Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I just want to inform the House that pursuant to the Standing Order 35 application for an emergency debate made earlier today by the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, agreement has been reached on the matter raised by all three parties. Therefore, we will be having a one-hour debate pursuant to Standing Order 35, and I will be inviting the member to move his motion at 5:25 this afternoon.

With that, hon. Speaker, I also call, at this point, continued second reading debate on Bill 40, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Amendment Act, 2018.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 40 — ELECTORAL REFORM
REFERENDUM 2018 AMENDMENT ACT, 2018

(continued)

Hon. D. Donaldson: I’m very pleased to take my spot at second reading debate on Bill 40, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Amendment Act, 2018.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

It might be likely no surprise to the people in this chamber or to people who might be watching back home in Stikine that I’m in favour of Bill 40, in favour of legislation that confirms a referendum after two general election cycles. Therefore, our government is giving voters a safety valve to revert to the previous voting system after an opportunity to actually experience both systems.

I also want to say I’m in favour of improving democracy by speaking in favour of proportional representation as well as Bill 40. I’ve been following this debate over the last day and a half. I must say I’m astonished by some, but not all, of the comments from those in the official opposition that are opposed to electoral reform and have used fearmongering, misinformation and even the argument that supporting proportional representation is somehow unpatriotic.

I want to speak to Bill 40 and to proportional representation by speaking a little bit to values, especially the values that are held dear by people in rural areas and by people in northern areas that I represent — for instance, the values of cooperation and collaboration that we uphold.

[1:35 p.m.]

I’ll give a couple of quick examples about these values that relate to proportional representation and to this second reading debate we’re having of Bill 40. First of all, there’s a trail in the Hazeltons called the Eagle Down Trail. It’s about an eight- to ten-kilometre trail from the village of Hazelton up to the municipality of New Hazelton. This trail was conceived, put together and put forward by the current mayor of Hazelton, Alice Maitland, and others in the communities to connect the two communities and provide a safe walking route between the two communities, because many people are related through family and extended family and through community activities.

The point here is that this trail that was constructed is within the jurisdiction of two municipalities, one regional district and two First Nations reserves and is on the territory of two Gitxsan Hereditary Chiefs. So that’s two, four, six, seven different jurisdictions — seven different types of lines we’ve drawn on a map.

You can imagine that in some other places, this would result in gridlock and this project never getting completed, because there are different views on projects within the community. However, it’s a testimony to the fact that the values of cooperation and collaboration are held dear in rural areas that this trail was built and is functioning now and is used by many members of the community.

Naturally, in rural communities that don’t have a lot of population…. Hazelton has a population of about 350. I live just outside of Hazelton — a population in Two Mile of about 500. You consistently rub shoulders with people that you may not share all your values with. It’s impossible just to isolate yourself, as some people are able to do in larger centres, with people who only share your values. So you rub elbows with people who don’t share your values, necessarily, all the time, but you find ways to disagree and live as neighbours.

I’ll also give another example of how the values of cooperation and collaboration are upheld in remote and rural communities. We have to do that to get ahead. The Upper Skeena recreation centre is being constructed as we speak — an incredible project. It’ll be a project that has been supported by seven different First Nations, Indian bands, three communities in the regional district, two municipalities and over 60 Hereditary Chiefs.

Again, we work together in rural areas. We’re fiercely independent. The people who live in those communities that I just described are very, very proud of their communities, but because we have no one else to depend on, the values of cooperation and collaboration are really the foundation of rural communities.

That’s why I am in support of proportional representation — because it encourages these values. It encourages cooperation and collaboration, and the current system that we have discourages cooperation and collaboration to a certain extent.

I’ll give an example of that — how the partisan nature of the current system is exemplified and the cynicism that it breeds. The example I want to point out…. There have been many, but this is a very recent one and a very appropriate one, I think, considering the debate we’re having today on Bill 40. It’s from an October 4 reporting in the Dawson Creek Mirror. The headline says: “B.C. Liberal Leader Campaigns Against Proportional Representation.”

At a meeting, a Rotary lunch in Dawson Creek, the opposition leader, who was there, was quoted as saying…. “During the lunch, the opposition leader was even more dramatic to the receptive crowd.” In a response about proportional representation — and this is the direct quote, not out of context: “If it passes, you will never have an MLA again.”

[1:40 p.m.]

That’s what the Leader of the Official Opposition told the Rotary lunch in Dawson Creek earlier this month. That is either shockingly uninformed or it’s deliberately ignoring the facts. I know that the Leader of the Official Opposition is a thoughtful person and a person who has a high degree of intelligence, as exemplified by the fact that he was a Rhodes Scholar. So I only have to assume that he was deliberately ignoring the facts by saying: “If it passes, you will never have an MLA again.”

