Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued debate on Bill 5. In Committee A, I call continued debate on the estimates of the Ministry of Finance.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 5 — CONSTITUTION
AMENDMENT ACT, 2017

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 5; L. Reid in the chair.

The committee met at 1:35 p.m.

On section 3 (continued).

Hon. D. Eby: Joining me for continued committee stage on Bill 5, which is the Constitution Amendment Act, and our discussion on section 3 relating to changing the general voting day from the spring until the fall and also from a Tuesday to a Saturday, are Nancy Carter, the executive director, civil policy and legislation office, justice services branch, Ministry of Attorney General, and Renee Mulligan, legal counsel of the same department.

Just before we begin. Prior to the break, my colleague across the way raised a number of questions related to the timing of when general voting day falls but, more particularly, in relation to the advance voting days over the Thanksgiving weekend. His concern about vacations and will people have adequate opportunity for advance voting — I think he raises good points.

I have asked staff to go back and look at whether there is an amendment that would address his concerns about the fact that the proposed amendment in section 6 would require Elections B.C. to hold a block of six consecutive advance voting days, which would necessarily take it over the Thanksgiving weekend. Staff are having a look at that.

As we get to section 6, if we get to section 6, I’ll just advise my colleague across the way that I’ll ask for that section to be stood down so that we can evaluate whether or not an amendment could address the concern, while achieving the goals of the government in this particular bill.

With that, I’m glad to hear any further questions the members may have in relation to this.

J. Rustad: Thank you to the minister for his comments. I’m glad to hear that. This process of committee stage on bills is an important process, because you do go through the bills line by line. Hopefully, there’s an opportunity to be able to improve on bills and improve, in particular, those components that could be potentially challenging or an issue that could limit, especially in the case of this — people’s ability to be able to vote. So I appreciate that.

I’m pretty sure we’ll get to section 6 today, at some point. Hopefully, we’ll get to that in a timely enough way that there should be an opportunity for you to be able to move that amendment on the floor. If not, of course, standing it down is an acceptable procedure, and we can move on through the rest of the bill.

Still back to section 3 in terms of this component. When we look through, as I mentioned before, this issue of the fourth calendar year taking it out 4½ years, the minister made mention about the jurisdictions that have done that. However, given the circumstances that we have in British Columbia at the moment, with the parliamentary composition in the state it is….

The fact that we do have a minority government and that there are significant changes that are being proposed by this government on a wide range of topics, all of which are somewhat unusual in a minority situation…. Usually, governments would be in a majority situation to be looking at moving these type of things forward. In light of that and in light of the arguments made before, I would propose to move an amendment standing in my name to Bill 5, to section 3.

[SECTION 3, by adding the underlined text as shown:

(2) Subject to subsection (1), a general voting day must occur on the third Saturday in October in the fourth calendar year following the general voting day for the most recently held general election starting with October 17, 2020.

(3) As an exception to subsection (2), if the campaign period for a general election to be held under that subsection would overlap with the campaign period for a general local election to be held under section 52 of the Local Government Act or the election period for a federal general election to be held under section 56.1 (2) or section 56.2 of the Canada Elections Act, the general voting day for the general election must be held instead on a date to be specified under the Election Act that the Lieutenant Governor in Council determines to be suitable after consulting the Chief Electoral Officer, the Leader of the Official Opposition and each leader of a recognized political party.

(4) In this section, “general election” and “general voting day” have the same meaning as in section 1 of the Election Act.]

On the amendment.

J. Rustad: I believe it was on the orders of the day, so the member has a copy of that. Now, in particular, when I look at the language that is added to this, this actual language was taken from the federal act, the Constitution Act.

[1:40 p.m.]

When they changed to their fixed election date, they specified the specific starting date of the election as part of it so that it would be clear with regards to how the next election would be held. It would be clear in terms of the starting date, how the elections should be carried on beyond that.

I know the member opposite has made the argument as to why it should be 4½ years. But, as I mentioned, given the composition, given the things that are happening, I think there’s no question in my mind, in talking to constituents and talking to members around the province, that they would be very comfortable with the date being an earlier date so that such substantive changes that the government is proposing — in the way that it’s managing and doing things within the province — would have an opportunity to be able to garner a clear majority of the people of the province of British Columbia before moving too far down its agenda.

With that, I know there are going to be a number of people that have an interest in providing some commentary around this amendment. I hope it is one that all sides of the House will certainly take into consideration in terms of when that next date was and being able to provide, like I say, the electorate an opportunity to be able to voice their perspective on what is happening in this chamber and what happened after the last election, with a perspective as to where they would like to see the future of the province of British Columbia.

I may have a few more comments to make in the closing part of this, but moving this amendment forward, I’ll cede to some of my colleagues to make some additional comments — unless, of course, the minister would like to add some commentary in advance.

Hon. D. Eby: I thank the member for his amendment. I have read it, and I will not be supporting it.

I don’t blame the member for wanting to have an election sooner. When I was in opposition, certainly, I wished that elections happened sooner. But the relatively straightforward reason for this is that when you set in place a change from a spring fixed-term election to a fall fixed-term election, the established precedent across the country — there are many jurisdictions that have done this — follows the same process, and we have followed the same process.

In Saskatchewan, the result was a four-year-and-three-month term for government. In Manitoba, a four-year-and-five-month term for government. In Quebec, their next election date is four years and six months. Prince Edward Island, four years and four months. Newfoundland and Labrador, four years and eight months. These are all jurisdictions that moved from a spring election term, as we are in B.C., to a fall election term, which we are proposing to move to under this act.

Now, of course, we are in a minority parliament, and there is certainly the opportunity for a majority of the members in this place to decide that the current government is not operating in a way that they believe is consistent with the public interest and for them to issue a non-confidence vote and for there to be an election at any time. This bill does not change that.

What this says is that as long as the government preserves the confidence of the House, the next election will be October 16, 2021. The math is quite straightforward, as is the date. That is the reason for proceeding on this basis.

It is a minority parliament. This government operates with the confidence of the House. Any member is able to test that — although, hopefully, not too often, because it’s a lot of work for everybody to show up and vote. Certainly, any member is welcome to test that at any time that we’re sitting.

If the government is tested and fails, then so be it. But if not, under the legislation as proposed, this is when the next election date will be, which is consistent with all of the other jurisdictions in Canada that have headed in this direction.

G. Kyllo: I’m proud to rise in the House today to support the amendment to section 3 of Bill 5.

We are proud to have introduced fixed election legislation while in government, putting us in line with other jurisdictions across Canada, the Commonwealth, European nations — ranging from Sweden to South Africa. However, three words come to mind when giving consideration to Bill 5 as presented by the current government: presumptuous, self-serving and disrespectful to B.C. voters. The prospect of four years of the current illegitimate government is reckless enough without adding a further six-month sentence for British Columbians.

The NDP have developed an interesting pattern of delaying decisions, citing a need to study, review, consult, revisit, reconsider or otherwise postpone most every single other decision put before this government: the George Massey Tunnel, Site C and ride-sharing, to name just a few.

[1:45 p.m.]

But, hey, when it comes to consideration of a fundamental change to the voting date for our next provincial election, extending our incompetent government’s term for a further six months, the NDP government is primed to do so without a hint of public input, evaluation, consideration or consultation.

This bill, in general, is all part of the NDP-Green deal, the proverbial green tail wagging the orange dog. The legislation that their junior partners have forced the NDP to adopt, much as they forced them to adopt taxpayer subsidies for political parties — another NDP broken promise.

This behaviour appears to be consistent with a long list of other broken NDP promises, including the renter rebate and $10-a-day daycare. This illegitimate government will cause enough damage to B.C.’s economy without the prospect of adding an additional six months to their term in office.

Now, to be clear, I have little issue with the suggested move to a fall election date. However, I am vehemently opposed to the NDP utilizing Bill 5 to extend their term in office. Should the government feel so obliged to move to a fall election date, the date of the next provincial election should be moved to the fall of 2020 and every four years thereafter.

Now, with respect to the prospect of establishing the fall election date to fall on the third Saturday in October, my colleague from Nechako Lakes did an extremely exemplary job of raising significant challenges presented by holding a general election on a Saturday following the Thanksgiving long weekend. I will not take a great deal of time recanting the many valid concerns and sound arguments that were posed by my friend the member for Nechako Lakes. However, I feel incumbent to restate the obvious.

Many British Columbians take advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend as an opportunity to take an extended holiday to visit family and friends, both domestic and abroad. Additionally, many British Columbians, snowbirds as they’re often referred to, also head south immediately following the Thanksgiving long weekend, to beat the snow.

In both of these circumstances, British Columbians are either fully denied the ability to take advantage of advance polling dates — advance polling opportunities are greatly diminished — and denied the opportunity to participate in the general voting day.

Previous bills brought forward by the now government suggested a fall election date set for the first Tuesday in October. Now, there must be significant considerations to the suggestion that the members opposite identify the date as the third Saturday in October — both a weekday and in the first week of October. Clearly, the direction set forward in this bill, identifying the third Saturday in October, is motivated by something other than increasing the opportunity for the maximum number of British Columbians to fully participate in B.C.’s provincial election, as the bill, as presented in this House, clearly fails in this regard.

I, therefore, am supporting the amendment to section 3 of Bill 5, moved by the member for Nechako Lakes.

Hon. D. Eby: Just for members who may be making remarks and might have missed my earlier comments, I agree that the member raised a good point about the Thanksgiving week. We have staff that are looking at a possible amendment to try to achieve addressing the member’s concerns as well as achieve the aims of the government, which are informed by the former Chief Electoral Officer in British Columbia.

So any members that are addressing that in your remarks, just so that you know, we are aware of the issue. I’ve got a commitment to the member that our staff are looking at a potential amendment to section 6, which is the section that deals with that. As far as I understand, it’s not dealt with in the amendment.

G. Kyllo: Yes, with all due respect to the minister, until such time as that amendment has actually taken place, I feel it’s incumbent to make the statement to ensure that the members at home watching and those in the gallery are fully aware of the considerations that need to be undertaken with respect to the fall election date.

Hon. R. Fleming: I look forward to my colleague’s comments in a moment. I’m sorry if I upstaged him. I was told to rise at this time to speak on this amendment, and I have to say that I disagree with it.

I have heard other members, at the early stage of this debate, suggest, for their own reasons, which I think are quite transparent, that they would like to have an election sooner. They would like to have an election in 3½ years. That’s not surprising.

The member said: “Look, our government, when they were in government, introduced fixed election dates as a reform” — not a bad reform. I think there was unanimity in the House at that time, when it occurred. We’ve had several election cycles in British Columbia now where an idea that may have been dismissed originally as somewhat Americanized has become well acquainted in British Columbia.

[1:50 p.m.]

The more significant reform — the most significant reform that has happened around campaigns and elections in British Columbia, by the way — is the one that was introduced by this new government to ban big money in politics. I think that’s the most critical piece of legislation that we’ve had the opportunity, at this early stage of the new government, to introduce and pass.

On this amendment, I’m not persuaded. I find it a little bit ironic that the former government across the way, the opposition, who, after working with local government leaders, extended local government terms from three years to four years, would now seek a shorter duration between elections for the provincial parliament.

Now, I’m additionally not persuaded because this amendment comes after a summer interregnum period where that side of the House tried to cling to power for months and months and tried to impinge upon the independence of the Queen’s representative at Government House to try and get their way and cling to power. It’s in that context that they now propose that the new government, which has a partnership with the Green Party, should be robbed of an opportunity to govern for the full term.

I don’t remember the B.C. Liberal Party voicing strenuous objections when independent members of the House argued for a fall election in the past. Indeed, they don’t argue with the wisdom of having a fall election. The legislation that we propose, unamended, would not conflict with local government elections, and that’s critically important. It will not conflict with the public holiday around Thanksgiving. That will be determined.

Let’s also look at additional elements that should be brought into this debate. Another proposed significant change that will be considered by the people of British Columbia in a year’s time is about their voting system. British Columbians will be asked again whether they would prefer an alternative to the first-past-the-post voting system, whether they would like to see more pluralism in their Legislature, whether they would like to see more opportunities for power-sharing between parties to provide good governance in British Columbia. That’s the question that is going to go before British Columbians.

It’s an opportunity for B.C. to say, “We’d like to stay with the system that a very small minority of parliamentary democracies continue to use” or: “We would like to join a much larger league of nations and states that use a proportional representation voting system.”

That vote occurs in November of 2018. The counting of that ballot and then the work that would be required by Elections B.C. and the voter education going into an election would be better served in the fall of 2021. That’s why I support the original legislation.

I think the member’s amendment is entirely self-serving, although I’m a little perplexed. For a leaderless party to…. I would caution them to be careful what they wish for.

But again, to try and truncate and abbreviate the term of office that this government will use to do great things for British Columbia, in the naked self-interest of a party that had 16 years and failed on so many issues that are important to British Columbia….

The Chair: On the amendment.

Hon. R. Fleming: I think that’s pretty important and an additional reason why we reject that amendment.

The Chair: The Minister of Advanced Education seeks leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Hon. M. Mark: There’s a delegation of young people in these chambers that have been advocates for the rights of children and youth in care. They’re lobbying the government to extend supports for youth in care across this province. I just want to give a shout-out for their advocacy. Many of them are my constituents. Some of them have attended Douglas College, Vancouver Island University, UBC. They are the leaders of tomorrow. Would the House please join me in welcoming this important delegation. Haawa.

J. Brar: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

[1:55 p.m.]

J. Brar: We have very special guests today in the House. That is Baljit Brar — she is my sister-in-law — and my beautiful niece, Jaspar Brar. I just want to say here, because this is the people’s House. Baljit and her husband, who is my brother Jaswant Brar, played a key role to bring me here from India. Of course, they played a very, very important role in my own elections, and I won four of them. I want to say thank you to them for that.

We also have with them a special guest from India, Gutcherising Brar, and his beautiful wife, Riggitte Brar. I would like to ask the House to please make them feel welcome.

Debate Continued

J. Yap: It’s my honour and privilege to rise and join the debate on this amendment. I am supporting this amendment in regards to ensuring that should this bill pass, we amend this bill so that the next election will happen in the year 2020, not 2021.

I do appreciate the comments of the Attorney General, his words of understanding of why we would advocate for this, and I appeal to his reasons. We’ve heard a lot of talk about a new way of doing things in working with all sides of the House and hope that in that spirit, members on the government side will consider this amendment and support it.

Just a quick recap. As my colleague from Shuswap had mentioned, the previous government, of which I am very proud to have been a part, had introduced an innovative fixed election date. We were among the first, if not the first, in Canada to introduce this. Now many jurisdictions, if not all, have followed the lead of British Columbia to have fixed election dates in a Westminster parliamentary system.

This bill will also, as we know, change the voting to a Saturday, which is believed to encourage greater turnout. That’s a good thing, and we support that, subject to ensuring that it’s the right Saturday in the fall that is selected. I appreciate the commitment of the Attorney to work with his officials to find the right date that will not conflict with other statutory days.

The matter at hand, for the benefit of those just tuning in on Hansard or viewing in the gallery, is part of the line-by-line debate of this bill in committee stage. We’re considering an amendment to one subsection of this bill. The effect of this will be to have the next election happen in the fall. We agree that we would support having an election date in the fall but instead of in the fall of 2021, in the fall of 2020. As my colleague from Nechako Lakes has said, there is precedent for this with the change at the federal level when the legislation was introduced to change the election date to the fall.

We can discuss the effect of whether an election should be six months sooner or six months earlier, and I know that the Attorney is thinking that it depends on where you sit, right? But I can say, with great confidence, that the majority of my constituents on whose behalf I’m here in this House — I’m speaking on their behalf — would support the amendment for the reasons that have been indicated.

[2:00 p.m.]

We do live in unusual times. And we have a very unusual circumstance where a party that won fewer seats and a lower plurality of seats was able to form government with the support of the third party — an unusual circumstance in modern British Columbian history.

I do know for a fact that many of my constituents would like to see an opportunity to have a chance to exercise their vote, to have their say on the state of affairs of British Columbia politics. The way to do that is through an election.

Now, the Attorney and the last speaker, the Minister of Education, have said that the government will have to always, as a minority government, enjoy the confidence of the House. We know that they do at this point in time, and probably into the foreseeable future, because of the robust arrangement that seems to be in place with the Green Party and the secretariat. In effect, it’s a coalition government, if I may say so.

The opportunity for my constituents to have a chance to cast their opinion, to cast their vote, is somewhat limited because, to all intents and purposes, the NDP and Green coalition government will probably serve a full term. That’s what we’re debating here. Should that full term be 3½ years or 4½ years? My constituents would argue that this is simply a power grab, nothing more than a power grab, to extend the life of this coalition government.

On my constituents’ behalf, I know that they would like to see an election sooner rather than later. That six months to have this election, if this bill passes…. To have it happen in the fall of 2020 is what I would support on behalf of my constituents. I urge all members of this House to consider this and support this amendment as well.

A. Olsen: I’m encouraged. I’m encouraged by the growing confidence that the official opposition has in seeing that this minority government, which is the first minority government in a long time in our province, is going to last.

I mean, we’re starting to hear that story emerging from the official opposition, and I encourage them to participate in this minority government. After all, 87 members have been elected to the people’s House here to do the work of the people. I’m looking forward to the day — I said it during the campaign, and I’ll continue to say it for every day that I’m here — where we’re actually able to work as a group of 87 MLAs on behalf of the people of this province. I’m encouraged that the confidence in this minority government is growing.

It is unfortunate, though, that we continue to hear the kind of hyperbole. I was talking about it yesterday on another amendment earlier. I have to address it again, because it just continues to appear as almost a full-blown rewriting of history, frankly, and passing speculation for rumour and fact.

The reality is that in our Canadian constitution, from my understanding, elections are to be held once every five years. The spring of more than a decade ago was when the election was called, and then the legislation came in. They kind of formulated: “Okay, we’re going to have spring elections in this province.” So then the next election date was set to be the spring. This is my understanding. I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I’m not getting this right.

Now we have this spring election date. In 2013, before the 2013 May election, we had three independent MLAs. They wanted to change the fixed election time of the year from the spring to the fall.

[2:05 p.m.]

They said a few things: that it’s important for British Columbians, important for the quality and integrity of our democracy, to move the election date from the spring to the fall. They suggested that, actually, the first time that they could do it would be on the first Tuesday. So they didn’t quite agree to move it to a Saturday, but that’s okay. But it was going to be in October of 2017, which would have meant that the official opposition’s last term would have been the same length as the one that we’re hearing so much disagreement with, basically a 4½-year mandate.

The most important reason for us to change this is for the budgeting process. As I said in my speech at second reading, it’s critical that we separate the budgeting process from the election so that we then don’t use the pre-election budget for politics, but rather, the budget is important because it’s the business of the people.

In fact, one of the former Liberal leadership candidates and former cabinet minister in this place agrees with that. I’m just going to quote here. “Election budgets are always the most challenging for a Finance Minister. The reason is that there’s the perennial struggle to continue to try and do what’s right from a policy point of view and, of course, the struggle between what is politically expedient. It’s typically not a battle but a conversation that rages between the Premier’s office and the Finance Minister’s office.”

That was former Liberal leadership candidate Kevin Falcon acknowledging the fact that this change needs to happen. We’ve got former members of this place suggesting that it’s fair, that the Attorney General has done a good job of articulating the precedent. In other jurisdictions in our country, it would be to extend it, rather than to shorten the life of an elected parliament — a group of us, 87, all elected to this place. Rather than shorten that, it would be to simply move it further along in that year. Technically, there is still a lot of room in that year for this province to have an election legally, within the Canadian constitution.

That’s my response to the amendment, and it will probably be no surprise to the members of the official opposition that I will not be supporting it.

J. Rustad: Thank you to the members for the comments.

I want to make a few comments, particularly to the member for Saanich North and the Islands. I understand why he wanted to keep it for 4½ years as opposed to 3½ years. I understand his perspective on that. However, one thing he should note…. History teaches some interesting lessons.

In this province, I don’t actually remember a centre-right party, whether it’s Socred or Conservative or Liberal, that has actually gone more than four years in a mandate. As a matter of fact, during the time of W.A.C. Bennett, who was Premier in this province for about 20 years, I think he had seven elections. He held an election about every three years. Even the former NDP leader, in the first time the NDP formed government in the early ’70s, held the three years for an election, not four or not five, as what is allowed.

