the province.

The representation we get with one MLA isn’t representative. MLAs do listen to their constituents, but we know from research that people who voted for the elected member are much more likely to contact them. There’s good evidence from a bunch of first-past-the-post systems that representatives tend to reach out to and consult with people like them. When we have an unrepresentative assembly — and we still do, unfortunately, although we got over the 50 percent male-female threshold, which is great — it tends to be that representatives reach out to people like them, so representation is unequal in that sense.

If there are, say, three representatives in a district, they’re simply more likely to hear a wider range of voices in total, and people are more likely to contact one of the representatives because they feel that person will be sympathetic to their needs. I don’t want to come across too strong on that. I think that people do contact MLAs when they know that the MLA is from a party that they don’t support, but it’s common sense to think that people are more likely to contact a representative who they know shares their views.

[10:20 a.m.]

What about currently with having a government versus an opposition member? The power of representatives is unequal because representation is really different when you have a government member versus a non-government member. Obviously, members of the governing caucus have a better chance of getting their constituency interests heard and acted upon. Opposition members try to represent the local interest, of course, but they can be kind of dismissed as partisan by the government, and even in committees that can happen.

With three members, one would almost certainly be in government and could work with the other members from the district on a strategy to represent those interests. That’s a kind of accountability we would force from our multiple members — that they work together and represent the district.

What about, right now, having a minister versus a backbencher? Well, maybe ministers have stronger voices, but maybe they’re distracted and do less for the district. Either way, representation is unequal, even comparing members of the governing party. When you have three members, even if one is a minister, again, they’ll be working with the other members representing the district to get those concerns heard.

What about the MLAs actually understanding what the local interests are? Right now, we have a system where one MLA and their staff consult with people in their district. If we had three people doing that, again, it’s common sense to think that they would hear more voices and that they would, in totality, have a better understanding of the local interests than one member does now.

You’ve heard a lot. I won’t belabour the point about fairness in single-member districts. Obviously, not enough people feel well represented when, on average, a bit fewer than half of the voters have voted for someone who gets elected. We know that people, simply, are less satisfied with democracy when their representative is not somebody they voted for. Again, multi-members — you have more people voting for people who actually go to the Legislature.

My own research shows that the further back the candidate you prefer is likely to finish in your riding, the less satisfied you are or the more likely you are not to vote — and if you do vote, the more likely you are to have to vote strategically. Not surprisingly, people whose preferred candidate is further back are more likely to want and vote for electoral reform.

I just want you to think about people who vote for a losing candidate over time. Voting is a huge part of feeling like you’re having your voice heard. We all agree on that. Imagine being in a place you love and where you’re going to remain for the rest of your life but where the party you prefer never wins. Imagine going for decades voting for your preferred party and always having someone you disagree with to some extent go to Victoria to represent you.

Imagine being one of three people in Vancouver-Kensington or in Kootenay Central who prefer the right-of-centre B.C. Liberals or Conservatives, losing election after election. Imagine being one of three people in Abbotsford South or Kelowna-Mission who vote NDP, losing election after election. I don’t understand why we can put up with a system that does that. I mean, one election — maybe that’s okay. Election after election, if you live in a place where your party doesn’t get elected, it must be crushing.

So feeling well represented matters. Democracies are better when people feel well represented, because that probably means they are well represented. Multi-member districts, obviously — and the evidence supports this — make people feel better represented because more of them have elected somebody who they agree with.

Let’s think about accountability for local representation. There’s this kind of mythology that we’re going to toss you guys out if you do something that’s against the local interests. We might do that if we have an opposition member. It’s a bit weird. If it’s a government member, and the government decides something, the member can always say: “Well, I tried in caucus to make a difference, and it didn’t help.” I think with three members per district, you get tremendously better accountability for local representation and genuine expression of those interests.

So what would a future look like with three-member districts? I’m going to put this as answers to some of the misrepresentations and red herrings you’ve heard from people like Bill Tieleman and Jonathan Berkowitz and Suzanne Anton. They mostly talk about proportional representation systems of one district, party lists, strong party control of the lists.

With three members per district, I think we’re likely to get about the same number of elections that result in stable majority governments. It’ll take a little longer to form governments, but we’re not going to be Belgium. We’ve just had that with the current system in B.C. recently. So we can put up with it once in a while — that it’ll take a month or two to form a government.

[10:25 a.m.]

I would say local and regional interests will become more important in the formation of governments, which affects the policy we get.

We wouldn’t have extremist political parties with three members per district. We wouldn’t get the scare tactic of the idea of extremist parties that represent 3 percent of the population. We would not have that if we had, simply, three members per district.

We’d also very likely see Indigenous members get elected from a few districts, election after election. So that representation would be ongoing and more influential.

We’re likely to get a few more political parties. We’ll probably still have B.C. NDP, Liberals or Conservatives, maybe, or Greens, but we might get a few more parties expressing some different voices, which I think would be good.

So I just ask that the committee consider taking the plunge and moving us to a system where we quite simply have more than one representative to feel like our interests are being voiced in Victoria.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I have a couple of questions.

In terms of going to an approach of, say, three-member ridings, presumably that would result in some fairly large ridings. When we’ve been discussing proportional representation models, that has been a concern that has been raised by presenters and members of this committee.

If you’re currently an MLA for a riding the size of Switzerland, oh my god, if you combine that with a couple of others to create a three-member riding, it’s going to become very difficult in an area of the province that doesn’t have internet everywhere to actually represent the constituents. That’s a first concern.

Then a second concern that presenters have raised is about multiple members. Who do I go to? How do we divide up the work and so on?

So my questions are: how do we address existing large ridings in the model you’re proposing? And secondly, how would you see moving this forward before the next election if that were a recommendation we made?

Fred Cutler: I don’t think I have much to contribute, necessarily, on that last question. I know you had a presentation from a graduate of our department who had done a lot of work thinking about referendum versus not referendum.

I think the simpler the change and the more it looks like our current system…. I think simply combining existing districts and adding members does that, and there’s precedent for that, of course, in B.C. many years ago. I think it’s more doable to switch to a system like this than to go to an MMP system or something, obviously, that voters are less familiar with.

On the question of big districts: look, we deal with those now, and members deal with those now, and I fully support providing a lot of extra resources for those members. You’d be getting more members in that much bigger district. To the extent that they will, in some sense, compete for attention in the district, they’re more likely to go and cover areas of that bigger district.

I want to suggest that in Ireland, they’re worried about the opposite problem. They have tiny districts, but in their STV system, they think that the MPs — I’ll call them MPs — are too localistic. So that doesn’t…. I mean, there, obviously, they can drive anywhere. We can’t necessarily drive in a riding we have now, let alone one that’s three times bigger.

But I think we have technology that helps us a great deal at the moment. As you say, it’s maybe not universal. But we can provide, essentially, a great deal more resources, as we do a little bit now, to those MLAs who are trying to cover that area. And again, I think with three of those members cooperating, they’ll do just as good a job as one member does now.

[10:30 a.m.]

Rob Botterell: Okay, and then just a quick follow-up, if I may, Mr. Chair. We had an earlier presentation from Jonathan Berkowitz, and he suggested that Arrow’s impossibility theorem is an argument against proportional voting and in favour of the first-past-the-post.

What’s your reaction to that? How does Arrow’s impossibility theorem apply to your proposal? What is the Arrow’s impossibility theorem?

Fred Cutler: I saw that, and I was puzzled. I mean, what he was talking about was the design of an electoral system. The idea, basically, is that if you propose one electoral system, and if we have multiple criteria and multiple participants in the dialogue, somebody else is going to say, “Well, this other electoral system is going to beat that first one on some criterion, and we’ll just get in a cycle,” and everybody knows that’s true.

The B.C. citizens assembly spent a lot of time saying: “Look, we’ve got all these values that we want to represent in our electoral system. Wouldn’t it be great if we could snap our fingers and design one that will get us everything we want: full proportionality, no extreme parties, amazing local representation and lots of independent voices?”

I think he’s just saying — and he’s not wrong — that we can’t design a perfect electoral system, but I think it was a bit bamboozling to have somebody describe Arrow’s theorem in talking about designing an electoral system. That doesn’t mean first-past-the-post is better. It’s an admission, really, that first-past-the-post is trumped by other electoral systems on some criteria. I found it puzzling that you’d bring that up in this and say that it somehow establishes that first-past-the-post with single members is a better system.

Rob Botterell: Okay, thanks.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Professor, for your presentation. I wanted to ask a point about the principles of the Westminster parliamentary system. The guiding principle, of course, is that the minority must be heard but the majority must rule.

In our House, which is a unicameral House — we don’t have a bicameral one, although I have some thoughts about that — there are two groups in the House, only two groups. There is the government, and there is the opposition. When legislation is brought through committee, various groups are members of those committees. The committees are small, by design, so that work gets done — which would not necessarily allow for the participation of large numbers of small parties.

Ultimately, when legislation is presented, it is subjected to a vote, and the vote is very simple. It is for or against, without allowance for abstentions, except if people choose to be absent.

What is the benefit of a proportional representation system in the Westminster parliamentary system, which we have, which does not align itself well to what has been described as PR?

Fred Cutler: I’ll just emphasize again that I’m sort of putting aside, or making less important, the idea that the system I’m suggesting is a proportional system. Look, the majority of democracies around the world use a more proportional system than we do. They get legislation passed. They have committees in their legislatures. I don’t see any change in that.

If we have 100 members, and they’re members of, say, two, 2½ or three of what we’d still call major parties, and we had a few members who were more like independents, or we got three or four people from different areas of the province more or less banding together in a three- or four-member party — you heard about, in Holland, an animal rights party — those people know they’re opposition members, they know they might be serving on a committee, and their voice will be heard in the committee. Often they’ll agree, and they’ll vote yes with the government.

We’ve had minority governments in Canada plenty of times. Lots of citizens say they prefer minority governments. I agree that we want a balance between majority and minority, and I think we will still get them in a system where we just make the districts bigger and have three members. I don’t think it’s going to change the character of what you folks do in Victoria very much, because it isn’t that proportional of a system when you go to three members per district.

[10:35 a.m.]

The effective threshold in systems like this — and there aren’t many of them — ends up being between 10 and 15 percent. So you’re not dealing with a bunch of really extreme views, and I think you get a dialogue that just reflects more voices and is more balanced. Again, even in those committees, you’re going to hear more about local interests, because the members representing each district will have consulted each other on what each one is doing in the committees they’re part of.

Sheldon Clare: I would just add that that really happens already. In effect, that’s already a part of that process. So I’m not really sure what the value is of making a significant change. But thank you for the answer to the question.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): MLA Shah?

Amna Shah: My question has been asked by MLA Botterell.

Rob Botterell: I would note that there’s more to electoral reform than the decision-making process in the Legislature. I mean, we certainly currently have an opposition that isn’t all Conservative, and there are more than two voices, and we seem to manage.

But I want to come to something that’s been raised by other presenters. I’ll just give this context. In the most recent Scottish Holyrood proportional representation elections, turnout has risen substantially. So in 2011, it was 50.4 percent; 2016, 55.9 percent; 2021, 63.2 percent. And by comparison, the U.K. election in Scotland in 2019, the voter turnout was 68.1 percent. And in 2024, it actually dropped under first-past-the-post to 59.2 percent.

I give that as context to…. A concern we have, in terms of the work we’re doing, is voter turnout in B.C. How would you see moving to three-member districts affecting turnout? Have you looked at that or thought about that?

Fred Cutler: I certainly thought about it and more or less extrapolated from the current evidence, because we can’t just say, “imagine a B.C.,” and get evidence on that. It’s really a full consensus among political scientists, and you’ve seen some of the evidence. People have cited that turnout is higher in more proportional systems.

Obviously, there are all kinds of cultural explanations, but if you take a wide range of countries and jurisdictions, even subnational jurisdictions like ours, turnout is higher. Is it three points higher? Is it seven points higher? Probably somewhere in that range.

I did some research with colleagues at the federal level in Canada where we estimated that just the perception that your preferred party is less likely to win the federal riding than another party depresses turnout by about 3 or 4 percent. So a million and a half voters would be much more likely to vote if they thought that their vote was going to elect somebody.

I’m not going to say we’re going to go immediately to 80 percent turnout. That would be silly. I think probably we will have a couple hundred thousand more British Columbians voting in a system that is even a little bit more proportional. Even one that is just three members per district will have better turnout.

Rob Botterell: And do you have that study you mentioned around increased voter turnout?

Fred Cutler: Yeah, it’s in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and it’s a careful estimate of….

Rob Botterell: Can you send it along?

Fred Cutler: Yeah, I will.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I have a quick one too. You mentioned about the three candidates and increasing the size of the riding. Well, I’m just wondering how.

[10:40 a.m.]

We’ve had this conversation about the logistics of any particular MLA with the responsibilities that they’re going to be undertaking. It’s no different than in my area if you wanted to amalgamate Kamloops–North Thompson, Kamloops Centre and, let’s say, Fraser-Nicola, which goes all the way down to this side of Mission, short of giving us a helicopter, it’s going to be very difficult for me to be able to be in three places at one time.

The other concern I have, and maybe you can explain this, if you can…. Are we going to have senior MLAs? The way it splits out, you could have one candidate that could get 60 percent of the vote, one candidate could get 30 percent of the vote, and one candidate could get 10 percent of the vote.

Now I can see in Surrey, where you have ten ridings, and you can almost see from one riding to the next…. We have a pretty fair breakout now, with four NDPers and six Conservatives. I can argue that what’s missing in the percentages is 1½ Greens or independents or whatever that is.

How is that going to be in our rural area? We’ve had this conversation over and over again, that it’s going to be very difficult. The expectation is that there are still going to be Con voters in Hope, and there are still going to be Green voters in Vavenby. How are you supposed to be able to do that effectively when you’ve only got 5 or 10 percent of the vote?

Fred Cutler: I think that’s probably one of the strongest criticisms of going to a simple multi-member system. That’s why the citizens assembly, with all the care they took, went to an STV system, where voters are ranking and you end up with multiple members that at least feel like they have more equal support across the three of them.

I think a 60-30-10 situation is very, very unlikely. Just the way that the politics would be generated in those areas, it’s very unlikely you’d get that big a difference.

You could get all academic on us and give those people different voting power in the assembly. That’s probably a place people don’t want to go.

I just think that the three of you could cover the north-south area you just suggested, if you go north-south in combining those three ridings. I agree; that’s wild. You would do it very carefully and even consider the transportation options for MLAs. For instance, I think you might combine your riding with Kamloops Centre and then one of the ridings east or west of you instead of south.

I agree that’s going to be difficult. Again, there will be just as many people covering just as much territory as there is now.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you very much for your presentation.

We will take a recess until 10:50.

The committee recessed from 10:42 a.m. to 10:54 a.m.

[Ward Stamer in the chair.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Welcome, John Beebe, Democratic Engagement Exchange representative. Just as a reminder, you have 15 minutes for presentation and ten minutes for questions afterwards. Whenever you’re ready.

Democratic Engagement Exchange

John Beebe: Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I know that you’ve been hearing, over the last couple of weeks, from many people passionate about electoral reform, and this is a critical issue, but today I will be speaking about the opportunity you have as a committee to strengthen our democracy regardless of the electoral system.

My name is John Beebe, and I founded and lead the Democratic Engagement Exchange, a national, non-partisan, non-profit organization based at Toronto Metropolitan University. We work across the country to promote inclusive democratic participation, particularly among communities that are often underrepresented in elections, like youth, newcomers and people on low incomes.

Since our founding in 2017, we’ve developed and delivered award-winning programming in elections in every province and territory. I have a particular admiration for our partners here in B.C., the dedicated community leaders and organizations who are doing some of the most creative work to increase voter turnout in the country. At the exchange, our mission is simple: to build a culture of democratic engagement that makes voting not just possible but probable and powerful.

Today I want to talk about how we do that and what we could do together to expand what works across B.C. to increase voter turnout and strengthen democracy in this province. I’ll be proposing three solutions critical to building a strong democracy from the ground up: first, by enhancing Elections B.C.’s outreach and engagement initiatives; second, by ensuring that our colleges and universities are supporting participation in elections; and third, by making the critical investments in our democratic infrastructure required to ensure the long-term vitality of our democracy.

B.C. is fortunate to have one of Canada’s most widely respected election management bodies, both nationally and internationally. As an American, who can now vote in Canada and has worked with election management bodies from coast to coast to coast, I can tell you it’s easier to vote in B.C. than anywhere else in North America.

Last fall I had the honour of serving as an official observer in the B.C. provincial election as part of a delegation that included election professionals from across Canada and around the world. What really struck us wasn’t just the technical excellence, though that was impressive; it was the voter experience.

One element that stands out is Elections B.C.’s vote anywhere option, available both during advance polling and on election day. This is unique in Canada and a boon for first-time and infrequent voters. As you heard, in the most recent election, it took an average of only 2½ minutes to vote — that’s less time than buying a cup of coffee — while maintaining strict standards for integrity, security and accessibility. That’s no small achievement.

Elections B.C. has built a system that makes it easy to vote and hard to make a mistake. That’s exactly what a 21st-century democracy should do. So if voting is so easy, why isn’t everyone doing it? One reason is that people often overestimate how difficult voting will be. The 2019 national electors study found that only 35 percent of electors thought voting would take five minutes or less. After voting, 63 percent said it actually did. Just 28 percent thought travel to the polls would be quick, but 54 percent found it was.

Voting is easier than people expect, and when they try it, their confidence and trust in the system grows. But access alone clearly isn’t enough. And 1.5 million eligible voters did not participate in the 2024 provincial election. When four in ten voters don’t vote, that is not a statistic. That’s a crisis. It is a crisis that undermines the legitimacy of our electoral system and makes us vulnerable to foreign interference and disinformation campaigns.

At the exchange, we’ve spent nearly a decade developing and refining a model of voter engagement that works in cities, small towns and communities from coast to coast to coast. We do that by developing and providing free resources and tools and training for community-based organizations and local leaders. These trusted organizations and leaders are the glue that holds our communities together, but too often they do not have the resources or expertise for effective non-partisan voter engagement.

[11:00 a.m.]

When engaging new voters, we start with a simple but powerful question: what matters to you? Then we do something radical. We listen — not with an agenda, not with a quiz, just with curiosity and respect. That’s when something amazing happens. People recognize that they have something important to say. They start to connect their lives to public decisions and elections, and they begin to believe, maybe for the first time, that their voice matters.

I will never forget the young woman who I met running a vote pop-up in an inner suburban library. When I asked her, “What are the issues that matter to you?” she replied, “No one has ever asked me that before.” She went on to share her concerns for her family and community. She also shared her gratitude for being asked and heard.

For those of us fortunate enough to grow up with friends and family that always talk about politics and issues that matter to us, this is almost inconceivable, but for many people, talking about politics is not part of their regular conversations. And, with the increasingly toxic political discourse, who can blame them?

Listening is the first step towards participation. It’s not about giving people information and hoping they act on it; it’s about building trust and giving people the space to see themselves as participants in democracy. Once we listen and build trust, we can provide information about where, when and ways to vote. We can answer questions about election integrity and respond to mis- or disinformation. Turnout is the final step in a much longer journey, and right now, too many people are never invited to take that first step.

How do we know this works? Because our community partners tell us it does. In an independent evaluation, 93 percent of the community organizations that used our materials say they will use those materials again. This approach isn’t abstract. We’ve seen it work in libraries, campuses, food banks, citizenship ceremonies and community centres across B.C. and Canada, and the potential is enormous.