In fact, under proportional representation, we will have — and it preserves — the same levels of rural representation that we have today in the north. In addition, it will also ensure that Dawson Creek residents would still be voting for the local representative that they want. To say that if it passes, you will never have an MLA again I think is deliberately ignoring the facts.

What it speaks to…. I’m not saying that the Leader of the Official Opposition was shockingly uninformed. I’m not saying that he was deliberately ignoring the facts. What I’m using this example to point out is that the current system encourages the kind of partisan campaign that we see exemplified by the Leader of the Official Opposition’s comments. It really puts a fine point on it that collaboration and cooperation are not encouraged by the current system. Those are values that are fundamental to rural areas.

Another very important point for me around proportional representation is that I believe it will increase the number of young people who vote. That is just such an essential and critical factor for a healthy democracy.

I’ll give you another example, another story from the north, about why I think proportional representation will lead to an increase in the number of young people voting, a demographic that is on the decline as far as turnout for all elections, including provincial elections. I believe that in the youngest demographic, the 18 to 24s, it was far less than a 30 percent turnout of registered voters in the last provincial election. We need that demographic showing up. I’ll give you an example from the Hazeltons, the area I represent, of how young people are turned off by the current system.

As much as possible, I like to go into elementary schools and secondary schools and talk in a non-partisan way about how our system now works and how the Legislature is configured. I often get questions from the secondary school students, but there was one really interesting comment I had from the elementary school students.

I go in, and we decide on an issue. They bring up a topic that they want to vote on. I think this time it was that the driver’s licence should be lowered to 14 — this was an elementary school — or 12. I can’t remember.

We took the classroom and set up desks like they are in the Legislature here, where one side is the government, our side, and one side is the official opposition. Then we divvy up the class, and the children sit on each side. When the vote came for this motion that the government decided to put on the floor in this grade 6 class…. The government side put out their motion. I had somebody designated as the Speaker — such as yourself, hon. Speaker — and they called the vote. The government side stood up. So did half the opposition side. I said: “Why are you doing that?” “Well, it was a good idea.” It points out the fundamental belief of collaboration and cooperation.

When I explained to the class that in the current system — an example being 40 percent — the party that gets 40 percent of the vote gets 100 percent of the power, the young people in that class just found that unfair. My word is “unbalanced.”

[1:45 p.m.]

Again, the current system we have, I believe, is unbalanced. I believe that a vote supporting proportional representation will not only lead to more young people voting because it’s fundamental to collaboration and cooperation and fundamental to fairness; but it also really fulfils the values that we hold in rural, northern and remote communities.

I just want to conclude by saying that I believe it’s time for a new way of voting that works for people, not political parties. We know that the majority of functioning democracies around the world are using some form of proportional representation. There are countries that are close to us in values — Germany and Scotland and New Zealand — that use a proportional representation system that’s working and working well.

I also say that this fall we’ll have a provincewide referendum that gives British Columbians a chance to replace the status quo with proportional representation, a way of voting that puts people at the centre of politics. With that, I’ll conclude my comments to Bill 40. I’m voting in favour of Bill 40. I’m voting in favour of proportional representation this fall, and I hope people in B.C. will do as well.

L. Throness: It’s a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill 40, the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Amendment Act. It didn’t take me long to go through this bill. If British Columbians choose proportional representation, using the mail-in ballot that they will receive beginning on October 22, the bill says this: “A subsequent referendum must be conducted throughout British Columbia after 2 general elections have been held using the proportional representation voting system, respecting whether to continue using the proportional representation voting system or to revert to the first past the post voting system.”

Even though it’s only a few lines long, this bill was not part of the initial legislative package that was passed a year ago at this time, and I wonder why. The government was thinking about this all along, but they timed, I believe, this recommendation for a second referendum, this bill, as part of the report entitled How We Vote, a report and recommendations of the Attorney General which came out on May 30. This is part of the plan, and I think they did that on purpose to give them the opportunity to bring forward this legislation during the campaign period.

There are two considerations here, really. One is a policy consideration, and one is how the policy is brought forward. First, I want to talk about how it’s brought forward, and then I want to talk about the policy. I see this bill as part of a larger plan that can only be called manipulative. The policy of proportional representation is bad enough in itself. I don’t think it stands scrutiny on a public policy basis alone. The government is trying to steer British Columbians into making a decision that they hope will benefit them and keep the Greens and the NDP in power for a generation. That’s really what it’s all about.

Why would manipulation be necessary? It’s because the policy can’t stand on its own. It lost in two referendums already, most lately in 2009. It only received 39 percent support, well under 50 percent support, after a long and intensive and objective process with a citizens’ assembly and lots of funding and lots of public discussion. It was rejected handily and, I hope, will be again.