All the other governments that I can think of in the research that I’ve done, going all the way back to 1903, when parties were first recognized as an entity in this province, were all less than five years. However, there are two exceptions. That is in the 1990s, when the government of the day was in trouble, both going into the ’96 election and the 2001 election, and went the full five years before they would call an election, as opposed to doing what the tradition has been in this province.

Here we have another example of a government, in terms of this section of the bill, that have proposed to go longer than four years to try to hold power for as long as possible, knowing that their time may be limited and not willing to face the electorate in asking for an election at an earlier time.

It’s disappointing when I hear those sorts of comments. To the Minister of Education and his comments about the municipal election going for three to four years, it’s probably worth noting that sitting councillors and mayors were not asked to extend their term. However, they ran a new election based on an extended mandate going from three years to four years. They went out, and people knew well in advance what that election time would be before people made a decision as to who they wanted elected for that extra period of time.

[2:10 p.m.]

Now, the member for Saanich North and the Islands is right. The constitution does provide an opportunity for an election in a five-year period. Having said that, though, that has not been the tradition in this province, given the fact that the majority of elections held since 1903 — since there were parties, and even going back before then, since British Columbia was formed — were well under four years — the vast majority. It would make sense that this amendment, which asks for a 3½-year period of time, as opposed to a 4½-year period of time, would be logical to support, especially given the changes that are being proposed and the format that this government is bringing forward as a minority government.

They did not win the popular vote. They did not win the majority of seats, yet they’re governing as if they had. I understand why they’re doing that and the decisions that they made. But I will warn the members opposite associated with this: there’s a reason why they were reduced to two seats in 2001. There was a reason. After holding on to power, desperately clinging to power, for those extra few months, wreaking havoc in legislation and things that they brought forward, people had enough. They may find that may be the exact reason why a similar result may happen in 2021.

In a way, offering this amendment to the members opposite is a way to be able to say: “Look, have the confidence in what you’re doing. You’re saying you’re bringing forward policy that the province of British Columbia wants. You say you’re bringing forward policy that the majority of people are interested in doing. Put it to a vote.”

We’re giving you that opportunity to put it to a vote to the people of this province by having this election held in fall of 2020, as opposed to 2021. The amendment being brought forward is, I think, reasoned. It is reasonable in terms of the approach that is being taken. The significant changes, when you add them up — the changes to the voting date; the changes to the way we vote; the welcome changes in terms of the financing of elections, although not welcome from the perspective of taxpayers being asked to fund political activities….

That has been a no-no virtually everywhere. The only time it was tried by the Canadian government, the next government that came in immediately did away with it, and for good reason. That was what the majority of people wanted. Yet this government ignores those types of perspectives, ignores those history lessons, at their own peril.

I invite the government to look at this amendment from that perspective of: have the courage to ask the voters. Have the courage to go out there early, and say: “You know what? We want to see what the people of the province of British Columbia think of the policies we brought forward. We are brave and bold in our perspective on it. We’re willing to stand up and go to the voters and say that this is the right thing” — in the government’s perspective — “that we want to bring forward for the province, which is why we’re willing to go early.”

When you look at the governments in the 1960s and 1950s and even in the 1970s, those governments of the day had that courage. They went out, and they went early. They could have gone five years, as the member for Saanich North and the Islands suggested. They could have done what the government is currently doing and tried to get an extra few months of the term by changing the election date. But they didn’t. They went early, because they wanted to test the confidence of the government, to test the confidence in the policies they brought forward and to ask the people of this great province to be able to bring forward a new mandate for them so that they could carry on with bringing policies.

This government seems to be afraid to do that. I don’t know why it’s willing to do that, as opposed to supporting the amendment brought forward to give you the opportunity to move it forward. Even when we, as a government, back in 2001, brought forward the date for fixed election dates, what did we do? We didn’t pick a date that extended our mandate. We picked a date that was four years out from when that election was held. We didn’t go 4½. We didn’t go four and two months. We didn’t go five years, as the members opposite. We could have. But we said this was a fixed election date. This was reasonable.

With those comments, I would suggest that this is an amendment that gives the government an opportunity to have the courage to put forward their policies to the people of this province in a timely way, fixing the election date for 2020 and allowing the province of British Columbia and the people of British Columbia to validate whether they truly support the idea of this unholy coalition that has been formed — as it has been called in this House before — or whether or not they would like a different approach in terms of how the province of British Columbia is governed.

[2:15 p.m.]

A. Weaver: I rise to speak against the amendment put forward today by the official opposition, for a number of reasons. The amendment, of course, as we know, is to change the fixed election date to 2020 instead of 2021. The member opposite does himself a disservice when he continues to refer to government here as a coalition.

The member opposite, as he tries to put forward his wealth of expertise in democratic reform in British Columbia, should know at a very fundamental level that a coalition is not what we have here in British Columbia. It is a minority government, where the majority of members in this House support the B.C. NDP in government.

It would do this member well — and it would do opposition members opposite well — if they actually were to be factual in their responses and debates. To mislead British Columbians by talking about things like a B.C. coalition is not fitting of members of this place.

We know that it is a minority government, under the great vast tradition of Westminster parliamentary democracies, where the government of the day, the B.C. NDP, is supported by the three B.C. Green members in a minority, not a coalition. So I correct that, for the record.

We know that under the Constitution Act, we must have an election every five years. The member opposite, again, in what I can only describe as a somewhat revisionist history, forgets to point out that in 1986, the Social Credit government, the 1986 elected Social Credit government did not have an election for five full years, until 1991. Five years — not four years, as was suggested by the members opposite.

Here, what is happening, and why I do not support the amendment and why I support the original legislation, is as follows. Again, in the tradition of Westminster parliamentary democracies, we stood here in this House and pointed out to the B.C. Liberals this past summer that they did not have the confidence of the House. We didn’t quietly spring this on them at the last minute. In fact, shortly after we signed the confidence and supply agreement…. As, I’m so pleased to say, is signed in a similar manner in New Zealand, between the labour party there and the Greens, celebrated today in some of their housing policies.

We signed this agreement and told British Columbians that we would have this agreement signed before the writ was returned because we wanted to instil confidence, and we wanted to ensure that British Columbians had certainty as we moved forward. So we messaged out to British Columbians, through this government, that on May 31, we were going to support a B.C. NDP minority government.

Hon. Speaker, members opposite, despite saying they would call back the House soon, took their time. We waited months for this to come. So to say it’s four and a half years is simply incorrect. We wasted months by this government not willing to stand up and have confidence tested in this House, somehow in denial that we live in a parliamentary democracy. So to say it’s four and a half years is flat out wrong. That is why I continue to support the bill as it stands and speak against this amendment.

We talk about precedent. We had three independent MLAs in this House: one who formally was with the B.C. NDP, Bob Simpson, who sat as an independent; one who was formally with the B.C. Liberals, John van Dongen, who also sat as an independent; and then, of course, our friend and colleague Vicki Huntington, who was the only independent MLA in British Columbia to be re-elected as an independent. The three of them got together, and they made recommendations.

They made recommendations to bring the election to the fall, as we did, but they also recommended and they also suggested that it was important to recognize that we need to go a little longer because of some time for Elections B.C. to adjust. So this is not some kind of surprise, as suggested by the member opposite, the member for Nechako Lakes. This is no surprise to British Columbians. This is precisely what happened in 1986 when the Social Credit government served for five years.

It’s what was recommended in the bill brought forward, which is somehow not being raised by members opposite. They refer to previous NDP opposition bills — not referring to the independent members’ bill, which was truly independent, with one member from the B.C. Liberals, one from the NDP, and Vicki Huntington, suggesting otherwise.

[2:20 p.m.]

With that, hon. Speaker, I thank you for your time. I do appreciate the opportunity to speak against this amendment.

M. Bernier: I think it’s really important, when we look at this bill that’s on the floor and the amendment that’s on the floor, to actually talk about the facts. Everybody is trying to talk about the history here, but we’re trying to talk about the future and the future of British Columbia and what this means to the people in the province of British Columbia.

The NDP government now is enjoying…. Even though the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head doesn’t want to officially call it a coalition, if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it’s a duck. Whether he wants to call it a coalition or not, we truly have a coalition here that’s actually keeping government afloat. We have an unelected minority government in place making these decisions. All we’re asking is that the general public, the voters in the province of British Columbia, get to have a say — that they get to have a say on these bills going forward.

Now, when we look at the government wanting to extend their term in office, it’s not a surprise that the members from the soon-to-be-called, I guess, Green Party here in the House of course would be in favour of that. I would expect nothing less from them, wanting to extend their term here as well.

The whole point here is giving that decision back to the electorate. It is not democratic for this government to be extending their term by six months. If they truly want to test the confidence, it’s the confidence of the general public, the confidence of the voters in the province of British Columbia they should be testing — which is why we have this amendment on the floor. It’s why we are saying that if they are truthful, if they are honest with themselves and they’re going to be honest with the public in the province of British Columbia, they should be going to the electorate sooner rather than later.

They should be going to them and saying: “We are confident as a government. We’re confident with what we’ve put in front of you.” If that’s truly the case, and if they’re going to be standing here for possibly the next couple of years, talking about what they’re going to do, they should not be shy, not be ashamed to go to an election in the fall of 2020.

We’re not arguing that we’re going to move the election into the fall. I think we’ve all agreed with that. If this bill was specifically just about that, I think we’d have probably a full consensus here in the House. But when we’re actually going to the fall and extending it by another six months, that’s where we have difficulty.

As the minister who’s put it forward and other people have spoken…. Again, if they truly feel that they’re doing the great service that they talk about for the people in the province of British Columbia and that they’re going to continue do that for the next few years, then I have no idea why they would not be in favour of this.

In fact, you would assume, you would think, that a minority government would want to actually get in front of the voters of British Columbia to secure a solid mandate as soon as possible so they can actually try to have a majority government. If they’re as confident as they are, that they think they can do that, why would they not be in a position where they’d want to secure that sooner rather than later?

I do not understand why they would actually think that it’s democratic to extend their term without actually going to the public and allowing them a say in that. That’s why we’ve put this amendment forward. We feel that it is appropriate. We feel it’s the best democratic system.

We feel it’s the most fair system for the voters in the province of British Columbia, where they can actually have a say of who their duly elected government will be and allow them the choice to have that at an election. To extend it again by six months is actually taking those rights away from the citizens of the province of British Columbia, and that’s why we’ve put this amendment forward.

Although the members opposite will continue to stand and talk about why they want to stay in office longer and why they, even though they were not elected with a majority of seats, want to use the now coalition formed with the Green Party to allow them to stay in government longer…. I can appreciate that. I can see why they would want to do that. They weren’t elected by the majority so if they can now, through this coalition, extend their time, why wouldn’t they? I mean, obviously it takes the rights away from the public. I guess that doesn’t matter. It takes the rights away from the voters, but I guess that doesn’t matter.

[2:25 p.m.]

I think it’s important that they actually talk about going forward, making a decision, and actually having the vote sooner rather than extending their term. It’s unfortunate that the members opposite in government don’t agree with this amendment of allowing the voters in the province of British Columbia a right and a say.

We’ve talked about the municipal government elections. Well, the municipalities knew what they were running for. They knew when the terms were extended. They weren’t voting on extending their terms while they were in office. Why? Because that would actually not be democratic. They wouldn’t do that.

Municipal governments allowed the flow and the decisions and the policies to be changed and then ran on a new system. That’s obviously what the members opposite don’t want to do. They’d rather actually make the decision here in this House rather than allow the general public to have a say.

It’s disappointing that the members will not be in favour of this amendment. We were hoping that they would be, because we thought it would be the right thing for the voters and the people in the province of British Columbia.

Hon. D. Eby: Thank you to all the members who’ve spoken to the amendment. I have to agree with the member down the way that we have heard a lot of hyperbole in relation to these various amendments.

I would like to remind the members who spoke in favour of this amendment of a throne speech that was given in this place not that long ago. It said the following: “British Columbians want a stable government, and in sending us this result” — the last election’s result — “they expect us to listen and find a way to work together. They expect us to collaborate, while respecting the dignity, rules and traditions that govern our constitutional monarchy, our democracy and this Legislature.” With that in mind, “instead of focusing on areas of disagreement, we should reflect on who it is that we are and what we share in common.”

I didn’t find a lot to agree with Christy Clark on, but those words made a lot of sense to me in terms of the minority parliament. I’ve heard a lot of suggestions from the other side that make absolutely no sense.

“Get out there and test this government with the voters. Collapse the government, and go test whether you’ve got a majority of support out there.” The voters sent us here with a clear message. They wanted a minority parliament. They wanted a stable government. In fact, this is the same throne speech that recognized the need for a fall election date, which the member rightly pointed out would have been fall of 2021. Now the members say: “Well, because there’s a minority, because it’s your minority parliament, it should be a three-year instead of a four-year.”

They are certainly entitled to that opinion, but it makes very little sense to me why in one throne speech, it’s one way, and in today’s amendment, it’s another way — except for exactly that. It depends on which side of the House you’re sitting on.

With that, I will not be supporting the amendment.

J. Rustad: Thank you very much to the minister for the clarification. I find it interesting that he raised the point that the people of this province want to see members being able to work together, to collaborate to find ways forward. What we have brought forward is a reasonable amendment that instead of going for a four-year, goes for a 3½-year period.

It would enjoy support from all sides of this House in terms of being able to work forward and move this thing forward, but instead, the government is proceeding with ignoring the opposition’s perspective that this has brought forward, which obviously doesn’t change the way things work. It is not a new way of doing things; it is the old way of doing things. It’s unfortunate that this government feels that it doesn’t have the confidence in what it’s bringing forward in its policies and approach to be able to actually approach the voters.

With that, I will end my comments, and we’ll see if the minister has any other that he wished to add before we get to the vote on this.

A. Weaver: I just wish to address the comments raised by my good friend from Peace River South, who suggested in this House a number of things. He suggested that this was undemocratic — that it was undemocratic to not support this amendment — when I would argue what is truly undemocratic is to not actually listen to the will of the people of British Columbia and to delay the testing of confidence in this House for so many months, which put us in the situation where we are to this day.

In addition, there are a number of reasons that have not been raised. Number one, of course, is that we are in the midst of debating…. I recognize we cannot debate other bills, but that other bill is relevant because the time frame for change of proportional representation, were it to pass and were the referendum to pass, would be 2021. That gives time for Elections B.C. to actually put in place the necessary rules and regulations and electoral boundaries and consultation, if indeed we are to go to that bill.

The Chair: Speaking to the amendment.

[2:30 p.m.]

A. Weaver: It’s relevant, then, to this particular case. The 2021 date is critical, as it actually is also critical for Elections B.C. as we move forward there.

To suggest somehow that we cannot have another election…. I mean, this is a minority government. We’re committed to working together, but to suggest that there will be no election suggests, again, not understanding how Westminster parliamentary democracies work.

We’re committed to work together for four and a half years. We will work together. But it doesn’t mean there could not be another election. It is within the government’s right, at any given time, to say: “This is no longer working. We need to test the confidence of the House, or we need to call an election.” They can do that.

In addition, we could say: “This isn’t working. We want to have an election. We’re not going to support a budget.” We could do that. Those options are still available, but those options have not been acknowledged as existing in this present minority government that we have here.

Finally, I take exception to the suggestion that this is all about power. I come back to what I said earlier. What I come back to say about earlier is: I understand why, in the mindset of the B.C. Liberals, it is all about power. It’s because for them, government is about power. It’s not about policies.

I come back to the member from Abbotsford here, who, at the parliamentary democracy meeting with teachers, specifically stated to the teachers of British Columbia visiting this House that the role of the official opposition is to get into power. Shame. We hear it time and time again emanating from members opposite that all this is about is power. They don’t understand that it’s about good policy. So the longer we have to actually assure that the policy measures are in place, recognizing that it would have been four years….

Maybe there would be more of an appetite to listen to the amendment put forward had this government actually tested confidence months early, instead of losing four months of this government by, essentially, desperately trying to hang onto power, despite the fact that we’d given British Columbians certainty and said that this was not going to happen and we were going to support an NDP minority government.

M. Bernier: First of all, I have to correct the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head. He should know better, because he was actually here. He was duly elected in May. He also knows the timelines of what it took for the writs to be returned. It’s unfortunate that he’s not listening to me. He might want to take notes, actually.

Interjection.

M. Bernier: Thank you. I’m glad he is.

It’s unfortunate that members opposite, including the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, continue to stand up in this House, trying to say that we were delaying bringing the House back, when, in fact, he knows the process. He knows we can’t do that until the writs have been returned. He knows we had to wait until there was possibly….

It was a close election. We’ve all acknowledged that. We had to wait for the writs. We had to look to see if there were going to be judicial reviews. We had to wait for those final counts to be in.

If memory serves, it was within only three weeks of all of that that we called the House back. It’s not the three or four months that the members opposite continue to say. It was three weeks.

The role of opposition is to hold government accountable. It’s to bring forward ideas like this, where we show where something we don’t agree with…. We show that we feel it’s serving the public’s interest more accurately, better serving the public, if we actually bring forward amendments.

It’s unfortunate when we keep hearing from the coalition across from us that it’s all about working together. The only thing they’re showing is that they’re working amongst themselves. If they truly want to work together, then we’ll actually be looking at amendments that our party will be bringing forward, seriously considering them and actually having a good, honest debate about whether these things — like this amendment and other amendments that we’ll probably bring by — have value to the people of British Columbia. We feel that they do, and that’s why we bring these amendments forward.

If it’s truly about working together, I’m assuming the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head is now inviting us to be part of the secretariat, because we haven’t been involved in any of those discussions at all. Yet he continues to say that it’s all about working together as government. It’s only working together for them, not for everybody, which is not representing the people in the province of British Columbia appropriately.

That’s why we put this amendment forward. That’s why we will continue to support this amendment. Again, it’s unfortunate that the now government, through their coalition, don’t understand what we’re trying to do to help the people of B.C. and make sure that they have a say.

[2:35 p.m. - 2:40 p.m.]

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Amendment negatived on the following division:

[2:45 p.m.]

[L. Reid in the chair.]

The Chair: Committee on Bill 5 resumes. Shall section 3 pass?

Interjections.

J. Rustad: Groans from the members opposite. There’s a purpose for doing this, as the members opposite well know from when they had an opportunity to be on this side of the House.

Carrying on with section 3, I think we’ve canvassed as much as we can in terms of the date.

Moving on to the next section around this, which is, if I understand this right, about the potential for overlaps and the movement that’s in there. Can I ask the minister to explain why he felt the need to put this section into the legislation?

Hon. D. Eby: We canvassed, a little bit, the federal provisions around fixed election dates, as well as general local elections and the fixed date for provincial general elections. It’s not a surprise, at least to the government, that many different jurisdictions have seen the benefits of fall elections, so federal, municipal and soon, hopefully, provincial elections will all be in October.

Now, although currently, each of these jurisdictions has elections in a cycle on different years, ourselves included, there is the possibility that in one of these jurisdictions, there could be — the technical term, I understand — an on-demand election, which is an election as a result of the government collapsing in one way or the other in one of these other jurisdictions and there needing to be an election outside of that regular cycle. That could cause an overlap between our provincial fixed-date election and a general local election or a general federal election.

This section really responds to that possibility by setting out a mechanism by which we could address a date overlap. The goal of it is to ensure some level of transparency, because I think it seems, at least in the debate, that members in this House generally support the idea of fixed election dates for a number of benefits that accrue from that.

When you can’t use your fixed election date because it doubles up with another election that’s happening in another jurisdiction, how do you achieve the goals of a fixed election date — the transparency, the accountability — yet respond to an evolving situation?

For transparency, the new date that’s been set out…. The goal here is to ensure that it’s determined by cabinet, but not by cabinet alone. There’s a requirement of consultation with the Chief Electoral Officer, with the Leader of the Official Opposition and with the leaders of any recognized political parties that are in the Legislature. It’s our attempt to ensure that the goals of a fixed election date and the transparency of a fixed election date are included in a possible scenario that is reasonable to anticipate, that one of these other election cycles might move off their current cycle onto another cycle and then suddenly interfere with the fixed provincial date.

[2:50 p.m.]

J. Rustad: I want to thank the minister for that explanation. I do find it interesting, though, with British Columbia, of course, being the first jurisdiction in Canada to go to the fixed election dates. Other jurisdictions have followed since, including the federal government. For the last 16 years, there wasn’t a need or wasn’t a perceived need to have this in as part of the Constitution Act with regards to overlapping potential election dates, even though that same circumstance that the minister described could have happened at any time with regards to the federal government. That is really the only place where there can be overlap, unless, of course, there’s a change to the municipal election and local governments.