For a minute here, imagine every library in B.C. with a colourful display showing where, when and ways to vote, and a board where people share what matters to them. Imagine at orientation every college and university student is registered to vote and asked to share their hopes for their future. Imagine every new Canadian at their citizenship ceremony welcomed with a voter card and asked: “Why do you vote?” Imagine every neighbourhood house, food bank and settlement agency hosting a vote pop-up where people can practise voting and connect it to the issues they care about.

These aren’t dreams; these are programs that we’ve already delivered, and they work. But they don’t happen on their own. They happen because of strong partnerships and real investments.

In B.C., we’ve been doing this work for the past ten years. With support from Elections B.C., we’ve run over 390 vote pop-ups across the province; reached more than 8,000 residents, many of them first-time or infrequent voters; partnered with over 130 local organizations, most new to democratic engagement; and distributed over 300 toolkits. We’ve created space for people to reflect and connect, to build community, and we’ve shown that democratic competence can be built not in lecture halls but in our communities through conversations, curiosity and compassion.

Turnout is the visible part of democracy, but what drives it is everything that we do or don’t do between elections. That is why we’re not just here to name the problem; we’re here to offer solutions. Informed by years of on-the-ground work and lessons from partners across B.C. and Canada, we’re offering three practical proposals, each one designed to expand participation, strengthen trust and build the infrastructure that a healthy democracy needs.

First, we should deepen Elections B.C.’s role in engagement by creating a year-round community engagement program within Elections B.C., including staff and training to support deeper local outreach and stronger connections to underrepresented communities. We also should ensure that on-campus voting happens at all post-secondary institutions across the province, and we can establish that in a relationship with Elections B.C. and our post-secondary institutions. Finally, we need to collect and publish disaggregated data on turnout to better target engagement efforts and close the participation gap. So that’s Elections B.C.’s role.

[11:05 a.m.]

We also have a second recommendation. We must mobilize post-secondary institutions as civic gateways. Our civic education often focuses on K-12 education to the exclusion of post-secondary education. K-12 outreach is critical, and our friends at CIVIX and CityHive do amazing work in this space. But it is when students are attending college and universities that most voters vote for the first time. Our post-secondary institutions have an opportunity to step up and provide a critical lift to engaging students during elections.

You can support this effort by requiring every college and university to develop a voter engagement plan that designates a staff lead on every campus, integrates voter registration and civic reflection into orientation, and funds student-led non-partisan engagement initiatives.

Finally, we want to express our strong support for the B.C. fund for democratic resilience and renewal proposed by SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue. This is not just a policy proposal; it’s a statement of leadership. It’s a chance for B.C. to show Canada and the world what’s possible when civic participation is treated as essential infrastructure.

We don’t expect hospitals to run without funding or schools to function without trained teachers, so why should we expect democracy to thrive without investment? The B.C. fund would provide the resources needed to scale community-led engagement, the kind of work we see every day. These are the people and places already doing the work of democracy in our libraries, our settlement agencies, our YW and YMCAs, and our community centres. What they need isn’t convincing; it’s support.

Critically, it includes support for deliberative processes that allow people to come together across difference to shape solutions collectively. As SFU rightly notes: “Deliberative democracy doesn’t replace voting; it strengthens the culture that sustains it.” We urge the committee to create a B.C. fund for democratic resilience and renewal and ensure it supports the full ecosystem of democratic participation across this province.

In conclusion, I want to thank you for the opportunity to present today and for all the work you’re doing listening to people across the province. I know you’ve been on a bit of a marathon, and I appreciate all that you’ve done over these last few weeks.

But no matter what decisions British Columbians make about electoral reform, you have a rare opportunity to make changes and investments that will ensure B.C.’s democracy remains strong, resilient and a model for the rest of Canada, because the strength of our democracy isn’t measured by who wins; it’s measured by who participates.

A healthy democracy is how we build our future together. It’s how we solve problems, work through disagreements and continue to live with one another, even when we don’t always agree. We would welcome the opportunity to work with you to help turn this vision into policy that creates a legacy for your committee and for the province.

Thank you, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, John, for your presentation. I appreciate the enthusiasm in voter engagement. That’s a great thing to see.

My question is about engagement. While your organization is non-partisan, what role do you see in engaging political parties in the voter engagement process in a cooperative fashion or collaborative way? Certainly, political parties try to do this already. What opportunities do you see there as part of your three-point plan?

John Beebe: Political parties clearly have a critical role to play in engaging communities and in the health of our democracy. But of course, as all of you know, as new members, political parties are focused on getting out their supporters to the polls. As a consequence, they often do not focus on young people, first-time voters, infrequent voters, people who might not have a strong political identity yet and whose allegiance may not be as clear.

So if we’re going to build a strong, vibrant democracy that includes everyone, we need to have these non-partisan efforts. We certainly want to encourage and make it possible for our political parties to continue to play their role. But I think we need to build on top of that and not rely solely on our political parties to drive voter turnout.

Sheldon Clare: Just a quick comment to follow up. I think that’s a pretty good assessment. Parties do focus on identifying voters and then trying to get their supporters out to vote. That’s the critical aspect of it.

[11:10 a.m.]

General efforts to get people to vote certainly are more challenging, especially when you see how many people have chosen not to participate in the elections over time. And it varies. We’ve seen it at highs, went down to a low during the COVID times, and it seems to be rebounding somewhat. So thanks for your efforts in making that happen, along with others who support voter engagement.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I have a couple of questions, too, John.

One of our concerns that keeps coming up more and more is the disinformation, particularly through social media channels and people being in their little echo chambers and just however they’re accessing information. With algorithms and everything, it’s just basically reinforcing what they believe, whether it’s true or not.

Looking at other jurisdictions, like in the U.K., for example, and today’s announcement that they’re going to drop the voting age to 16. They’re going to register students as young as 14 to get them into the game so they’re ready and able to vote at 16 if there’s an election. In the U.K., they have significant tools in place where online misinformation and disinformation is suppressed.

One of our previous speakers was talking about eliminating anonymity on our social media platforms so that you have to identify yourself when some of this stuff is coming out there.

How do you see us going forward in this process? One of the complaints that we’ve heard with PR, proportional representation, is that their voices aren’t being heard; they’re not being reinforced. How do you see us getting through some of these negativity aspects of our social media? Is it something that the federal government should be seriously looking at and trying to push back? Where do you see us going in the next few years?

John Beebe: I think that’s a critical issue. Certainly, it is one that the federal government is looking at, ensuring the health of our online discourse, because so much of our political discourse is moved online.

But I think the other element, and I think you nailed it when you talk about being in our bubbles, is that we have to create more opportunities to get outside of our bubbles. Of course, what we’ve seen is the most powerful place to do that is outside of our online discourse. It’s in our communities. It’s in our community organizations where we can have those face-to-face conversations that are anything but impersonal. They’re very personal. It’s where we can find common ground. It’s where we can find fun. It’s where we can make this not a toxic environment but a place that actually builds community.

I think that what we’re looking to do here is to set up ways to invest in our communities that build that resilience. It’s not just how we stop it but how we actually build in our communities the capacity to respond in a healthy way. I think that’s where we see, in a sense, that a good offence is the best defence against these kinds of things, because we can build all the rules we want, and we should build better rules, but people are going to find ways to get around those rules.

If we have people in our communities who have trust relationships…. I have a friend who may not agree with me on everything, but I trust him. I can talk to him about this stuff. I can have those more informal interactions that are at the core. That’s what I think is going to build our resilience to these kinds of attacks and threats.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I just wondered if you’ve given some thought, order of magnitude…. You talked about establishing a B.C. fund, deepening the role of Elections B.C., supporting post-secondary. I mean, are we talking $100 million or $50,000?

John Beebe: I think the good news is that, unlike maybe the investments we need to make in our health care infrastructure or some of our road infrastructure, these can be impactful with relatively modest impact. I know that SFU has suggested a figure of around $5 million for the fund, and I think that that would go a long way to providing our community organizations the resources they need to engage their communities.

I think there are changes…. Like with Elections B.C., they can implement what’s called a community relations officer program. This is something that Elections Canada already has. Elections Ontario has a similar program with relatively modest investments to engage their communities on an ongoing basis.

[11:15 a.m.]

In terms of our universities, our post-secondary institutions I really think are sort of the low-hanging fruit out there in this space. With the simple investment of identifying a key staff person on campus to lead on these issues, to incorporate some of this programming into orientation as a standard activity would go a long way to encouraging voter engagement. We’ve done a lot of work on campuses. Students are eager to vote, but they need to be supported in getting over that first hurdle.

Doing anything for the first time is a little bit daunting. It’s a little bit scary. I think there’s an opportunity there for our institutions to do that and build citizenship, to return to their roots of creating citizens who can be effective members of their community, and I think they have a role to play in that, with a very modest investment.

Rob Botterell: Great, thank you.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Not seeing any more hands up, thanks very much for your presentation and your conversation today, John. Have a fantastic day.

John Beebe: I appreciate the opportunity. Take care.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Next up we have Alex Hemingway, from the B.C. Society for Policy Solutions.

Good morning, Alex. Just a reminder that you have 15 minutes for your presentation and ten minutes for follow-up questions. Whenever you’re ready.

B.C. Society for Policy Solutions

Alex Hemingway: Thanks for hearing from me today. My name is Alex Hemingway. I’m a senior economist representing the B.C. Society for Policy Solutions, which is an independent non-profit research institute. I really appreciate the opportunity.

I’m going to focus my remarks on a single, concrete recommendation for strengthening democratic engagement in B.C. We’d like to recommend that the province make greater use of what are known in the research literature as deliberative mini-publics. As one recent research review described it, a mini-public creates a space within which a diverse body of citizens, who would not otherwise interact, is selected randomly to reason together about an issue of public concern.

These are democratic tools that revive a core practice of ancient Athenian democracy, which is again, selecting citizens by lottery to form bodies that deliberate on important policy issues. It also happens to be a practice that British Columbia was instrumental in adapting for modern use, most notably in the form of the 2004 Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

As you may know, the B.C. citizens assembly brought together 160 randomly selected British Columbians from every riding, who spent weekends over nearly a year learning, consulting with the wider public, and deliberating on whether and how B.C. should adopt a new electoral system.

Their final recommendation of adopting the BCSTV system earned the support of 58 percent of voters in a referendum and won the majority, in 77 of 79 electoral districts, in that referendum — which was a very significant achievement in consensus-building on a very complex and contentious issue. Ultimately, of course, the recommendation wasn’t implemented, because the government of the day had set a 60 percent supermajority threshold for the referendum.

My point here today is that the B.C. citizens assembly model set a global standard, and it has since been studied, replicated and adapted for use on a variety of issues around the world, as well as within Canada and here in British Columbia at the local level. Besides citizens assemblies, other very similar forms of deliberative mini-publics include citizens juries and deliberative polls, which can vary in the length of time, the number of participants and the types of tasks that are assigned to these citizen bodies.

There are many benefits to the model of deliberative mini-publics, which is found in the extensive research literature on these democratic practices. I’m going to touch on three of the key ones here today.

First, an important strength of mini-publics is that the use of a lottery to select members ensures that they’re made up of a much more representative cross-section of the public than in most consultation processes. In a typical public consultation process, participants self-select into the process.

[11:20 a.m.]

For example, research shows that in local public hearing processes on proposed new housing projects, the voices of renters and young people are underrepresented, while a relatively small number of vocal opponents of new housing often dominate the proceedings, providing policy-makers with a skewed picture of the public’s views, which are often at odds with more representative opinion polls.

In fact, this is a contributing factor to policies in our cities that continues to severely restrict housing creation. So a mini-public is a powerful tool to ensure that public engagement processes hear from a more representative sampling of ordinary citizens, reflecting a wide range of views and perspectives.

A second key benefit of the mini-public model is that citizens are given the time and resources to engage in good-faith deliberation on important issues. Participants are asked not just to advocate for their pre-existing views but to listen to one another and to evidence from experts, to weigh trade-offs and to find common ground. Hearing directly from people with different perspectives and experiences builds mutual understanding and tends to lead to more public-spirited recommendations in these bodies.

As we know, in an analysis that I co-authored with Professor Simon Pek at the University of Victoria, research shows that mini-publics often help engender high-quality deliberation, even when participants tackle complex topics. Researchers have highlighted how participants in mini-publics make high-quality decisions based less on their own personal priorities and more on those of the broader community. We’ve seen that again and again where this has been carried out around the world.

The final benefit I’ll touch on today is that mini-publics tend to earn a higher degree of public trust because they are bodies made up of ordinary citizens rather than members of the political class. For example, research on the 2005 electoral reform referendum in B.C. found that voters who knew about the citizens assembly and how it worked were far more likely to vote in favour of the B.C. STV model at that time.

Another example comes from Oregon in the U.S., where citizen-initiated referenda are common. But before the votes are held, a citizen’s jury deliberates and develops a recommendation on each proposal, and the recommendations and the reasoning behind them are distributed to households. When asked by researchers, voters in Oregon judge the citizens’ juries to be more credible than other institutions, including the state legislature.

Mini-publics of varying forms have been conducted hundreds of times now around the world, studied intensively, revealing some of those benefits I just discussed. Other prominent international examples include the Irish citizens assembly that helped resolve contentious social issues in that country and the Citizens Convention for Climate held in France.

Closer to home, Burnaby recently held a community assembly on this model to help shape its official community planning process. Victoria and Saanich, as I’m sure you know, held a citizens assembly to consider whether the municipalities should amalgamate. So at a practical level, this also means that there’s already significant expertise ready to be tapped in B.C. and Canada to run effective mini-publics.

One area where a mini-public might prove particularly useful in B.C. would be on questions of electoral reform and democratic engagement, as well as public financing of political parties. I think there’s a strong case to take these types of quasi-constitutional policy questions out of the hands of politicians — and I say that respectfully — who arguably shouldn’t set the rules of the game in which they compete, much as their public service should be respected.

Putting these types of issues like electoral reform to a citizens assembly could help earn broader public trust in our democracy. Another potential use would be a citizens assembly on fair tax reform, which could allow a representative group of everyday British Columbians to deliberate on how we can best pay for our shared societal priorities — those important social investments — with access to experts who can help inform those deliberations.

[11:25 a.m.]

As a final example, the B.C. government could enable, encourage or even require cities to use mini-publics rather than solely using unrepresentative public hearings in their public engagement processes on housing policy, which could help develop broadly supported plans for new housing, which is so urgently needed in our province.

In sum, we’d like to recommend that B.C. actively incorporate the mini-public model in its toolkit for democratic engagement and policy-making. Whenever public input is being gathered for policy-making, a mini-public should be seriously considered as an alternative to typical engagement processes that rely on self-selection, which, as I’ve emphasized, tends to provide a skewed and static picture of the public’s views.

While they’re not a panacea, mini-publics are a proven and practical model of democratic practice, particularly at a time when political and social trust feels increasingly precarious and polarization is a growing concern. Bodies like mini-publics have real potential to strengthen meaningful democratic engagement by convening a representative cross-section of the public, facilitating those good faith and high-quality deliberations among citizens and earning the trust of the broader public.

I want to thank you for your time and consideration.

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

Sheldon Clare: Thank you for your presentation. I’m fascinated with this idea of mini-publics and possible policy suggestions, but I’m not sure I understand how the members of mini-publics are selected. You pointed out at the end there about self-selection. People want to get involved, so they step up and say: “Hi. Pick me for your committee for this particular matter.” How do you go about this process of selecting mini-publics? Are there elections? What do you do?

Alex Hemingway: The general principle is random selection, so selection by lottery. Practically, how that plays out…. It can vary. Practices vary in different cases. Generally what it looks like…. Take the B.C. Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, for example. They sent out invitations to a wide selection of citizens in every riding in the province with a random selection element. Of course, it’s a voluntary participation process, so people do have to select in in that sense and say: “Yeah, I’d be willing to participate.”

You then take the pool of people who are willing to participate and randomly select among those. You can stratify that selection in different ways. For example, in the B.C. Citizens’ Assembly, there was assurance that there were two representatives from each riding and that one was a man and one was a woman. But you could stratify according to other demographics as well, if desired, and that’s been done in some cases.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Thank you for that. That’s helpful. But what sort of screening process would be there? Like, for example, would you screen for people who might be difficult or overbearing or tend to dominate discussions?

I know, having been in education for decades, the tenor of a classroom can change dramatically with the introduction of an individual or a small number of individuals whose interactions with others can dominate the effectiveness of the class. I’m just wondering what other criteria could be used.

Alex Hemingway: Yeah. That’s an interesting question. I haven’t seen much discussion of that type of issue arising with extremely disruptive people in the literature. I think part of that’s going to come down to good facilitation. These are strongly facilitated processes, structured processes, and you do need experts in mini-publics to lead them.

I will say…. Look, I don’t have all the answers. It may well be that there are screens of the types that you’re talking about. I haven’t come across that. This is one area of research for me. We do have lots of great experts in B.C. who are sort of more full-time on the mini-public issue, which is not the case for me — my co-author, Simon Pek, who I mentioned, but also the folks who were involved in running that B.C. Citizens’ Assembly.

I think it’s an interesting question, but I would say, in terms of the success of these bodies and other areas, it hasn’t come up as a big problem.

[11:30 a.m.]

Rob Botterell: Just one quick question. You touched on it in your opening remarks. Once again, it may not be the focus of the presentation, but it’s something I’ve heard once or twice over the last couple of weeks. What are deliberative polls?

Alex Hemingway: Deliberative polls are an interesting variation on this. Typically, what their aim is….

First of all, generally, they were developed by a man named Fishkin, a professor who came up with this model. Typically, they happen over a weekend, and they’re smaller than a citizens assembly. You bring together a group of citizens to deliberate on a particular issue.

The polling element is that you poll their attitudes at the beginning of the weekend and at the end, after the deliberation process. The idea is that it helps give you a sense of what public opinion might look like if everyday people had the opportunity to really sit down and go back and forth about these issues, to access experts.

They’re looking at: what is the shift in opinion over that weekend? What is the process of learning together with other citizens doing to change people’s attitudes on a given issue? That can help inform policy-makers.

Rob Botterell: That’s helpful. I just didn’t know what it was. Thanks.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Not seeing any more questions, thanks very much, Alex, for your presentation. Have a great day.

We’ll recess for five minutes.

The committee recessed from 11:32 a.m. to 11:33 a.m.

[Ward Stamer in the chair.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): We’ll reconvene our meeting. I’d like to introduce Mark de Bruijn, from the North Island–Powell River Green Party of Canada.

You have five minutes, sir, for your presentation and five minutes for questions. Good morning and welcome.

Mark de Bruijn

Mark de Bruijn: Good morning. It’s a privilege to meet with you about my concerns over our current electoral system in B.C. Thanks very much for the invitation.

In the interests of full disclosure, I want to let the committee know that for many years, I’ve been a member of both the B.C. Greens and the Green Party of Canada. Provincially, I’ve door-knocked for the past several elections, and federally, I’ve been a director of our local riding association or EDA, as it is known, for 11 years, three times as the CEO. I ran as a Green candidate in the 2019 federal election. My remarks here are largely drawn from these experiences.

Why do I support electoral reform? I’m going to focus my comments on the need to bring proportional representation, often called pro rep, to B.C., though that is only one aspect of electoral reform — lowering the voting age being another important one.

[11:35 a.m.]

I expect that you will already have heard much of what I could say to you about the many benefits to B.C. politics if we left behind the antiquated first-past-the-post system and went to some form of pro rep. If time allows, I’d love to mention a few of these.