I want to talk, first of all, about the elements of manipulation that I see in this bill, to detail some of the elements. First, the government declined to hold an objective citizens’ assembly which would have assured that British Columbians would get objective and impartial information and complete information. Instead, they’re getting biased and partial information. Even the government’s report How We Vote is ad­ver­tised as the recommendations of the Attorney General. It’s not the recommendations of a citizens’ assembly or some other objective group.

It’s clear that this is not an objective process; it’s a partisan process. It’s driven by one who is well known to be one of the more partisan members of this House, the Attorney General himself.

Second, the government has provided a referendum by mail-in ballot. This pretty well ensures a low turnout, since the ballot itself is complicated. It’s hard to understand. For instance, there’s no information on the ballot that says that you can fill out the first part but you don’t have to fill out the second part at all. People will look at it — those who don’t throw it in the garbage immediately when they get it — and think that they have to fill in the second part, which will confuse things. They will think their ballot will be spoiled if they don’t.

[1:50 p.m.]

Also, as an aside, this is a very expensive process. The whole exercise is going to cost $15 million, the Chief Electoral Officer says. It could have been done in conjunction with a provincial election. It’s been done before. It would have cost virtually nothing. That’s because, I would submit, timing was important to the government. They didn’t want this to take place in conjunction with a provincial election.

The government has further manipulated the process by providing partial information. For example, the government never provided riding maps to show voters how they would be treated under proportional representation. No one knows how many ridings there would be, how big they would be, where their boundaries would be, how many members there would be in each of the ridings, how many would be chosen by voters or how many by party lists. It’s all a mystery. It’s purposely kept vague and undefined by this government.

They did not even put before the voters a single, concrete proportional representation system to vote on. In fact, there are three options to choose from, and even among those three, details have yet to be worked out in all of them. So voters, by definition, cannot know what they’re voting for, nor can they look to the track record of other countries, in the case of two of the three systems, because they’re purely theoretical. They’ve never been used by any country in the world. They’ve been invented by academics, and we have no idea if they would even work. This, again, is part of the design of the government to manipulate the decision of voters.

Moreover, any details of the proportional representation system, if it is chosen by the mail-in ballot, will be worked out by a committee of politicians, the majority of which will be Greens and NDP, the government, so that they will be able to institute anything they want.

The lack of resources devoted to the referendum also are an indication, to me, of manipulation. Two formal groups, for and against, were chosen, given $500,000 to spend, which is really hardly anything these days in terms of advertising dollars. This will ensure that very few British Columbians will even know about the referendum at all, except those who are activists for proportional representation. They will know all about it, because they’re keen for it. On the other hand, the government, which supports proportional representation, has all the tools of government at its disposal to push its will on the citizens of B.C., including the introduction of this bill, as I’ll talk about in a moment.

The process for registering a group to advertise about PR is difficult, and the possibility of donations is restricted, which makes it hard to get the message out. For example, in order to make a donation, you have to fill out a long form, giving your personal details, and sign it personally, approving of the advertising in writing. That discourages people from donating and ensures a minimum of donations. You can’t, for instance, donate on line. You have to be physically present to give a personal cheque so that you can sign the form at the same time. The government is determined to make it hard to donate so that people can be kept in the dark.

The timing of the referendum is manipulative. It was set to take place right at the end of provincewide municipal elections, when voters will be rightly sick of politics, when local elections will have taken up all their time, their energy, their attention, thought and donations. The mail-in ballots will come in as an afterthought, and many of them — I would say most of them — will go into the recycling bin without even being considered.

The vote will also take place, coincidentally, just a few days after marijuana is legalized. On Wednesday, tomorrow, when this happens, all the headlines are going to be taken up for the next week or two with that more interesting topic of marijuana. Who will be interested in the technical matter of the way an election is run? Not many.

Freddy Marks, who is a realtor in Harrison Hot Springs and my constituent, has registered a group with Elections B.C. called No Pro-Rep Fraser Valley East. He held a proportional representation town hall in Harrison Hot Springs a couple of weeks ago, and I attended so that I could see the reaction of people there. And I can honestly say that when people were told about the details of proportional representation, they were horrified. They wanted nothing to do with it. When they hear about it, British Columbians don’t like it. So this government does not want people to hear about it.

Now we come to this bill. I find the timing of the introduction of this bill to be particularly manipulative. The government could have introduced it a year ago. It knew that it wanted it. But instead, they introduced it at this crucial moment during the campaign period.

Now, here’s what the regulations related to advertising during the referendum say about this. They amount to 63 long clauses, complex clauses describing all the stringent limits on advertising and including a $20,000 fine for any abuse.

[1:55 p.m.]

Here’s what the regulations specify: “A referendum advertising sponsor must not sponsor, directly or indirectly, referendum advertising during the referendum campaign period such that the total value of the referendum advertising is greater than $200,000 overall.”