Given that the confidence side…. The opportunity for that kind of an overlap to occur is actually quite low, given how legislatures work. If there’s ever to be a confidence vote, it’s usually around the budget, usually around the springtime, which would then trigger an election at that time, as opposed to something that would go into the fall.

I’m just wondering why the rationale from the minister, given that it wasn’t needed in the past. It’s something that…. We function quite nicely without it, and the likelihood of something like that happening is very small. It just seems to be an over precaution, but I’m just curious with regards to that.

Hon. D. Eby: Certainly I can’t speak to what was in the mind of government when they put forward the original fixed date legislation, but what I can do is advise what the intention of this government was in putting this in. There are many jurisdictions now that have fall elections. I can speculate, perhaps, that when the previous fixed date legislation was put in, municipal elections were in the fall. This was a spring election cycle in British Columbia, so there wasn’t perceived that there would be an overlap with municipal. I don’t know why there wasn’t concern about overlap with federal.

In any event, it’s our feeling that it’s best practice to include such an overlap provision. I can point to Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the federal legislation, which all have overlap provisions. As well, it appears at a quick glance that every jurisdiction except for P.E.I. that has a fall election also has an overlap clause. So Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, P.E.I. — oh, they’re there — Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Canada all have fall elections. They all also have overlap clauses of the type that we’re discussing right now.

J. Rustad: It’s clear in my mind. It’s sound rationale. But given that municipal elections can’t possibly overlap with the provincial election unless we change municipal elections…. There is, I suppose, the chance that a federal government may decide to change things in terms of those.

I guess the question I really have is: is this section designed in case government falls early due to non-confidence or perhaps at the call of the Premier and executive council to have an election — that it provides the ability for that date to be adjusted so that it wouldn’t necessarily overlap? This sort of gives it that clause to be able to do that. Is that what this is designed to do?

Hon. D. Eby: This section that we’re discussing is actually if there’s an overlap in the fixed election date, which is every four calendar years, as we’ve discussed, the Saturday in October — if there’s an issue with that overlapping with one of these other processes.

[2:55 p.m.]

If there’s a snap election, the date is not set by this legislation for the snap election that happens as a result of the government collapsing. If there is a snap election, though, let’s say in May of 2018, then the next general voting day would be the third Saturday in October 2022 — four years after the general voting day. This legislation would set the next fixed election date, but it wouldn’t determine when the snap election date was. So this provision doesn’t relate to that kind of scenario.

J. Rustad: In essence, just to be clear, and I know it’s not specifically here but with what the minister said, if there happened to be a snap election called in February — pick a date, February or March or something of 2018 because of a confidence issue or some other thing — what this legislation would do is make the fall election basically five years out from that date, given that it would be into the fourth calendar year beyond that, as we had canvassed earlier in our discussions around the first component of section 3.

Hon. D. Eby: The member is correct. If the government collapsed in February, then the section 3 provision would require an election in October of 2022.

I note that that would be a local government election year. So there would be the snap election in 2018. And then the new government…. It would be a requirement of this act that they sit down with the Leader of the Opposition, any recognized parties and the Chief Electoral Officer in setting an election date for 2022 that did not overlap with the local government election process.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

J. Rustad: I’m curious about this section in the sense that I believe the second component of this, under 4(b), talks about an amendment made by section 6. I understand that there may be an amendment coming forward to section 6. Would it be appropriate, at this time, to actually have the discussion or does it need also to be stood down until the section 6 amendment is presented to the Legislature?

Hon. D. Eby: I have very good news. Any amendment to section 6 of the Amendment Act has no impact on this section. We’re not looking at any amendments that would result in adding an additional section. So this reference to section 76 would be unchanged by any attempt to accommodate the member’s concerns around Thanksgiving holiday days. We can go ahead with this and still have the ability to amend section 6, if required.

Section 4 approved.

On section 5.

J. Rustad: I’m just curious why the amendment is from the word after — if I’m reading that right. No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t reading that right. Okay. It was put in after that. So no, I don’t have any questions. Sorry.

Section 5 approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I’d like to stand down section 6. We are currently considering the possibility of amendments to that section.

On section 7.

N. Letnick: Yesterday we had quite a thorough discussion on the section that would propose to change the number of members of a political party from four to two. A motion was provided to the minister that would see that number change to three. That motion was defeated.

[3:00 p.m.]

Section 7 also deals with the same issue, the number from four to two. At this time, as per the orders of the day, I would like to move that the text be changed.

[SECTION 7 by deleting the text shown as struck out and adding the underlined text as shown:

“2 3 or more members”.]

On the amendment.

Hon. D. Eby: Hon. Chair, thanks for your…. It just took a second there to register. I was: “Didn’t we do this yesterday?”

I thank the member for his proposed amendment. I will not be supporting the amendment. The reasons were canvassed quite thoroughly yesterday. The intention here is to ensure that all parties that elect two or more members have the opportunity to participate appropriately in legislative debate as well as in the Legislative Assembly Management Committee. That is the wish of the government, based on historical precedent here in B.C.

The Chair: Shall section 7 pass?

Some Hon. Members: Aye.

The Chair: So ordered.

Interjection.

The Chair: There’s a question as to whether or not the amendment was moved.

N. Letnick: I did move the amendment, as per the standing orders.

The Chair: Our apologies.

Amendment negatived.

Section 7 approved.

On section 8.

J. Rustad: I just need to have a bit of clarity in terms of procedure, if I may, Chair, through to the minister. With regards to passing the commencement component of this act, given that section 6 has stood down, I’m assuming what ends up happening from this is that we report progress and ask leave to sit again as opposed to….

Okay, I just wanted to make sure of that. Otherwise section 8 would have been a potential problem, so thank you.

The Chair: That is the proper course of action.

Section 8 approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I seek leave to report progress and seek leave to sit again.

Seek leave twice — I will get this.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 3:03 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Committee of the Whole (Section B), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

[3:05 p.m.]

Mr. Speaker: When shall the committee sit again?

Hon. D. Eby: I am taking some advice, a request that it be called later today.

Mr. Speaker: That’s fine, thank you. So ordered.

Hon. D. Eby: I call second reading on Bill 6, Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 6 — ELECTORAL REFORM
REFERENDUM 2018 ACT

Hon. D. Eby: I move that Bill 6, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act, now be read a second time. This bill creates the legislative framework for a provincewide referendum, in fall 2018, on whether to change from the current first-past-the-post voting system to a form of proportional representation.

The government believes that it’s time for British Columbians to have their say on whether they wish to change to a voting system that uses a form of proportional representation, and the referendum will give British Columbian voters the opportunity to do just that. This is what is called enabling legislation. It creates a number of enabling powers for government, and it also prescribes some aspects of how the referendum will take place.

To ensure that voters have adequate opportunity to consider the options before them and cast their ballot, the referendum will be conducted by mail-in ballot. This method of referendum voting is not new for British Columbians. We’ve had two important issues conducted by mail-in ballot, namely the 2011 HST referendum and the 2015 Metro Vancouver transportation and transit plebiscite.

The referendum question or questions will be established by regulation of the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council and will be announced with sufficient time for an informed and vigorous debate on the merits of the current and proposed voting systems on the ballot. Government will have more to say about how the proportional representation voting systems on the ballot will be selected in the coming months, but I can tell the House that it is the government’s intention to sponsor a public consultation process to ensure that we are fully informed about the best options to be put before British Columbians in the question on the ballot.

The precise timing of the referendum will be announced following the public consultation, but this bill requires that all ballots must be returned no later than November 30, 2018. So we will know the result of the referendum before the end of that year.

One very important aspect of the bill is that it confirms that the threshold for success in this referendum will be 50 percent plus one, provincewide. There will not be a so-called supermajority required for change, nor will there be any thresholds established by region or electoral district.

[3:10 p.m.]

If British Columbians do opt for a proportional representation system, the bill requires government to take steps to implement the new voting system for a general election called after July 1, 2021. Changing the province’s voting system would be a significant undertaking, and this length of time is necessary to ensure that appropriate legislation can be passed to implement any necessary changes, and for Elections B.C. to prepare to conduct a vote under the new system.

This bill provides a vehicle for the potential of public funding to be provided to registered proponent and opponent groups to stimulate debate on the referendum. Whether there should be funds provided, the amount of funds to be provided and the process by which any groups would be selected will be decided following the public consultation process. The proposed legislation does require that any funds provided to approved groups may only be used for the purpose of supporting or opposing a proportional representation voting system. The regulations will also establish any rules respecting how these groups and other individuals and organizations may advertise in relation to the referendum.

The legislation also provides for the repeal of legislation and regulations that are no longer required respecting past referenda and a plebiscite. I should note that this bill specifies that the Referendum Act would not apply to this referendum. Instead, this bill is the sole authority for this referendum.

Now, I’m going to use this opportunity of second reading to encourage all political parties in this House and political parties that are not in this House, as well as individuals across British Columbia, to provide their submissions to the government about suggestions related to the enabling provisions of this bill, should it pass into law — the question of whether proponent and opponent groups should be funded; if so, how groups should be selected for such funding; what the question should be; and so on, as outlined in my speech. In order for this to be a successful exercise and a fair exercise, all parties should be heard.

This bill, by establishing the legislative framework for the conduct of the referendum, begins the process by which British Columbians will decide how they elect Members of the Legislative Assembly, whether under the existing system or under a new system. I look forward to the debate on this bill and on the referendum itself.

J. Martin: Thank you to the Attorney for the introduction and kicking off of what I’m sure will be a very informative and enthusiastic debate over the next several days and weeks. I’m very happy to be able to be the first responder for the official opposition.

It was about 70 years ago that a wiser fellow than myself said something to the effect of “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” You know, we’ve got a system that, despite some hiccups here and a speed bump there, works pretty well across the country and particularly in British Columbia.

When we talk about First World problems, I don’t think our voting system really ranks up too high on there. In my limited 4½ years or so of being an MLA, I haven’t had anyone come into my constituency office or send me an email or a phone call that we need to get rid of the current voting system.

That system has been tweaked over the decades. We started recognizing official parties in the 1903 election. Basically, for the first little while in British Columbia, it kind of looked like the federal scene. We had Conservative governments and Liberal governments enjoy a few consecutive terms in government, and then it would flip back.

Things really changed in the 1945 election. That’s when there was kind of a ragtag, informal coalition between the Liberals and the Conservatives. That won two consecutive governments. It was in the 1952 election when Social Credit formalized that coalition and basically kicked off one of the political dynasties in Canadian history. Social Credit won 11 out of 12 governments from ’52 to ’86. There was one NDP government in there, in ’72 to ’75.

[3:15 p.m.]

Things got interesting as we got into the ’91 election. The dormant B.C. Liberals, who really hadn’t been a political force for quite some time, pretty well came out of nowhere and seized official opposition status. There was another election five years later, and until 2017, it was probably one of the most tightly contested elections in British Columbia history. That resulted in a second consecutive NDP majority.

Since then, we’ve obviously had four B.C. Liberal majority governments, and we now have, for the first time, a minority government in this province. We have the unique situation where we have the NDP forming government in a minority government supported by the three members who, very shortly, will be not independents but part of the Green Party. [Applause.] I thought you’d like that.

The previous government is now the official opposition. Well, what we have learned over that period of time is that the system works. Governments change. Governments fall. New parties come. Old parties go by the wayside. Social Credit is little more than a name registered with Elections B.C. now. Who knows, in ten years, what the political landscape will look like in British Columbia? Will new parties emerge, new alliances between different stakeholders? The system does not protect the status quo.

Let’s look at it this way. In the last six consecutive elections, the B.C. Liberals won a majority of the vote. Not a pure majority but they won more of the vote than any other party in the last six elections, yet they only formed government in four of those.

Somehow this evil first-past-the-post that we’re supposed to turn our sights on is what’s hampering democracy. Somehow that doesn’t seem to be a problem after all because, as I just said, the B.C. Liberals only formed government four of the last six elections, despite winning the most votes in every single one of those elections.

I think we need to be cognizant of the power of language. Using this term “first-past-the-post” is one of the things that I’d like to focus on a little bit during my time here. So what does first-past-the-post actually mean? Well, it’s only recently that we’ve actually applied that moniker to the political realm. Actually, the definition, one that I found, was “of a contestant, usually a horse in a race, winning that race by being the first to reach the finish line.” Imagine that. The horror — the horror. The first horse to cross the finish line is declared the winner. Well, that’s no good. We’ve got to do away with that. Something’s got to change at Exhibition Park. I mean, that just won’t work.

This first-past-the-post tends to work well for thoroughbreds, and it tends to work well in political campaigns. That has not been a problem in British Columbia, let alone in the rest of Canada. So why are we here? Why are we at this particular point, going through this process, where we’re going to have a spirited debate? We’re going to have a vote at some point, on the referendum legislation that the Attorney just outlined. Depending on the outcome of that referendum vote, there may be a referendum within 13 months. There may not. We’ll be staying tuned for that.

It’s important to recognize why we’re actually here. One of the many agreements between the NDP and the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head and his colleagues, in gaining their support, was to move forward with the commitment to hold a referendum and to attempt to get that legislation passed. This tends to be the one, and the only one, item that for the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, is non-negotiable. He will compromise on ride-sharing. He’ll compromise on tolls, on patronage hiring. But on this one, he’s holding his ground. So we are going through this. This one he’s not backing off.

[3:20 p.m.]

I’m sure if the NDP brought forward an announcement that they were going to log Stanley Park, the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head would support that, that being negotiable as well. But on proportional representation and holding a referendum, there’s absolutely no wavering there whatsoever.

We are going to be moving into a very interesting period in British Columbia. We’ve been down this road twice in the not too distant past, and both times, voters made their intentions clear. This is kind of reminding me of the referendum process by the separatists in Quebec. We’re going to keep holding referendums until we get the result we want. We’re not going to recognize the last referendum. It’s only the next one, if it turns our way. That will be the good referendum. That’ll be the right one. Those other ones in the past don’t really matter.

What is taking place right now…. I don’t want to minimize it whatsoever, but it’s significant. It’s important. It’s a process that could fundamentally and significantly change the way we elect governments in British Columbia, and that is something that is of vital importance to everybody. It literally changes the fabric of our democracy, and it affects British Columbians, regardless of who they will support, even if they don’t support anybody. On this side of the House, we have some serious concerns about how this process is going to take place and what the question will ultimately be.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

What we do know so far…. I have to give thanks to the ministry staff. They were very kind in giving me a full briefing on the legislation and were outstanding in responding to my questions and clarifying a number of points for me in the legislation. Again, I thank them very much. It was a great group of people that I had an opportunity to spend some time with.

But we do have some concerns about how that question will be determined, because the question on the actual ballot, should it go that far, will not be determined by British Columbians. It will not be determined through the consultation processes that the government is becoming quite renowned for. It will be decided by cabinet. At that point, we’ll understand what the question is and how the question will actually be voted on. That’s an enormous ability to manipulate this process.

It’s not going to be open. It’s not going to be something that is determined by the populous. It’s not going to be something that is put to an all-party committee — or go on a travelling town hall information process. It’s going to be solely decided by the cabinet, which is their prerogative, and I don’t begrudge that, but we need to recognize it.

It’s the third attempt at a referendum in British Columbia in recent times. We did this in 2005. We did it a mere four years later, and proportional representation was not successful when the votes came in.

We also have concerns with the nature of how this process is going to be laid out, the timelines of it, and exactly what information is going to be available. We’re hearing about…. There’s going to be proponents and opponents of the legislation funded, and it’ll be very curious about the application process for that and how some groups are successful in getting their funding and how other groups may find out that they didn’t pass muster.

I’m also very concerned that, this time around, it’s not a 60 percent threshold, which is perfectly reasonable when we’re talking about fundamentally changing a key component of our democratic system, the way that we elect governments. It will be simply a mere 50 percent plus one, and that’s really lowering the bar about as low as it can get, as far as possible. A bare majority can literally turn our democratic process and how we elect governments upside down.

It ignores the need for regional support. It’s simply a winner-takes-all. There’s no regional support. There’s no recognition of different parts of the province. It shows a lack of respect for both the public and the desperation to change the voting system, which is something that was agreed upon during the negotiations to prop up a minority government.

[3:25 p.m.]

Again, that is all perfectly legitimate in our system, and I don’t begrudge that. I recognize and accept that. But it is pretty serious that we find ourselves in that particular situation.

It should not be this easy: 50 percent plus one, no minimal vote turnout, no regional recognition. It should not be that easy to change something as critical and as long-lasting as how we elect governments in the province of British Columbia.

The minister outlined some of the key components of this legislation. It will be a mail-in ballot. That was kind of interesting during the last time we had a…. No, it wasn’t the last time, but one of the referendums we had, I guess. There was a mail strike, a postal strike by Canada Post. The Chief Electoral Officer, I believe, had to extend the deadline for getting submissions in, due to the postal strike.

That’s kind of interesting. I mean, I’m trying to think of the last time I licked a stamp and dropped a letter in the mailbox. Right now, to be honest, if I had to mail a letter in ten minutes from my house, I’m not really sure what direction out the door I should go. I’m not really sure where the nearest mailbox would be. But this is interesting. We’re supposedly modernizing the voting system, supposedly moving it forward, and we’re using snail mail, the most antiquated system of registering votes possible. But so be it.

Now, what we’re also faced with is that there’s a possibility of a ballot with more than one question. That is problematic. I’ll get into that a little bit further on. But for the first part, it’s going to be very awkward. It’s going to be very confusing. I’ve spent an awful lot of time looking at the different systems in the different countries. I hope that before the red light comes on, I have an opportunity to delve into those.

We also see in the legislation that the new system for the next general election will be on or after July 1, 2021. That’s kind of interesting because we just heard a rather spirited debate about, possibly, with the amendment, moving the next fixed election date prior to that. That would be very awkward with the referendum, so it was little left to the imagination of one of the reasons why that particular amendment was defeated.

During my briefing with the ministry staff, I also learned that should, for some reason, the government have to go to the polls prior to July 1, should the minority government fall apart before the 21st, should the Premier see an opportunity to go for an election prior to July 1, 2021.... For whatever reasons, even though the legislation says that the new system for the next general election on or after July 1, 2021, the government does reserve the right, as long as the mechanics are there and get an assurance from Elections B.C., to actually use this new system prior to July 1, 2021. There’s nothing in the actual bill that lays that out. That’s something I discovered through discussions with staff. So that’s a little bit disturbing, because it’s misleading.

Say we have an election in two years, and if the referendum had passed, even though the legislation says we would be bound to use the current voting system, well, apparently the government isn’t bound to that at all. There is the possibility of using the new system prior to when it was supposed to be available.

We also have a bit of a difficulty with the provincial cabinet ordering the ballots be counted on a preferential voting basis. This is, obviously, a way to help determine a preferred turnout. Clearly, advocates of proportional representation recognize that there’s one, two, three, four or five different models of proportional representation. People could rank-order those. Those of us that are very happy with the first system wouldn’t really have a second choice. We’re quite content with the current system, and we wouldn’t have a second choice of transferable vote or mixed representation.

[3:30 p.m.]

Clearly, the deck is stacked. It’s not an honest game. It’s rigged, and it is going to be designed to get a particular desired outcome. We see, through the legislation, that if no option reaches 50 percent on the first count, then we go to the second count. We go to the third count. Under that model, it would be very likely that one of the proportional representation models would be successful.

We also have a big problem here when we look at what happens with proportional representation in other jurisdictions. Proportional representation might sound nice on a bumper sticker: “Make every vote count.” That sounds good. No one can argue against that. I think it would be very difficult to argue that, right now, every vote doesn’t count. But that’s a nice bumper sticker.

I think a better bumper sticker for proportional representation is: “Instability.” Minority and coalition governments tend to produce instability for voters and investors. They are more expensive to run than governments that don’t operate under that particular model. I’ll outline these a little later on in more detail.

Belgium went almost 600 days without a government after using the proportional representation model and being unable to come to a working agreement with the ragtag scattering of parties that had some representation in the new parliament. They were unable…. All they could do for almost 600 days was keep the lights on and pay the bills — no legislation, no reform, no ability to tackle any of the country’s concerns. It was just simply paying the bills as the parties strove to form a coalition. While day-to-day government operations continued, those critical decisions that governments are responsible for and people elect them for were ignored: migration, legislation, the eurozone crisis. All of this was delayed for well over a year, and it was a totally unnecessary delay.