In my opinion, our current voting system is deeply flawed. In every one of the seven elections that I’ve been actively involved in, provincially and federally, strategic voting has played a very outsized role in dictating how people vote. Strategic voting is actually fear-based voting, where people decide their vote on trying to prevent someone or a party they don’t like from winning. It is extremely undemocratic. People do not feel free to vote for what they really like, want or value and instead, out of fear, try to minimize the power of those they don’t like.

As a Green, I’ve seen time and again how the popularity of the Green Party, both provincially and federally, in polls and on the doorstep or on the phone, greatly disappears at the ballot box. Many Green supporters and others have told me and many others who’ve worked and campaigned tirelessly during elections that they really admire what Greens stand for and want to vote Green, but they were afraid that if they did it, it would split the progressive vote and allow the Conservatives to win. So rather than vote with their hearts and minds for what they want, they voted out of fear, to strategically prevent an outcome they didn’t want.

I have to ask you, the committee: is this a healthy democracy? Many Green candidates have been told that they should withdraw to avoid splitting the vote and letting the Conservatives win. This would’ve prevented many people from voting for the party of their choice, diminishing our democracy. Worse, some Green candidates were even threatened if they didn’t pull out.

The negativity and threats and the dismal election results due to strategic voting, which, again, is fear-based voting, left many volunteers so disenchanted that they stopped volunteering, and some even cancelled their memberships. Especially federally, fear-based voting and the relentless pursuit of power under first-past-the-post at the expense of governing collaboratively out of a love for our country is gradually reducing us to a U.S.-style two-party system, and B.C. is heading in the same direction. This is extremely sad for democracy in Canada.

Personally, like many voters, I’m very close to giving up on politics altogether. It’s always the same battle for power, and some of the most important challenges we face as a country and, indeed, as a planet are never truly dealt with and often just ignored. The battle for power trumps everything.

Did you know that of the 38 OECD countries, only three — Canada, U.S.A. and the U.K. — use no form of pro rep at any level of government? The vast majority of democracies around the world use a wide variety of pro rep systems, and there is one that would work best here in B.C. Indeed, some excellent models have been proposed by organizations like Fair Voting B.C.

Right now it’s not so important what that system is as it is to finally make the choice to bring pro rep to B.C. and then to Canada. We don’t need another referendum. I want to see the parties do what we elected them to do. Work together and make pro rep a reality in B.C. It’s time for our elections to be fair, where all our votes count.

I do have some comments here about advantages of a pro rep system for B.C., and I don’t know if I have time to mention some of these. I’ll leave that up to you. Would you like me to proceed? It’ll take about a minute.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): That’s fine. Go ahead.

Mark de Bruijn: Okay. Under a pro rep system, you can vote for what you believe in and know your vote will count towards shaping the next government. Parties are motivated to show voters that they can work together for the common good. Parties pay attention to every voter, no matter where they live. Virtually all British Columbians would be represented and play a part in the governance of our province, no more focus on safe seats and power blocks, and swing ridings would no longer dominate elections.

First-past-the-post systems promote fewer parties and give fewer voter choices. It denies many voters the right to vote for the party of their choice and wastes the vote of many others. Effective representation in government is our right.

[11:40 a.m.]

The academic evidence from research on countries with robust pro rep systems tells us that PR will improve B.C.’s democracies. These countries experience increased voter turnout; increased women voters and number of women in government; increased government accountability to voters; increased voter satisfaction with government, even if their party is not in power; increased political stability, reducing policy lurches from one government to another; lower levels of polarization; more durable and innovative policy and legislation closer to the median voter’s views; less partisan heckling and disruption and more cooperation and collaboration; reduced pandering by politicians to voters with quick-fix solutions; increased political sophistication of the electorate; and limiting control by elites over decision-making.

In other words, pro rep systems outperform winner-take-all systems in almost every respect. In the words of one famous researcher whose name I don’t have here, it results in a kinder, gentler society, and in my opinion, we are sorely in need of that.

Thank you very much for your attention and for listening to my thoughts. I hope they make an impression and help craft our future towards electoral reform.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Mark.

Sheldon Clare: Mark, thank you for your presentation. I appreciate the candid nature of your comments. What I want to ask is…. I mean, despite the differences between the Green Party and the Conservative Party and the NDP, for that matter, and others, I know that my good friend MLA Botterell and I occasionally vote against each other and quite frequently vote with each other on a number of issues.

I wondered about your comments about voting to keep out the Conservatives. Given that, and given that you feel that such a system would increase the quantity of people who would not vote for Conservatives, given that I’m a Conservative, why on earth would I, as a Conservative, support such a system when I hear from your lips that the design of this would limit the ability of others like myself to have seats in the House and increase people who would possibly vote against what my constituents believe and what my party and platform stands for?

Mark de Bruijn: Well, that’s a great question and, I guess I would say, kind of a typical one from the mindset or the paradigm that we’ve all been so used to. Rather than thinking about this in terms of, “Oh my God, my party will lose votes. My party might even not get the same number of seats,” we’re being asked to shift to looking at our elections as how we can best represent all the people in our province, not just those who want to vote Conservative but all of them, and give them a fair shot at having representation in the government.

It may be that some of the big parties, like yours, would have a few less seats, and some of the small ones would have more. That’s certainly my hope. But the point is that we would all be represented, and the government would be forced to work together rather than polarizing and becoming so darn partisan and confronting each other and fighting. You, if you’re in government or if I’m in government, would have to work together to craft legislation everyone could live with — everyone, Conservatives, NDPs, Greens, doesn’t matter who — that works best for the whole province, not just for the Conservative element.

It would benefit you guys. Right now, the Conservatives have a huge representation in the interior of B.C. but not on the coast, and you don’t have power in the government. You are the opposition. That’s a direct result of first-past-the-post. If we had pro rep, then you would have representation, so would the NDP, and you’d be working together with the Greens and maybe with some other parties. There might be other parties that emerge under a pro rep system.

I have to add that one of the fears that often is mentioned, “Oh my god, that means we’re going to end up with a whole slate of minor parties, fringe parties, and all that stuff….” Well, there are ways to avoid that. I’m certainly not a fan of that kind of thing. It happens in a few countries. Italy is a terrible example of that, and it’s a disaster.

[11:45 a.m.]

But what other countries do is they say you cannot be a party unless you have, for instance, a certain percentage of the popular vote. You don’t reach that threshold, let’s say 2 percent, you don’t get to be a party. You have to have reasonable representation, reasonable support in the jurisdiction — in this case in B.C. — and then you can be a party.

It requires a change in our thinking.

Sheldon Clare: Okay, well, thank you for that. If I could just follow up, I would think my comments also apply to the NDP, for example, in that circumstance. I want to let you know that we are actually, across parties, collaborating on a wide range of issues, and the theatre that you see that is the half hour of question period, while it’s designed to draw out issues and promote particular situations, is not the whole picture of what goes on in government.

In fact, I think just the existence of this committee, showing its multi-party presence in listening to these issues, is a demonstration that even in the first-past-the-post system, there is a significant amount of collaboration between parties. There is a sense of solving things and getting things done. We do have meetings with government, opposition and others to try to solve problems on behalf of our constituents.

So I think some of the points you’re raising are a little bit overstated, but I do recognize the concern, and I thank you for your comments.

Mark de Bruijn: Well, if I could just respond very briefly, the main reason why this committee exists, in my view, is because there is a minority government right now. The Greens held the government’s feet to the fire and said: “We will support you guys, but one of the requirements on our part is that you form this committee and that we again enter into an exploration of reforming our electoral system. That’s the result of a minority government.

Sheldon Clare: No, it’s a majority government. This is a majority government; it’s a narrow majority.

Mark de Bruijn: Well, okay, it’s a razor-thin one — yeah, I stand corrected — but it’s so thin that they need agreement to make things happen. The Greens did enter into an agreement with them, right?

There are a lot of major things happening, though, that many people in this province, people that I know, are extremely unhappy about, like this railroading — if I could use that word — of major projects and going back to building more gas transmission lines, even considering an oil pipeline through the northern part of B.C.

Now the tanker moratorium is up for question. So far, the government here has held firm on it, but it’s looking like it’s wavering. Greens and other progressives are not at all in favour of that, yet we have no say in these things. They are arbitrarily being decided, in the rush to try to increase our economic independence and less dependence on Trump and the U.S. and all of that stuff. That is fear.

As a result, the environment — and, god, may I mention, climate change — is all being, basically, thrown under the bus. I’m not saying that we’ve got to stop everything, but I am saying we need far more deliberation and cooperation on finding ways through this that accommodate all these concerns. Right now, as a Green, I feel that it ain’t happening. We don’t have any say about these new pipelines and the LNG plants, all the rest of that stuff.

So I appreciate your comments, and I hope we can find some points of agreement.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yeah, thanks, Mark. I have a question, and then I have MLA Rob Botterell to come up.

I don’t disagree with what your assumption is, but the reality is: even if you had 15 percent of the room or even 20 percent of the room and if you agree that we’re going to continue to have a democracy and that a democracy is compromising — everything you say can be true, everything you say can be a very valid point — but if 70 or 80 percent of the room disagrees with you, that’s going to be unfortunate for you.

That’s just the way it works in a democracy. There are times when I’ve been right and when the majority of the room wants to go a different direction. That’s just the way it goes.

I have a couple of questions, quickly. One, when you talk about proportional representation and having a better opportunity for engagement, what about some of the jurisdictions like Austria that have proportional representation? For the very first time, an extremist, far-right…. I’m not suggesting you’re trying to correlate the Conservatives as far-right, because I think that’s totally unfair. What are the opportunities, if we have more extremism in our system, if we allow more political parties to enter in, depending on the thresholds we have?

[11:50 a.m.]

The second part I’d like to add and ask for your point…. You know, in highly densified areas, I would suggest, we already have pretty much what you suggest — inasmuch as in Surrey, we have six seats for the Conservatives and four seats for the NDP. The only thing missing is possibly one or 1½ seats from the Green Party.

In the highly densified parts of our province, yes, that would probably work, but in some of the regional areas, how would those MLAs, proportionally, be able to go over those vast areas, short of having a helicopter?

I’d like your take on: does PR allow more extremism into our system? We’re seeing that in other areas, where there have been arguments that it’s working just fine, when we can argue that it’s not.

Mark de Bruijn: Well, that is a risk. I have to acknowledge that.

We’re going to see the rise of extremism whether we have PR or not, in the way the world is going. We have first-past-the-post countries like the U.S. and the U.K., where there is a lot of extremism as well, exerting a lot of pressure and a lot of disruption. It’s not an easy fix, but there is less of a chance of extremism really getting a foothold if more people feel that their government represents them.

As far as 70 percent, you know, directing the decisions over the 30 percent that may not agree, there is far better opportunity for collaboration and reaching some kind of decision, which may not be consensus but is more majority-based, of the people as a whole than there is under first-past-the-post.

So if that 70 percent decide, “We’re going to go this way,” and the 30 percent disagree, that 70 percent would be made up of more than just one party and more than just one set of values. There would be at least several other parties included in reaching that consensus, that 70 percent level of agreement.

I think extremist parties start off as fringes, very small. As I said, there are ways to minimize that. I don’t know what has happened in Austria, but much of Europe is experiencing this rise of extremism. It’s hard for us to compare ourselves, because we don’t deal with the vast immigration issues they’re dealing with, with the threats of Russia right next on their doorstep, the dependency on Russian gas.

All those things are huge issues in Europe that we don’t know anything about here experientially, so we can’t really compare ourselves. I can say that if things continue in Canada the way they are, we are going to see — we already are — the rise of extremism here as well. It will take its own form. First-past-the-post does not help diminish that.

Pro representation gives much more power to people and much more of a feeling that “I matter; my voice in government makes a difference.” That tends to diminish the drive towards extremism and of stepping apart from the mainstream and fighting it. We don’t have to do that so intensely if we all feel that we have a role to play.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you for your opinion.

Rob Botterell: This discussion covered the issue I was going to raise. Thank you.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Not seeing any more questions, thank you very much for your time, Mark. We truly appreciate it.

Mark de Bruijn: Thanks for letting me be so candid in speaking frankly with you folks. I really do appreciate it.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): We certainly appreciate it very much. Thank you.

We will now be recessing for lunch until 1:05.

The committee recessed from 11:53 a.m. to 1:06 p.m.

[Ward Stamer in the chair.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. I’d like to reconvene the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform. Next up, we have Mario Canseco, from Research Co.

Just as a reminder, you have 15 minutes for your presentation and then ten minutes for questions. Please start when you’re ready.

Research Co.

Mario Canseco: Thank you for the opportunity to address this committee. My name is Mario Canseco. I’m the president of Research Co., a public opinion firm based in Vancouver that was established in 2018.

My work as an electoral forecaster in four different companies has resulted in 158 correct predictions of democratic processes in Canada and the United States, including six Canadian federal elections, 26 Canadian provincial elections and four United States presidential elections.

In the past 12 months, British Columbia experienced two extremely close democratic processes. In the provincial ballot of 2024, the two main contending parties were separated by less than 2 percent of all cast ballots — 44.9 percent for the B.C. New Democratic Party and 43.3 percent for the Conservative Party of B.C.

In the 2025 Canadian federal election, the difference between the top two parties was less than 1 percent — 41.8 percent for the Liberal Party of Canada, and 41.0 percent for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Research Co. conducted a survey from July 13 to July 15, 2025 among 814 adults in British Columbia. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region in British Columbia. The margin of error, which measures sample variability, is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

When thinking about what to ask British Columbians about electoral reform, the first-past-the-post system immediately comes to mind. We could assume that large proportions of residents would disparage this method, especially if they saw their party or candidate defeated. This is simply not the case. Almost two-thirds of British Columbians, 65 percent, told us they are satisfied with first-past-the-post while 21 percent are dissatisfied, and 13 percent are not sure.

Our survey also tested three possible systems for elections to the Legislative Assembly, and not one was backed by a majority of British Columbians. Support is highest, at 47 percent, for the adoption of party-list proportional representation, where parties would make lists of candidates to be elected and seats get allocated to each party in accordance with the number of total votes the party receives.

The appetite is slightly lower, at 43 percent, for electing all members of the Legislative Assembly through single transferable vote, where a vote is initially allocated to a voter’s most preferred candidate and, as the count proceeds and candidates are either elected or eliminated, it is transferred to other candidates in accordance to the voter’s stated preferences.

Mixed-member proportional representation, or MMP — a hybrid method that would use party-list proportional representation for a portion of the Legislature and first-past-the-post for another portion — is backed by 40 percent of British Columbians.

[1:10 p.m.]

There is one consistent finding across all three systems. British Columbians aged 55 and over, traditionally the group with the highest participation rates in provincial elections, are not open to change. Only 36 percent of the province’s oldest adults endorsed party-list proportional representation, while fewer would welcome switching to single transferable vote, at 32 percent, or to mixed-member proportional representation, at 28 percent.

Our survey also looked at the perceptions of British Columbians on other aspects of the democratic process. A sticking point for the province’s residents is the absence of candidates in planned debates and public meetings. More than three in four British Columbians, 77 percent, think it should be mandatory for candidates to attend at least one public debate in their riding with the candidates from other parties.

Majorities of British Columbians also like three other ideas: making voting mandatory in all provincial elections, at 61 percent; holding provincial elections in May, like the province did five times in the century before the 2020 pandemic, at 56 percent; and declaring provincial election day a public holiday, at 54 percent.

A question designed to work as a characteristic proposition yielded fascinating results. The notion of punishing, through fines, eligible adults who choose not to vote is endorsed by only 10 percent of British Columbians. Almost two in five, 38 percent, would prefer a different route, where eligible adults who do cast ballots in provincial elections are rewarded through tax incentives. Still, the largest proportion of British Columbians, 45 percent, think both ideas are misguided.

Finally, we studied whether British Columbians are willing to extend the franchise to groups that actively participate in the province’s life but have not attained voting rights. More than half of British Columbians, 57 percent, are in favour of allowing permanent residents — defined as individuals aged 18 and over, who have been granted the right to live and work in Canada permanently but are not yet Canadian citizens — to cast ballots in provincial elections.

Fewer than two in five British Columbians would add three other groups to the voter rolls: British Columbians who would qualify as Canadian citizens under current regulations when they turn 18, but who are 16 and 17 years old, 37 percent; foreign students or individuals aged 18 and over who are not Canadian citizens but are pursuing post-secondary studies in a Canadian institution, at 27 percent; and temporary workers or individuals aged 18 and over who are not Canadian citizens, but work in Canada for a limited period, at 26 percent.

In conclusion, the survey outlines a public that is not particularly enraged by the first-past-the-post system, where the desire for change is very low among those aged 55 and over, the group that is the most interested in politics.

We also see majority support for the return of spring elections and mandatory voting. At this stage, more than half of British Columbians think permanent residents, who have chosen to make Canada their home and have been cleared to relocate by the federal government, should be able to cast ballots in provincial elections.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Mario, for your presentation.

Sheldon Clare: Mario, thanks for this. Have you provided the committee with your survey results and a written summary of your results? I must have missed it.

Mario Canseco: Yes, I did file it, and we will send the data files that go with it as well.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Perfect. That’s what I was hoping for.

My question was: in terms of the construct validity of your questions, how were the questions determined? How many questions did you have? How was the surveying conducted?

Mario Canseco: We conducted the research online with a representative sample of British Columbians. It’s the same methodology approach that we use for all of our provincewide work: usually around 800 British Columbians, making sure that all areas are represented — northern B.C., southern B.C., Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island and Metro Vancouver.

I believe we had six different questions. Some of them were quick questions where you agree or disagree with a statement. Others were stand-alone questions, but it’s the same way in which we do all of our surveys in B.C.

Sheldon Clare: Did you use any weighting for any of your responses?

Mario Canseco: Yes, we always weight by age, gender and region. It’s not a significantly heavy weight. We try to be very careful with the sample selection so that the weight doesn’t throw everything out of whack.

Sheldon Clare: Very good. Thank you very much. Those are my questions.

[1:15 p.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I appreciate it. Thank you for sending along the results, the background methodology and so on, so that we can sort of dig into it more and understand it more.

I had a question which was not so much related to first-past-the-post but more related to the types of items we’re hearing about. We’ve had a number of presenters say that their concern with first-past-the-post, in the last couple of elections anyway, is that it led to strategic voting, which they object to or don’t feel is fair. There are other examples, too.

I wonder: in your choice of survey questions, or in other surveys that you’re aware of, have those types of questions been posed — as opposed to yes or no for first-past-the-post?

Mario Canseco: Well, we wanted to test three different systems. We had proportional representation through party list, we had the mixed-member parliament, and we also had single transferable vote. None of the three gathered more than 47 percent support. There’s a lot of skepticism, especially among those aged 55 and over.

The issue with strategic voting…. It’s a question that I usually incorporate in our exit polls. You do see somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of people who vote strategically because they’re worried about a specific candidate winning and ultimately enabling a party to form the government.

I’d say my most important experience in this matter would be the 2015 federal election. We did have a concerted effort from groups, particularly Dogwood Initiative and Leadnow, to actually knock on doors and ask people to endorse a candidate who had the better chance at defeating the federal Conservative.

It seemed to be something that was going to work out well, but in the end, as the campaign progressed and the majority that the Liberal Party was going to get became more massive, it ultimately was rendered useless. It’s difficult to actually figure out whether that actual movement of asking people to vote for one party instead of another actually moved things.

So it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing with strategic voting. You could look at the results of the election and assume that everything flowed because one specific party was asking for the voters to switch, but it’s been very difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, if we were to use the phrase.