What, I would ask, is the advertising value of introducing a bill in this House, with all the apparatus of the government: the government’s media machine cranking out the press releases and holding press conferences and commenting to the media; putting stuff up on official government websites; drawing media attention; debating it in this place, hour after hour; having it come up in question period; and all the rest? All of it is valuable advertising. It flouts at least the spirit of the law, if not its letter, because the value of all that advertising, I submit, would be far more than $200,000, for which the government will pay nothing. It is using its advantage as government to skirt the rules and push its manipulative agenda.

Now I want to talk a bit about the bill itself. Obviously, the government knows that proportional representation is not an easy sell. That’s why it’s reserved this bill for this moment. People don’t like it when the learn about it, so the purpose of the bill is to assure those who are wavering, who are uncertain about proportional representation, that they will get a second chance to pass judgment on this new system of voting in maybe nine, maybe ten, maybe 11 or 12 years from now. If they don’t like it, they will get another shot at another referendum. This allows voters to be lulled to sleep, to relax their guard, to accept the bill without being afraid.

The government’s design here is abundantly clear. They are tilting the field as far over as they can in order to ensure the imposition of proportional representation on the province. This is in addition to other ways in which they’ve done the same thing. I want to remind the House of a few other ways in which they have tilted the field.

First, there is no regional threshold. Vancouver can force proportional representation on the entire rest of the prov­ince. We know that Vancouver is more left-leaning than the rest of the province. We can tell that by the distribution of seats in this House. NDP were virtually shut out of rural areas, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the NDP. The urban concentration of population makes it easier and less expensive to reach and to organize voters in favour of proportional representation.

Second, there is no super- or double majority required, even though the two previous referendums on this issue, in 2005 and 2009, both required an extra majority. Obviously, the government looked at those referendums and said: “Let’s not do that again. Let’s forget about a high threshold if we want to accomplish a radical, leftward change in B.C.’s electoral system.”

The hypocrisy here is astounding. I would turn members’ attention to the NDP’s own constitution, which deals with amendments to its own foundational document. I quote from that: “Amendments…shall require a two-thirds majority of delegates present and voting to pass.” To change their own party’s constitution, they require a 66 percent majority, but to change the foundations of B.C.’s democracy, the NDP only require a simple majority.

That’s because they know they couldn’t get two-thirds. That’s why they relax the normal principles of prudence and caution and safety with regard to preserving what has provided stable, efficient government for well over 100 years in this province. They will happily throw caution to the four winds in favour of an untried and untested system in Canada, based on a bare majority.

I go on. Third, there is no turnout threshold, so that if 25 percent of British Columbians return their ballots, just 13 percent of the province will plunge all 4.7 million inhabitants into a new way of voting.

Now, the NDP tries to cast this manipulative exercise as a positive thing, but I don’t see it that way. I see it as a dark thing, as an ominous thing, as a cynical ploy to tilt the balance of power in favour of the NDP and the Greens on a permanent basis, to adopt a form of government that is clearly detrimental to northern B.C., unworkable in other countries, detrimental to the cause of free enterprise, clearly detrimental to the accountability of local MLAs and very supportive of much greater party influence.

I understand that up to 40 percent of MLAs could be appointed by party leaders, who are not elected by the people, who are not accountable to the people, and I see that as a dark thing. It is a downgraded democracy.

Now I want to turn to policy in real life and talk for a moment about New Zealand, because it is very relevant to what we’re doing here today. I think we should take a lesson from it. I took a little while to research this.

[2:00 p.m.]

New Zealand chose proportional representation in 1993, with 54 percent of the vote. They had a bare majority there. I think, in retrospect, New Zealanders might wish they had imposed a higher threshold. There are 120 MPs in that parliament; 49 of them are selected by party lists, not voted in as individuals. They’re selected by party bosses. That gives those bosses enormous power to drop in whoever they want.

Listen more to the story of what happened in 2017 in New Zealand. There is a party in New Zealand called the New Zealand First party. It’s a small party with 11 members in parliament, because in 2017 in the general election, they received 7 percent of the national vote, and 7 percent of the vote roughly equates to 11 members. The New Zealand First party and the Labour Party together decided to do a deal and signed a coalition agreement to form a government, but it took a long time to make that deal.

Why is that? It’s because the New Zealand First party board — that is, the governing board of the party — could not meet because some of them had to ask time off from work. Some of them had to go to funerals. Some of them had to fly in from different parts of the country. I’m not making this stuff up. The whole country waited while the party board took its sweet time to get its act together and meet to decide on the government. Why should they hurry? They’re not accountable to the voters. They couldn’t care less.

The leader of the party, Winston Peters, refused to say who sat on that board. It was a secret. It was that secretive board who would decide on the government, on who the New Zealand First party would form a coalition with. What a democracy. It’s not even a minority of MPs making the decisions. New Zealanders did not even know who was making the decision about who would form the next government. It’s appalling.