We have an issue with accountability under proportional representation that is very different than under the system that we currently use in British Columbia. It makes it very difficult for voters to hold their governments and representatives accountable, because many of the representatives have nothing to do with the community, with the region they’re supposedly representing, instead of this system that we have now, where, generally, most MLAs have deep roots in the community they run in.

When I talk to members on both sides of the House, these are people that understand their communities, that are connected to them, and they care about those communities. They were school trustees. They were small business owners. They went to church there. They raised family there. They volunteered. They coached baseball and soccer. They helped with the non-profits. They volunteered. Their kids were involved in the communities.

That is a great pedigree to becoming an MLA, understanding what takes place in your community, knowing who the stakeholders are, having a familiarity with the different sectors in the community, how they’re connected and what the challenges are. That’s what makes part of the proving ground for a successful MLA — to have those roots in the community.

That is very different than a party having a binder with a list of 40 or 60 names, and, at the end of the day, depending on how that party in particular does in the election, they’ll just start picking names off that list and assigning them to different regions in the province. They may have no history whatsoever in that jurisdiction. They may be fine, great, outstanding citizens that are not necessarily connected to the communities.

When I’m asked — as I have been, shortly after I got elected in 2013 — what is the best thing about the job, I don’t have to think long about it. It tends to be the same thing a lot of other MLAs say to me, maybe in slightly different words. At the end of the day, you can help make someone’s problem go away. Some of the best days I’ve had since I’ve been elected in office were when I was able to fix a problem. It might not have seemed like a huge problem to anyone else, but it had been a burden on this individual for months, maybe years.

[3:35 p.m.]

It might have been an issue with accessing health care. It might have been an issue with trying to work through WorkSafe B.C., some of the red tape, some of the bureaucracy of government, the frustrations of people who maybe aren’t as nimble as many of us in this House at navigating through legislation and bureaucracy.

For instance, I had one individual a few years ago. She was a single mom, early 40s, a hairdresser. She had a serious, serious dental issue. Basically, she got an infection — bacteria. Her teeth were horrible. She was in pain and agony. She was taking Tylenol 3s all the time. She didn’t have an insurance plan that was going look after it, and she was looking at about probably a 14-month wait to actually have it done in the hospital, where she would be covered.

We made rounds in the community. We found an opportunity where her problem could be fixed, and it wasn’t going to cost her anything. I mean, for her, that was one of the happiest days of her life. A huge problem was taken away. She actually said to me during one of our discussions: “John, if I was a meth head and I started working the streets, the government would pay for this. You know that.” I just sat there. I didn’t know what to say, because she’s right.

When you have a case like that come in and you can fix someone’s problem, can make it go away, that is a very good feeling at the end of the day. Well, that’s what we as MLAs are supposed to be doing. We’ve got jobs over here to do. We’ve got assignments over here to do in Victoria, but when we’re back in the riding, those are the types of problems we’re supposed to be fixing. Those are the types of people we are supposed to be trying to make a positive impact in their life and improve and enhance the quality of their day-to-day existence.

Proportional representation has no time for that. It’s not about representing communities. It’s not about representing individuals. It’s not about being in the community and fixing problems in the community. It’s simply about having different parties represented in the Legislature that have no necessary commitment to the community which they may not have even set foot in previously, as they’ve been selected from a list provided by the party. For no other reason, if it was just that, is why I would not support proportional representation.

Some parties in this system of proportional representation tend to be ever-present. They’re always there. They have weak electoral performances, election in and election out. But over the long haul, they can play a part in governance. In Germany, the Free Democratic Party has held the balance of power for 45 of 64 years. Their average first vote was only 7 percent. It has never eclipsed 12.5 percent. yet at the end of the day, this small fringe party holds the balance of power for decades.

There is another problem that I think every one of us should be concerned about when we talk about proportional representation, even its advocates. It’s that it’s a system that legitimatizes and gives voice to far-left and far-right fringe parties.

We’re seeing this throughout Europe, where parties that under the current system would never, ever have a possibility of serving in the legislature, of being in the parliament, actually are part of a government, or they are part of the negotiation of the coalition. And we’ve seen far-right leaders and political parties rising in popularity around the world. I don’t want to have to work with communists. I don’t want to have to work with Nazis. I don’t want to have to work with white supremacists. I don’t want to have to work with separatists.

Under proportional representation, that is a very real possibility. It is not that difficult to get 1 percent of the vote if you have a very motivated base. And that means 1 percent of the seats in this Legislature. There are some scary, scary possibilities and consequences to that.

[3:40 p.m.]

Let’s just revisit something I alluded to not that long ago about the actual referendum question. Well, apparently there may be two questions. There may be three questions. We’re not really sure. That is very, very different than what the Premier said on May 1 of this year, a week to go in the election, wind in his sails. Things were looking good, and here’s what he said. He was asked: “You’re going to have 50 percent say yes or no. So you give them one system to vote on?” The Premier says: “Yeah, exactly.” “You’re going to give them one system to vote on.” “Yeah, exactly.”

Well, I’ve looked at the legislation, and that is not what is in there. It is something very, very, very different that is in there. This is one more broken promise. When we’re talking about the future of our democratic system and we are talking about the way we elect governments, we need something a little more reliable than a broken promise to base that process on.

I see that my time is just about up. I’ve got very limited opportunity to get through everything that I did want.

I want to conclude by saying that we in British Columbia are so fortunate to live in this province, to live in this country. I don’t think government of any persuasion has an awful lot to do with that. It’s British Columbians that are responsible for us being as prosperous, for us being as comfortable as we are. We fight our challenges, and we meet and we exceed expectations. We punch above our weight, and we’re going to continue doing that.

It’s going to be an awful lot more difficult under a system that literally turns our democratic process upside down and gives voices to those who would be extremely destructive and would poison the Legislature.

I look forward to the rest of the debate and hope to have more to say at a later date.

Hon. R. Fleming: I think I’m pleased to follow the member for Chilliwack. He did speak at length on a number of areas around his fears, I think I would call them, around the proportional representation. I think a lot of them were…. In illuminating his fear around extremist representation, which I’ll deal with later in the debate, he tended to pick, I noticed, the most extreme examples he could find the world over to illustrate his point and completely deviated from the norm of the experience in the over 81 democracies that have some form of proportional representation system.

I understand why he might cherry-pick certain democracies or situations to illustrate his point, but I think that he has not been persuasive at all in making an argument for what this debate on this bill is in favour of.

First of all, he gave his reasons and his perspective, and I respect it, on why he would be voting no and presumably urging others to vote no when we get into a referendum campaign on proportional representation in British Columbia. But he didn’t give very good reasons, or any reasons at all, as to why he fails to trust voters on deciding what their voting system will look like. That’s what this bill is about. It’s about giving opportunity and voice to the electorate on how they elect their elected leaders.

He would rather keep the current status quo that presumably suits him very well, and he articulated that — regionally, and in other ways. He would rather preserve the status quo than give constituents — writ large, British Columbians — a chance to have a say on reforming their election system. I don’t find that a persuasive reason to vote against the bill.

[3:45 p.m.]

I can go along with his reasons or respect his reasons as to why he’ll be a vocal and vigorous participant on the no side, presumably, in a referendum. I also found it quite interesting that he accused the NDP of holding a series of referendums on changing the voting system that have failed. He didn’t exactly come clean on the fact that it was his government in 2005 and 2009 who, in this Legislature, set the people of British Columbia onto having a referendum on a system called single transferrable vote, a form of proportional representation.

Because the New Democrats in coalition with the Greens are giving British Columbians an opportunity to change their voting system here and now in 2017, that’s somehow different than what Gordon Campbell and the B.C. Liberal Party did 13 and eight years ago. Unbelievable.

By all means, I say to the member for Chilliwack. Fill your boots; get out there and passionately debate why we should stick with one voting system over another. But don’t condemn those who would pursue voting reform in this jurisdiction or others and give the people that matter the most input into that — that is, the voters of this jurisdiction or anywhere else. It’s their decision to decide. It’s not elected officials who dictate what their democratic chambers look like and how representatives arrive here.

I am actually very excited about this bill. I think British Columbians are going to welcome the opportunity to have a discussion and cast a ballot on what British Columbia elections look like.

The very first ballot I cast was in a national referendum. It wasn’t perhaps the most interesting question of all. It was around the Charlottetown accord and a series of constitutional amendments proposed nationally. But it was a novel use of a referendum to get the temperature and the pulse and to give Canadians an opportunity to shape their constitutional future. I participated in that election.

We’ve had referendums on a number of items in Canada throughout history, and I think that 2017 is an opportunity to revisit that tradition. It’s absolutely essential, of course, that if you’re going to propose to change the voting system, you’d better have a vote on that, and that’s exactly what we propose to do in this bill.

Let me offer a couple of arguments as to why I think the current first-past-the-post system is problematic and why I think there is a recurring interest in British Columbia, in Canada, to look at voting system alternatives.

First-past-the-post democracies — it can’t be said they are any more robust than mixed-member proportional systems or other forms of proportional representation. In fact, I think one of the most persuasive arguments against the first-past-the-post system is that typically…. This has been studied by the international electoral agency and other groups, with extensive research. The chief distinction between first-past-the-post and proportional representation, aside from how the system actually works, is who participates.

There is a measurable gap in terms of overall voter participation rates in the first-past-the-post system versus a proportional rep system where, typically, the voter will have two votes: one for the local candidate that they support and one for the party that they prefer. Then proportionately, those votes count in different ways to make sure that the parliament is more reflective of the voter sentiment. Not surprisingly, the chief advantage of a mixed-member proportional system is that the Legislature looks a lot more like the electorate when you make your parliament based on an MMP system.

What is a noticeable trend, and this is well documented, is that over the last 30 to 40 years, we have a seen a visible decline — year after year, election after election, with a few punctuated exceptions — where first-past-the-post sees a precipitous decline in voter participation. We’ve seen that here in British Columbia. We’ve seen it in Canada where some elections have hovered in the mid-50s in terms of turnout rates.

It’s gotten so bad that we cheer and celebrate when we get an election that is up to 60, 65 percent, even though that’s fewer than two-in-three voters casting a ballot. But what we see consistently throughout the western world and the democratic world where MMP systems are used is voter participation rates typically in the 75 to 95 percent range.

[3:50 p.m.]

We don’t see in MMP jurisdictions a voter participation rate amongst 18- to 24-year-olds like we see here in Canada and British Columbia that hovers around one in four young people turning out to vote. You smooth over the demographic inequities in participation in MMP systems, because, as the slogan goes — but in actuality as it goes in these countries — “Every vote counts” in a mixed-member system.

Those are some arguments I advance as to why I’m open-minded and supportive of having a referendum, even if it’s the will of the people of British Columbia to look at a different way of electing MLAs. The debate on this bill is really about enabling British Columbians to be able to choose, and that I fundamentally support.

I don’t need to persuade the members opposite today as to which system is better. Our job is to persuade them that giving British Columbians a choice on what their voting system looks like, which this bill does, is the best path forward to continually reinvigorate and legitimatize the democratic system that we all enjoy, no matter what its voting system looks like.

Let me get into some additional arguments made by the member for Chilliwack. He had the advantage, of course, of speaking first and laid out a few concerns that I think were presented, really, as red herrings.

I can’t imagine or think of a proportional representation system in the world where 1 percent of the vote gets you a seat in a parliament. There is a concern in a first-past-the-post democracy, as well as an MMP system, that during certain times, usually times of extreme economic duress and uncertainty, there’ll be a rise of extremist parties. Indeed, he’s correct. We’re seeing that in different parts of the world. But to make the correlation that pro-rep parliaments give additional voice to extremist parties relative to first-past-the-post countries is wrong.

We have seen fascist and far left representatives get elected in traditional Westminster-style first-past-the-post parliaments, and we have seen coalition governments that work — and this is a very current example — to exclude and diminish the rise of extremist parties in their own countries.

It’s very important to remember our history — as an Allied country that shed blood and worked with a number of other Commonwealth nations and other Allies to defeat fascism and Hitler in Europe — that when the Marshall plan and the democratic institution–building happened in postwar Europe, the most important thing was to make democracy enduring forevermore, to restore those countries that were occupied and where civil society was destroyed and visible minorities literally sent to the gas chamber and wiped out — that modern Europe be rebuilt on a fundamental respect for parliament, the rule of law and respect for minorities within the national context.

It’s worth noting in this debate, because the member for Chilliwack I think raised some inaccuracies, the unbridled period of peacetime in western Europe and the North Atlantic following this reconstruction. Most of those countries that have rid themselves of authoritarianism and embraced democracy have chosen proportional representation systems as the best way forward — the best way to ensure that language and visible minorities, national minorities, are represented in parliament; the best way to ensure that a pluralism of political interests are heard within their jurisdictions.

I can’t remember if the member raised the issue of Italy, but that one is thrown out there all the time. It’s worth noting that in first-past-the-post Canada, since 1945, we’ve had 21 national elections to the House of Commons. In Italy, since 1945, they’ve had 18 elections.

[3:55 p.m.]

Let’s put facts on the table about this debate. I’m sure the member intended to do so. I’m sure he will do so when we get to a formal referendum campaign in Chilliwack and throughout the rest of British Columbia.

This debate is about whether you believe in letting British Columbians have the ability to decide on their voting system, whether you believe democracy is a living, breathing, organic process or whether you believe it’s always tradition and hidebound and can never be improved upon.

That’s probably why the other side rejected, on six occasions, the wishes of British Columbians to get rid of big money, out of politics. They were dragged kicking and screaming into a realization that this had reached an absurdity.

Now, not surprisingly, they’re closed-minded to any other type of political reform that we might pursue. Never mind that they conveniently forget and have selective memories about their one-time interest in changing the voting system. They unleashed a process that allowed British Columbians, on two occasions, to vote for the single transferrable vote system. Now that they’re on the opposition side and no longer enjoying being in government, they’re dead set against British Columbians having a say on a different model of voting system.

When somebody makes an argument like that, I think it strains every level of credibility. To say, “It’s okay when we do it, but when somebody else talks about an issue and proposes a solution that is related, they’re out of order. They’re wrong” — forget that argument. It doesn’t cut ice.

What is of interest to British Columbians now is to have a look at how we can improve the voting system here — how we can prevent, as we have seen, various election results that give a huge distortion between the value of one citizen’s vote which is overcompensated in the influence it brings and the diminished value of another citizen, whose vote counts for very little. If we believe in having more pluralism, more representation in our chambers and if we believe that our system can retain some of its most appealing elements….

I actually share the views of the member for Chilliwack that having constituency-based MLAs is critically important. But I believe that we can have a hybrid of both. We can have the best of both worlds. We can have directly elected MLAs in this chamber, and we can have proportionately elected people who are elected by the party preference of the individual voter.

That is I think what is at issue here today. Do we believe that British Columbians should have control over what their voting system looks like? Absolutely. Do we believe that this Legislature legitimately is able to offer British Columbians a chance to vote on what their voting system looks like? Yes, that’s in the bill too.

If you want to agree with what the Liberals are saying…. It’s a very confused message. It’s pro-STV one year, anti–pro rep another year. It’s okay to have a referendum when they’re in power. It’s not okay when a different group is in power. Well, I guess that might be persuasive if they’re talking in a little echo chamber over there, but it’s not persuasive out on the streets of the British Columbia, where people do want to talk about electoral reform….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. One speaker at a time, please.

Hon. R. Fleming: And they’ll be able to talk about electoral reform, because when this bill passes, there will be a referendum campaign in British Columbia. It’ll be in the fall of 2018. If it passes, we’ll be writing legislation that defines what the voting system looks like. And then British Columbians will be able to elect members as they see fit in the 2021 general election.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity.

L. Throness: It’s always a pleasure to rise in this House to share the opinions of my constituents, as well as my own. I certainly think that my constituents’ opinions will mirror my own on this legislation. I’m speaking today on Bill 6, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act. It lays out the parameters of a referendum on proportional representation that will be held before November 30 of next year. Of course, I’ll be speaking against the bill.

[4:00 p.m.]

We’re beginning today a debate not just about the bill but about a larger concept, the concept of proportional representation. It’s about the way that citizens are represented in this House, the people’s House. The way we run our democracy is a cornerstone of our society. There could be few more fundamental issues than the one we’re discussing here.

Now, the bill before us doesn’t attempt to change the Constitution Act, but it is a bill to change the way we are constituted as a province, because the constitution of our province doesn’t just refer to one act of this Legislature. It’s the way government is structured.

It includes all the elements of our government: the Legislature, its standing orders; its laws, how they’re passed and enforced; the function of the Speaker, officers of the House; the cabinet, how it’s made up; the judiciary, how judges are appointed, how it’s funded and operated; the public service, with all of its dizzying complexity; the rules of democracy, of elections; the budgetary process; the Premier and his office; and the Lieutenant-Governor, who, we learned this summer, has a very important and crucial role.

It includes the levels of government, municipal, regional governments. I could go on. Our constitution, the way our government is made up, our vast and pervasive structures throughout our society…. And that means that any time we want to amend the constitution of our government, we’re talking about the underlying rules that form the foundation, that form the basis of the way we govern ourselves. Any amendment should be subject, then, to a lot of scrutiny. It always warrants a close look.

We don’t want to do anything that would shake the foundation of government. We’ve enjoyed very stable government in B.C. for over a century. To shake that foundation would send a tremor through our society, our social policy and even our economy. To shake the foundations of government brings uncertainty, brings changeability and brings unpredictability to all the institutions of government that constitute our government.

The constitution that I’m speaking about also includes political parties, which were first instituted in B.C. in 1903. Before that, there were none. Every member was an independent, just as they are today in most municipalities and regional governments. But political parties were begun for a reason, and I want to talk about that reason for a moment, by waxing philosophical for a moment and taking the view from 30,000 feet.

This House is all about accommodation. It’s about the reconciling of differences. If you were to consult every member in this House privately about any public policy, you’d no doubt get a different viewpoint from each and every member. We’d have 87 different opinions. That’s going into the Legislature, but what comes out of the Legislature can be only one thing. Just one policy can result for the entire province on any issue. Either you raise taxes, or you don’t. You build a new road, or you don’t.

As in our own lives, the Legislature is involved every day in choosing from a panoply of choices, a direction on each issue. That means that at some point, people have to agree on a policy, but how do we come to that kind of common understanding when we have 87 different opinions? Eighty-seven different wills, all of them strong enough to catapult them to this place, which of course, is no easy feat.

In a dictatorship, you only need one will, one person to make all the decisions. I always say that Mr. Stalin and Chairman Mao never took opinion polls. They didn’t care about other people’s opinions. And it made for marvellously efficient making of public policy, even if the policies themselves were stupid and cruel and inhumane and all those things we reject in our society.

If you had an imaginary society, though, where you had two people who were making all the decisions, that would require a degree of accommodation. Those two people would have to meet and argue, come to a common understanding about a future direction. And every time you add another decision-maker, you also have to add another degree of accommodation, as people need to soften and change their views rather than tow a hard line on everything and insist that their will be done on each and every point.

A free and democratic society is based on the notion of consensus, people freely choosing to come together to this place, deciding great questions of public policy and hearing everybody in that process.

In that way, democratic politics, I’ve found, is a broadening of the mind. It requires a change in character. As the rough edges of our personalities are shaved off, we become less introspective, less egocentric, less selfish, as we are forced by the system — I think in a very positive way — to understand how the other person thinks and to adjust our own positions in order to come to some kind of agreement with them, often even with people with whom we would normally disagree.

That’s where political parties come in. It’s very important that we act in groups in this place, groups that come to a common understanding about a policy, nail it down as a plank in the party platform. It results in clarity for the people of B.C., helps them decide how to vote and results in a more general policy that shaves the rough edges off of opinions and pushes our province forward in a united fashion.

[4:05 p.m.]

Proportional representation would alter all of that. It would allow and even encourage smaller and smaller groupings in this place. What would be the impact of proportional representation on how this place works?

Let’s walk through, on a microbasis, how that might work. We have a perfect illustration, a perfect case in point, afforded us by the presence of the Green Party in this House before us today and the current debate in this chamber over the recognition of a party of two versus three.

What would happen if a party of three could go to a party of two and still enjoy full recognition as a party in this House? That’s what will effectively happen with proportional representation. The Green Party has three members, but if this House decides that a political party can have official recognition with only two, the Green Party could be decimated. It could lose a third of its members and still remain a recognized party in this chamber.