Rob Botterell: I just mention it because I know in my riding, Saanich North and the Islands, in the last provincial election and in the federal election, there were innumerable doors we knocked on where the homeowner, the resident of the house, would say: “I really like what you’re doing in the Green Party, but I’m afraid I’m going to have vote strategic. I really don’t want to, but I don’t want the NDP in” or “I don’t want the Conservatives in.”

It just struck me that we’re sort of at a point — which is fair — of getting polling results on first-past-the-post versus other options. But I’d really be…. I’m not an expert, but a poll that actually looked at the underlying attitude towards the existing system, rather than focusing on are you in favour of a particular change, would in some ways be helpful additional information.

[1:20 p.m.]

This is great work — that sort of what’s behind the choices people are making. Anyway, thank you for your answer.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Mario, I’ve got a couple of questions. One of the questions revolves around lowering the voting age. Have you done any specific polling on that?

Mario Canseco: We did on this occasion. We asked whether people aged 16 or 17 should be allowed to vote if they would be eligible to vote once they turned 18. The level of support was not high.

We had more people who supported the notion of allowing permanent residents to vote. I am aware of discussions happening in the United Kingdom related to this particular point. It was a promise that the Labour Party made before their election a few months ago. I think it’s the third time that I asked specifically about underage voting or allowing people aged 16 or 17 to vote in B.C. elections, and we’ve never had a majority supporting this notion.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay, thank you.

To further that, we’ve also heard — and I think we’re all pretty concerned — about the challenges in communication, the disinformation, the guardrails on our social media platforms. Looking at what they’ve done in the U.K. when they announced today about the lowering of the vote, one of the points that they talked about was guarding against the effects of online misinformation and disinformation. The implementation of the Online Safety Act is ongoing in collaboration with Ofcom. Obviously, in Europe, they have a lot more stringent guardrails when it comes to social media and disinformation.

I’d like your comments on that, and I’d also like to ask a question. How are you finding the affecting of the polling…?

You’re saying that your numbers are still pretty well bang-on, but with the fact that less and less people have land lines, there seems to be less willingness for people to give you a straight answer, even if it’s anonymous. How do you see that leading in, when people are using polling data to help reinforce their election choices before they vote? Is that happening at a greater level than we’ve seen in the past? What are the implications, going forward, on that?

Mario Canseco: I think it’s a very valid point. It becomes more complicated to achieve a representative sample because of declining response rates. Conducting a survey online — on a province, on a country, on a city even — has become a little bit easier because of how many people have online tools and have joined online panels. Doing something at the riding level, for instance, is very complicated at this stage, because we don’t have the capacity, even using all the online panels in existence.

I think there’s a situation that might be brewing, because of the way in which social media tends to represent specific polling findings that favour one candidate or one party over the other, and just sends them to the group, which is going to repeat them ad nauseum. We had a similar situation in the federal election, with challenges about the way in which polls were conducted, from the same people who, six months earlier, were very happy, because most pollsters had the Conservatives winning the election by a handy margin.

It’s part of the complexities of the communication that we need to deal with. Ultimately, I think this really starts on the social media user being able to look beyond wanting something to happen and understanding how research is conducted.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay, great. Thanks for that.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Mario, for your presentation. Lots of numbers everywhere, which I so much appreciate. I may have missed this. because I was furiously writing. How was this poll actually conducted online? Could you walk us through how people accessed it and how you determined response rate?

Mario Canseco: Of course. We have four different online panels that we use. An online panel is a collection of people who choose to take surveys. They’re usually receiving somewhere between four and six surveys a month. It could be something political. It could be something related to which detergent you use or which car you drive. This is the way in which we have been conducting our polls since 2018.

You send the survey to a representative sample of the panel, making sure that it’s going to abide by the targets that the census gives us, making sure — if you’re having, in this case, 814 British Columbians — that roughly half of them are male, half of them are female, that all the regions are represented and that all the age groups are there. It doesn’t make any sense to speak to 814 people if all of them are from the same gender or region.

[1:25 p.m.]

It’s the same way in which a survey would be stratified and designed back in the days of telephone polling, but now it’s a lot easier to do it this way because of online tools. It also allows us to have a little bit of a larger conversation and to have a larger preamble that people can understand, especially when you’re explaining how the systems operate, which would be very difficult to do on the phone.

Amna Shah: Great. Just as a follow-up…. I’m just looking at your written submission. Would it be possible to provide what the questions looked like to the committee?

Mario Canseco: Of course. Yes. I’ll also send the data tables. The website made it very clear that I can only send one PDF, but I will definitely provide that.

Amna Shah: Well, thank you very much.

Rob Botterell: I know we’re asking lots of questions, but I really appreciate getting as much detail as possible, because this polling result that you’re sharing with us is the opposite of EKOS polls that expressed support for pro rep, so it’s good to really be able to dig into the methodology and understand the differences.

My general observation, too, is anything you can do to eliminate people relying on 338 to make all their decisions would be a welcome change, because it’s amazing how it drove voters’ initial impression of what they needed to do. I come back to the fact that — we’ve heard this repeatedly, and I certainly saw it in our riding — people would go to 338 and say, “Oh my god, I’ve got to vote NDP this time” or “Oh my god, I’ve got to vote Conservative this time.”

They treated that as an authoritative source. Then you’d walk them through everything, and sometimes they’d change and sometimes they wouldn’t. Whether they’re Green supporters or not, the fact that 338 had such an outsized influence on their decision-making was, for me, quite concerning.

Mario Canseco: Well, I think there are a couple of factors at play. One of them is people don’t understand that this is an exercise that is put together usually relying on provincewide surveys. If we’re talking about the case of B.C. specifically, you take a provincewide survey, look at some of the demographics and the way in which the election happened the last time, and you extrapolate from that data to try to figure out whether a specific riding is going to work well or not, or how that riding is going to respond.

Part of the complexity with this is you don’t really have data from that specific moment, so if you’re basing that calculation on something that happened in the past, the resiliency of an incumbent candidate or the name recognition of a specific party, or the way in which the campaign is going is something that is going to get lost. That’s a problem.

The other problem is people assume that these are polls. It says so right there. This is an extrapolation. This is a calculation. This isn’t a poll of this particular riding. This is how we think the riding is going to fall.

Now, let’s say they’re right 97 percent of the time. If you’re in a riding that is one of those ridings that is included in the 3 percent that they didn’t get right, and people didn’t vote for you because they thought you were going to lose or because they chose to exercise their franchise based on what a website told them, it’s no wonder that they would be disappointed the day after the election — completely understandable.

Rob Botterell: Great, thanks.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): To further that, can I ask a question? On the 338 site as an example, and you guys are looking at all the other companies as well, wasn’t the data for the most part correct?

Mario Canseco: Yes, absolutely. I mean, it’s difficult…. When you look at it from the standpoint of your own particular campaign, there are certain things happening on the ground that cannot be grasped by me doing a B.C.-wide poll, even if you have the regions well represented or by anybody who is extrapolating. It’s not one of those cases where you look at the situation and go: “Well, most of them are right, so therefore that’s fine.”

It can be very disheartening, particularly for somebody who’s knocking on doors, to be told that you saw a poll — when it isn’t a poll — that says that you’re going to lose, so that suggests that you will be better off voting for somebody else. So it’s a type of strategic voting that isn’t based on riding-level data. It’s based on an extrapolation of B.C.-wide results.

[1:30 p.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yes, thank you. I’d also like your opinion on the fact that if somebody’s using that method to try to determine what is actually going on in this moment in time, what is the difference between somebody doing that and knocking on the door and hearing somebody say something that they have either read or heard that is totally untrue? What’s the difference? Because they’ve already formulated an opinion, whether that’s even true or not, where when you’re looking at the polling data, in most cases, in that time frame, it’s correct.

Mario Canseco: Well, I think that is also part of what makes consistent polling data throughout campaigns important. You know, we try to always conduct a final poll in the latter stages of the campaign, because that is exactly when you figure out how the electorate will move.

We could go back to the 2015 federal election. It started with the Liberals as a very distant third place. If you started to base your calculations at the riding level without taking into account the last three or four days of the campaign, you probably would have had a minority government for either the Liberals or the Conservatives, instead of the majority that the Liberals had.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Understood.

MLA Botterell, you have a short one?

Rob Botterell: Yeah, just a really short one.

Have you got other polls that support going with PR this year?

Mario Canseco: We did one at the Canada-wide level. I can certainly provide that as well. The level of support was roughly the same.

Part of it is — and this is something that we saw, also, when we were conducting research back in 2015 for the committee in the House of Commons — there’s a resistance from voters age 55 and over to change the system that they have. It’s usually more attractive for younger voters, for middle-aged voters, but the level of support for any change that takes us away from first-past-the-post just plummets with the over-55s.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you very much, Mario, for your presentation, and have a fantastic day.

Mario Canseco: Thank you. You too.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Next up is Matthew Cook representing the BCGEU.

Good afternoon, Matthew. Just as a reminder, 15 minutes for your presentation and ten minutes for follow-up questions, whenever you’re ready.

Matthew Cook

Matthew Cook: Thank you. All right.

I am pleased to be addressing the committee from the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically the Esquimalt, Songhees and W̱SÁNEĆ, where I’ve resided as an uninvited guest these past 17 years. Originally from the Beothuk territories, I’ve been making a home out here.

Presently, I’m a social worker employed with the health authority, meaning I work with people with mental health issues on the wrong side of the law. I’ve been doing that for the past five years. The previous seven, I was working as a housing outreach worker, trying to find rental accommodation for people on income assistance. All of which is to say I’ve spent the last decade or so working with the homeless, addicted and people struggling under the housing crisis.

I thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to address them on this deeply important issue. I do want to make clear I’m speaking as a member of the BCGEU, not for the BCGEU itself, although I have been going through a number of materials that the union produced on the issue and will try to represent that as best to my ability.

To begin with, I want to speak to the spectre of polarization that is haunting our democracy. Once upon time, to avoid politics and confrontation, you were advised to speak to the weather and your health. Now, between the pandemic and global warming, those topics are infused with new levels of political vitriol. If one does not find that vitriol matched in one’s social group, you can always turn to the internet and let the algorithms organize the hatred.

Misinformation dogs our every step, and no election is free from interference, as farms of trolls are released upon the voters like wolves hungry for resentment. We saw this clearly in the last two elections, both the federal and the provincial, that were severely scarred by interference and by the first-past-the-post system.

Provincially, we saw the Liberal Party close up shop and pass the torch to Conservatives, because they did not think they had the numbers to face the NDP in a first-past-the-post. In doing this, they propelled a mishmash of Conservative candidates, some with some outlandish conspiratorial thinking, into the office of the opposition.

The party has since fractured into a centre-right and a further-right party. Had proportional representation been in effect two years ago, maybe the Liberals would have stuck it out and the taxpayers would not be on the hook for a political party that they did not vote into office.

[1:35 p.m.]

I relate this as the argument has been made that proportional representation would allow for fringe parties to get into the office, but I think recent history shows clearly that the fringe is already entering the political arena easily enough under the present system.

Further, in the federal election, we saw a massive decline in our political diversity. Due to the pressures of the present American administration, Canadians then felt that they had to answer the question of who they wanted to face Trump and didn’t want to gamble with the one vote they had. And so we came, effectively, to a two-party system in the last election, squeezing out candidates who did not pass the 50 percent margin.

I myself voted strategically at the last election, voting for the Liberal Party for the first time in my life, and I spent a longer time in the voting booth than usual — not the usual sense of satisfaction of having done my civic duty with something but more of a political hangover after the fact. But the present system forces me to misalign my values, so I don’t vote for who I want but vote for who I want to stop. Is it any wonder why people are losing faith in democracy when they cannot vote for who they want?

Thus far I have addressed what I consider to be the need for change and spoken to some of the misgivings I have around the present system and why I think proportional representation would solve some of the issues. One example not too far from us is Ireland.

In the Irish single transferable vote system, there are bigger ridings, and they elect three, four or five MPs depending on the population of the area. So 75 percent to 85 percent of the votes actually directly elect the people, while in the first-past-the-post, as little as 30 percent can get a person elected. In Ireland, they all compete, even politicians from the same party, for your vote, so they are all keen to help you with your political problems.

I’ll add that the BCGEU, when it was surveyed in 2017, a single transferable vote was preferred by 35 percent; list proportional representation or mixed-member proportional representation, as is practised in New Zealand, Germany and Wales, was the second most preferred.

To be clear, I am not recommending ranked ballots in single-member ridings, as it creates the same problem in first-past-the-post. But to that, only 14 percent of the union members endorsed first-past-the-post, so that means about 80,000 people across B.C. stand in favour of some form of proportional representation. The one that the union endorsed the heaviest was the open list system as used in most Scandinavian countries.

As the hon. members might be aware, in that system, electoral seats are assigned a proportion based on the party’s share of the popular vote in a region, but the voters are also able to indicate their preference for specific candidates within a party list. This strikes a balance between party and individual candidates, which is a balance that, as I’ve stated, was sorely lacking in the last federal election.

I’ve taken a few digs to the Conservatives in this brief presentation, but those digs were meant to show that as a country, as a province, we are not immune to what we are seeing in the U.S. and that if we do not take bold action to reform our democracy, we risk slipping into the spiral of political extremism that’s becoming increasingly commonplace in North America. To that, I would implore the members to take bold action and show decisive leadership on the issue.

I’d like to close this presentation with some words from Astra Taylor, the CBC Massey lecturer of 2023, author of the book Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone:

“When I look at the forces aligned to roll back democratic change — the concentration of wealth, the structures of minority rule, the market imperative of endless growth, the seemingly irrepressible appeal of racism and the rapidity of climate change — I feel my will weaken. Given the magnitude of the task at hand, how can people like me possibly make a dent? The established order is big and powerful and an individual so vulnerable and small. When I engage my intellect, something approaching optimism is possible. The past is proof that it can be done.”

Thank you. That’s my presentation.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for that. I have a couple of quick ones for you, if I could. I know you’re only speaking as a member, not as the union. Do you know how many of your union members voted on that 35 percent poll on PR?

Matthew Cook: I believe we passed the 50 percent margin, but I’m not positive on it.

[1:40 p.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay. I have another question for you. Do you believe that canvassers, during an election or previously, should be volunteer-only?

Matthew Cook: Volunteer-only?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): That’s right — not paid canvassers going door to door.

Matthew Cook: No, I think it’s all right to have paid canvassers.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): All right. Thank you.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Matthew, for your presentation. I remember fondly my years of contract negotiations and bargaining with the BCGEU component in education, as a partner to that.

I have a question, probably about internal governance, related to elections. The BCGEU is usually regarded as what’s called a top-down union. Is that your experience?

Matthew Cook: I do more voting in the union than I do anywhere else.

Sheldon Clare: I’m glad to hear that. That answers my question. Thank you very much.

Rob Botterell: Mr. Chair, I’d like to keep the questions focused on democratic reform. I don’t know what the internal voting patterns of unions have to do with recommendations the committee would make on democratic engagement and electoral reform provincially. I’d just like that noted for the record.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Matthew, for your presentation. It’s actually quite appreciated for you to be here, and I appreciate the work that you do on a daily basis to help people, especially the most vulnerable, across our province.

I’ll stick to the topic at hand. One of the things that we’ve talked about is the importance of civic education in schools. I’m wondering whether you, in your conversations with other BCGEU members or with the general public, have ever tackled this question about how important civic education is, whether you think it’s important, whether you think it’s adequate currently in our K-to-12 system and whether there has ever been any conversations that you’ve had about that issue.

Matthew Cook: Well, I have two kids. They’re both in grade school right now. After the last election, there was a buzz, and there were mock elections. So I think the kids have an idea of how the thing ticks and tocks. But I do think there’s a need for a wider berth of education, not just like how our government ticks and tocks but how it could, like on the question of a proportional representation, enhance our democracy.

Again, we work on a rather simplistic, first-past-the-post, majority rule — 51 percent, yee-haw — but that also does stagnate a number of other conversations.

Amna Shah: Great. Thank you.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Matthew, I have a question. When you polled on the PR question to the membership. has there ever been any polling on reducing the voting age? Even as a member of the public, do you have any stance on, say, dropping it to 16, like the U.K. just did?

Matthew Cook: I don’t know if there has been any polling on that question. As a member of the public, I would endorse younger participation. They have more in stock in the longer term than I do presently.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Great. Well, I’m not seeing any more hands up. Thanks very much for your presentation, and have a great day.

Matthew Cook: And yourselves. Thank you for your work.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I’d like to introduce Dennis Bell.

Just as a reminder, Dennis, you have 15 minutes for a presentation and then ten minutes for questions.

Dennis Bell

Dennis Bell: Okay. Right off the bat, I am not very comfortable with public speaking, but I’m very passionate about this subject. That’s what drew me here today. It’s also why my son and I came up with this plan, in a conversation after the last federal election, seeing how representation is so very important.

[1:45 p.m.]

I want to talk about why we want to change the voting system. You’ve heard it all before, but I just want to summarize what I think we need. A voting system has to be really simple to understand and execute. We don’t need people being able to jeopardize the acceptance of a new voting system by claiming its complexity, which we’ve seen before. Voters and election workers need to be able to understand this and implement it without any kind of training.

It needs to be cost-effective — no additional MPs, MLAs, whatever the parliamentary system being used to implement this uses, and no new infrastructure changes.

We want to promote local representation. Party politics are important, but people are voting for a local representative, so it really needs to promote that.

We really need to combat vote splitting. Vote splitting is a cancer to the general voting systems out there, and it results in not getting what we actually want.

I really think it needs to address divisive candidates and parties. We don’t want to vote in people that make one group of people extremely happy and another group of people extremely upset. We want to promote inclusive, consensus-building policies.

That being said, what I really want to sum up this with is a very popular quote: “Canadians don’t vote for who they want but vote against who they don’t want.” That is something that’s been said time and time again, and it also causes low voter turnout. Let’s see if we can address that.

What I’m proposing isn’t so much a race but a tug of war. If Canadians vote against candidates indirectly, let’s allow them to do it directly. All the change that’s needed…. It’s still first-past-the-post, but we have a “for” column and an “against” column. It’s really simple to understand. People already think about for and against, and the tallying system just adds up the for votes and subtracts the against votes; highest total wins.

Before I go into the two different options of how to implement this, I want to talk about some of the benefits. It’s simple. As I just said, voters already have this mindset, really easy to tabulate, gets people in and out really quickly, doesn’t have to explain complex proportional voting systems.

One interesting aspect that my son brought up was that it neutralizes vote splitting, because if you have one side that benefits from vote splitting on for votes, they become disadvantaged on vote splitting on against votes and vice versa. If you’ve got one party that can win with just the for votes and the other parties have to split theirs, well then the against votes — it’s flipped around, so it balances the playing field automatically with no weird calculations needed.

It punishes divisive candidates because if you’re divisive, you’re going to mobilize the against votes against you, so it will naturally limit divisive rhetoric and policies. Votes then reflect the true net support in the riding.

It promotes smaller parties and independents. Large parties attract more for and against votes. Smaller candidates with policies focusing on riding-specific stuff or less divisive stuff will accumulate more total votes. So it creates a lot of opportunity for riding-specific representation and builds consensus over having to vote split.

It’s very cost-effective. Same riding, same number of MPs, minimal ballot redesign, and it still runs under the same system. If you’ve got electronic vote-takers, they might need some updating.

[1:50 p.m.]

As I said, it reduces divisiveness, so this, in effect, reduces campaign negativity. If you’re negatively attacking an opponent, you’re going to mobilize that opponent’s against votes. People who support that opponent are going to vote against you.