Well, the party board eventually met. They made the deal, and four of the New Zealand First party became cabinet ministers. That gave them enormous power in the government, even though they received only 7 percent of the vote. The people of New Zealand didn’t vote for them to do that. In particular, they did not vote for the deputy prime minister, Winston Peters.

Let me tell you about Winston Peters. Winston Peters is the head of the New Zealand First party. He was first on the party list; he’s the head of the party. In fact, in 2017 he did not win his own election. He lost his own constituency of Northland by more than 1,000 votes, but he was a party leader. So he was No. 1 on the party list.

Let me give you an example of his power. Winston Peters was mad at one of his party members, an MP named Richard Prosser, so he demoted him on the party list from third to 15th because of some controversial comments he had made. That meant that Mr. Prosser did not rank high enough to get a party seat in the legislature, one of those 49 out of 120 party seats. The lesson: under proportional representation, if the party leader doesn’t like you, you will not get into parliament. Indeed, Mr. Prosser is not in the New Zealand Parliament today. That is raw power. It is undemocratic, it is unelected power, and I think it’s an entirely negative thing.

While Mr. Peters did not win his own seat, and while his party only received 7 percent of the vote in 2017, his party has four cabinet ministers in the government and 11 members in the House. He himself, the leader, Winston Peters, served this summer as acting Prime Minister for six weeks, with all the powers of the Prime Minister, while the actual Prime Minister — the elected Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern — was giving birth. This bizarre and undemocratic set of results is brought to you thanks to proportional representation.

One could say that a party with 7 percent of the vote really had 100 percent of the power, because the New Zealand First party decided who would form the government, much like the Green Party in this House today. You can count on it that if PR comes in, the Greens will dominate this House for a generation, even when they’re a small minority. They’re happy about that. They’re very happy about that.

We can look forward to situations like New Zealand’s situation if we choose proportional representation in B.C. Why is that? It’s because it happened in New Zealand. I want to point out that the mess in New Zealand is caused by none other than the mixed-member proportional system, which is one of the systems the government is recommending for B.C. and the only one that has ever been used in real life. In fact, mixed-member proportional is used in New Zealand. It’s used in Scotland and Wales, also Bolivia, Lesotho and, for a while, Venezuela, until 2009, when they decided to can it.

[2:05 p.m.]

I wonder. Is British Columbia actually going to do this? I think if British Columbians heard the explanation that I just made, they would be horrified. They would say: “We’re not going to go near this system. What a crazy system.” If they know about it, they will not choose proportional representation. That’s why the government has carefully tilted the field by giving partial information, incomplete information, denying information, suppressing democratic participation by ordinary British Columbians to institute a flawed and biased process.

Bill 40 is a smokescreen. It is a feint. It is a decoy. It is a distraction. It is an attempt to divert the attention of British Columbians from the real issue, which is a piece of very bad policy called proportional representation — and mixed-member proportional, in particular. That is why I will vote against Bill 40.

J. Brar: It’s a real honour for me to stand up in this House to support the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Amendment Act, introduced in this House by our government. This is an historic opportunity for the people to make a change. This legislation will allow the people of British Columbia the opportunity to vote in a confirming referendum on electoral reform.

If people change B.C.’s voting system by supporting the referendum this fall, these amendments require that the government conduct a confirming referendum within 13 months after two provincial general elections that use the chosen proportional representation voting system.

For example, if scheduled general elections occur in October 2021 and October 2025, the confirming referendum would take place by November 30, 2026. The current 2018 referendum voting period by mail-in ballot will run from October 22, 2018, to November 30, 2018.

The key questions we are debating in this House are: one, why the outdated first-past-the-post system is not good for people…. That’s the first question. Second, why we need to change the outdated first-past-the-post system with the new proportional representation system. That’s the second question.

I know the members on the other side have been making comments all over the place. I just want to mention one. If I get the time, I will come back to the other one. The member who just finished speaking before me mentioned a story of a leader of a party in New Zealand who won, in his opinion, because he was on the party list. He would not have otherwise. The member described that as a bizarre and undemocratic system.

I want to remind the member that in the 2013 election, right here in British Columbia, their own leader, Christy Clark, lost the election — her own election. She lost, and she had to go from Vancouver to Kelowna to win the by-election. What was that? Was that democratic? That was also bizarre and undemocratic, if they say she has to go and find a place somewhere else. I will come back to some other comments made by the members if I find time at the end of my comments.

I would like to answer the first question: why the outdated first-past-the-post system is not good for people. The key role of the government is to serve the people, but this outdated system has failed to serve the people of British Columbia. For too long, the old, outdated voting system has put too much power in the hands of too few people.

[2:10 p.m.]

Let me tell you why this is so important. The Quebec election on October 1 saw the conservative coalition receive only 37 percent of the popular vote but 59 percent of the total seats. They got only 37 percent of the popular vote, but they got 59 percent of the total seats. And that’s what the member on the other side calls democracy, meaning they don’t have to work with anyone while pushing through their agenda.