Let’s say that one of those Green Party members disagreed with the other two, as may happen from time to time. The two who agreed with each other would be less willing to accommodate and reach agreement with the third, because they won’t lose official party status if that person leaves. They risk very little. So the two would be more likely to dig in their heels and not change their position. That’s the incentive that a system favouring smaller parties will give to political parties. It’s an incentive to disagree, to be less accommodating of each other’s viewpoints.

If we encourage the proliferation of smaller and smaller parties in this place, there will be less accommodation required. There will be more disagreement, more time spent on process and negotiation between parties, as parties try to agree on a way forward. At the same time, the system will give less motivation to agree in order to retain party distinctives, keep supporters on board and motivated to vote and volunteer and give to a small party.

There will be more time spent negotiating, less time spent on actual governing, more timid and wishy-washy and vague policy moves by the government in order to try and please more parties, more complexity in party positions and therefore less clarity in the public mind about how to vote and who to vote for and who stands for what. And more disagreement in larger society, as fragmentation in this House is increasingly mirrored by fragmentation in the public mind.

Instead of several broad choices, people will have many narrow ones, and that’s not good for societal consensus. It’s not good for the making of public policy, as policy is increasingly controlled — as we’ve already seen in this House, to the detriment, I believe, of this province — by a small number of people who hold the balance of power rather than the majority. This, I submit, would be the result of proportional representation.

Now we come to the specific matter before us in this bill. What is it? What is proportional representation? I want to define it. The dictionary defines it in a very simple way. It’s an electoral system in which parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them. If a party gets 50 percent of the vote provincewide, it will get 50 percent of the seats. If it gets 2 percent, or thereabouts, of the vote across B.C., it will get one seat. It’s not about 50 percent in each riding or constituency; the votes are counted provincewide.

This contrasts, of course, with the system we now have called first-past-the-post, which, of course, is an analogy to a horse race. In a horse race, many horses are running, but the first one to reach the post, the finish line, wins the race. That means in our electoral system, the party with the most votes wins the election.

Typically, there are a number of parties running, and no one party, either in our federal system, in other provinces or in B.C., will get 50 percent of the vote. But in each riding, the party with the most votes gets the seat. I was happy to win my riding with over 50 percent of the vote, but many in B.C. do not. We simply add up the number of seats who won to get a government.

Now the NDP and the Green Party, together, have combined forces to push proportional representation on B.C. They’re in favour of it, and the instrument that they’re going to use is Bill 6, before us today. I want to talk first about the mechanics of the bill itself, then move on to how proportional representation will look at the ground level and the practical implications of it on provincial politics.

To my mind, this bill is tailor-made to please the Green Party, the junior partner in the NDP-Green alliance. The elements of the bill will favour a yes vote, which would make the Green Party and many others permanent fixtures on the political landscape in B.C. This vote is all about job security for the Green Party. Now, they dress the matter up in ethical principles and fairness and other good words like that, but, really, it’s about power. Really, it is about survival for the Green Party.

As I said before, the requirement of the bill is to vote on a referendum prior to November 30 of next year. This will roughly coincide with municipal elections next fall, or it might conflict with them. We’re unsure how the two will impact each other.

[4:10 p.m.]

There will be proponents campaigning on either side of this question, and there will be municipal campaigners, as well, that could easily be mixed up together. People might be sick of municipal campaigning, not pay attention to the campaign on proportional representation, or the other way around. The potential for voter confusion, voter fatigue, is high, so the timing of the referendum is poor.

Those who want proportional representation knew this. This is a cold calculation. They’re in control of this House today. They know that the more you can obscure an issue, the more you can keep people from seeing the ramifications of proportional representation and the more likely a referendum will pass.

Second, the voting method is a mail-in ballot. I think this guarantees a low turnout. People often don’t bother reading their mail anymore. They will think their ballot is junk mail. They’ll discard and recycle the letter. In a situation of low voter turnout, the more ideological proponents, particularly the more radical minority proponents, will be more motivated to vote. They have an advantage. So they will vote in higher numbers. Their turnout will be proportionally greater. Since the proponents of proportional representation are the more fringe parties, the Greens and the NDP are clearly favouring a yes vote through this principle.

I would further point out that the referendum is binding if 50-plus-one percent vote the same way. Usually, in a matter that will change the fundamental makeup of our democracy, the threshold would be higher, like 60 or 65 percent — not in this case. The threshold is a bare minimum.

There have been two referendums before in this province on proportional representation — one in 2005 and another one in 2009. Both of them failed. In 2005, the level of voter approval needed for the referendum result to be binding was 60 percent with a simple majority in 48 of the 79 electoral districts. They only received 50 percent. They fell short of that super majority. In 2009, the referendum failed, with only 39 percent of the vote.

In this bill, there are no thresholds. As long as the total number of votes provincewide favour proportional representation by 50-plus-one, the referendum will pass. That means that if Vancouver and the area of Vancouver gets out and votes in higher numbers, the rest of B.C. won’t matter, because more people live in the GVRD than the rest of the province combined.

The way our House is constituted now, there are numerous rural constituencies, each one with one member, so that regional representation — that means most of the province, geographically — is guaranteed. In past referendums, the government understood that people in rural B.C. need to have a vote that counts on the issue — not so in this referendum. Vancouver will be able to force its will on the rest of B.C. and bring it in. This principle is just plain wrong.

Moreover, the provincial cabinet gets to draft the question. We don’t necessarily have wide consultations about what the question should be. The question will be drafted behind closed doors by politicians who have every interest in the measure passing. They will make sure to draft a question that they think will pass. Talk about open and transparent government — the fix is in with this bill.

The legislation gives us the possibility of a ballot with more than one question, which will confuse the matter even further, which is directly contrary to a promise made by the Premier. He said in an interview with Rob Shaw, a journalist…. “You’re going to have 50 percent say yes or no,” the reporter said. “So you give them one system to vote on?” The Premier said: “Yeah, exactly.” This was in the Province, May 1 of this year. So the Premier is planning to break yet another promise on this matter by giving a choice of complicated systems to vote on.

Further, the question is going to be decided among those who will actually mail in their ballot. We won’t have to have 50 percent of voters send in their ballot by mail. What if 25 percent send in their ballots and 50-plus-one of those 25 percent vote for proportional representation? That would mean that 12½ percent of British Columbia voters could completely change our system of democratic representation.

I can’t tell you how much that upsets me. This is a hijacking of our electoral system in order to uphold the agreement between the NDP and the Greens. This is what they’re doing to our province for the sake of holding on to power.

But it gets worse. The provincial government can order the ballots to be counted on a preferential voting basis. It stacks the deck again against what we have now. Voters who choose our present system as their first choice will have to choose between multiple PR systems for their second and third choices, if they want to make them. If there is a multi-part ballot question and no single option reaches 50 percent on the first count, second and third choices will be redistributed and counted until 50 percent is reached. Even some of those who choose first-past-the-post could still be counted as supporters of proportional representation.

[4:15 p.m.]

This new system will be forced on British Columbians in time for the next general election on or before July 21, 2021 and, of course, every one thereafter.

While there are many strengths of the system we have now, and I want to go through a few of them, the choices between the main political parties are very clear. That produces stable government. We have the B.C. Liberals and the NDP right now, the two broad directions in B.C. The distinctions between them are very clear. Voters know who they prefer. The system has given us stable government in B.C., with very few exceptions, for over a century, because it usually produces a majority. It also produces a strong opposition, a strong minority, as we have on this side today.

Because there are fewer parties and those parties must have broad appeal to voters in the first-past-the-post system, extremist or fringe parties are less likely to win seats in the Legislature. That provides for a more moderate government. The situation in this House today, where a more radical group holds the balance of power, has resulted in more radical decisions. The bill before us is a perfect example of that.

I would say that our present system provides for more decisive government as well. Knowing that you have a majority in the House allows the Premier and the cabinet to make bold decisions like the W.A.C. Bennett dam, which has been so good for B.C.; like Site C; like deciding to build a bridge to replace the Massey Tunnel. Would those decisions have ever been taken under proportional representation? I doubt it. Some little party on which the government depended for power would have blocked it as the price of its support, as we’ve seen in the past few months.

I think one of the biggest strengths of our current system is what happens on the ground. The first-past-the-post system allows a local candidate to stand. People, through the party nomination process, choose that local candidate. They know the candidate. The person is of good reputation. They live locally. People vote for that person. They know about local issues, and they can hold that person to account to represent them on those local issues.

I’ve really learned over the past several years what I call the democratic imperative. The fact that I have to get re-elected in my own constituency, to face my own voters, forces me to do a whole array of good things. I have to spend time in my constituency. I have to pay attention to individuals with problems. I have to appear at events in my riding and advocate strongly for my people here in Victoria. Why? Because I might not get re-elected if I don’t.

Last year at this time, I was knocking on doors in Harrison Hot Springs on a cold Saturday morning. I thought: “Really, democracy provides a great incentive.” Instead of sleeping in on a Saturday morning, I’m out asking people if I can help them in some way. The drive to get re-elected is a good thing. It ensures good service to constituents.

This direct, local accountability will disappear under proportional representation, because electors may not have a local MLA that they can call on the carpet and run out of town if they do something stupid. Instead of a local person, we’d be voting for a provincial party. That party might choose who the MLA is, and that MLA would be in as long as he or she could retain the approval of the party, rather than the people. Right now there’s a possibility of a recall of an MLA who doesn’t please his or her constituents. That would be gone under proportional representation.

Of course, there is a possibility of a popular individual, a person with a local grievance that really motivates people. That person, at present, can get elected as an independent member without a political party, which has happened in this House over the past four years. That wouldn’t happen under proportional representation.

In general, the person, the local politician, matters less in proportional representation, and the party becomes much more important. I don’t like that. That’s not the history and the culture of our province. People, in my experience, don’t like political parties very much. They don’t like their motivations. I think people would be very unhappy if they knew that their MLA might not even come from their town or area and might not be directly accountable to them, that they would not be able to eject that person if they don’t like him or her. In fact, under proportional representation, politicians are often chosen by the party from party lists. That’s not what we want here in B.C.

Let’s go through some other problems with proportional representation. One of the greatest problems is its complexity. There are various forms of PR, and each one is complicated and hard to understand. Two of the most used around the world are the mixed-member proportional and the single transferable vote systems. It’s pretty hard to describe what those mean. Let me give you an example of a system.

[4:20 p.m.]

We would get rid of our riding boundaries as they are, each riding having one MLA, and we would group five or so ridings together so that we’re talking about a much larger district, covering a large geographic area, with voters having to vote for candidates they wouldn’t know and who might live a long way away. Voters would not be aware of issues in those other areas or the personalities of people they’re voting for.

On the ballot in the riding of Chilliwack-Kent in the last election, there were just three candidates to choose from. It was very simple. It was very clear. You knew who you were voting for. You knew what the parties stood for. Under proportional representation, there would be a ranked ballot with five candidates, perhaps, that would eventually be chosen, but there might be dozens of candidates on the ballot from a wide geographic area. How would the normal person know to choose their preferred candidates?

Let me read to you from a pamphlet that advocates for a form of proportional representation called local PR, as it attempts to describe how voting takes place. Let me quote from that pamphlet.

“Voting is by ranked ballot. Voters may rank as few or as many candidates as they wish. Candidates are listed on the ballot according to the existing ridings in which they were nominated, but voters can rank any of the candidates running in the multi-member district. Ranking is optional, and voters can vote for just one candidate if they prefer.

“The counting process under local PR is done in rounds, where each round elects one candidate who has achieved the required number of votes” — that’s a quota of votes — “to win a seat. If no candidate has enough votes for a seat, the least popular candidate is suspended. Those votes are redistributed to second preferences until one MLA is declared elected.”

And on it goes.

I’m not sure I understand that, and I’m in the business. I’m a full-time politician. How would we expect the average British Columbian to understand the system, most of whom don’t like politics very much and don’t pay much attention to politics, except at election time? A number of those even spoil their ballots under our present system because they don’t understand the system. I don’t think the average person would understand what was going on.

Let’s talk about international experience. Proportional representation leads to less stable government. I can cite Italy as the world’s great example of a continuing electoral disaster. It has a dog’s breakfast of 28 different political parties. It has had 65 elections in the last 70 years. That’s almost an election every year. Can you imagine this for B.C.? Moreover, as I’ve said before, more and more time would be spent negotiating between parties — and almost more time than it takes to govern.

I’m not exaggerating. In 2010, Belgium took 589 days, almost two years, to form a government. Eleven parties had to negotiate. In 2015, Spain had 13 parties. It took 314 days to negotiate a government. The Netherlands has 13 parties. This year they took 208 days to form a government. Germany had an election in September but will not be able to form a government until next year. These are not marginal countries. These are major industrial countries, and I don’t see why we would choose that kind of a system for B.C.

I do know this. I have a constituent who moved from Germany to my riding, and he said to me: “Don’t go to proportional representation. The government is always manipulated and run by the smallest fringe party. It’s crazy there.” That’s what he said. That’s another weakness of proportional representation.

We’ve been treated to a demonstration of what it would be like by the agreement between the Greens and the NDP. They took two months to form a government. They did so according to an agreement that was negotiated behind closed doors and presented to the province as a fait accompli. A party with just 17 percent of the vote is virtually running the government, and this bill is a demonstration of the raw power that the Greens have to set the government’s agenda.

British Columbians didn’t vote for that. A majority didn’t even vote for the governing party, the NDP, let alone the Greens. But we will see much more negotiation, more fragmentation, more wasted time and energy, negotiating agreements behind closed doors, as parties horse trade policies between them under proportional representation. The promises made during a campaign will take second place to the agreements between parties after an election.

Allow me to summarize my thoughts. British Columbians have twice rejected proportional representation, and for good reason. This issue would not even be on the table today if it were not for the backroom deal between the Greens and the NDP to stack the deck in a referendum rigged to favour proportional representation, in return for the Greens supporting the NDP in power.

In any systemic change, you give something to get something. You increase the power of small parties and parties in general, but you sacrifice many things to get there. We sacrifice simplicity. Proportional representation is a complicated system, difficult to explain and operate. It would reduce confidence in the outcomes, I believe. We sacrifice individual power and the power of a local MLA, and we would increase the power of political parties in the system.

[4:25 p.m.]

We would sacrifice the stability of government. Proportional representation would result in more unstable government, more frequent elections. We would sacrifice local accountability. We would reduce local accountability for local MLAs to their own constituents. We would sacrifice the close connection between constituents and their own MLA.

We would sacrifice the influence of rural B.C. in the Legislature by taking power away from rural areas of B.C. and concentrating power in the GVRD. This is not good for B.C. We would sacrifice the principle of majority rule, as more radical minority parties would hold the balance of power and would therefore be able to dictate policy to the majority, as the Greens are doing today on this very bill.

We would sacrifice consensus and accommodation, as proportional representation would give the incentive to parties to hold on to their principles, dig in their heels and disagree with each other. We would sacrifice the decisive nature of majority governments and the bold policy decisions they might take, as coalition governments try to please everyone. We would sacrifice precious time governing, time that would be spent instead in negotiating agreements between parties rather than carrying on the people’s business, the business of governing.

I don’t for the life of me understand why the NDP would want this. They have a good degree of consensus within their own party. It’s certainly not in their own interests, it is not in the interests of the B.C. Liberal coalition, and it’s certainly not in the interests of the people of B.C.

For these many reasons, I will be voting against this bill. I want my constituents to know that I will campaign hard against proportional representation as we move closer to the fall of 2018.

Interjection.

P. Milobar: It’s always flattering to know that the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head seems to seek out when I’m going to be speaking to make sure that he’s in the House. I thank him for being a regular attendee to my speeches.

I rise to speak around Bill 6 and the issues that I see with the proportional representation referendum. There are quite a few flaws that I see in the proposal given by the government with this bill. Probably the first and the most clear and disappointing one is that we have a Premier who has broken yet another election promise with this bill.

He is quoted on May 1 as saying that it will be, basically, a yes-or-no question on the referendum, not a multiple choice of several different types of proportional representation and first-past-the-post. That, by its very nature, pretty much guarantees that unless you have a first-ballot victory, a first-past-the-post, you will not see that becoming the second option that suddenly gains that groundswell of support.

That is, perhaps, the most troubling piece. We have a very clear election statement, a broken promise by the Premier yet again. One would think that on something as fundamental as changes to the democratic process in a province…. That is the one thing that, perhaps, the public should expect their Premier to not break a promise on. Certainly, that’s exactly what we’ve seen in this case. That’s very troubling, I think — to try to create public support and public confidence in our appointed government that we currently have within the province of British Columbia.

As I’ve said in this House…. I say “appointed” because that’s exactly what we have right now. We have a government that has been appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor. They did not win the majority of seats in the election. No party did. They crafted a deal with the Green Party, and they have the ability, duly authorized by the Lieutenant-Governor, to govern British Columbia. But make no mistake about it. It is an appointed government and one that the voters, in the majority, did not select in our current system.

[4:30 p.m.]

That’s, I think, what does lead to some of these concerns around this proportional representation referendum. We’re using the word “referendum,” but I notice that in the bill…. I believe it’s in item 3 of the referendum bill, section (b) of 3. I think it’s 3(b). I could stand to be corrected. It actually says the Referendum Act shall not apply.

Here we have a referendum that will not be governed by an existing piece of legislation around a referendum act. That, again, is very troubling, when you have an appointed government situation, to bend the laws of our parliament, to bend the laws of our operations when we have existing legislation in place that deals with referendum — to flat out state that, while calling for a referendum, we’re not actually going to follow the rules of a referendum.

I think that’s a very far-reaching way for a government that has not been elected with the majority of seats from across this great province to behave. It is very troubling.

I know that the members opposite will get very blustery when we talk about backroom deals in the secretariat’s room and the $1 billion secretariat that is helping craft some of these deals between the NDP and the Green Party. We’ll hear lots of great language from those parties about how politics will be done differently. Well, so far we haven’t seen politics done differently in this House, and there’s no indication that that will change.

That leads one to think that proportional representation will be no different and, in fact, be a series of backroom deals made outside of the lights of the cameras, without public scrutiny, and the result already decided well in advance.

I can only imagine what the members of the NDP would be thinking right now, after sitting in opposition for 16 years, what would happen — when they were so close, when they were those one or two seats away from actually being elected as a government, as opposed to being appointed as a government — had the deal with the B.C. Liberal Party and the Green Party been struck instead. I’m sure we would have been hearing howls and howls of conspiracy theories and backroom deals and everything else that would go along with that.

Now when that mindset gets raised, it gets laughed off. I don’t think it’s a laughing matter. I think there are a great many people in this province that are very concerned about the structure that we currently see. What we see with this bill is a way to try to basically rig the game to make sure that they get the result that they want.

We have the leader of the Green Party on record as saying: “We don’t even need to hold a referendum. Just go ahead and change the law.” That was the opinion shortly after the deal was struck to have the deal with the NDP. Instead, what we see are the rules around a referendum that pretty much guarantee this is all nothing but a show. It really does question the commitment to things such as the democratic process in British Columbia.

When you see a referendum being brought forward that not only is going to be multiple choice by the sounds of it…. We haven’t got that confirmed yet, because there’s not a citizens’ assembly, like we saw in 2005 and 2009, bringing forward the bill to make sure that the option that will go on the referendum ballot has been well vetted and thought up from across the province and recommended.

No. Instead, what we will see is the cabinet, the ministers of the Crown, go into their cabinet room, under cabinet confidence, and decide what the final rules of this will be.

So we will pass a bill…. Or hopefully, we won’t pass a bill. But by all indications it looks like it might, unless a bad flu bug hits. What we will see is a bill rammed through the House without the real rules well spelled out to the public so anyone actually knows what the rules are going to be in their final real-world application.

We’ll find that out sometime after the fact, after cabinet has decided to meet, under cabinet confidence, in a private room. Somehow the Attorney General will be the arbitrator of being neutral and impartial, and he will tell us all what’s best for us as a province. That is very problematic — that we’re essentially talking about changing our electoral system, which has long stood the test of time, with a rigged game.

All I know is if I was ever in a back alley, I would definitely turn down the opportunity to play three-card monte with the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, because I don’t like my odds of winning that game. That’s for sure.

You look at — instead of having a simple yes or no — the broken promise on that being the case to begin with. Then you take that a step further, and you say: “So now we are going to fundamentally change how democracy in this province works, moving forward.” And we’re going to use…. An appointed government has decided to decree that it shall be with the slimmest of thresholds.

[4:35 p.m.]

Now, even in the municipal world, the government of British Columbia has enshrined within the Local Government Act that certain major decisions within municipalities’ realm…. They can still make those decisions. But you know what? It’s not a simple 50-plus-1 percent within the Local Government Act for that form of government to be able to make that fundamental change to something they’re trying to do. It’s three-quarters. It’s a 75 percent threshold.