It encourages positive, policy-focused campaigns as opposed to “They’re going to do this and we’re not” or “We’re going to do this and they’re not.” It really focuses on what we want to achieve by government as opposed to a popularity contest — better minority government representation, getting all sorts of voices available.

Rather than having proportional votes across the province, it has a generalized, centralizing vote system per riding. So you will get — how would I say this? — the most acceptable candidate regardless of party, regardless of any kind of outside influence. The most desirable candidate will naturally come from each riding. Therefore, we get voices from all sorts of different ridings based on what the needs of those ridings are, and they will have to work together.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the two ways that we can perform this. One is full ballots only. Just like our current system, if you have a ballot with nobody selected, that’s an invalid ballot. So in this case, you would have to have both selected.

Now, what’s interesting about doing it this way is that since every ballot is a net zero plus one, versus minus one, the sum of all ballots is a net zero. So if you have a ballot box or an entire riding that has a non-net-zero total, then it automatically triggers recounts, because something went wrong. That recount is available right down to an individual ballot box, where you can just focus on the ballot box that provided the non-net-zero total, saving time across having to count all the ballots in the riding by hand, because it’s like an error correction routine.

The other way of doing this, which has its own different benefit, is flexible. You can just vote for, you can vote against, or you can do both. The interesting aspect of allowing this method is that, like I said before, Canadians vote against, not for, generally.

So if you have a total net negative of 200 in a 50,000-voter riding, then generally people have found somebody they can vote for, and there have been a few people who just go in there and vote against somebody and not vote for anybody. But if you have negative 20,000 in a 50,000-voter riding, that means 40 percent of the people in that riding couldn’t support a single candidate.

That gives you valuable democratic feedback about the quality and the — what’s the word I’m looking for? Desirableness? That’s not quite the word I was looking for — acceptability of the candidates presented to that riding, which means that all the people there who are trying to get elected need to go back and seriously consider what they’re offering the people. We’ll still elect somebody who is the least negative, but generally speaking, it’s a really good scorecard on how representative those candidates are to the people in that riding.

There are a few other benefits, but if you want, we can pause now, and you guys can ask your questions. I know I ran through that quickly, but that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. It’s a tug-of-war, not a race, and the most acceptable candidate will win.

[1:55 p.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay. Thanks very much, Dennis.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Dennis, for your presentation. I would argue you’re well-spoken, and I think I’ve followed along as best as I can. I think I get it. But one of the concerns that we’ve heard from the majority of the people who presented is that they don’t feel that their voice is being counted towards an overall result.

Now, given one of these styles of ballot that you’re suggesting, do you think that it would not unduly or unfavourably favour larger parties and not smaller parties? Because, I mean, there are certain ways in which you could vote for the person that you want, and you could just go against, against, against for everybody else.

There are some individuals in our community who say: “Well, I am from one of those smaller parties who offer very great things to the discussion table about certain issues, and I would like to see representation.” Do you not think that that voice would be completely drowned out by individuals just voting against, against, against? You’ll have net negative 200 votes in a particular area, but that may not necessarily mean that they don’t bring any value or substance. It could be party politics.

Dennis Bell: Right. So, first off, you get one for vote and one against vote. You don’t get to go down through everybody you don’t like and vote against them. You say, who am I least wanting to represent me? Who am I most wanting to represent me?

You could choose to not vote for either of those. You’d need to have one vote on the card for option 2, or you need both votes on the card for option 1.

Generally speaking, what we will see, and I’m not to pick on any parties in particular, but if you have a very strong left-wing party and a very strong right-wing party, and they’re divisive in their policies, they will nullify each other. Then the independents and the smaller parties will get higher representation because, again, that vote splitting against the for will be countered by the vote splitting against the against.

Amna Shah: I see. Okay.

Chair, if I may follow up, would that be representative, then, of the voice of people of who they really want to vote for if the votes just cancel each other out? Then there’s the candidate with the least damage who kind of comes up the middle?

Dennis Bell: It would provide more votes for the person who does the least damage, which, in my opinion, is the person we want to represent our area, because they are causing the least amount of total angst.

Amna Shah: Okay. Thank you.

Sheldon Clare: MLA Shah’s question and your answer partially answered my question, but I would follow up and say that the experience and practice and research seems to indicate that most people prefer to vote for party rather than a candidate specifically. Although a candidate can have something like — and I’m just throwing numbers out there — 3 percent to 5 percent, or sometimes higher in some circumstances….

There are places that if you paint a hay bale a particular colour, as has been said, that hay bale is going to get elected if that colour is the dominant one in that riding. So I’m not quite sure how the system that you’re proposing would really answer the dominant desire of voters in particular ridings for a party rather than a candidate.

Dennis Bell: I’m proposing it won’t. I’m proposing that party politics need to nuance the candidate, but the candidate needs to represent their riding. By allowing the majority of party policy to be given the to-and-fro of the general populace, this will mathematically lower the differences, and you will get a person who represents the overall benefit to the riding more so than the party.

[2:00 p.m.]

Party politics has dominated the government far too long. I think parties are great for providing a unified method of voter engagement, but it’s also a bit of a crux. It’s really easy to digest a party line or just stick with a party, whereas if you need to understand what benefits your riding and your province, it’s better to be educated in what and whom you’re voting for, because you can’t vote for the Premier. You can’t vote for the party. You can vote for a candidate, and that’s who you should be voting for.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you. If the Chair will indulge one follow-up question…. In the party system and the parliamentary system we have, people tend to cluster together when they have like positions on particular issues, be they of a social, financial or whatever concern.

In so doing, they form parties and develop platforms. The platforms generally are what are proposed, sold or presented to the public for scrutiny. In that case, the platforms and the party positions matter considerably more than individual candidates. Of course, there is a screening process for candidates, I expect, in all parties.

I’m still not sure why your system would solve any issue in that regard. I don’t think it would address the desire of people to have a clear understanding of the issues before them, whether they be supporters of my colleague MLA Botterell and the Greens, of my colleagues in the NDP or of my other colleagues as Conservatives or anything else. I just wonder what you’d say to that.

Dennis Bell: You’re still going to have party politics. You’re still going to be represented by your candidate. At that point, I have a bunch of people who like that policy, and I have a bunch of people who don’t like that policy. If the net people who like that policy is higher than the net people who don’t like that policy, then they will win. So it still allows for party politics and party candidates representing that party, but divisive policy will be voted against.

In the example where we have to vote-split for the federal government, for example, that would be null and void because you could vote against the party you find divisive and for the party you choose and want to represent you. So it actually gives you better access to the party system in those cases. You don’t have to vote for the least-desired person on your side. You can vote for who you want, and you can vote against the party that really doesn’t represent you, be that left- or right-wing. It doesn’t matter.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Thank you very much.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Dennis. I just wanted to point out a couple of things. Our system has always been one person, one vote. Even if we went to proportional representation, that would still allow that to happen.

As an example, if we’re saying that the Third Party, whatever the Third Party is…. In B.C., it’s the Green Party, and they get between, let’s say, 8 or 10 percent of the vote. Surrey is a pretty good example of almost representing what happened in the previous election. It’s a 6-4 split, Conservative-NDP. Really, the only thing missing is that one Green candidate or MLA that could be in that.

Don’t you believe, though, that you’re actually allowing two votes, because if there are three parties, and you have somebody that votes for, let’s say, the Third Party and somebody that votes, basically, against the other party, then you’re actually penalizing one of those parties by an extra vote. That’s how the math works for me.

Can you explain how that doesn’t increase polarization? To me, if you look at the numbers, candidate A could have 45 percent of the yes votes, and then you’ve got a breakdown of 35 percent and 20 percent. So at the end of the day, the person with the most yes votes could be cancelled out with the most no and against votes.

[2:05 p.m.]

Dennis Bell: Absolutely, because they represent less than half of the population. That’s why this is a fairer system, because now you don’t have somebody who represents 30 to 40 percent of the population with their policy. They have been properly reduced because over 50 or 60 percent of the population doesn’t want that candidate.

It actually prefers smaller. It prefers independents, or it prefers smaller parties, because they potentially could be less divisive. There’s nothing saying that a person who likes party A might actually really dislike party C over disliking party B.

It doesn’t mean that the smaller parties won’t get negative votes. If you have somebody who’s very much, for example, pro–big business oil and very against Green, they might vote against Green, as opposed to voting against NDP, because they really feel that the Green does not represent them — which is true in this case; the Green does not represent their needs.

When you put this over an entire population, you will find that you will get better representation of people who are less divisive and will have less people who don’t want their policy. That’s where the negative vote comes in. If you want to think of it as that you get one vote, half is for, and half is against.

It’s nuanced; it’s wordplay, but yeah, you still get your vote. I get to say who I think represents me the most and who really doesn’t represent me the most, and the sum of it describes me better than just saying who represents me the most.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Great. Well, thanks very much for your presentation, Dennis. Have a great day.

I’d like to introduce Jason Woywada. B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

Just as a reminder, Jason, 15 minutes for your presentation, and ten minutes for follow-up questions.

B.C. Freedom of Information
and Privacy Association

Jason Woywoda: To start, I want to be sure to thank the committee for this opportunity to present today. FIPA acknowledges, with respect, the Indigenous people on whose traditional territory we conduct activities while striving to increase privacy protection and access to information for everyone. We recognize that colonization and associated attitudes, policies and institutions have significantly changed Indigenous peoples’ relationship with this land.

For many years, those same things have served to exclude Indigenous peoples from the privacy protection and access to information afforded to others. FIPA is committed to addressing these historic and continued barriers. We acknowledge the insight and knowledge of Elders past, present and emergent, and their relationship to this land and these issues. I’m presenting from the unceded Coast Salish territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən, amongst the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, whose historic relationship with the land continues to this day.

My presentation today is focused on three main areas: why I and FIPA are here today, some background and our recommendations. I find myself in an increasingly long career that intersects this subject matter. I’ve spent six years as a small market TV reporter, 14 as a political staff person for the Manitoba NDP, ten of which were as the director of caucus services under Premiers Doer and Selinger in the Legislative Assembly.

Following that, with a move to B.C., I was an adult learner gaining a master’s in business administration with multiple international privacy certifications. I worked in Citizens’ Services for a time, drafting one of the two-year annual reports on FOIPPA for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 calendar years.

That means my perspective is rather unique. I am one of the few people who has navigated and specialized within the legal frameworks that strive to appropriately transition personal information respectful of privacy between a candidate, an elected official and a minister as it intersects the party, caucus and government. I joined FIPA in 2020.

Based on all of this, I can honestly say I believe most elected members in every party work to make the best decision they can and to represent their constituents. I can also say that they are at times in conflict of interest. That requires they recognize the conflict and incorporate the recommendations from others that pertain to the creation of precise regulation through legislation to ensure that they do not act in their personal interests or the interests of their party rather than those of the public.

This is particularly vital with things like money, tax dollars, electoral boundaries and the increasingly valuable personal information of the public that they gain access to by virtue of the exceptional privilege and powers they are granted in fulfilling their rules.

What is FIPA? We are a non-partisan, non-profit society that was established in 1991 to promote and defend freedom of information and privacy rights in Canada. While we are based in B.C., our membership extends across Canada, and we regularly partner with organizations throughout the country.

[2:10 p.m.]

We are one of very few public interest groups in Canada devoted solely to the advancement of freedom of information and privacy rights.

There is significance in that 1991 date. FIPA predates the introduction of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and Personal Information Protection Act in B.C. Our goal is to empower citizens by increasing their access to information and their control over their own personal information. We serve a wide variety of individuals and organizations through programs of public education, public assistance, research and law reform. We are a small organization funded through a variety of institutional funders, grants, membership fees and donations, and you can learn a lot more about that on our website.

This presentation, with its supporting PowerPoint and white paper of recommendations, will be sent to the parliamentary committee consultation portal, but before submitting this material, I wanted to express my appreciation to Jerika Caduhada. She came to work at FIPA through the University of Victoria’s law co-op program and is completing her studies there. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work with university researchers of her calibre in drafting and refining material of this nature.

The principle that privacy rights are inseparable from democratic trust is a foundation of our submission and leads to our recommendations. That principle considers the following. Political parties have exceptional access to personal information. While federal parties may currently be working to exempt themselves from B.C. privacy law and PIPEDA, politicians were never intended to be exempted from the Canadian privacy standards and principles that informed these laws.

The public expects political parties to respect their privacy and requires that respect to trust the democratic process.

The emergent threats and risks to people and democracy weaponizes the very personal information some political actors seek to benefit from with looser regulation.

Now I’ll go through each of those in a bit more detail. First, the international scandals surrounding misuse of personal information by political actors have direct ties to British Columbia. The Brexit, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook misuse of personal information all ties back to AggregateIQ, who had an office on lower Johnson Street here in Victoria.

As a result of those scandals and complaints regarding the potential misuse of personal information by political parties here in B.C., the B.C. Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner investigated and documented the types of information that political parties collect. It’s a lot. These issues also inspired FIPA’s work to conduct and create an interprovincial comparison of political privacy rights across Canada.

Importantly, given the amount of information collected and used in political campaigns, the importance of political parties acting in good faith requires consideration of privacy law in exceptional circumstances.

One example is during the most recent provincial election here in B.C. In the lead-up, we sought to ensure that the public impacted by the changes with the B.C. United and Conservative Party of B.C. were aware of and had access to a public legal opinion on their privacy rights.

In addition with this, FIPA is an intervener in the current case seeking to ensure that federal political parties adhere to B.C.’s provincial privacy laws. As that case moves through the courts, recently introduced Bill C-4 part 4 seeks to retroactively exempt federal political parties not only from British Columbia’s privacy law but all Canadian privacy standards. Those standards predate the laws, which were drafted and designed to apply to all sectors in Canada in 1996.

If exempted, federal political parties will have less oversight on their use of personal information than corporations like Tim Hortons, government departments, municipal and federal police agencies and, most shockingly, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS. None of that aligns with public opinion.

In 2024, FIPA commissioned Ipsos to poll public opinion on information management in public bodies. The results show that there is a broad agreement around what is expected of public bodies with respect to accountability in governance, records management and accessibility in fees.

The results of the survey deliver a clear message. Most notably, more than 50 percent of respondents strongly agreed that they expect political parties and their candidates to collect, protect and respect personal information by complying with provincial privacy laws.

Public trust in political parties is directly impacted by the commitments and actions of those parties to meet public expectations regarding privacy rights and accountability. There is a need to ensure political parties and their agents act appropriately and transparently in accordance with multiple acts. The results of our survey affirm the necessity of enhancing protections for voters’ personal information due to new vulnerabilities from increasing threats and risks.

[2:15 p.m.]

As Western democracy is increasingly under threat, B.C. is no stranger to new and emerging issues. University of Victoria professor emeritus of political science Colin Bennett is an adviser to the B.C. OIPC and a long-standing FIPA member. In his 2024 submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, he stated: “At root, this issue is not only about the rights of Canadians to exercise their privacy rights. It is about the health and resilience of our democracy and about restoring the trust of Canadians in their political institutions, including our political parties.”

Top of mind is the murky intersection between party spokespeople, influencers and advertising as an area that requires particular attention within election finance and information management laws.

As identified by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, the rise of mis-, dis- and malinformation is another threat. Separately, foreign interference is an area this chamber has already had to consider acting upon. Any of these issues may only be exacerbated when you consider the use of artificial intelligence.

In combination, all of these factors intersect with the personal information of British Columbians. The use and misuse of this information and weaponized activities that intersect public opinion and political action increase polarization, division and potential breakdowns in civil society. Creating a scenario where political actors fail to recognize privacy standards and respect the privacy rights of the people they seek to serve erodes the ability of people to trust their elected representatives and the parties they in turn represent.

For those reasons, we return to the premise that privacy rights are inseparable from democratic trust, and for that reason, we make the following recommendations.

Given its application to political parties in British Columbia, the B.C. government should introduce modernized and rights-focused reforms to B.C.’s Personal Information Protection Act.

Particular attention should be paid to the introduction of the following provisions: mandatory breach reporting and mandatory privacy impact assessments, reports of which must be produced to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of B.C. upon its request, and stronger oversight and penalization of any non-consensual collection of personal information through staff, volunteers and agents.

Given rapidly evolving risks, threats to democratic institutions, a working group to propose regulatory amendments to PIPA and the B.C. Elections Act should be established. Particularly given the impacts of social media and the use of artificial intelligence, there are rising concerns surrounding mis-, dis- and malinformation, as well as non-compliance with election advertising rules and foreign interference.

These amendments could include formally regulating the use of generative AI in campaigning and advertising, implementing specific requirements and procedures for the use of influencers in election advertising and ensuring such requirements and procedures promote advertising and financial transparency that regulate the collection and use of personal data by such influencers in the campaign context.

Now, in addition to the requirements in PIPA, to maintain trust, reforms must ensure that political parties are required to institute privacy management programs similar to those in FOIPPA that include extensive training.

In proportion to the sensitivity of the information political parties hold and to maintain trust, political parties must ensure employees, agents or volunteers handle personal information appropriately. This is created through a privacy management program aligned to PIPA with training. Such training ought to be publicly available, reviewed and approved by the OIPC and B.C.’s Chief Electoral Officer.

Any access to the personal information by employees, volunteers or agents should be aligned with the least privileged principle. With all of that said — and again, you’ll have our written reports and summaries and all of this to follow up from the verbal presentation here — I want to thank you for your attention and time. We look forward to seeing the valuable work that the special committee will do on this matter, and I’m open to questions.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much. Lots of information, trying to ascertain how it impacts specifically what we’re doing.

I don’t know about PIPA, but I would offer up that, with our elections laws right now, I believe that we have some pretty stringent rules when it comes to personal information and sharing that personal information, especially when it comes to elections.

When you talked about misinformation, that was one of the concerns that we had. There was also a presenter this morning that was saying that we’ve got some challenges with our social media system that we have in this country. We don’t have the same guardrails that some of our European counterparts have. Can you see anything that they’re doing that we should be doing here as well?

[2:20 p.m.]

Jason Woywada: Well, I think this goes back to the rights-based approach that we see in the GDPR out of Europe, and that there is less of this division between corporations and public bodies in the application of the GDPR.

That’s why this overlap between FOIPPA and PIPA is so important, in particular for political parties. I think when we’re considering mis-, dis- and malinformation, the rights of the individual in Europe are able to be acted upon in a stronger context with political parties there. They have stronger guardrails in place as part of that on the actions of political parties’ social media writ large.

Again, PIPA here hasn’t been updated in a long while. It’s about time that something is done to update that legislation to reflect some of those changes. The legislation predates social media, right? So at its root, it needs to be changed in order to address the modern landscape.

From what we’ve seen, the provincial government has been playing a game of catch-up, waiting for the feds to take action first. We think B.C. has been a long-standing leader in privacy and access to information and should re-establish itself as such. It doesn’t need to wait for the feds to take action on this. Quebec certainly didn’t.

I think there are a few items there that are important to act upon.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for that.

MLA Botterell.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I would be interested in your perspective…. We have a set of privacy legislation in place right now as it relates to elections and parties and so on. You’ve covered that.

If we recommend, you know, updating PIPA or updating privacy safeguards as it relates to our mandate, which is democratic and electoral reform…. Certainly, as the Chair mentioned, there’s a lot of concern around AI and social media and the way it can influence elections.

Is there a jurisdiction in Europe that would be a good jurisdiction to look at in terms of best practices?

Jason Woywada: I know there’s been a lot of consideration given to this in Europe. Again, Professor Colin Bennett has made submission to the Council of Europe in terms of some of these issues. We’ve been following his presentations there quite extensively.