Quebec results echo what happened in Ontario in June, when Doug Ford’s Conservative Party took 61 percent of the seats with only 40.5 percent of the vote. Doug Ford won 61 percent of the seats with only 40.5 percent of the vote, and that’s not what we call democracy. Doug Ford also doesn’t have to work with anyone, holding 100 percent of the power.

These are two prime examples of the latest elections we have had in this country. Clearly, the current system is broken. It’s completely broken. It’s not working for people. In these two elections, each party won 100 percent of the power with less than 50 percent of the vote. That’s the main problem with the current system. The party won 100 percent of the power with less than 50 percent of the popular vote. That’s where this whole issue is.

What this story tells us is that something is completely wrong with the current system and that the current system is broken. Too many people feel their vote doesn’t count. That’s the problem.

We have young people listening up there in the gallery, and this is a good debate for them too. Too many people feel their vote is wasted. Too many people feel that our current voting system isn’t working for them.

They see a situation like Ontario, where Doug Ford ran a divisive, Trump-style campaign, won 40 percent of the vote but took 100 percent of the power. Sixty percent of people actually cast their ballot for the other parties. He doesn’t have to work with anyone in the House, other than his own members, and his decisions are hurting the most vulnerable people in the province. That’s what the outcome of that election is.

We saw something very similar happen in this province under the B.C. Liberals, election after election. They would get less than half of the votes but grab 100 percent of the power. And it was the hard-working people of the province who paid the price. In four elections right here in B.C., the B.C. Liberals took 100 percent of the power by getting less than 50 percent of the popular vote. That’s what the problem of the system is.

The B.C. Liberals made everyone pay more for everything, while cutting important services like health care and education. But to be fair, I have to give some credit to the B.C. Liberals, because they got me into politics. Let me tell you, when they came to power in 2001, the B.C. Liberals started cutting services that people counted on. On the other hand, they gave a huge, huge tax cut to the top 2 percent of its people.

That’s what happens when these parties come in power. On the other side, they started closing schools. Particularly in Surrey, the fastest-growing city in the province, they cut health care and forced the people of Surrey to wait six long hours at Surrey Memorial Hospital to access health care.

They went ahead and sold the land that was purchased to build the new hospital. The B.C. Liberals forced….

Interjection.

J. Brar: That land was sold by B.C. Liberals that was purchased to build the new hospital. That is a fact, and that stands there. The member there has a problem. I know it’s a painful fact, but that’s a reality.

B.C. Liberals forced the people of Surrey to pay unfair tolls on the Port Mann Bridge and Golden Ears Bridge. They completely ignored the needs of our fast-growing city. That’s what happened. They were out of touch with our reality.

[2:15 p.m.]

The truth is that the outdated first-past-the-post voting system only works for those at the top — for the rich people, the top 2 percent of people, their friends, who used to fund their election campaign. That’s the reality, and that’s why the B.C. Liberals and their wealthy friends are desperate to keep the old way of voting system. It makes it easier for them to control the government with a minority of votes. That’s the problem.

With first-past-the-post, they can cut services and make your life more expensive while doing favours for their rich friends. That’s what happened in the past 16 years. We see the B.C. Liberals pretend to care about people across the province at election time, only at election time, only to largely ignore them after they formed the government with a minority of votes. That’s the problem.

They pick and choose the voters they truly care about based on where they’re most likely to win seats, and everyone else takes a back seat. That’s what happens. And that’s why people would like to change this outdated system with a new proportional representation system.

Why we need to change the outdated first-past-the-post system with a new proportional representation system — that’s my second question, which the people of British Columbia would like to know. That’s my question. I think we have young students there that would be interested to know about that.

We’re trying to change the system — the way we elect people in the province. That’s what we’re doing, and that’s the debate taking place right now here. We are in favour of changing the system. Members on the other side are not in favour of changing the system. They want to keep the status quo, where less than 50 percent of the people can actually elect the government, giving them a majority of power, even if 60 percent of the people voted against that government. So we want to change that system.

Coming back to my script, proportional representation is a system used by countries around the world to ensure that everyone’s vote counts. The party that will get 25 percent of the votes will get 25 percent of the seats in the Legislature. Very fair system. I think the member from the Green Party will agree with me.

The party that will get 25 percent of the votes will get 25 percent of the seats. It’s simple. It’s very simple. Pro rep provides stable government where parties work together to get things done for people.

One of the questions we hear about the political parties from the people…. One of the biggest, biggest concerns we hear is that these parties keep fighting with each other. They never work together. Pro rep is a system where different parties have to work together for the good of the people. I think that’s a very good thing of this new system.

Most democracies in the world use proportional representation, but B.C. would be leading the way in North America, if the people of British Columbia choose the system in the coming referendum.