I’m not advocating for a 75 percent threshold by any means. I’m just saying that even the province of British Columbia has realized that when you have large fundamental decisions that need to be made on structural changes, there should be a higher threshold than 50-plus-1 percent. We make sure that another body of elected officials has to be held to that standard. Yet here we have an appointed government — an appointed minority government — making sure that they decide to walk away from all of that.

Instead of following the Referendum Act, which would have had the higher threshold as well as 50-plus-1 percent of ridings that actually have to…. It’s a double test to be met. This bill proposes to drop it down to 50-plus-1 percent total — blanket, across the board. The reason that is a problem, as we’ve heard from the previous speaker, is that the population base is so spread out in British Columbia, except for concentrations in Metro Vancouver, that the math actually does lead to that urban side of things.

I’m not saying this as a rural representative. Depending where you are…. I know the CBC classifies Kamloops as rural, but when I go to areas in my riding like Barriere or Clearwater, they consider Kamloops to be urban. So I get that we’re kind of that mix of whichever brand and relevance the person wants to make Kamloops out to be. I’m not worried about that.

What I’m saying is that to go down from…. Most proposals have us going from the 87 ridings that we currently have to that 42 or 45, like we see with the federal government ridings. Not only would that take the rural ridings outside of the Lower Mainland from 23 ridings down to ten, but that also does impact the Lower Mainland ridings. It impacts Surrey. It impacts Burnaby. It impacts parts of the Island and the capital regional district, where they will see their seats diminish quite greatly, because you still have to go from 87 to 42. Those aren’t all going to be made up by reducing seats in the rural areas.

What we will see in the spirit of good old democracy is 42 members elected by people, and 45 members — so more than the majority of the House — will be off of a list developed by parties of party insiders that get to be appointed to the House. Those lists will be developed by parties, make no doubt about it. There won’t be the ability for that local representation to be able to decide.

That, very much, is very troubling, because we’ve heard for years and years about people worrying around undue influence or people not having local say in an issue and in a matter. I can tell you that in my riding people, do want to have that local say. People do want to have that local connection with their local MLA office. I don’t think that’s a rural and an urban issue whatsoever.

I think that even residents of Surrey want to make sure that they can walk into their local constituency office in Surrey and be dealt with by somebody that — even if they didn’t vote for them because they were from a different political party during the election — was still local, that they still were hearing from during the election and that they still understood what that person, to a certain degree, stood for. Even if they didn’t vote for them, obviously their friends and neighbours probably did, in sufficient numbers.

They have a little bit of comfort that they were locally vetted and that local population within that city had a say in who was going to represent them. I think that brings comfort to the residents of Surrey. I think it brings comfort to the residents of Langley. I think it brings comfort to the residents of Vancouver — all of which would lose several seats under this option.

[4:40 p.m.]

When we look at why 50 plus 1 is such an amazingly low threshold…. This is such a rush right now. Let’s keep in mind that in 2005 and 2009 — before we got to the actual question, before there was the vote — there was a year or two of consultation and work around the province of, literally, a committee of hundreds of people that were brought together to try to figure out what would be the best system to ask in a yes-or-no type of ballot, in terms of first-past-the-post or one other option — the same type of system, I would point out, that the Premier committed to on May 1 of this year. And here we are a few months later, and that promise has been totally been broken yet again.

Why is that important? Well, you think about it. So 2005 was the first time this was discussed in any great depth. And there was the double threshold. The double threshold was you needed at least 60 percent of valid votes to cast a yes under the Referendum Act. The same Referendum Act that we are now actively in writing…. I think it’s 3(b) that says that the Referendum Act shall not apply to this referendum.

That first threshold — 60 percent of valid votes cast yes. Final results — 57.69 percent of the total valid votes cast voted yes for the new system. So the threshold was not met, but admittedly, it was very, very close.

They also needed the second threshold of at least 48 of the 79 electoral districts, more than 50 percent of valid votes cast yes. And 77 of the electoral districts voted yes by more than 50 percent. That threshold actually was made, so there shouldn’t be a fear of having this double threshold. Perhaps that threshold was a little high. But there should always be that second threshold to make sure that it’s not just the concentrated few ridings with large population bases that can control, but make sure that there’s a broad number of ridings spread out around the province to sufficiently demonstrate that need.

Now, why the timing of this is so interesting…. That was 2005. Now, as the public — and it came very close to succeeding — got more informed on what that would really mean, as the public started to really have time to digest what almost happened, unlike Brexit, we had to have a do-over.

After the people actually had that sober second thought of, “What did we almost just vote for?” — which I think they wound up with on May 9, actually, or May 10…. What we found in 2009, with almost the identical question of the same type of system…. The results weren’t even close. The results were so far against electoral reform, as people had four years to properly digest…. Because again, people in the real world outside of these halls that are working day in, day out with busy lives — with their families, with their work — are not paying that close of attention.

It’s not because they can’t comprehend it. It’s not that they’re not interested in it. They’re just busy. So yes, the people huddling around, those morning coffee crews that every town has, were very engaged and very interested in what was going on. The average person didn’t quite pay enough attention, I would suggest. Only four years later, when we ran the referendum again…. That one, we still had with the Referendum Act. So we held a referendum using the Referendum Act, instead of what we’re being pitched to right now, which is a referendum ignoring the Referendum Act.

The turnout. The votes of at least 60 percent of valid cast provincewide ballots — that’s the first threshold. Previous, 57.69 percent. Four years later, when people got better educated and understood what it was they were being asked, 39.09 percent — a huge drop, a 20 percent drop of the ballots cast. Then you needed at least 51 of the 85 ridings to vote 50 percent. Only eight this time. We went from 77 electoral districts voting yes of 50 percent to eight. That’s incredible. That’s 69 ridings suddenly saying: “Wait a second; time-out. This system isn’t what’s best for the province.”

[4:45 p.m.]

Knowing these results in such a way, instead of going…. I could even understand if we said we were going to 50 percent plus one, in every single riding, and you need, out of the 87, 45 ridings to vote that way as well. I could even understand if they’d lowered the bar of the two thresholds. But to just wipe out one threshold completely and to lower the bar of the other threshold so incredibly low…. If it was only a simple yes-or-no question, as we saw in the last round, it wouldn’t actually succeed.

What’s the solution to that? “Well, let’s just drop it to 50-plus-one percent for the whole province, and you know what? Why don’t we throw in a multiple choice exam at the same time on the ballot so that we can make sure that we get the result that we want” and, as we’ve heard, cling to power, essentially.

Those are the biggest problems that I have with this whole proposal. It’s not equitable, and you’re taking away a lot of the local ability for people to engage in the political process. We hear all the time about people disengaging with the political process, people not being engaged, people feeling like they’re not being heard. Well, weakening that system even further to get a desired result based on the feeling that because you had 17 percent of the overall vote, you should be entitled to 15 seats in the House — or whatever the math worked out to be — I think is problematic.

When you start trying to change a democratic system at the whim of trying to retroactively get a result based on a previous election — that’s not how systems stand the test of time. That’s why there are positions within this House that aren’t about the person; they’re about the title and the duties of that job. It makes it very hard to change that. That is why, when you’re going to change something as fundamental as how people elect their government to represent them in this House…. To go to the absolute bare minimum that you can possibly have to try to get a result is really quite shocking.

In fact, we don’t even see a double threshold being…. Forget about the number of ridings. We’re not even seeing a double threshold based on the percentage of overall voter turnout. What we’re hearing from the government and the Green Party is: “As long as it’s 50-plus-one percent, and as long as one person casts their ballot, we’re good to go. We can change the whole system of the province of British Columbia, full-stop, because there’s no second threshold to be met.”

We’ve seen this in Canada already, where the other province decided that in fact the threshold of voter turnout — at 36 percent, I believe — was too low to get a good sense of what the public was really thinking when it comes to democratic reforms within their province.

I don’t think anyone’s opposed to good, solid democratic process, but when you are using anything but good, solid democratic process to change that, that’s very problematic. There is only one way that you should be able to do something as fundamentally important as this.

As I say, we already say to local governments — which are entrusted and duly elected and operate under the provisions of the Local Government Act, designed by the members in this House and governed by the members of this House, essentially, to operate as an order of government — that if you want to make large fundamental changes in certain aspects of how you are operating your city, you need three-quarters of a vote. You don’t need three-quarters of a vote to pass a budget, just like you don’t need three-quarters of a vote to pass a budget in this House, but you do if you’re going to make fundamental changes to the way the city is going to operate.

To make a fundamental change to how a province is going to elect a government and to drop the threshold, the sole threshold. To totally ignore a Referendum Act that has been built with two thresholds in place for a reason. To not even acknowledge that there’s a reason why there are two thresholds — instead of coming back and saying that these are our new two thresholds or these are the new percentages of the existing thresholds. No, they have totally walked away, with this piece of legislation, from any of that whatsoever.

They have put in the most simplistic way of calculating the will of the people. To not even recognize that at some point, to make such a massive change to the democratic process, there should at least, at a bare minimum, be a certain voter turnout is shocking.

[4:50 p.m.]

To say that you want to, as an appointed minority government, just full stop take a 5 percent voter turnout, a 10 percent voter turnout…. There’s not even a provision in this that says you need to at least have a minimum voter turnout that matches what we say would constitute a party if you got that amount of vote. You need a certain threshold, to become a party, of the overall vote. But we don’t have that threshold in this. One has to really wonder.

Interjection.

P. Milobar: The last time I ran for mayor, I had just under 80 percent of the vote, and it was about a 29 percent voter turnout. So thank you for making my point, though.

That’s right, and that’s the point — that we hear from the members opposite that this isn’t the right system, first-past-the-post, because, really, 40 percent voted for this and 40 percent voted for that and 17 percent voted for that.

What we need to also put in mind is that still equates…. And then they say, “And the voter turnout’s not very strong either” — provincially. It’s about twice of what it is municipally, and there are about ten times as many people that run municipally as they run federally.

In fact — since the member opposite brought it up — I had, I believe, the same amount of people running against me for mayor as I had running against me in the recent provincial election. We were one of the anomalies, our riding, because we actually had four parties running. We had the Communist Party running, as well, in our riding.

What we need to make sure we’re doing, though, is setting a threshold for something as fundamentally different as changing our electoral system. If the member opposite is suggesting that a general election where you’re electing a mayor or councillors, where a large part of the province is actually done by acclamation, so it’s zero voter turnout, because you didn’t need to be there to vote…. Or a school trustee — many of them are acclaimed, as well, in the smaller rural areas, and I’m sure the member opposite will figure that out when he tours the province going around looking at schools.

To suggest, though, that a municipal general election is the same as fundamentally changing our whole electoral system is shocking. That a minister of the Crown would equate a general voter turnout in a municipal election as the same as making sure….

Interjection.

P. Milobar: I see I’ve agitated the Minister of Education.

To suggest that that is the same is very shocking, and I think that speaks volumes. The fact that the Minister of Education chooses to characterize me as asking how dumb I am, that does bring into question the level of decorum that this new way of governing is bringing about in this House.

It does lead to the question of how far a government is willing to go — that hasn’t been elected, has been appointed and has no problem governing as an appointment — to make sure that 50-plus-one percent is an acceptable threshold to fundamentally change our democratic process across the board in this province and sees that as the same level of a decision being made as when people go to a regular municipal election or to a school board election.

The fact of the matter is, though, there is no threshold around voter turnout on this bill. There is no threshold on number of ridings that need to vote in favour of it. There is no threshold above 50 plus one. In fact, what we see in this bill is a commitment to have many questions on a ballot, when we have the Premier of this province, on May 1, very clearly saying that it’s going to be a simple yes-or-no style of ballot, as the previous referendums have been.

Now we see a total broken promise. It’s not acceptable. I don’t think it serves what the public was expecting when they were hearing proportional representation. Again, it’s around that public expectation. When I toss the keys to my son if he wants to go to a movie, I’m assuming he’s driving the five kilometres up the hill to go to the local movie theatre. I don’t think he’s going to head down the I-5 and go down to the Tijuana film festival and when I question him on that, he turns around and says: “Well, I told you I was going to the movies.”

[4:55 p.m.]

When people hear there’s going to be a referendum on proportional representation, I think their natural expectation, having gone through two previous referendums on proportional representation and after hearing the Premier say it would be a simple yes-or-no type of question, the average person’s expectation of that would be: “Well, it’s probably going to have similar thresholds as what we saw in the last two referendums. Maybe not exactly but similar, and, at least a double threshold.” I’m certain they would have expected it to be a simple yes or no — not a broken promise.

But that’s not what we have here. So the public expectation should be dealt with and held with a little more high regard from the members opposite than we’re currently seeing. We just recently saw it with the three or the two — where people’s expectation was probably three, but now we’ve got two. Now we’re seeing it again.

If this is the new style of governing and if this is the new decorum in the House that we can expect on a regular basis, I’m really starting to question the veracity of those statements, when you have actions that are really no different than what we’ve seen from the members opposite over the last years — the last 16 years, in fact.

I guess one would have to ask why it was that the public chose to make sure that it was 16 years between governments changing. Certainly, some of what we saw today speaks highly of that. So I cannot support this bill as it stands. There are too many problems in it.

The first and foremost is that we have another broken promise from the Premier contained right within it. We have, contained right within it, that it’s a referendum that will not follow the Referendum Act.

It actually has the absolute lowest threshold you could possibly have for any vote. In fact, I would suggest that there are probably a lot of schools…. Again, the Education Minister might know better than I on this. There are probably a lot of high schools around that have a higher threshold to elect their student councils than this bill contains.

Hon. G. Heyman: To be honest, I’ve been sitting in the House for the last couple hours listening to the member for Chilliwack and then the member for Chilliwack-Kent and now the member for Kamloops–North Thompson. As I’m listening, I’m thinking which one of their so-called arguments I would want to debate in this particular intervention on Bill 6, and I honestly don’t know where to start. I’m a little dumbfounded.

They’re essentially contradictory, and none of them deal with the real fundamental issue in front of us, which is: how do we ensure that the view of the majority of British Columbians is represented in a government made up of members from a single party or members from two parties or members from one or two parties supported by other members of the Legislature?

I hasten to point out to my colleague the member for Kamloops–North Thompson that this is actually the fundamental nature of the British parliamentary system, which he appears not to understand, although he apparently has got no compunction of doing a rather pale imitation of the attempt of the former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, to convince Canadians that we actually operated under the United States electoral system rather than the British parliamentary system, the fundamental premise of which is that individuals elect people, and people, who are MLAs in this House under the current system of first-past-the-post, then decide who forms government. That decision is then given effect by the Lieutenant-Governor.

The member for Kamloops–North Thompson continually referred to a government that was appointed. Well, all governments, in that sense, are appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor on request of her to the leader of a party that she believes — or he believes, if it’s a male — can command the confidence of the House. That’s the fundamental premise of the system in which we operate.

[5:00 p.m.]

That’s why the government that was appointed prior to the 2017 election was able to exercise a commanding majority in this House with the support of slightly over 40 percent of the people who voted, let alone the people who were eligible to vote in this province, which apparently the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, the member for Chilliwack, the member for Chilliwack-Kent and every member in the now opposition party think was just fine and perfectly democratic and somehow represented the will of British Columbians. But when I talked to people on the doorstep in the election, one of the most common questions I was asked was: will you support a change to a proportional representation system?

I explained to them, when I campaigned, that I personally supported that system; that in two referenda, I had voted to change the voting system personally; and that our commitment was to put a referendum before the people of British Columbia to determine whether the makeup of this Legislature should more accurately reflect the support for members of various parties expressed in percentages of people who had voted in the election.

That’s the fundamental question before us. It really isn’t anything else. It isn’t, as the member for Kamloops–North Thompson said, an attempt by the members of the Green Party or the members of the governing party to “rig the game.” I would say that when a party can govern without having to achieve the agreement of members of any other party, including members of parties that gained well over 50 percent of the vote in the province, if they can impose their will, that’s a rigged game in the view of most British Columbians.

It’s a rigged game that doesn’t reflect the views of most members and citizens of British Columbia. It’s a rigged game that doesn’t allow for what the member from North Thompson refers to as deal-making but most British Columbians would refer to as decisions made by listening to the views of other people with an open mind, modifying one’s own views and trying to achieve some workable consensus in the best interests of the majority of the people they represent — or even the majority of people around a family dinner table. I reject the notion that somehow this was a rigged game.

I reject the notion that this is not democratic. I reject the notion that this government was appointed in any manner that differs from any government that preceded. The leader of the governing party, the New Democratic Party, was requested to form a government by the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia after she was presented with a document signed by a majority of members of this Legislature that indicated that there were terms and conditions on which we agreed and which would result in stable government for the people of British Columbia for a period of time to come. That’s exactly what we’re providing.

In the course of providing that, rather than trying to ram our own views down the throats of every member of this Legislature and the people of British Columbia, we’re trying to do politics differently. We are talking to members of different parties. We’re certainly open to talking to members of the Liberal Party, as well, about areas where we have agreement, where we have some common shared values, but where our approaches may differ.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

We’re learning through that process that because we have differing approaches doesn’t mean we can’t find a way through, doesn’t mean we can’t reach agreement and doesn’t mean that we can’t provide good, stable government with the benefit of dialogue, sober second thought, discussion in committee, consultation, negotiations and everything else that most people go through on a day-to-day basis in their daily lives in order to reach decisions that are in the best interests of the majority of people.

It’s not a rigged game. It’s not an appointed government. It’s not something undemocratic. Let me refer to the statement by the member for Kamloops–North Thompson where he said that all of this was just an attempt to ram through, by some sort of rigged vote or referendum, our attempt to cling to power.

[5:05 p.m.]

Did the member for Kamloops–North Thompson forget what most people called the interregnum, which was a period of two months where the previous government of British Columbia, led by the former Premier, Christy Clark, did everything in their power to hang on desperately with their fingernails to power for no other sake than power? No expression of values. They were willing to completely change almost every position they’d taken in an election, with a throne speech that was shamelessly stolen from the Greens and NDP. That’s clinging to power.

Then after the former Premier, Christy Clark, promised British Columbians that she would not request another election, that she would accept the will of the voters if the will was to become Leader of the Opposition, she asked the Lieutenant-Governor to call a new election, which the Lieutenant-Governor wisely declined to do when presented with evidence that a stable government could be formed. She then resigned her seat rather than face this House from the other side of the floor.

We don’t need any lessons or lectures about clinging to power. All the examples that anybody in this Legislature needed were laid out clearly for everyone to see in the two months following the May election.

Member after member on the other side has stated that, somehow, this is undemocratic. Somehow, having 50-percent-plus-one of British Columbians choose to have a different voting system — which will ensure that parties in this House more accurately reflect the percentage of the votes that they got and that a government in this province will reflect a party or a combination of parties that have the support of more than 50 percent of British Columbians — is undemocratic when compared with the system we currently operate under, where a majority government can be formed by a party representing 41, 42, 43, 44 percent of the vote.

It has been decades since this province has seen a majority government that received more than 50 percent of the votes of British Columbians. That’s not democracy. That’s a rigged game, and that’s what we’re trying to change with this referendum. That’s why we’re giving British Columbians a simple 50-percent-plus-one chance to say they want to try something different.

What we’re trying to do on this side of the House, between the two parties that together form a majority of MLAs, is show that there is nothing to fear from a majority government, that there’s nothing to fear from a consensual working relationship of two parties who are committed to talking openly about their differences, working through them, building policy based on common values and having a healthy debate about different approaches they may take to achieving those values.

What members on the other side are afraid of, if this referendum passes, is that they will never, ever again be able to form government in this province because they cannot hold their coalition together on the basis of a proportional representation government. They will divide apart from the completely artificial so-called free enterprise alliance they’ve formed. If they can’t handle it, British Columbians, I assure you, can.

There is not much need to say more. The principles are simple. I’d be happy to have an opportunity to speak longer, but unlike some of the members opposite, my points are clear. My points are simple. A government that is formed without the support of a majority of voters in British Columbia is wrong.

We will test that with a referendum where a simple majority of voters can say whether they think it’s okay to do that going forward, as we have for so many years, or that they want to try something different, that they want to ensure that their vote counts. If 17 percent or 20 percent of people vote for the Green Party or 10 percent of people vote for the Conservative Party or 15 percent of people vote for another party and 42 percent of people vote for the New Democratic Party, those numbers will be reflected in the Legislature.