The Council of Europe, in the EU, is the governing body that’s sort of working to try and address these emerging threats. So they’ve been conducting public consultations there and considering how those laws should be amended within their own jurisdiction as well. There’s a lot of….

This is such an emerging issue. It’s all evolving in real time. That is indeed one of the things that I think leads to the importance of regulation that can evolve to address those emergent issues. You’re looking at somebody who loves legislation and having everything iron-clad and locked in as much as possible. But at the same time, these emerging threats are acting faster than the legislation can be amended.

That requires amendment in regulation and the development of a robust enough system in order to address those emerging threats. So when you’re asking which jurisdiction in particular is addressing this, they’re all addressing it in real time through these regulatory frameworks and changes in their laws through the Council of Europe. So they’re creating those overarching frameworks in the Council of Europe and through their legislative framework and then enabling local regulation and regional variation underneath that, as I understand it.

Again, if the committee hasn’t reached out directly to Colin Bennett, he has a lot more information on this. I can’t name one specific jurisdiction right now off the top of my head, but I can point to the situation as I understand it in Europe.

Rob Botterell: Great. Colin is still at UVic, right?

Jason Woywada: Yeah, a professor emeritus there. I believe he’s actually in town for the next month or two before doing some more travel, not to give out personal information unduly here.

But that is one of the things we’ve been talking to him about in the lead-up to this presentation as well.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Great. Well, not seeing any more questions, thanks very much for your time, Jason, and for your presentation to our panel. Have a great day.

We’ll take a five-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 2:25 p.m. to 2:35 p.m.

[Ward Stamer in the chair.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. I’d like to introduce Duff Conacher. He represents Democracy Watch.

Just as a reminder, Duff, 15 minutes for your presentation and ten minutes for questions. Whenever you’re ready.

Democracy Watch

Duff Conacher: Thank you very much to the special committee for this opportunity to testify on this very important issue of ensuring democratic politics across the province and to increase voter engagement and participation in political processes and ensure democratic elections.

Democracy Watch will be making a written submission to the committee. I will summarize the main points today, and I welcome your questions. Overall, Democracy Watch is calling on the MLAs on the committee to recommend many different changes needed to ensure democratic politics, increase voter engagement and participation, and ensure democratic, fair elections, all of which will also very much help stop foreign interference in B.C. politics. We call on the committee to recommend these changes, and hopefully then all B.C. parties will work together to enact the changes into law as soon as possible.

Currently, no one in B.C. politics is effectively required to act honestly, ethically, openly, make representative decisions or to prevent waste. So the system is the scandal, and it is not surprising that it produces scandalous political decisions and actions regularly and +also discourages voter engagement and participation in political processes.

It is not surprising at all that B.C. voters would be turned off politics, given that false election promises, dishonest spin, excessive secrecy, secret and unethical lobbying, conflicts of interest, ministers and top government officials profiting from their own decisions, and waste of the public’s money are all legal under current B.C. laws.

In addition, the political donations and third-party spending systems amount to legalized bribery, and the vote counting system often gives majority power to parties that are supported by only a minority of voters. The only way to increase voter engagement and participation and to stop the undemocratic, unethical and dishonest influence of foreign interference by governments and foreign agents on B.C. politics is to make key changes that are needed to stop all undemocratic, unethical and dishonest influence, and to require democratic engagement with voters during and between elections.

To have an actually democratic political and election system that encourages and increases voter participation and democratic engagement, and to stop foreign interference, the ten most important areas in which changes need to be made and applied to everyone in politics — politicians, their cabinet appointees, political staff, public servants in the provincial and municipal governments, and in every government-funded institution across the province — and also changes and measures that need to be applied to lobbyists and interest groups as well…. The following are the ten key areas.

First, enact an honesty-in-politics law that allows for complaints to the provincial Conflict of Interest Commissioner about broken promises, dishonest statements made anywhere, including the Legislature, by anyone, including fake online posts during election campaigns, with mandatory high fines as the penalty. We need leaders, not misleaders. I will be submitting a detailed report. I know there is a limit of 2,000 words on submissions, but we will be linking in that submission to a detailed report Democracy Watch has done on stopping dishonesty, disinformation and misinformation.

[2:40 p.m.]

Second biggest area: require all provincially regulated industry and service sectors — property and auto insurance, financial investment services, health care institutions, energy, water — to include a notice in mailings and emails to customers inviting them to join and fund citizen watchdog groups for each industry and sector.

As well, increase royalties for all resource development sectors, and put the money raised into a fund that citizen watchdog groups jointly oversee and can use for jointly decided initiatives. That is a way of both balancing the marketplace in the private sector and balancing the marketplace in terms of policy-making.

It would cost the government nothing, and it would cost the industries nothing, because all they’d have to do is put a notice at the top of their emails, inviting customers to join the watchdog groups. It has been proven to work in a few U.S. states and is the best way to empower citizens and give them the resources they need to participate in policy-making and to hold governments and big businesses accountable. It’s the best method and the lowest-cost method in the world.

Three, establish a public appointments commission, whose members are approved by the leaders of parties that received more than 5 percent of the popular vote in the election and/or have seats in the Legislature. Require the commission to be conducting public, merit-based searches in choosing a shortlist of a maximum of three candidates for all cabinet appointments, including watchdogs, police chiefs and provincial judges. Then have an all-party committee required to choose who was appointed from the shortlist.

B.C. has part of this system in place but not enough to ensure a truly merit-based search that results in the best-qualified candidates being put forward in the shortlist. I’ll be submitting a detailed policy paper on how to make law enforcement — especially in the area of democratic, good government — independent, timely, transparent, fair and effective.

Four, enact a meaningful public consultation law that requires broad, in-depth public consultation with voters before any government or government institution makes a significant decision. Free and empower MLAs to represent voters by restricting the powers of the Premier and all party leaders.

Five, ban gifts and loans from businesses, unions and other organizations. And, as in Quebec, limit individual political donations to $100 annually. If the parties can prove it is actually needed, establish per-vote and donation-matching public funding. Quebec has both, and it’s the world’s leading system for a democratic political finance system that is not a legalized bribery system — as are the systems in every other province, including B.C. I will be submitting a detailed paper on how to have a democratic donation and loan system.

Advertising and spending by third parties should be set at amounts based on the actual number of members of the third-party organization — the number of voters they represent. A very low spending limit should be set for individuals and business third parties because they don’t represent anyone but themselves. It’s undemocratic to have the same spending limit for them as you do for citizen groups who are supported by thousands or tens of thousands of voters. I’ll be submitting, again, a link to a detailed position paper on how to have a democratic third-party spending system.

Six, prohibit everyone in politics from participating, in any way, in any decision-making process if they have even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Prohibit top politicians and officials from having investments in businesses, and ensure a lengthy cooling-off period after they leave, so that they can’t just sell access and their inside knowledge to the highest bidder and, therefore, gain undue influence for their clients in lobbying and policy-making processes. Again, I’ll be submitting a link, in our 2,000-word submission, to a detailed policy paper on how to ensure ethical political decision-making.

Seven, take measures, by closing loopholes and switching the whole system, to ensure that politicians, political staff, appointees and public officials are the ones who disclose who is lobbying them, who is trying to influence or is communicating with them in any way with regard to decisions that they are making or participating in. Prohibit lobbyists from giving gifts or doing favours, including helping with campaigns or fundraising. Again, I’ll be submitting a link to a detailed policy paper on how to stop secret, unethical lobbying.

[2:45 p.m.]

Eight, strengthen the freedom-of-information law by reducing loopholes, applying it to all government and government-funded institutions, requiring that records of all decisions and actions be disclosed regularly, giving the Information Commissioner the power to order changes to government institutions’ information systems and to penalize violators of the law.

The penalties are very important, because everyone knows that now they can violate the law for years and will face no penalty at all and may even be promoted by keeping wrongdoing and wasteful and dishonest, unethical activities secret. As well, strengthen the whistleblower protection system and make it best practice.

Nine, change the voting system to ensure a more accurate representation of the popular vote results of each election and the seats held by each party in the Legislature and in city councillors elected, while ensuring that all elected officials are supported by and are accountable to voters in each riding or constituency. Put in place a safeguard to ensure that a party with a low-level narrow base of support does not have a disproportionately high level of power in the Legislature. In addition, actually fix election dates, as many countries have, as much as possible in our Westminster parliamentary system.

Ten, reduce waste of the public’s money by prohibiting omnibus budget bills and empowering the Auditor General to actually do a pre-approval process for all significant spending proposals, based on an assessment of whether the proposal clearly commits to comply with all waste prevention requirements in law and that the projected amount to be spent is realistic, to ensure truth in budgeting.

Empower the Auditor General to audit all government and government-funded institutions, including the Legislature and MLA offices. Prohibit government advertising if it is misleading or partisan. Also, empower the Auditor General to order changes to clean up the financial management of any institution.

Again, the area of penalties is very important, because everyone knows in B.C. government that you can violate the spending rules, as long as it’s not straight-up fraud, and you won’t face any penalty; you may even, actually, be promoted. So the Auditor General should be empowered to penalize violators of spending and procurement rules.

Those are the top ten key areas and key changes to be made in order to have B.C. elections and political systems be actually democratic, honest, ethical, open and fair. To expect voters to engage more and participate more without making these changes…. I mean, voters are not dumb. They know that everyone in B.C. politics is allowed to be dishonest, unethical, secretive, make unrepresented decisions and waste the public’s money. So why would you participate in such a system, either voting for people or participating in policy-making processes?

Again, I’ll be making this detailed submission showing what other jurisdictions do, what best-practice standards are and how B.C. can change its laws to these best-practice standards, some of which exist in Canada — such as Quebec’s political donations system, which is the world’s leading system — others from other countries.

I look forward to hearing back from the committee on that written submission, and also, I welcome your questions now. Thank you very much again to the special committee for giving me the opportunity to testify on this very important set of issues.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Duff. It went over a lot of information, specifically on the question at hand, talking about proportional representation and changing our first-past-the-post.

Just looking on your website, some of the studies that you’re representing…. One that 49 percent of Canadians find the current system is unacceptable — that data is 25 years old. Do you have anything a little bit more current than that?

Duff Conacher: It’s not the main issue that Democracy Watch focuses on. Of course, you know about the Fair Vote groups.

We are part of the national coalition and support Fair Vote Canada’s position on this — which, essentially, I set out — which is that there be a system where elected officials are supported by and accountable to voters in each riding or constituency and that there is a safeguard to ensure small parties with a narrow base of support cannot, essentially, force larger parties with much higher levels of support to do things that are not in the public interest. That has happened in some other countries that don’t have that threshold at the lower end in terms of whether you actually end up with representation in the Legislature.

[2:50 p.m.]

The reason we don’t focus on that as the main issue is because even if you change the voting system, because everyone in politics would still be allowed to be dishonest, unethical, secretive and wasteful, they wouldn’t be making representative decisions that many people would be pleased with.

Making the Legislature more representative is only one of the things that discourages voter engagement and participation. The other things discourage it as well. Even if you vote for the party that wins, every voter knows that parts of the election platform are false promises that you use to bait them to vote for that party, and that there’s no penalty if that party then breaks those promises blatantly and heads in a different direction. And so, of course, that would discourage voter turnout.

If you’re going to do electoral reform, you should also be including a right to vote “none of the above.” It should be on the bottom of every ballot. Even better, people should be able to write a short sentence as to why they’re voting none of the above, which would give feedback to all the parties as to why people are not supporting any of the candidates. That would be a great voter feedback system.

All the parties would get that report from Elections B.C. post-election that would show them how they could possibly attract more votes, because they would know why people had voted none of the above.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Dr. Conacher, for your — dare I say — blunt and a little bit cynical presentation. I’ve followed some of your stuff over the years, and I’ve enjoyed hearing your presentation.

My question is regarding your second point: “All provincially regulated industry to include funding for citizen watchdog group initiatives.” Such initiatives — would they include legal action?

Duff Conacher: Yes. The groups would be able to help voters shop around for the best deal, which would lead to all businesses knowing that consumers would learn about whether they were the best business to deal with in terms of both their record of dealing with customers and also price and quality.

They would also advocate for consumers in these sectors. That would include legal advocacy, helping people with complaints if there’s a complaint handling system. Also, it would facilitate class action lawsuits against businesses that have abused a whole class of customers. And then they would also provide a balance to business lobby, which…. In every sector, the business lobby, their advertising, their gifts, their donations — all of that is funded by consumers.

We’re not asking you to force businesses to fund consumer groups. Instead, just require businesses to facilitate citizens banding together through this very effective, low-cost method — the most low-cost and effective method that has ever been developed in the world — of ensuring broad-based, independent citizen watchdog groups are established that have the resources to actually help their members in every way.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. If I may…. You founded Democracy Watch, if I recall correctly. Does Democracy Watch solicit for members that would be supporting its initiatives as well? What do you do to raise funds to support your work in this context?

I’m trying to see…. You’ve given us a pretty ambitious ten points to look at, and I know you’ve been doing this for a while, and I can understand a bit of the cynicism.

So how do you make your operations happen?

Duff Conacher: First of all, I’m not expressing cynicism. If I was cynical, I would just be watching TV now as opposed to participating.

Sheldon Clare: Fair point.

Duff Conacher: I’m expressing skepticism based on the fact that there are about 100 loopholes in B.C.’s democratic good-government laws that allow everyone in B.C. politics, effectively, to act dishonestly, unethically, secretively and unrepresentatively and to waste the public’s money. It has been proven by case after case across the board, and there are very few penalties for violating these laws, so that encourages noncompliance, as I mentioned.

[2:55 p.m.]

The system is the scandal, and it’s not surprising that it produces scandalous behaviour. B.C. has not been immune to this. It has been hit with as many scandals as any other jurisdiction in the country.

Democracy Watch raises its money from individuals across the country, and 95 percent of the people who donate, donate less than $150. We have just over 40,000 supporters. Not all of them donate, but they are signed up, and we’ve had more than 225,000 voters sign on to one or more of our petitions calling for these key changes across Canada.

And I’m not just calling for them in B.C. Every single jurisdiction has 100 loopholes — slightly different loopholes depending on the jurisdiction — in their democratic good-government laws. And their enforcement systems are lacking independence, transparency and effectiveness, as in B.C.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Well, I’ll substitute cynicism for skepticism, and thank you for the explanation.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I have a question. If you’re suggesting that any or all of us are operating unethically or dishonestly, I would certainly welcome those 100 loopholes that you suggest to be made public. If you’re going to make a public statement like that, I take exception to that. If you believe there are 100 loopholes, please send them our way, and I will enjoy having a look at that. Thank you.

Duff Conacher: I did not say that. What I said is that no one in B.C. politics is effectively required to act honestly, ethically, openly, representatively or to prevent waste. That does not mean that everyone is. It just means that the system does not effectively require you. You are more likely to get caught and face a higher penalty for parking illegally anywhere in B.C. than a cabinet minister would be for violating the conflict-of-interest law, in terms of getting caught and the penalty they would face.

That’s a perverse system, because parking illegally usually does no damage unless you happen to park in front of a fire hydrant, and then you’ll find the firefighters will just knock out both windows in your car to get the fire hose through.

But breaking the conflict-of interest-law is essentially just under accepting bribes in terms of the seriousness, because you’ll be furthering your own or others’ — your family’s, your friends’ or businesses’ who have lobbied, fundraised and campaigned for you — interests as opposed to upholding the public interest.

So the system is the scandal, and you’ve had enough scandals in B.C., hopefully, to make you want to clean it up. But I’m not saying that everyone is acting dishonestly, unethically, secretively, unrepresentatively or wasting the public’s money. It’s just that it’s possible to do it, and it’s legal to do it, effectively. That’s not a good system. It’s far from best practice, far from world-leading.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I gather, in the written materials…. I think you mentioned you would be identifying examples of other jurisdictions that might have best practices, and that would certainly be helpful.

Then I just wondered if you could very briefly describe the approach in Quebec to donations and so on. I think you flagged it as a leading jurisdiction.

Duff Conacher: Yes. Quebec limits individual political donations to $100 annually. If you donate more than $50, you have to send it to Elections Quebec, who then verifies that it’s your money before it’s passed on to a party.

The reason they do that is to stop someone who is the head of a business from walking into party headquarters. Let’s say the business has 100 employees, and the chief executive walks in and hands over 100 cheques for $100 each, $10,000 total, and says to the party: “Oh, all of my employees gave this willingly.” To stop that, what’s called straw person donations, where someone’s funnelling money through someone else, they put in place this rule that if you donate more than $50, you have to send it to Elections Quebec first.

They also have not only per-vote funding but also donation-matching funding that’s on a sliding scale. It’s front-end loaded, so in effect…. It’s kind of complicated to describe an example, but let’s say someone was supported by 1,000 voters who could each only afford to donate $20, and someone else is supported by donors who can all afford to give $100.

[3:00 p.m.]

The sliding scale of donation-matching will close to equalize the amount that they’ll raise in terms of how their donations are matched. It’s not as good a sliding scale as it could be, but it’s better than not having it at all, because it does equalize support between those who are supported by people who can’t donate as much as those who are supported by those who can donate the maximum.

Quebec restricts advertising spending by third parties to just a few hundred dollars. It’s the one part of the system I don’t agree with. If a citizen group has thousands of supporters, they should be able to spend a lot of money, but it does make sense for individuals. Individual voters only represent themselves. They shouldn’t be allowed to spend as much as a citizen group that has thousands of dollars.

B.C. now has a blanket third-party spending limit. It applies the same to private corporations with only a few shareholders, big businesses, individuals and then citizen groups that are actually supported by thousands of voters. That’s not a democratic system. It doesn’t uphold the fundamental principle of one person, one vote. It should be changed to do that.

Quebec, as well, should allow groups that have a lot of support from voters to spend a certain amount per voter that they have as a member or supporter. I will be sending a detailed policy paper on that.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I’m not seeing any further questions. Thanks so much for your presentation, Duff. Have a great afternoon.

Duff Conacher: My pleasure, and I welcome any further questions that your researchers, clerks may ask when receiving the written submission.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Great, thanks again.

Welcome, Karren Smith. You’re up. Just to go over the rules again, you have five minutes for a presentation and approximately five minutes for questions. Whenever you’re ready.

Karren Smith

Karren Smith: I speak to you from the traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nation, and I’m down by the river. I bring you the goodwill of my ancestors as far away as the Mi’kmaq, who also may be listening across the Salish Sea to you in the land of the lək̓ʷəŋən It’s very comforting, Mr. Chair, that I don’t have to walk on the water.

[3:05 p.m.]

I feel very privileged to have the health and technical assistance to be able to connect in any way, much less electronic, with the government organism whose purpose is to listen and recommend. Being in the company of the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform is extraordinary in itself with special people like parliamentary secretaries, even though the hon. Chair is absent and you’re replacing her at this moment. I’m filled with anticipation — wild — but I also feel that I’m holding a delicate blossom yet to be opened in this heat.

MLA Ward Stamer, are you the timekeeper and the scorekeeper?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): No, ma’am, but I’m just trying to follow the rules. So if you have a presentation, please let us have it.

Karren Smith: Good. My name is Karren. One name I have. I will not talk about sex. I would like your assurance that you’ve had a nutritious lunch, your blood sugar is up, and your joints are hydrated.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yes, ma’am.

Karren Smith: Karren is my name.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yes, Karren.

Karren Smith: Thank you. You can call me anything. But I did not sign up to defend or debate, persuade or preach, argue or teach, convince or sell.

Guess what. My understanding is that your recommendations do not either. Take the heat off. It’s called the latest boogie in town. Group decision-making based on evidence-based practice, using critical thinking and effective communications skills that you are demonstrating, even during this presentation.