We have an historic opportunity to make a change that could have a profound and positive impact on B.C.’s politics for generations. We will lead the way for the rest of the country. British Columbia has the opportunity to change our voting system so that everyone’s vote counts.

Proportional representation can fix this. With pro rep, everyone’s vote will be counted. Pro rep will strengthen the voice of people from every region of the province, because every vote will count, and MLAs won’t be able to ignore voters anymore. Parties will have to work together to get things done for people in B.C. Parties will be more accountable. They won’t be able to just ram through extreme agendas and get away with it.

The majority of the countries around the world now use some form of pro rep, and we have seen, from their experiences, that the governments are more stable. People have a greater sense of satisfaction in their democracies.

[2:20 p.m.]

There is a greater diversity among elected representatives. And voter turnout, especially for young people, young voters, goes significantly high in those countries.

Over the next several weeks, people are going to hear a lot of misleading claims from the other side’s members. They don’t want the new system because it does not favour, it does not serve, their needs and their friends’ needs. That’s the problem. The no side — the B.C. Liberals and their friends — we must remember, has a very personal stake in keeping the status quo.

We have already banned big money from elections, and now we have an historic chance to finish the job. I just want to say to the young people out there, the elections are run, of course, with the money. And there are parties that support big business out there, the top 2 percent. They get a huge amount of money from them.

We support the ordinary people. We get money from the public. We get way less money than them under that system. They use that big money to win the election, and then they go back to help those big people, the top 2 percent rich people. That’s what happens. That’s how money plays a role.

I’m proud to say, so you know, that we, the NDP government, after coming into power, have actually banned both the union donations and corporation donations. Big business cannot donate anymore. Unions cannot donate anymore. We have done that job. Now we are on the second chapter so that we can clean up the democratic process in a way that works for the people, for the young people, for the education system and all that.

We have a chance to put power back in the hands of regular people, not just the wealthy and well-connected, and elect a government that works for everyone. That’s what we want to do. We have a chance to finally put people at the centre of politics, and that’s what we’re doing under this system.

Now, I have been listening to the members for the last, I think, couple of days. One of the critiques I heard from the member from the other side is that under this system, somehow all the promises the different parties are going to make to the people of British Columbia…. They will forget them the next day because one party has to work with the other party, and they will forget their promises. That’s the claim they have been making.

I just want to say to the members, with respect…. I hope they will listen to this. In the 2013 election — and Mr. Speaker will remember that too — the B.C. Liberals made a promise to the people of British Columbia that the province will be debt-free, that they are going to build a mega-LNG project in the province of British Columbia, that they are going to produce 100,000 jobs for the people of British Columbia — that that will bring $100 billion of revenue to the province of British Columbia.

That is a fact, my friends, and that was written on your bus, on the campaign bus. That was the plan. The reality is this: not a single project was done. Not a single job out of 100,000 jobs was created under LNG.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. The member for Surrey-Fleetwood has the floor.

J. Brar: Not a single dollar from LNG came to the province of British Columbia. So the outcome of the promise they made to the people of British Columbia was zero.

They are concerned now that somehow if we change the system, the different political parties will have to work together and that they will somehow change completely the promises they made with the people of British Columbia. That’s absolutely not true.

In B.C., although we don’t have this system yet, we, the NDP government, have been working with the Green caucus for the last 15 months. People tell me every day that the government is doing a great job.

[2:25 p.m.]

We have done all major promises that we made to the people of British Columbia. We said we were going to get rid of tolls. We eliminated the tolls in the city of Surrey that were actually introduced by the B.C. Liberal government.

We said we were going to eliminate the MSP. We have eliminated the MSP. We have eliminated the MSP 50 percent already, and 50 percent will go in the near future. We said we were going to take big money out of politics. Working together with the Green Party, we have taken big money out of politics. We have done that too.

We are moving forward on various promises we made with the people of British Columbia. That’s why I’m very proud today to stand in this House to say that I will support this bill, because we need to get rid of the old, outdated, first-past-the-post system, and we need to bring in the new system that will work for the people of British Columbia, where everyone’s vote counts. That will be good for the people. That will be good for democracy. That will be good for accountability.

That’s why we need to support the bill, and that’s why, Members from the other side, you should support the bill. Forget about rich friends — at least for the good of the people for some time — and support this bill. Having said that, I will take my place.

J. Thornthwaite: I am actually quite enjoying the debates that we’ve been going through for the last couple of days on Bill 40, and I’m honoured to be standing here and talking about the Electoral Reform Referendum Amendment Act.

The philosophy behind this bill imagines that somehow in two or possibly three elections — actually, maybe 12 years from now — the government of the day will be bound to hold a referendum based on this legislation. On the contrary, I believe that we should be debating the actual flawed referendum, soon to come to a mailbox near you, starting October 22 — not to mention that the cost of this referendum, according to Elections B.C., is $15 million. If we’re having one or two more referendums, then that’s going to be exponentially much more expensive.