[5:10 p.m.]

They will have an opportunity to see if we can work together, bringing together the diversity of views of British Columbia into policies and legislation that accurately reflect the many, many different views of British Columbians, the different approaches British Columbians have to solving the problems of our time and actually see if that can work better than a minority of British Columbians having their views reflected by an improperly elected majority of legislators who ram their personal points of view down the throats of everyone else.

That’s undemocratic. That’s why I’m supporting this referendum, and that’s why I believe that British Columbians will as well.

S. Furstenau: I rise today to speak in support of Bill 6, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act. An electoral system has a lot of influence on how we practise politics. A system that is based on opposition and conflict will encourage politicians and candidates to focus on what they oppose rather than what they can hope for. For three decades, this has been the reality in British Columbia. With only two parties represented, we have seen both of them define themselves as the antithesis of the other, rather than clearly define a broader version for the province.

I find it so disheartening during the election campaign to hear from so many people that they wanted to use their vote to ensure that the Liberals didn’t get in. Another said they wanted to use their vote to make sure that the NDP didn’t get in. Many people felt fearful. “I’m afraid that party X will get in so I’m going to vote for party Y, even though what I really want is to vote for party Z.”

For me, this is an indication that our political system is failing. People are not showing up at the polls filled with hope, based on a vision that has been presented by a political party. They’re showing up at the polls filled with fear that the party they dislike the most might get in.

We see campaigns based on attacking the other party. The Liberals attack the NDP. The NDP attack the Liberals. It seemed that so much of the campaign effort was put into trying to convince voters that the other party was worse.

Interjection.

S. Furstenau: We did not. I did not.

Interjection.

S. Furstenau: I did not. You can look at my campaign.

Deputy Speaker: Members, through the Chair.

S. Furstenau: All this conflict — the attack ads, the nasty mudslinging, the character assassinations — contributes to disillusionment, despair and ultimately dismissal of the idea that politics can be a force for positive change. And it contributes to fewer and fewer people showing up to vote.

Looking at the statistics from Elections B.C., historically B.C. has tended to hover around 70 percent voter turnout. Between 1928 and 1983, turnout was within a few percentage points of 70. But then we saw a downward trend: 66 percent in 1986 and 1991, 59 percent in 1996, 55 percent in 2001, and down to 51 percent of eligible voters casting their ballots in 2009 — 51 percent. Nearly half of the voters stayed home. They didn’t feel motivated to show up to vote in a democracy, yet so much depends on elections.

Turnout climbed back up to 55 percent in 2013 and 60 percent in the last election — 70 percent in my riding, almost 74 percent in my colleague’s riding. But 60 percent seems hardly worth celebrating, even if it was an improvement. Four out of every ten voters in this province chose not to participate in their own democracy. For me, as a historian, that’s worrying.

Let’s look for a moment at the 2013 results. The Liberals got 44.4 percent of the popular vote in 2013. This gave them 59 percent of the seats in the Legislature and 100 percent of the power. Every decision, every piece of legislation, was made and passed without needing the support of a single MLA outside of the Liberal caucus. The 55.6 percent of voters represented by the rest of the MLAs in the House — 33 NDP, one Green, one independent — could vote together on everything, and it made no difference because they only had 41 percent of the seats.

[5:15 p.m.]

Let’s go over that again. So 44 percent of the vote gets you 59 percent of the seats and 100 percent of the power. No wonder the Liberals want to keep this system. The remaining 56 percent of the votes gets you 41 percent of the seats and zero percent of the power.

Let’s dig a little deeper. There was a 55 percent voter turnout in 2013. Of that 55 percent, 44.4 percent voted for the B.C. Liberals, which means that 24.4 percent of eligible voters in B.C. were able to give 100 percent of power to one party. Three out of four eligible voters did not vote for the party that had 100 percent of the power. I ask: does that sound like a success story for democracy?

Interjection.

S. Furstenau: Oh, I’m going to get to that.

This is one of the most fundamental problems with the first-past-the-post system in which there are more than two political parties. The outcome is what’s called a false majority, like we have seen over and over again in B.C. for decades.

Do parties and their leaders acknowledge this? Are they more humble? Are they more prone to collaboration? Unfortunately, it’s the opposite. Parties elected declare that voters gave them a powerful mandate, the pundits declare landslides, and false majorities are wielded like a bludgeon for four years without a whisper of acknowledgment that the party with all of the power indeed represents a small portion of the people in our province.

Collaboration between political parties in this province, until recently, was unheard of, and this reality has led to a deep cynicism about politics. I believe we need an electoral system that incentivizes a very different type of politics, one that gives our politicians the tools to work together, to be greater than the sum of their parties. We need an electoral system that is aspirational and hopeful, a system that brings out the best, not the worst, in us.

It is for these reasons I am so proud to be speaking for the electoral referendum act. This piece of legislation is the first concrete step towards providing British Columbians with an opportunity to update our electoral system to one that is more fair and more engaging.

The act in front of us today only establishes a basic framework for the referendum to follow. Most of the specifics, including the question, have been left until after the Attorney General’s office has had a chance to hear from British Columbians across the province. This engagement is one of the most fundamental components of this referendum.

This must be a made-in-British-Columbia process and a made-in-B.C. question. It is my sincere hope that we will emerge with a made-in-B.C. electoral system that serves all the people of this province and moves us into a new era of politics.

The Attorney General has taken on the responsibility for establishing and overseeing this process, one that must be independent of partisan influence. This is a significant undertaking by the minister and one that he will have to have on his mind every day as he works through the process and the submissions that highlight the ideas and concerns of people across this province about how our system currently works and how it could work better.

I believe that it was prudent and responsible for the minister to recuse himself from all discussions in cabinet where the topic comes up. It is a powerful step to take to protect the legitimacy of the process he is responsible for.

It is also why our caucus sent a letter to the Premier notifying him that our caucus will limit our involvement going forward to the public engagement process. This means that no consultations as envisioned in the confidence and supply agreement will take place between our office and the office of the Attorney General with respect to the administration of the referendum, including respecting the complete independence of the minister’s office to draft the referendum question.

[5:20 p.m.]

Proportional representation is something that the B.C. Greens proudly stand in support of. It is long past time that we move to a way of voting that will modernize our electoral system and better represent British Columbia’s diverse voices.

At its core, proportional representation is about ensuring that every vote counts. It’s about moving beyond a system that no longer serves the interests of democracy, given that 100 percent of power can go to a party that has earned less than 40 percent of the vote. It continues on the suffrage movement. It’s a change that means every vote will count even if all of your neighbours vote differently than you.

First-past-the-post incentivizes a winner-take-all style of politics that is far too often on display in this Legislature. Proportional representation, on the other hand, requires parties to learn to work together. This may take some time, given the adversarial nature of our two-party system, but if we focus on the values and the goals that we share, we can achieve much more by working together.

On my trip to northwest B.C. this last summer, what became clear in every community I visited is that there is far more that unites us than divides us. Each community leader hopes for the same types of things, things that we all hope for: vibrant schools where our kids can reach their full potential, hospitals and health services that take care of us and give us the peace of mind that we deserve, opportunities for higher education in our own communities so that our children don’t have to leave home to pursue degrees or training, and opportunities for everyone to have meaningful work that contributes to the well-being of the community.

I did not experience an urban-rural divide in my travels. I discovered that everywhere in B.C., we have extraordinary communities that are defining themselves on their own terms. We have towns where people have grown up, raised their children and want to see generations to come thrive, just as their grandparents and great-grandparents thrived. We have communities that recognize that the economic landscape of the 20th century is not the same landscape that we exist in today. In places that used to be one-industry towns, we are seeing diverse and exciting opportunities well beyond the scope of a single mill or a single mine.

To suggest that we are divided is to dismiss all that connects us in this province. I would argue that it’s our job as elected representatives to focus on those connections rather than to drive imaginary wedges between the extraordinary citizens of this extraordinary province. What I see every day and what I saw in my travels are people filled with kindness, compassion, empathy and a genuine desire to contribute to their communities in a positive way. Quite frankly, I’d like to see a lot more of that in this chamber.

The coming weeks and months will see significant discussion about our electoral system, and these discussions will take place in communities across the province. Changing our electoral system is not a decision to be taken lightly, and every British Columbian deserves to be heard and to formulate their own position about what type of system will best capture their values.

All members of this House should be engaged and should be leaders in this process of weighing the pros and cons of different options and taking part in the debates to come. However, some of the members opposite have taken the opportunity to use all manner of fear and misinformation when they talk about proportional representation. They have been shameless in playing one region of the province against another, even as they speak of wanting to vie for the position of Leader of the Opposition.

Fear based on trying to divide citizens is one of the most corrosive and damaging approaches to politics, and this is what we are seeing. “Be afraid,” they say. To support their position, they divide the province into two — Metro Vancouver and everywhere else.

[5:25 p.m.]

They try to drive a wedge, creating a classic us-and-them narrative. They use misinformation and alternative facts to generate fear and confusion. This isn’t the leadership that British Columbians expect from their elected officials. Divisive politics based on misinformation does British Columbians a disservice, and I expect more.

I’d like to point out that the B.C. Liberals are not using first-past-the-post for their own leadership race. They’re using a ranked ballot. So while they are loudly proclaiming that first-past-the-post is great for British Columbians, they don’t think it’s a good enough system for their own leadership race and election.

Here’s what our colleagues in the Liberal Party aren’t talking about but are participating in. Our current electoral system has helped to allow the politics of fear and division to flourish in this province, rather than championing a politics of hope. We see people forced to vote against what they don’t want, rather than feel empowered to vote for what they do. This is one of the perverse incentives in our current first-past-the-post system.

This kind of campaign — fear-based, negative, divisive — harms communities. Just look at social media in the last election campaign, people being unfriended because of which party they supported. Heated arguments became normal, and people who had worked together as allies in their communities could no longer work together at all. This kind of winner-takes-all politics harms communities, which are the foundation of a healthy, thriving province.

Imagine an election campaign where ideas and policy are what we’re debating, rather than who the strategic vote is in your area. Imagine an election campaign where parties put forward their vision for the future, rather than putting out attack ads against each other’s leaders.

Do we really think that an electoral system created in medieval England under very different circumstances remains suitable today? Eighty percent of OECD countries have adopted a form of proportional representation, including Sweden, Scotland, Germany — strongest economy in the world — and New Zealand. These countries have abandoned a medieval electoral system because it does not serve democracy. And democracy matters.

B.C. Liberals are already decrying that we could see a change to our electoral system with a 50-plus-one result. They ignore that we already had over 57 percent of British Columbians vote in favour of proportional representation in the 2005 referendum, an outcome far higher than what has elected governments in this House for decades.

They also ignore the fact that under first-past-the-post, well over 50 percent of voters end up with a government in power that they didn’t vote for.

Let me end with my election story. After months of hearing people tell me over and over again that they wanted to vote Green because the policies reflected their values, but they were afraid…. “I’m afraid I will split the vote,” they would say. And this narrative was certainly strong from the NDP campaigns. “A vote for the B.C. Greens is a vote for the B.C. Liberals,” they would say. This is only one of the many ways that first-past-the-post distorts election campaigns. Rather than debating policies, the airwaves were filled with a fear-based message.

Then May 9 came along. We had worked hard, we had knocked on over 8,000 doors, and we’d run an assiduously positive campaign.

It was a beautiful spring day in the Cowichan Valley, and I started the day with breakfast in Duncan, at the always busy and always delicious Duncan Garage. From there, I went with my dear friend Stephanie across the street, and a lengthy distance from any polling station, to Charles Hoey park. Within moments, we were approached by a friendly, smiling woman. “I just voted for you,” she said, and for the first time, I felt joy in the voting booth.

[5:30 p.m.]

We talked, and I thanked her. And I said what I have said so many times before: voting should be joyful. Voting is an extraordinary moment, a moment when a citizen — when all citizens — can participate in deciding what future they want. And if it is not a moment of joy, then we as politicians, as elected officials, are failing.

For the next couple of hours, I stayed in the park, and there was a steady stream of people who came to tell me, over and over again: “I voted for you, and I feel joyful. I feel hopeful. I feel optimistic.” There were hugs and laughs and even tears.

At our election night event that evening, the room was filled with love. Our campaign team had campaigned with love in our hearts. We’d refused to engage in negativity or attacks, and we’d gotten to the end of a long but invigorating six months feeling proud of what we’d done.

In an era of polarized, sometimes poisonous, often divisive campaigning punctuated by personal attacks, we had chosen a different pass. We’d chosen to build community, not tear it down. This is what politics and governance should be about — building, not tearing down. It should be about a hopeful vision for our future and working together to get there.

We have everything we need in British Columbia to ensure that every citizen can thrive. Our job, as politicians, is to figure out how best to make that happen. Anger won’t lead us there. Neither will fear. Hatred certainly won’t. Indeed, history shows us over and over again that cooperation, collaboration and respect are the foundations of the most successful societies.

This referendum will challenge all of us to consider whether we are willing to take a leap of faith and courage and change our electoral system to one based on proportional representation, where every vote counts and none are wasted. As we focus on building B.C. into a jurisdiction that is ready for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, we need to move to a 21st-century electoral system.

I look forward to engaging British Columbians across this province in the months ahead and campaigning in support of a new way of doing politics in British Columbia. And I look forward to a politics of hope, of optimism and of collaboration. Our province deserves no less.

T. Wat: Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 6, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act. This bill provides the legislative framework to conduct a referendum in the fall of 2018. They will ask British Columbians whether they should change our electoral system from the current first-past-the-post voting system to a form of proportional representation.

I would like to spend some time talking about the history of proportional representation consultation in British Columbia. This issue has been canvassed twice before in this province, once in 2005 and then again in 2009.

The Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform was set up in 2004. It was an independent, non-partisan assembly of 160 randomly selected British Columbians, including five people from Richmond: Brook Bannister, Caroline Fader, Evelyn Krenz, Craig Peterson and Jack Zhang. Their mandate was to look at how votes cast in provincial elections translate into seats in the Legislature.

Their final report and recommendation to the people of British Columbia was submitted in December 2004. It looked at the thorough work that was done by the assembly. They studied the voting system for 11 months and listened to thousands of British Columbians in 50 public hearings and more than 1,600 written submissions.

The assembly recommended a customized version of single transferable vote, or STV, called BCSTV. When it came to getting information out to the public, legislation did not establish a role for yes-or-no groups. There were no spending limits in place for referendum advertising sponsors.

[5:35 p.m.]

In order to ensure its neutral role in the conduct of the referendum, Elections B.C. did not provide information regarding the BCSTV system recommended by the citizens’ assembly and the current first-past-the-post system. While Elections B.C. ensured voters had the information they needed regarding the referendum process, government was responsible for promoting awareness and understanding of the two electoral systems.

The question posed to voters was: “Should British Columbia change to the BCSTV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform?” The level of voter approval needed for the result to be binding on government was a minimum of 60 percent, with a simple majority in 48 of the 79 electoral districts. The referendum happened in May 2005 and failed to meet this threshold.

Four years later, in May 2009, B.C. held a second referendum on BCSTV in conjunction with the provincial election. Public funding was made available to registered groups, who provided information and educational materials about their positions either in favour of or opposed to the single transferable vote and the first-past-the-post election systems.

The Attorney General selected British Columbians for STV as the proponent and No STV as the opponent. The Electoral Reform Referendum 2009 Act regulation set out a process for interested organizations to apply to the Deputy Attorney General. The selection was based on the applicant’s eligibility and assessment of their experience and capacity. In February 2009, the Chief Electoral Officer gave each group $435,000 to undertake public information campaigns to support and oppose BCSTV. A further $65,000 was provided in April 2009.

Only the registered proponent and opponent groups and registered referendum advertising sponsors could sponsor or conduct referendum advertising. There were no spending limits for the registered referendum advertising sponsors or proponent and opponent groups. Referendum advertising and election advertising could not be combined, except by registered political parties and candidates.

The Attorney General’s office was tasked with establishing a referendum information office with a mandate to provide objective information to voters about electoral systems. The question that was posed to the voters was: “Which electoral system should British Columbia use to elect members to the provincial Legislative Assembly: the existing electoral reform, the first-past-the-post, or the single transferable vote electoral system, BCSTV, proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform?”

For the referendum to be binding, the approval level had to be at least 60 percent of the total popular vote provincewide and more than 50 percent of the votes in at least 51 of the province’s 85 electoral districts. That referendum was also defeated. So twice B.C. has gone through an extensive process to debate the merits of various systems, and twice British Columbians have decided to stick with the current system.

Despite that fact, it seems we will be gearing up for yet another provincewide debate on the matter. I felt compelled to speak up about this bill, because it could fundamentally alter the fabric of our democracy, and this is really troubling. I fear the deck is being stacked in favour of a particular outcome.

The NDP and Green Party are working together to change the rules of the game to favour their own re-election. They say they will hold a binding public consultation on a new system of representation. When British Columbians went through this exercise in 2005 and 2009, the independent and non-partisan Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform defined the process and the question. Each time the assembly ensured British Columbians from every corner of the province would be consulted.

[5:40 p.m.]

This bill ensures that the question will be decided by an NDP cabinet behind closed doors. According to the backgrounder to the government’s news release to announce the bill: “The Attorney General will act as an independent official and refrain from engaging in debate, and will recuse himself from any cabinet or caucus discussion regarding the referendum.”

Well, that’s all fine and good except, as reporter Vaughn Palmer noted in a recent column: “The pose of neutrality comes a little late in the day.” The Attorney General, according to Mr. Palmer, “ran in the election as a leading light in a party that promised to fight for proportional representation.” And in their own platform, the NDP said: “We will campaign for the yes side.” I would say that the Attorney General can hardly act as an independent official in this regard.

I will draw attention to another statement made in the NDP platform on this issue — that they would “ensure B.C.’s regions are all represented fairly.” How can that be the case when they are lowering the threshold for the referendum to 50 percent plus one for the results to be binding on government? Not only the floor in this threshold further improves their chances of success, but it means that the large urban centres in our province will dictate the results. We know they have a bigger population than the Interior and the north put together.

Although I represent a riding as part of the Lower Mainland, I think we need to consider the impact for those living in rural areas of our province. I can’t imagine they are thrilled about this proposal, which totally ignores the need for regional support. What’s more, the government is breaking its own promise to hold a referendum at the same time as municipal elections are held, favouring a mail-in ballot instead. Another broken promise.

The Premier promised British Columbians that any referendum question would be yes or no. But instead we learn voters will have to choose between multiple proportional representation options, against first-past-the-post — not that broken promises are anything new to this government. All of these measures clearly make it easier for the government to get the approval it is looking for. A system of proportional representation would likely serve them and their Green partners very well. It also keeps the taxpayer-supported political relationships running smoothly.

Next I want to quote Global reporter Keith Baldrey. In a recent column, he says: “In what appears to be a sly and cunning move, the NDP has inserted a clause in the bill that stipulates that even if the referendum passes and a shift to PR is indeed endorsed, the earliest an election can be held with the new system is July 2021.”

This cute move means the Greens are beholden to keep the NDP in power until at least then, no matter what the NDP does. The Greens have made switching to a PR model their absolutely number one priority, since it presents the best, and perhaps only, chance of winning significant representation in the Legislature. The party cannot risk an early election.”

So there we have it. Political strategy and gamesmanship is at the heart of a piece of legislation that will have a tremendous impact on democracy. They are showing a complete lack of respect for the public for the sake of securing their shaky political alliance, and that’s just wrong. I think British Columbians deserve better than that.

Not only are they trying to determine the outcome of the next election, they want taxpayers to line their party’s coffers as well. They want to see political parties being subsidized by public dollars — which, in my view, is wrong. And they want to do this after explicitly stating in the media that taxpayer money would not be going to political parties.

[5:45 p.m.]

It’s another broken promise. So excuse me if I don’t believe some of the claims being made by the members opposite around this bill, including that they will ensure B.C.’s regions are all represented fairly or that the Attorney General will act as an independent official on this matter. I think members of the public will see through these claims.

Moving on, I’d now like to outline some of the strengths and weaknesses of the different systems. Our current system, first-past-the-post, has many things going for it. It’s simple to use and understand, with clear choices between the main political parties. There is an emphasis on strong individual candidates, rather than just accepting party choices. Popular independent candidates can be elected without a political party.