There’s no shortage of generosity, goodwill, wealth of available research and buckets of programs already in place to chart the unique path it will and must take in British Columbia. But remember, I am a creature nearing the end of my runway, like the expiry date of first-past-the-post, long past its shelf life.

Are you still reading me?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yes, I am, Karren.

Karren Smith: Yay. Thank you.

An electoral system needs to be examined as a way of life: how we hear, how we smell and what we trust. It reflects how we see the world. To be sure, replacing first-past-the-post with proportional representation is not a magic bullet or a quick fix, any more than first-past-the-post was imagined a few years ago, before my time.

Of any single change you could accomplish in your life to effect systemic change, it would be implementing proportional representation. The facts are clear. The how in B.C. will be how you implement it. Change the settings. Talk the tick. Dare to move the dial on the international democracy assessment to change what matters most.

The jig is up. It’s boogie boys with your best bangles time. In full acknowledgement and respect of our personal biases, I request: would you be willing to recommend proportional representation, the elaboration and implementation, based on evidence-based practices, before the next election?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): That is your question and presentation? Would we recommend it?

Karren Smith: Both. Yes.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): That’s exactly what this committee is tasked to do.

MLA Clare.

Sheldon Clare: Just if I might point out, the committee is committed to deliberate and examine, but we are not making any recommendations until we do that, as I understand our role, Mr. Chair.

[3:10 p.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yes, thank you for that.

Karren, I have a question. We’ve heard from a wide variety of speakers over the last almost two weeks. Is there any proportional representation that you favour?

I know you’ve mentioned that it’s, you know, pretty much up to us to gather the information, use our resources, use our experience, petition the House and to move forward. Is there any particular form, when you look at other jurisdictions in the world, that you would like us to try to emulate or at least try to replicate what they are able to do?

Karren Smith: No. It would be very unwise for me to recommend what evidence-based practices show.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay. As a follow-up, there’s quite a call for whether it’s ranked balloting, single transferable vote or multiple members, and the implications. Do you still stand by the premise that some people — I won’t say most — believe that they are unfairly represented when there is anywhere between 8 or 10 percent of the population that is not represented by 8 or 10 percent of the seats, as an example.

Karren Smith: My understanding of that is evidence-based. Is that yours?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, I think we’re trying to gather evidence on this point. We’ve had submissions where polling has indicated a wide variety of different results. One person threw out a poll that said 68 percent of people want proportional representation; in another poll, it was 10 percent. It’s very hard to gauge that evidence when you’re only getting a certain segment of the population that is basically making representations to this committee.

Karren Smith: With all due respect, defer to the people who have done the research. The evidence is very clear.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Another quick question, then. Do you believe we’ve had different opportunities to show what we could or could not do when we implement whatever the system is, if we do decide to change?

One is that, because of our legislative responsibilities, we can change it for the next election. We can turn around and have either a one- or a two-election time frame, where we change it, and there’s an opportunity to either modify it or go back. Or the third is nothing at all.

Is there a preference in those three categories that you would prefer?

Karren Smith: No. I would defer to you, because this is not my personal preference. It’s not my bias. I am deferring to whatever decision you make based on the evidence, not on my personal opinion.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, not seeing any more questions, Karren, I really want to thank you for your presentation and your spirited communication with us. It’s been a pleasure and just a great opportunity for us to be able to spend some time with you.

Karren Smith: Hon. Chair, may I add that your model and courage is an example of an engaging democratic process. I look forward to action, based on the recommendations.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thank you very much for that. I appreciate that.

I’d like to welcome Bill Sundhu from Kamloops. He’s not representing any organization today.

Just the review of the rules this time, Bill. Five minutes for your presentation, five minutes for questions.

Bill Sundhu

Bill Sundhu: Well, thank you, hon. members. I really appreciate the opportunity to address this committee. No doubt you have voluminous material, and I commend you for your work.

[3:15 p.m.]

I’m going to summarize my submission. I have made a written submission, and it really has three aspects to it, but the core of it is to urge you to engage in electoral reform, and that is proportional representation.

I do this as an individual citizen, and I submit to you — or I’d like to believe — that my experience of 40 years in our courts, constitutional law, rule of law, and student of history, and my work internationally in human rights law, including constitutional development, training judges in other countries and as list of counsel on the International Criminal Court in the Hague….

What’s basically happened for me in the evolution of my views…. I believe it was around 2005 that British Columbia had a referendum on electoral reform, under the previous Premier, Gordon Campbell. At that time, I voted no. I didn’t really take much time to study the issue. I had this confidence or smugness: “Well, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? We’re fine in Canada.”

Over the years, we’ve seen tremendous changes globally and in our country. I’ve come to a firm view, in recognizing that democracies are fragile, including not taking our own system for granted. We have limited voter participation, which generally is around 50 to 60 percent votes cast. We elect majority governments — as you may have heard from other submitters; I’m not sure — with a minority of the vote, not 50 percent.

I have personally expended considerable time studying: what is a system to improve our democratic elections? We have always had to bring changes, for example, when we first had suffrage…. We have a 19th-century system, first-past-the-post. Women were not allowed to vote; various segments of our population were not allowed to vote. Since then, we’ve had various reforms including votes for historically excluded groups, election financing laws, independent election commissions and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In a nutshell, we are seeing the rise of authoritarianism, the erosion of public confidence in democratic norms, extreme partisanship, regionalism and polarization. My view, and my submission to you, is that we need a democratic system that reflects the real will of the people. I have made a written submission, so I’m not going to go through it. I’m assuming that if you haven’t already, in due course you will read it and consider my submissions.

Essentially, what I’m getting at is that we are witnessing today the biggest change in global order — and we’re not immune in Canada; we are impacted by it — since the fall of the Berlin Wall. There are great, new threats to security. We have global trade intercepted, interrupted; our country is under threat; the principle of cooperation is under threat; and we have increasing cynicism. We have eroding voter trust and apathy.

To engage the public and have confidence in our electoral system, I am urging that you do consider a proportional-representation type of system. We have nefarious forces which are exploiting public discontent. We see that our democracy is underinvested, including our voting system. This is fuelling the power of nefarious forces, including the far right.

We have to feel and understand people’s insecurity to rebuild trust in the system, in the community and in our state, and that fundamentally includes our voting system.

I submit that proportional representation would engage more participation — more young people, civil society, political parties — and translate into legislation. It’s up to us. If not us, who else will step in? I’m a strong advocate for political party cooperation. It strengthens us. It’s for the greater good and will unify us much more than we are now.

As much as these threats are out there, it’s also an opportunity for us to be open-minded and collaborate for a more credible, responsive democratic system. I have confidence that we have the capacity to make meaningful changes.

That’s my five minutes.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, you’re right on time, Bill. Thanks so much for your presentation, and I look forward to your submissions. I want to thank you for all the good work that you’ve done behind the scenes, also, on the political scene. We know it takes a lot of work. I know we’ve crossed paths before.

[3:20 p.m.]

You’ve been very respectful, and I really appreciate the opportunity, when we can agree to disagree, that we can certainly have our opportunities to speak freely. I think that’s really why we’re having these discussions — to be able to sit down in a room, have our conversations and try to determine what the best way to go forward is.

Bill, we were talking about misinformation, and I just wanted to bring it up. Do you have any preference — this is just you, personally — about dropping the voting age to 16? We’ve had discussions about that, and the U.K. has just announced today that they’re going to be doing that.

Also, they’ve directly identified the potential effects of online misinformation and disinformation, and some of the safeguards and guardrails that they have in Europe and that, we don’t have here. Is that something that you would like us to be able to try to go forward with? Even though we know most of those responsibilities are federal, do you think that B.C. should be actively engaging as well to try to limit the disinformation and a lot of the meanness and polarization that we seem to be finding online?

Bill Sundhu: There are two aspects to what you’re asking. First of all, I’m aware that Scotland and Wales permit voting at age 16, and as you’ve noted, the U.K. — I think it was on the news today — has done that. I have looked at that before. I think it’s worthy of consideration. It’s not the most important step, but I think if we engage younger people at an earlier age….

When I’ve spoken to high school students in my capacity as a lawyer, as a former judge but also as a federal candidate — I ran in 2015 and 2021 — I find those young people quite informed, quite engaged. There are studies showing that if you vote once, you’re more likely to vote again, and if you never vote, you’re not likely to vote again. I think if we engage younger people, there’s benefit in considering that.

As far as disinformation goes, it’s a very complex topic. As you’ve noted, the federal government has a huge role. I do think this is a key factor — misinformation, disinformation — that fuels conspiracy theories, cynicism about our systems, cynicism about our politicians. No doubt all of you have heard on the doorstep: “You’re all the same. It doesn’t really matter who you get in.” Well, that’s not true. I do believe that most people that are elected are genuinely committed for the greater good and the greater welfare.

We have a system that is in erosion. We had the convoy. We have separatist movements. So I do think that disinformation is a key factor that we have to address, and Europe is taking substantial steps. I don’t have time to get into the details of that, and I don’t profess to be an expert, but I’m hoping you will receive some of that information to see at least what can be done jurisdictionally, under our constitution, for a province versus the federal government.

This is vital because we are particularly vulnerable to disinformation, propaganda, even foreign interference, for example, from south of the border and other places, and that works on eroding public confidence.

I even have friends — and I’m sure you all do — where you sometimes are shocked at what they’re saying, the cynicism that they carry, the apathy or the things that they maintain are factually correct when they’re not. That is due to the insidious role of social media. Obviously, there’s a good aspect to social media, but we do need some guardrails. Technology is moving very, very quickly, and we haven’t been able to keep pace.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Great. Thanks for your answer.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Bill, for your presentation. I really appreciate your insights.

My first question to you is whether you think that civics education in the K-to-12 system should be mandated and whether there should be a specific framework or whether that should be spread out over different courses, over a larger number of grades so that there’s consistent education.

As we’ve learned, up until now, there are different components of civic education. Some of it is life skills, some of it is respectful dialogue, and some of it is how you critically think about information that you’re receiving or information that is in front of you.

What are your thoughts on that?

Bill Sundhu: I think this is vital, and I think it has to be continuous throughout the education, the fundamentals of grade 1 right through 12.

[3:25 p.m.]

I think it’s fair to say that we have seen an erosion or a profound lack of understanding of civics, rule of law and constitutions and of how democracy works south of the border, and we have some of those aspects here. It’s just that we share the largest border in the world, and a lot of those influences cross the border here.

I think it’s vitally important for us to promote, encourage and advance public education in connection with the art or science of government, with civics and other branches of political, social and economic science, including our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We have to engage young people and plant the seed early. If they understand citizenship at an early age, they’re likely to be more engaged, more contributing and to uphold the system as citizens into adulthood.

Amna Shah: If I may, just one more question. We have heard from presenters who have brought up concerns that a pro rep system could give way to extreme voices. There have been many arguments made by lots of presenters. The one I wanted to ask you about is whether you think that that is possible by way of legitimizing extreme speech and bringing it into the House.

There are many arguments that, well, it’s already happening. Whether it’s first-past-the-post, whether it’s any other system, you can’t prevent that from happening.

There are also arguments that no, pro rep would actually prevent that from happening. It would encourage dialogue because it would keep people who engage in these types of politics inside and not on the streets.

Then there’s also the argument that, well, if you bring that in, you’re in a way legitimizing. So it actually shouldn’t affect, whether they’re outside or inside. They could be both.

What are your thoughts on that?

Bill Sundhu: I’ll answer that in more than one part.

You can have a floor so that…. Some countries have done this. Often Israel or Italy is used as a bad example to say you shouldn’t go pro rep because fringe parties or extreme parties get in, and they have too many elections. Actually, if you look at Canada, we’ve had a lot of minority governments over the past two or three decades. But aside from that, you can have a floor. You can say if a party doesn’t get 5 percent or 7 percent of the vote, it doesn’t get that proportionality, that representation. That’s one.

Two is we cherish freedom of expression. It’s a guaranteed right in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But we have section 1 of our Charter, which does allow certain restrictions in the interest of a free and democratic society where it’s reasonably justifiable, and that’s why we can have anti-hate laws. I think that’s a reasonable balance, and we count on the wisdom of our judges to interpret that in a healthy, proper way that respects those values and respects the boundaries there and creates those boundaries. I think that’s there.

The other thing, ultimately…. I think civic education, public education is important in this. In international human rights law, we use not just the term “democracy” — because democracy is just about elections and who gets the most votes — but also the term — and it’s a political science or legal term — “liberal democracy.” Liberal democracy means, yes, there’s the majority vote, and you respect the votes of the public. But we have guaranteed constitutional rights, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, the right to a fair trial, freedom of expression and to protect minorities as well.

You know, often we say that what were once orthodoxies become the prevailing views. We have that balance, so you also need an ethical, functioning community that is informed and understands those values.

I hope that answer helps, but the bottom line is you can have a floor to keep extremist parties out. And if you have good public education, you have better future citizens that hopefully will make wiser, more principled decisions that respect democracy and human rights and individual dignity.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I want to return to something you mentioned earlier in your presentation — that in 2005 you voted no to PR. You’ve talked about the nefarious forces at work in society these days, and we’re certainly seeing it around us. You’re a supporter of proportional representation, as I understand it, now.

How do you see proportional representation helping to address those nefarious forces?

[3:30 p.m.]

Bill Sundhu: Thank you for the question. I have addressed that, I would like to believe, extensively in my written submission. But the bottom line is that by having a wider representation of the voters’ choices, you not only increase voter participation, but you address…. For example, you would address regionalism.

Let’s look at British Columbia. There are lots of voters in the Interior in the North that vote New Democrat or Green but don’t have much representation, and vice versa in Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland, where you have a lot of Conservative voters but we’re not electing Conservatives. So you have this regional imbalance, which I don’t think is ultimately healthy. That’s one.

When you have greater representation proportionality, more voices, diverse voices are heard, and I think that leads to more cooperation. Ultimately, people feel, “Well, what I believe matters. My vote matters. I have a representative that I can elect,” rather than, “Well, you know what? I live in a riding,” a person might say, “that will never elect a person or reflect the values that I support.” Those kinds of arguments I think you’ve probably heard from other people that have made submissions to you.

But I think the nefarious forces are that, you know…. Look, today or yesterday CBC did a thing saying Stats Canada has said that the beginning of 2025 has the highest degree of inequality in Canada. Well, inequality also results in segments of our population that are angry. They’re insecure. They’re fearful.

But if we have proportional representation…. It’s not a panacea for everything, but I would like to believe and submit that the evidence is that you get a greater representation of voices, and you tend to get better policy that’s more comprehensive and inclusive and more sustainable, because you don’t get that whipsaw effect when one party comes in and gets rid of what the other party did and vice versa.

There’s extensive research on that, and I’m going to be as bold, I hope, in assuming that you’ve heard some of those submissions. I would say that proportional representation is a key component in addressing these kinds of fears and insecurities and nefarious forces, but alone it’s not.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much for your presentation, Bill. I always look forward to having a great conversation with you, and we look forward to your submissions. Have a great day.

Bill Sundhu: Thank you for your hard work and your public service.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Next up, we have Connie. Welcome.

Constance More

Constance More: Hello, MLAs. My name is Constance, or Connie, More.

I am grateful to live on lək̓ʷəŋən territory in Langford, but today I’m speaking to you from Quw'utsun territory on Thetis Island.

I am a 79-year-old retired lifetime citizen who wants a better world legacy, especially in how we treat each other. I came to Canada in 1970, becoming a volunteer for political improvements even before becoming a voter in 1973.

As you know, our unfair and tricky first-past-the-post voting system distorts results, such as having a single winner with 40 percent of the count so that 60 percent of votes are shut out. Geographic areas with varied viewpoints thus seem to have only one perspective. The chosen candidate is then supposed to represent many people who don’t agree with their party. How crazy is that?

[3:35 p.m.]

This typical result fosters an adversarial two-party system in which nobody seems happy, as policies and leaderships flip-flop. Any proportional system would be better than winner-take-all systems like first-past-the-post and alternative vote.

So what kind of society do we want? Most democracies use proportional representation governance. Fair representation, true majority cooperation, long-term planning that’s not tied to election cycles and civil behaviour result.

I’m reminded of a COVID decision in my own neighbourhood. We couldn’t visit in our homes, so we gathered about a metre apart outside in our cul-de-sac every Friday, weather permitting. We do not share the same political views, probably having every party and type of non-voter on my street, but we respectfully discuss and find agreement on all kinds of things, including municipal, provincial, federal and international politics. We’ve planned events and supported each other when needed. This weekly gathering continues, meeting a human need and creating cooperative accomplishments.

B.C. can also have balanced governance, supported by significant majorities via cooperation. To achieve this result via educated decision-making, without undue bias while inspiring trust, I think this committee has two possible paths forward. In any case, you can deflect fear-based reactions to change by avoiding a referendum, which unwisely and absurdly assumes that all voters have both time and inclination to study voting systems and their impacts instead of leaving that to experts.

Here’s my possible path No. 1 for you: all-party agreement by this committee to commission a specific type of proportional representation. Get it passed into law and implement it before the next election.

Or possible path No. 2: majority agreement by this committee to empower a non-elite mini-public citizens assembly to study, choose and commission experts to implement a specific type of proportional representation before the next election. Sorry about the long sentence.

Either way, a cross-party decision to implement PR would be popular. This change is taking us too long, similar to the long paths to now unquestioned things like women’s suffrage, votes for non-property owners, electoral voices for First Nations — you get the idea.

Now is the time for this change. Will you do the right thing?

Thank you for listening.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much, Connie, for your presentation. Any questions?

I’ll ask a quick one. Thank you very much for your 1, 2, 3. I appreciate that. Is there any particular proportional representation that you personally have in mind?

Constance More: I would be happy with any system that results with proportional representation. There are so many possibilities. I don’t have a personal preference.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): So, as an example, if there were two major parties, and the third party got 8 percent of the vote, you would want fair representation of 8 percent of the seats?

Constance More: I know that different proportional representation systems and decisions about them look at whether there should be a threshold under which representation wouldn’t be guaranteed.

[3:40 p.m.]

I’m just going to make a reference to something as to why I don’t think I can really answer that question. Like a lot of people, I drive a car. I am very happy to have the car function as it should, but I don’t know how to build the car or repair a car, and I don’t really care to have to learn that. I just want the result to get me where I want to go.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, that’s a very good analogy. Thank you very much for that.

Having seen no other questions, thank you very much for your time and have a great afternoon.

Constance More: Thank you for your time too.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay. We’ll take a five-minute recess right now, quickly, and then we’ll get right back at it.

The committee recessed from 3:40 p.m. to 3:51 p.m.

[Ward Stamer in the chair.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Hello, Abigail. I’m MLA Stamer. I’m the Chair of the committee. First of all, it’s our extreme pleasure to be able to welcome you here today. You have the distinction of being the youngest presenter so far in the last two weeks.

You have five minutes for your presentation and five minutes for follow-up questions. You may begin whenever you would like.

Abigail Armstrong

Abigail Armstrong: The first thing I wanted to talk about was that I think kids should vote. I was thinking that kids should vote because the adults in the government are making decisions for kids, and kids don’t get to decide who’s going to be making decisions for them. It’s just not fair. And right now, the adults aren’t listening to the kids.

Let’s talk about the education. We need more janitors, and the government isn’t doing that. They’re taking away the janitors for next year in my area. If they take away the janitors next year, a lot more kids are going to get sick and get hurt. Some kids wouldn’t go to the bathroom because the bathrooms were too dirty. The reason the janitor wasn’t cleaning the bathroom was because he was shovelling the snow outside so kids wouldn’t slip.

Also, the paper. I had an essay wrote that was taken for 45 percent of my grade, and I only got half credit because the teacher couldn’t read it because I had to write it on navy-blue paper.

That’s why I think kids should vote, because then they can choose who’s making the decisions for them, and then they can also help in the decision-making of what education is like for themselves and not just the adult’s perspective of what the kids should be like.

Yeah, I’m done.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much, Abigail. Can I ask a question? Where do you live?

Abigail Armstrong: Burnaby.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Burnaby, all right. Are you just finishing grade 3, going into grade 4?

Abigail Armstrong: I’m going into grade 5.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Wow.

Abigail Armstrong: I skipped a grade.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good for you.

Well, I was supposed to skip a grade when I was your age too, but they wouldn’t let me. I’m glad that they allow that now.

Do we have any questions for Abigail? I think MLA Clare would like to start.

Sheldon Clare: Hello, Abigail. Thank you very much for your presentation. It’s great to see someone engaged and interested in these important matters, such as yourself. It sounds like there are some real challenges at your school that need to be addressed.

[3:55 p.m.]

I thought it was interesting that you said kids should vote because adults are not necessarily making the best decisions for kids, but I thought I would ask you: do you like ice cream?

Abigail Armstrong: Yeah.

Sheldon Clare: Now, if you had the choice of eating ice cream at every meal and all the time, would you do that?

Abigail Armstrong: No.

Sheldon Clare: That’s very smart. I’m glad to hear it.

Has anyone told you that ice cream’s not a good thing to have at every meal?

Abigail Armstrong: Yeah.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. But if you had to vote on it, would you vote for ice cream more often or less often?

Abigail Armstrong: Probably less often. I mean, what would it be going against?

Sheldon Clare: Well if you had to vote a choice…. Say you were to have vegetables versus ice cream or haggis versus ice cream, for example.

Abigail Armstrong: Well, it depends on what we were voting on. To eat more, to be more healthy, or what would be your favourite food or something?

Sheldon Clare: Yeah, so about what would be your favourite food for the day? Like, would you be involved in the planning of the meals?

Abigail Armstrong: Well, I’d probably have the ice cream after the vegetables.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. That sounds very good to me. Thank you very much, Abigail.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for an amazing presentation. I really appreciate it.

You just mentioned that you’re going into grade 5. One of the things I wanted to ask you about was whether you would like your teachers to teach you all about government and how it works and how votes get made and stuff like that. Would that be something you’d be interested in learning more about?

Abigail Armstrong: Definitely. I want to be Prime Minister when I grow up. But I’m in a program that is for kids that know more about a certain topic. Mine was government. But, like, at my old class, nobody knew what the government was. One of them actually thought it was a grocery store.

Oh yeah, and they just cut the program that I was in, that people actually knew what the government was.

Rob Botterell: So you’d really support all of your friends and students being able to learn more about government and have that in the course so the teacher could work with you?

Abigail Armstrong: Mm-hmm.

Rob Botterell: Great, okay.

Amna Shah: Hello Abigail. Nice to meet you. Thank you for being here today.

I have to say I’m incredibly impressed by how eloquent you are and how you communicate your ideas. I’m very much looking forward to your bright future and seeing all the great things that you’re going to accomplish.

I really appreciate your argument that we should be very sensitive to your wishes about what it is that your future should look like, based on the things that are important to you. I just wanted to say that I appreciate your time. MLA Botterell asked the question that I wanted to ask, but I do have to say I thank you for being here.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Abigail, if I could ask you one question. What else do you see missing in your school right now? You said that there’s a service level of reductions, the janitor. You’re talking about not having clear white paper. You have to use navy paper. I’m guessing that was probably donated.

What else would you like to see that you don’t get to see or learn from when you’re in school?

Abigail Armstrong: My teacher. My teacher just lost her job because they cut the program.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much for your presentation, Abigail. It was very informative for all of us, and we hope you have a great summer and look forward to going back to school in the fall.

[4:00 p.m.]

Hello, Brock. I’ll just welcome you.

This is Brock Schuman. Brock is going to have five minutes for a presentation and five minutes for questions.

So whenever you’re ready.

Brock Schuman

Brock Schuman: Perfect, yeah.

Hello, valued committee members. I’m Dr. Brock Schuman, CEO of Azor Bioteck in Victoria, B.C. Life sciences and other purpose-led businesses like mine are under attack, enduring a completely artificial downturn in the U.S. Even forestry and other resource-based economies are under attack.

The committee has a tremendous responsibility before them today to help combat such blatant economic sabotage. You have the opportunity to set the standard model for electoral reform early enough to be emulated by other provinces and the federal government well before the next election cycles.

The Allied powers implemented PR in postwar Germany to successfully eradicate and prevent the resurgence of fascism, but they failed to implement such safeguards domestically. We need them now more than ever.

This is an appeal to immediate action, to submit legislation to enact electoral reform without delay to combat the most pressing and most neglected matters of national security — information warfare. I urge the committee to act fast to enact legislate-first, referendum-later models.

There is no legal requirement under the B.C. Constitution Act or Election Act that a public vote be held. The Legislative Assembly has the clear authority and profound responsibility to protect our electoral system through legislation. Referendum would be preferable to inaction, but it would once again be targeted by the very disinformation attacks that proportional representation was designed to combat. Previous referendums on electoral change have been compromised by arbitrary super-majority requirements, flawed rollouts and, more than anything, by malicious disinformation attacks from anti-democratic actors.

Over the years, I’ve regularly heard well-meaning people echo PR disinformation. In person, such lies are easy to debunk. In the public sphere, many of those vulnerable to disinformation attacks will not seek an informed perspective before voting to sabotage initiatives they don’t recognize the importance of.

We’ve all witnessed increasingly sophisticated disinformation tactics firsthand — campaigns like those that radicalized B.C.’s more vulnerable constituents to elect openly captured foreign agents, white supremacists and other extremists that bring shame to the Legislature and in no way reflect Canadian values.

One of the strengths of PR is that it naturally diversifies the political landscape, allowing large parties to align more closely with their core values rather than broadening their tents to cater to the increasingly divisive, disinformation-radicalized minority.

Disinformation is not a passive threat. Information pathogens are funded and orchestrated by foreign adversaries to dismantle democratic institutions. And they are working. Putin’s information warfare has been so successful that the Republican Cold War McCarthyists are now chanting that they’d rather be Russian than Democrat.

Divisiveness as a national attack is an existential threat to democracy, Canadian sovereignty and human life across the globe. Our southern neighbour’s authoritarian backslide is a dire warning. Canada is not immune, and British Columbia has already shown significant signs of disinformation influence. It is happening here, and we must act now.

Federal and provincial bills to directly combat such active and deeply entrenched national threats are dangerously overdue but beyond the scope of this committee. PR offers another profoundly effective tool we can use to combat disinformation to safeguard democracy by enforcing consensus politics, to curtail authoritarianism, encouraging major parties to consolidate their core values, diluting the influence of captured or radicalized politicians, increasing the cost and complexity of capture by hostile actors and by increasing the risk of political subversion.

[4:05 p.m.]

The political NDP holds a narrow majority. The federal party just lost 18 seats, not because of policy failure but because of divisive disinformation and because even informed constituents were forced to vote strategically. Let the people of B.C. vote their conscience and maintain a balanced power system that will empower legislatures to also vote their conscience. Do this now and you will inspire the nation to follow.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much, Brock. Any questions from the panel?

I’ll just ask a quick question, Brock. Thanks for the presentation. You were mentioning to be decisive. Yes, we do have legislation in place right now where we can go through the process and enact PR if the majority of the members of the House agree to that.

Is there any particular system that you would prefer personally, whether it’s an STV or whether it’s an MMP? Do you have a personal preference?

Brock Schuman: Pretty much anything but ranked choice ballots. Anything would be an improvement on what we have now. So I think it’s not really in the scope of the committee to…. Yeah, anything would be preferable.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Great. Well, we certainly appreciate your time. Thanks very much for presenting in front of us. Have a great day.

Next we have Jane Sterk. Hello, Jane. Again, five minutes for your presentation and five minutes for questioning, and you can start when you’re ready.

Jane Sterk

Jane Sterk: I am ready. In case I run out of time, I want to make four points in my presentation.

The first is that I hope you recommend proportional representation, that you persuade all of your colleagues in the legislature that that’s the right decision to make, and that you implement it for the next election.

My second point is: don’t have a citizens assembly, no studies, no experts. You can choose any PR system. It will make a difference for the province. The three choices in 2017 are there for your choosing.

Third, there should be no referendum. It’s a cynical way to keep the status quo, and it will never succeed.

Fourth, the people of the province will support you.

I was a candidate for the Green Party of B.C. in 2005 when we had the option of having STV as our voting system. As a candidate, with all of the other candidates in the Green Party, I canvassed for the referendum, for a “yes” vote on the referendum. We brought in a senator from Australia, Bob Brown. The Senate in Australia uses STV as their voting system. Just before the vote, the then leader of the Green Party made a public statement that the citizens assembly had been misled into choosing STV and that MMP was the only solution that we could have and that people should vote “no” for the referendum.

That deflated the whole team. We were just gobsmacked. I believe that it made the difference between the result that we got, which was 57.8 percent, and the 60 percent supermajority that had been imposed by Gordon Campbell.

After that, I felt that Gordon Campbell had the responsibility to say, yes, the citizens of B.C. had chosen — at almost 58 percent — STV, and he should have implemented it. Instead, he had another referendum in 2009, which failed miserably. All referendums in Canada have failed.

The one in New Zealand, which is the only place that I’m aware of where they were able to change the voting system using a referendum…. They spent almost 18 months educating the people of New Zealand, and they barely met the 50 percent requirement.

[4:10 p.m.]

So I would encourage you not to have a referendum.

I would also say that any form of an electoral system will be better than first-past-the-post. Personally, I prefer STV, but most people like MMP. In the 2017 referendum, you had the option of a hybrid system, which was a rural-urban system. It doesn’t matter. Any of them would be better than what we have.

I would say that, as a committee, you should come to a consensus. Choose the one that you want, run with it, and make sure that all your colleagues in the Legislature support you.

Then I would like to let you know that the people of Canada want electoral reform. In January 2025, before the federal election, EKOS ran a poll, and 68 percent of Canadians said that that they would like to change the voting system to a proportional one. Only 19 percent opposed, and 13 percent didn’t know.

In a 2022 EKOS poll, 76 percent of Canadians wanted to change to proportional representation, and there was a majority in all parties — Liberals had 73 percent, Conservatives had 69 percent, NDP had 84 percent, Greens had 91 percent and the Peoples Party of Canada had 72 percent.

My conclusion is that this would be one possibility for us to have better governance in this province. It would reduce the polarization that is increasing within the province, and I think it would create a more meaningful role for you as MLAs, where you could work with curiosity and collaboration to come to joint decisions that are better for the province of B.C.

Thank you.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation, Jane.

Any questions?

I have a question. And thanks again for your participation, even though it was a fair while ago. It’s not easy to put your name on a ballot, so thank you very much for doing that.

When you talked about STV and MMPs, is there a particular way that you would like us to do, like from a personal perspective? Would you want it STV? Would you want it rank-based? Would you want an MMP because of some of the regionalization that we have in this province? Do you have a personal preference?

Jane Sterk: Well, my personal preference is multi-member ridings with STV ranked choice. When I look at what happens in Ireland, I think that it has a better sense of proportionality and less divisiveness when I compare it to the MMP systems that I see in the world.

Quite frankly, I don’t think it matters. I think whatever you’re comfortable with as a committee, you should just support that and run with it and persuade all your colleagues that that’s what we need.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much for your presentation.

Seeing no further questions, I’d like to entertain an opportunity to say: have a great afternoon. Thanks again.

Next up, we have Peter Salmon.

I’d like to introduce Peter Salmon. Again, just as reference, you get five minutes for a presentation and five minutes for questioning, and you can start whenever you’re ready.

Peter Salmon

Peter Salmon: Awesome, yeah. Thank you all so much for having me here today. I’m sure it’s nice to be, like, close to the end of the two weeks. I know there were lots of presentations.

I’m really here to speak as a young person from B.C. I’m a psychology student at UVic. I just want to share sort of what I feel and also what I’ve observed among my peers.

In the last five years, what I’ve really noticed is this very consistent and very noticeable decline in political engagement among young people. This spans my friends, but also classmates, and just sort of broader peer networks. It’s super consistent.

The two sort of key issues that I think young people are identifying with are, first, this sort of perception of powerlessness. There’s like a very pervasive belief that we can’t make a difference, that our vote and our voice doesn’t really have an impact.

[4:15 p.m.]

The second part, that’s very related, is the sense that even if we do end up making a difference in who’s elected, the results feel the same no matter who wins.

The little engagement that I do see is almost always on the defensive side. It’s voting against someone you don’t want, rather than for someone you do. This is super consistent across the political spectrum. It’s not at all like a left-wing or a right-wing thing, I found.

The part that personally makes me sad is that I can never really fault these arguments. I’ve been able to vote two times in my life so far, and my vote has counted for something in zero of those times. I’ve never supported the winning candidate in either of my ridings. As such, my voice in forming this current government is non-existent, and this experience is far from unique. It’s mirrored in so many other young voters and, really, in voters of all ages.

What young people really want, from everyone I talk to, is just the sense that politicians and parties would actually bring forward solutions, plans and hopes for a better future — something that pushes life in the right direction and that gives freedom, opportunity and a chance at a life that we’ve sort of been promised but that doesn’t feel attainable.

Of course, the example always given is of housing affordability, but this really ranges so much further than that. If votes only count when they’re cast for the winners or done in a strategic way, I don’t really see how hope can exist in these conditions. The solution really feels like electoral reform.

We need a system where every vote actually matters, regardless of where you’re voting or if you’re voting for the winner. We need a system where a minority of the electorate can’t elect a supermajority government — really just a system where B.C. is accurately represented, where the people are mirrored in the parliament, and where people can vote for candidates and parties that they actually believe in.

One sort of criticism I’ve heard about electoral reform or about implementing some form of proportional representation is that it would be undemocratic to force a voting system upon people. To me, this doesn’t ring true, as our current system was forced on everyone in this room and really anyone born in the last couple of centuries.

No one has had any choice in our system, and if starting fresh today, I can’t imagine a constant argument for choosing first-past-the-post over the multitude of other options. Real representative democracy relies on every voice counting, not just the few who end up voting for the winners. As I see it, the path for youth engagement in politics and youth re-engagement lies through electoral reform.

Once every vote counts, traditional voter engagement campaigns will actually make sense and feel genuine. I’ve been told so many times — dozens of times in my life — that my vote matters, that every vote counts and that you have to get out there and go to the ballot box, but that actually hasn’t been true. My vote has never counted for anything. Until we have a proportional system where every vote actually does matter, I can’t see any sort of engagement campaign really making a difference to these issues.

I really appreciate you all having me here, and I’m happy to take any questions.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, thanks very much, Peter, for your presentation.

Amna Shah: Thanks, Peter, for your presentation. You mentioned that there’s no need to worry about forcing a system on people, because the system that we have currently was forced upon us.

I’m wondering. We’ve had a number of presenters present different pieces of information. At certain periods in time, it was quite obvious that the majority of people wanted some form of proportional representation; in other instances, not so much. We’ve had pollsters giving us information which actually is not necessarily consistent. There are different numbers everywhere.

Do you not think, in light of that, that it would be appropriate to ask the electorate whether we should remain with first-past-the-post, in a very simplistic manner?

[4:20 p.m.]

Peter Salmon: Definitely, there’s value in asking the electorate, and it’s happened in the past where it has had a majority of people supporting a change. Obviously, also, you know, the opposite has occurred. Polls are sort of difficult. Yeah, as you said, they’re never consistent, and it’s often very different from the actual outcome.

The best suggestion that I’ve heard is having a referendum, or perhaps like a referendum during an election, two or three elections after a new system has been implemented. That way, people actually get to experience the difference, and if it really does go badly, and if people aren’t happy with the change, we can return to the status quo. But it is naturally hard to break away from something that just sort of feels like the default.

That’s how I think about the value of a referendum. It should be after people have actually experienced the system.

Amna Shah: Thank you for that. I have one more question for you. You mentioned that you’re in psychology right now at UVic.

Peter Salmon: Yeah, at UVic.

Amna Shah: That’s great. I’m wondering, in your current experience, would you say that a majority of your peers are interested in electoral reform? Do you think that they’re engaged with the democratic or the government system currently?

Peter Salmon: Definitely the ones who are more engaged and aware of the systems — very rare to find one who isn’t in favour of some sort of reform. Though for the people who aren’t, they aren’t really aware of how our voting system works.

That’s sort of another piece of this I found. Especially during the federal election, but also during the provincial one, people almost vote as though we have proportional representation, even though we don’t. Because to most people, that feels like a more intuitive system, like your vote just counts towards the party that you support.

Amna Shah: Great, thank you.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Peter. I have a question. Are you currently in school right now?

Peter Salmon: Yeah, I’m in my third year of psychology.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Did you have any difficulty voting on campus? Is that where you voted?

Peter Salmon: Actually, no. In the past, I’ve always voted at the district electoral office, just in advance.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): This was one of the couple of things that have come up when it talks about voter engagement, Elections B.C. responsibilities, polling stations, those kinds of things. Did you have a sense, with your peers and the people around you, that there weren’t any access challenges when it came to voting?

You took it upon yourself to use the district office, knowing you could vote any day during the writ period, but was there any criticism or anything on people not knowing where the polling was or some of those kinds of things?

Peter Salmon: That isn’t something I’ve heard too much. I think, especially among a younger demographic, using the Elections B.C. website to find things is pretty intuitive.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay, and is there anything that you can see going forward…? One of the things that we talked about…. We’ve talked at length about social media, disinformation, those kinds of things.

Can you see us looking at trying to have more guardrails, more ways of not allowing Meta and these big companies being able to, you know, with algorithms and disinformation and all these kinds of things that are going on…? Where the Europeans are able to try to lessen that to some degree, do you think that that’s something that we should be doing here?

Peter Salmon: Definitely. I think, especially around elections, it shouldn’t be so easy for disinformation to exist on all sorts of social media platforms, especially stuff around fake voting locations or fake voting dates. Anything of that sort, I feel like, is far, far out of bounds. I guess the only challenge is, of course, not overstepping into preventing people from expressing their opinion, but yeah, I think more enforcement and more regulation would be good.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Peter. Good luck in your studies. I hope everything goes well.

Since you’re still in the education system, I thought I would ask a question about your education in civics when you were in the K-to-12 system. Did you hear about government? Did you hear about any theory or processes around politics or elections at any time in your K-to-12 education? Do you recall any of that?

Peter Salmon: I got basically nothing in high school. The only sort of social-studies-related classes I was in were a philosophy class and then a 20th-century world history class, and neither of those really touched much on democratic systems.

[4:25 p.m.]

I do remember in elementary school, we had a couple days where someone would come in to talk to the class, or we would do a mock vote, but it was definitely not much, and it never got into depth — just sort of the basics of, like, you vote for a person, and it contributes to the government. But no, nothing too advanced.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Thank you very much. That’s very helpful.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): All right. Well, thanks very much, Peter, for your presentation and our opportunity to ask you some pretty good questions. If there’s nothing further, I’d like to wish you a very good afternoon.

Peter Salmon: Awesome. Yeah. You all too. Thanks so much for having me.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): And with that, I will offer the opportunity….

A Voice: Move to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 4:25 p.m.