After serving my constituents in Richmond Centre, now known as Richmond North Centre, for over four years, I know that my constituents are very pleased with the current electoral system. My constituents can always contact me directly or come to my constituency office when they have any concerns. Now they are so worried that with the introduction of a proportional representation system, the strong links between the constituents and their representatives will be broken. My constituency office receives so many calls from my constituents, every day, strongly objecting to the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act and urging me and B.C. Liberals to say no to this act on their behalf.

The current electoral system excludes extremist or fringe parties from representation. We see a good level of stability, with majority governments often being produced. We also see strong opposition produced to perform the important role of keeping the government in check.

Then when we look at proportional representation, we see many flaws there. Coalition governments often lead to legislative gridlock and inconsistent policies. There may be horse trading or platform promises during the post-election transition period. There is a risk of fragmentation of the party system, leading to extreme minority parties holding larger parties at ransom for their support. It can create a platform for fringe parties to spread their extreme ideals and policy proposals to a wider audience.

One of my constituents described proportional representation as a nightmare giving a voice to the lunatic fringe. Smaller parties get a disproportionate amount of power, where they have the power to veto. Voters aren’t able to enforce accountability by throwing a party out of power or a even a particular candidate out of office.

What’s more, proportional representation is difficult for voters to understand and for electoral administration to implement the often complex rules of the system. There is no accountability for parties or politicians to keep their platform promises.

I think we see many examples around the world where proportional representation is causing all kinds of disruptions and negative impacts. Italy is often the first country that comes to mind when we think about the instability that can come from this system. It has had two separate proportional representation systems since 1993. It has had a whopping 65 governments in 70 years, with as many Prime Ministers since the Second World War as in Canada’s entire history. There are currently 28 parties, forming six separate alliances, and the average length of government is only 21 months.

Another example of that kind of instability was seen in Spain in 2015. The country went for 314 days without a government, and then, in the end, no government was formed, and a new election was held six months later. Belgium, in 2010, is yet another example. It took 589 days before government was formed, more than a year and a half. This six-party coalition government, with 11 parties in parliament, lasted just two years.

[5:50 p.m.]

These are just a few examples of how proportional representation has led to instability and a lack of productivity in European countries. While the day-to-day operations of government continued, major decisions were often delayed.

I will suggest that here in B.C., we are already seeing how this government’s inability to make big decisions is impacting our economy and people’s livelihood. British Columbians, the business community, international investors are already experiencing uncertainty and instability, thanks to the NDP’s constant delays and reviews and one consultation after another, and because of the shaky alliance between the NDP and Greens. Do they need more uncertainty and more instability? I don’t think so.

Another negative impact that I touched on earlier is the notion that the system of proportional representation legitimatizes extreme or fringe parties from the far-right or the far-left wings of political ideology. We saw two examples of this in European countries this year.

The Netherlands four-party coalition government includes the Christian Unity Party, which is an anti-LGBT party. I should note that it took 208 days before the government was formed, with 13 parties in parliament. Germany, which will not have a new government until 2018, after its September election will see the far-right party, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, with 94 seats in its parliament. That’s the same party that advocates for a return to Nazism.

We should consider the fact that far-right leaders and political parties are rising in popularity around the world. That far-right party I just mentioned, AfD, received 13 percent of the vote in Germany’s 2017 general election, up from 4.6 percent in 2013. Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right leader, won her seat in the parliament in France’s 2017 general election. So this is an additional caution to keep in mind when we think about switching to a system of proportional representation.

In closing, there is nothing wrong with exploring ways to improve our democracy. Indeed, British Columbians have done that twice, in 2005 and 2009. In both cases, we did not actively campaign for one side or the other, nor prejudge the outcome. We let the people decide. If we are going to go through this exercise again, it should be done fairly, instead of being designed to meet the outcomes desired by the NDP and Greens.

R. Singh: Today I stand in favour of the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act. The act will enable a provincewide referendum to be held in the fall of 2018 on the subject of whether to change B.C.’s voting system from the current first-past-the-post system to a form of proportional representation.

The first-past-the-post system is most widely used in Canada and means that the voter indicates on a ballot the candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives the most votes in an electoral district wins, hence the name. There have been some concerns about the system that it results in distorted results, regional polarization, wasted votes, low voter turnout and suppression of minority views.

Proportional representation is the most widely used system in the world. It refers to any method of voting that produces a result in which a political party’s share of the seats in the Legislature represents its share of the popular vote.

We should be aware that most countries around the world use a proportional electoral system. This includes countries like Sweden, Germany, Japan, Denmark, New Zealand, Scotland, Norway, and many more. Prince Edward Island was the first province in Canada to vote for the proportional representation system in 2016.

[5:55 p.m.]

British Columbians have a long history of being actively engaged in changing the electoral system. We should always be open to the examining of a democratic process, and British Columbians should have their say, including on whether to consider voting systems that weren’t on the ballot in the past.

The current makeup of the Legislature demonstrates the array of voices in British Columbia, and we have heard for years that there may be a better way. Our government believes that it is time for all British Columbians to have a say in the fundamental question of how we elect our MLAs. That’s why our government will begin public engagement on which voting system, or systems, should be on the ballot.

We will promote active, healthy debate and discussion and provide information on our current voting system and systems of proportional representation to ensure British Columbians are able to make an informed decision. There will be extensive engagement with British Columbians that will provide input to the selection of the question about proportional representation that will be on the ballot. We will be speaking with First Nations to ensure they bring forward their preferences and opinions about this important question.

The ballot construction will be determined following this engagement period. The referendum will be conducted by mail-in ballot, with the Chief Electoral Officer overseeing the process. A mail-in ballot for a referendum ensures everyone can have their voice, no issues of location and accessibility. The threshold will be a simple majority of 50 percent plus one vote provincewide. Fifty percent plus one is a majority of voters and has been used in other referendums on electoral reform, notably in P.E.I.’s recent proportional representation referendum in 2016. Results of the referendum will be binding, and the legislation will be introduced to ensure that the 2021 general election will be under the new voting system.

The Electoral Reform Referendum Act is about basic fairness and democratic principles. It is about modernizing our democracy, and it is about giving people the power to decide. In the current system, if you don’t vote for the winning candidate in your riding, your vote elects no one. With the proportional electoral system, almost all voters cast a ballot that elects someone. There are minimal wasted votes, higher voter turnout, and it helps in electing more women and under-represented groups. When people’s votes matter and they actually help to elect someone with their vote, there’s more motivation for them to cast a ballot and to be an active part of the democracy.

It is important that all members of this House participate in this engagement process that will enhance our democracy.

Deputy Speaker: I recognize the member for Abbotsford-Mission. [Applause.]

S. Gibson: Whoa, I appreciate the commendation and encouragement. Thank you so much.

Well, this is a very important issue, Bill 6, Electoral Reform Referendum Act. I speak here today as someone with some experience in democracy. As a matter of fact, this marks my 37th year in elected office — locally in the district of Matsqui, the city of Abbotsford, also Fraser Valley regional district; and here, now beginning my second term as a B.C. Liberal MLA. I take government and politics very seriously, which is why I’m pleased to be able to speak today to this important and troubling legislation.

Now, in a democracy, it’s always reasonable to continually reflect on our system of government, how we elect our officials. That’s a good thing, to continuously review the way that we govern ourselves. That’s a healthy thing. But as I review this legislation, I become concerned, and I want to speak to that today.

[6:00 p.m.]

The changes this bill proposes and the way this bill proposes them raise some very serious questions for me, and, I believe, others. We’re hearing that here today. This bill puts forward a plan for a referendum on a proportional representation voting system. Interestingly, I think we agree that it sounds nice, doesn’t it? PR has a pleasant sound to it. Every vote counts. You’ll see the bumper stickers coming out. We’ve heard that from friends across the floor. But we know, deep down, it’s troubling for democracy.

If carried out, this will be the third referendum in just over a decade for proportional representation. In 2005 and 2009, our previous government — our government — held referendums on proportional representation, but we did it with a lot of study. The process for these look quite different than today.

This process was guided by the B.C. Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform — it’s been discussed here a little bit today — which was composed of 161 members representing, from all over the province, every electoral district, First Nations. There was a chair. It was done properly. The consultation was rigorous, and people had confidence in it. The composition reflected the diversity of experiences around the province and ensured that each corner of our province would be fully involved in that process. It was a healthy mechanism.

The assembly was responsible for learning and looking at a lot of different options, consulting the general public and then recommending a system that they felt would be best, which ended up, actually, being the single transferable ballot system. This alternative system was then put to British Columbians in a referendum which required a super majority, you might call it, of at least 60 percent of the popular vote across the province, indicating the significance of that decision.

In addition to the popular-vote threshold, there was also a regional component for agreement. In each case, in order to pass, the referendum was required to gain a majority of support in a majority of B.C.’s electoral districts. You’ll notice that’s not applying today.

Then in 2005, this meant that the referendum was required to receive at least 50 percent support in at least 48 percent of the province’s 79 electoral districts. So the urban areas and the rural areas received consideration — very important, especially today when we look around this Legislature and the many different electoral districts. For example, there’s the one you represent, and then you’re more in the urban area, right? So it’s important.

Then in 2009, the referendum required a majority of the votes in at least 51 of B.C.’s then 85 electoral districts in order to pass, again demonstrating the importance of this decision and ensuring that a change of this magnitude would have widespread support. Despite the grassroots engagement that drove the process in each referendum, voters rejected electoral change, with support for proportional representation actually going down over that period between 2005 and 2009.

The bill we are debating today proposes yet another referendum on this very issue. Looking strictly at the previous two referendums, you might be surprised that the government is pushing ahead with yet another vote on electoral reform. The results of the previous two referendums suggest that there is not an overwhelming public desire for proportional representation in B.C.

Ultimately, the fact of the matter is that public opinion, or public will, will have nothing to do with the NDP government’s plan to hold another referendum on proportional representation. Instead, this NDP government was motivated to put forward this bill for the sole purpose of protecting their shaky political coalition with the Greens, as a referendum on proportional representation was a key component on the agreement that led to this agglomeration in the first place.

[6:05 p.m.]

The government is touting this as a plan to “modernize democracy.” But I see nothing modern about a plan that doesn’t listen to voters but instead revolves solely around maintaining a backroom political arrangement. Such a motive is the exact opposite of modern democracy, why I came here in the first place.

Thinking back, the three of us here right now all have local government experience. It’s a passion we bring to this Legislature.

Interjection.

S. Gibson: Yeah, some across the aisle as well. I know he’ll appreciate some of the remarks I’m making. Thank you for your consensus there.

Deputy Speaker: Members, through the Chair.

S. Gibson: In fact, it represents the very reason why voters become cynical about our political process or feel disconnected from the politicians who are supposed to be representing them.

I speak in a lot of schools, and the one thing that’s so disheartening for me as a politician today is the cynicism, the cynicism we experience. I talk to young people in schools, and this legislation, I think, will add to that level of cynicism, frankly.

Elected officials should first and foremost be accountable to those who elected them, rather than being focused on political manoeuvring. That’s something that would only get worse under proportional representation, with a rise in minority governments that would rely on these kinds of precarious alliances.

Now, there are some examples of precarious alliances, and I know colleagues have shared a few of these. Italy — this is a major country: two separate proportional representation systems since 1983, 85 governments in 70 years, with as many Prime Ministers since World War II as Canada had in its entire history, all under PR, currently 28 parties forming six separate alliances. Do we want that? That would be so upsetting.

How about Belgium, at 589 days before a government could finally be formed under proportional representation? It’s so upsetting. Six-party coalition government, 11 parties in parliament — lasted two years. I’ve got others in front of me, but I think we get the idea. Proportional representation means instability.

Now, in our own province, the political desperation becomes apparent, because I know there’s definitely a mechanism dealing between the government and the Greens. I understand it, and I accept it.

While the previous referendums required a super majority of support to pass with a threshold of 60 percent plus one, we now know, and we’ve heard this a number of times here in the House today, this government is proposing lowering the threshold as low as possible, to a bare majority of 50 percent plus one. For such an auspicious decision, very troubling to every member of this side of the House….

It shouldn’t be easy to change an absolutely fundamental element of our democracy — so easily. It needs to reflect the wishes of a wide variety of British Columbians, and government needs to be responsive to British Columbians across the province, even those who chose not to vote for them. For that reason, a change this significant needs to have regional support — very important. One area of the province alone should not be able to influence the outcome of a referendum on something as fundamental as a voting system.

Interjections.

S. Gibson: I’m getting nice remarks from across the floor. Thank you. I appreciate that.

It’s clear that this bill was not conceived with voters’ wishes in mind, regional representation or democratic principles. I believe this was designed for a specific purpose, to lean heavily in the favour of proportional representation. I believe that. Even the fact that the government is referring to this as a plan to “modernize democracy” — they’re already making the announcement. It’s almost like it’s a fait accompli. “We’re modernizing democracy. Here we go. Try this on.” It gives me an idea that they already have a specific outcome in mind. That’s regrettable.

Though government has said that maintaining our first-past-the-post electoral system will be an option — well, that’s encouraging — that isn’t connoted by the headline the government featured on their news release about the bill. Here’s the quote: “Government takes action to modernize democracy.”

Now, if my daughter tells me she’s going to buy a car, I’m pretty sure she’s going to buy a car.

[6:10 p.m.]

This bill allows for more than one system to appear as an option on the ballot, rather than posing a strictly yes-or-no, crystal-clear question. That would be a lot more intelligible, and I hope the members across the floor realize that and see the benefit.

Should more than one electoral system make it on the ballot, voters will be able to rank their preferred systems. But this, too, automatically places a bias against our current system, as first-past-the-post would be presented as only one option outnumbered by multiple PR options. You can see the problem, right? This is a serious issue, and I certainly hope that this can be addressed. This is very important. I just would really appreciate our members across the floor reconsidering that aspect.

Now, while questioning government’s fairness in this process may come across as cynical, it really shouldn’t be surprising because of the accord that’s in place. I get that. In a minority government, the Greens have a unique role to play, and they definitely have clout, if I can use that word, in terms of this legislation.

Indeed, one of the conditions for the Greens lending their support to the NDP was that the government would not only hold the proportional representation vote, but the two parties would — watch this — agree to both campaign actively in support of the agreement form of proportional representation. They’re already agreeing to work on it together. So already we’re outnumbered. The public should be concerned.

Let’s not forget that the Greens are the party that suggested we simply implement proportional representation with no consultation and no referendum. When I heard that — I read an article on that — I was shocked. I couldn’t believe the Greens, such a grassroots democratic party, would come out and say: “Yeah, let’s just go ahead with this huge, significant change without any consultation or referendum.” I was shocked. I almost fell off the couch, but fortunately, my couch is quite big.

Despite the NDP-Green compact, which very clearly obliges the government to actively support electoral reform, the government has not been candid about their very clear bias towards proportional representation. Due to the ministerial responsibilities, the Attorney General said he will remain neutral in the process, and that’s laudable. But this government, as a whole, still has a very direct interest in the process. Therefore, it strikes me as an obvious conflict of interest to have the government setting the terms of this referendum, including the bare majority threshold this bill proposes, when they’re obliged by agreement to actively campaign in favour of reform. There’s a bit of a conflict there, a bit troubling.

Indeed, this time around, there’s no doubt it will be the government, not the public, who is steering the referendum. The government has said they will hold public consultations to decide ballot questions and to determine whether there will be public funding allocated to proponents and opponents of the systems. Well, that’s good. I hope they follow through with that. But these public consultations will be non-binding, meaning that the government, along with their political partners, will ultimately be the ones to make these crucial decisions.

Back in May, the now Premier made it clear his party had a different plan in mind. This is very important and I think bears close scrutiny by this House. He told the Vancouver Sun and Province editorial board that if elected, he would hold a referendum on proportional representation, but voters would simply vote yes or no — a single option.

Another quote. “A consensus on yes or no is pretty easy. You’re going to have to have 50 percent yes or no.” These were two quotes from the Premier, and of course, we know what’s happened. It’s been morphed into something much more complicated and probably more difficult to explain to the average voter.

This needs to be crystal-clear in order to be comprehensible, for a vote to make sense. To try and implement this preferred system, the Premier would simply lower the threshold, requiring only 50 percent plus one to pass.

They’ve also moved away from this now, promising to conduct the referendum by mail-in ballot. Mail-in? That’s incredibly old technology. There are so many more means available. People discard….

[6:15 p.m.]

People get so much mail. I’m sure we all get mail at home. Sometimes I can’t tell which are the important ones and which aren’t. I think a mail-in ballot is probably a bit dubious.

I remember receiving a rebate cheque from Simon Fraser University for tuition. I thought it was junk mail, so I just put it aside. About four months later, I opened it up, and it was a cheque for $800. You see what happens. I almost threw it out. But the good news is….

Interjections.

S. Gibson: Yeah, the absent-minded professor. And I took my wife out for a nice dinner — $800 dinner. No.

This is a contrast to the previous two referendums, which were both held in conjunction with the general provincial elections, providing a variety of voting opportunities. That makes sense. There’s no doubt that the actual mechanics of this proposed bill are really problematic.

Make no mistake, changing the way we elect our representatives would have a profound effect on the way our system operates as a whole, while changing the electoral system would obviously change the way citizens vote and interact with our democracy. The effects would carry over fundamentally to the way this House operates, which would therefore directly affect the British Columbians who this House is ultimately responsible to. It would have lasting, lasting impacts on the province.

Proportional representation systems can also make it difficult for voters to connect with their elected representatives. As I review proportional representation, I suddenly realize how troubling that is. All of us here know who our constituents are. When we walk down the streets in our communities, people come up and thank us for serving them. They chat with us. It’s a privilege for me, as I go shopping or anything in Abbotsford. People know me and come up and are very welcoming. That paradigm will change dramatically.

If we look at the way proportional representation will change the way we interact with our political system…. It’s much more complicated than first-past-the-post. Logically, therefore, elections held under proportional representation are more difficult to administer. And depending on how votes are calculated, it can be less obvious and transparent how citizens end up with the representatives they do. They’ll take longer to announce the votes, as well, partially due to the complexity.

Also, I want to note the fact that proportional representation systems may not produce a clear winner, so to speak, for an election. While the current electoral system generally produces majority governments — our present parliament excluded, of course — proportional representation increases the chance of minority or coalition governments. If the current governing coalition is teaching us anything, it’s showing us that a coalition is easier said than done.

Forming a coalition in the first place often requires trading platform promises, just like we’ve seen here in this House, across the floor. This means that governments are less accountable to the electorate that voted for them and more accountable to the political process. They can’t really be sure which platform points to a party, because once in office, they don’t know which sacrifice they’re going to make to gain election again.

We don’t have to look far for examples. We had the many promises, such as the $10-a-day daycare and many others that, of course, have been compromised, perhaps as a result of this amalgamation or this coalition between these two parties. This is an era of what is effectively a coalition government. Campaign promises are irrelevant. Remember the leader of the Green Party said campaign promises are irrelevant? Well, I guess we’re finding out about that.

Ultimately, it diminishes the government’s accountability to those who elect them. One of the beautiful things about our system is we have direct accountability by individuals. People know who their MLA is. They know who their constituency people are, their mayor and their councillors. It gives voters less influence and certainty over what they’d like to see their province do in government. This is something we’ve seen now with only a two-party agreement, but imagine with five or six parties, as we’ve seen in Europe.

Proportional representation and the subsequent fracturing of party systems can allow the entrance of extremist parties. They get just a handful of votes on the extreme right or the extreme left, and they can actually gain a foothold, get seats in here and present incredibly problematic and troubling campaign platforms which they try to execute here and then go into amalgamating themselves with other parties to form government — very troubling and not out of the question. We’re certainly seeing it in Europe.

[6:20 p.m.]

While a majority of voters may not support or even agree with these parties, they can have a dramatic and pernicious impact due to their need for coalitions and alliances. These parties must not be allowed to enter this chamber.

I encourage people to remind yourself of that when considering any merits to proportional representation. It distorts our political principles and is a transition to a model of voting that would produce drastic changes without fully giving the public the chance to participate.

We are accountable to those who represent us. I take it seriously. I know all my colleagues do as well. The current system offers a tradition that people know. They believe in it. But despite how we might try, we’ll never be able to exactly express the wishes of every constituent in our House. That’s why we’re a representative democracy, and that’s why today, I want to encourage us to reflect deeply on the potential negative impacts should we proceed with any form — any form — of proportional representation.

We have a system here that is a heritage system. There’s a great commitment to it. The public understands it. It gives us stable government, and I will be voting against this.

S. Gibson moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Committee of Supply (Section A), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Deputy Speaker: This House, at its rising, stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.

The House adjourned at 6:22 p.m.