Put the fact that there is very poor turnout in elections by mail, and I fear that we’re not going to get the response, perhaps, that British Columbians deserve. But maybe that’s the point.

The referendum is a question, I would argue, on our voting system and what our province should be utilizing. It’s actually a question as to a comparison of whether or not we want to change our current voting system to something else that we don’t necessarily know what the details are all about.

In this particular referendum, there are 29 different factors that will be left until after the referendum to be clarified. These are pretty important factors, including the number of MLAs, the size of the ridings, what constitutes a rural or an urban riding, whether there will be closed or open party lists or even whether there will be a list at all. I don’t think we can fairly say that we are actually choosing a system then. What we are choosing or not in this referendum is kind of a concept, a concept of, perhaps, another system.

What we are asking is whether voters want to actually directly vote for their MLA or whether they want to have their representative chosen by the party that they are voting for. That is the definition of the proportional system. It’s that there may be MLAs that are elected, but the rest of the MLAs — and it could be up to 40 percent, we’ve heard — would be appointed by a specific party, based on the proportion of that party’s win, so to speak, in the election.

[2:30 p.m.]

In the end, after this government had done their on-line feedback questionnaire, even the ones that had been recommended were not included, and they discarded many of the systems — three out of four, actually. Two of the ones that are on the ballot that we will be faced with are proportional representation systems not currently in use.

We’re being asked to vote on systems that have never been used anywhere in the world, and we’re not being provided with details, maps, how big the electoral districts will be or how many representatives will be out there representing us.

Last week, along with the B.C. Liberal ridings on the North Shore, all four of them, we hosted a proportional representation information session, and we invited Bill Tieleman. Those on the other side will definitely know who I’m talking about. As much as what’s been said in a lot of aspects in this debate in the last couple of days has been partisan, one side versus the other, in actual fact, the person that is actually running the no campaign for proportional representation is an NDP operative, and a very successful one.

He has got big pull, actually, in the NDP, and he’s very well respected. So why would we invite him to come and speak? Well, we wanted to make it a non-partisan event — non-partisan because the NDP was speaking. We wanted to make it as open to everybody as we possibly could.

Bill actually came up with a whole bunch of information that was very, very telling. I would like to clarify that there are three main points that the people that are proponents of proportional representation say that we need to change in our current system.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Number one is that every vote counts in proportional representation, which implies that in the current system, my vote actually didn’t count. We just need to ask, perhaps, the member for Courtenay-Comox or the member for Coquitlam–Burke Mountain how much individual votes truly do count, because the margin of them winning those respective ridings was very, very small.

Then, when you look at what’s going on right now in the municipal election, you notice that every single candidate that I know that is on the North Shore is fighting for every single vote. So there’s actually no truth to the premise that in this current first-past-the-post system, not every vote counts. In fact, every vote does count, and it is counted.

The other issue that seems to come up…. As I said before, there’s one side here and another side there. In other words, it’s partisan. But as I mentioned, we had Bill Tieleman come to the North Shore last week, talking about why British Columbia should not be adopting a proportional representation system.

If you look at the proportional representation systems that are proposed…. If, in fact, the 87 ridings that we have now are to remain the same, and if 40 percent, which we’ve heard is an estimate, would be the number of MLAs that would be appointed, then that means that the rest of them would be elected. But how would those MLAs, those 40 percent, be actually appointed? By party list. What that means is that — and Bill brought this up quite eloquently last week — the number of Liberals and NDPs would be very, very similar, but the amount of Green MLAs would go way up.

That’s what I think this is all about. It’s not so much a Liberal-NDP issue. It’s to get the Greens more seats. And if that is the goal, then I think we should just be honest about it, instead of pretending that it’s that every vote counts.

The last one that I keep hearing from the other side and the Fair Vote people is: why should we have a system where a party can get 40 percent of the vote and 100 percent of the power?

[2:35 p.m.]

Well, our leader had a Facebook live town hall last week. He actually looked at this with regards to kind of a math lesson. He said that what happens when you have a very small percentage of the vote that is actually taken…. If a third and a third and a third…. That is what the general Angus Reid poll had said, that a third support proportional representation, a third support the system that we’re in, first-past-the-post, and a third are undecided.

If a third of the voters actually voted for the referendum, that means that 50 plus one…. That is the very, very low level that the government has put to actually win the PR referendum, as opposed to more than 60 percent in the last two referendums that we did conduct in British Columbia, which were done by a citizens’ assembly. That means that only 16 percent of the voters of British Columbia actually voted to support proportional representation.

That is significantly less than the 40 percent that the members from the opposite side are saying is so-called unfair to have somebody have 100 percent of the power. My point is it’s with this proportional representation referendum that we have the potential of having 16 percent or less of the public actually voting to change to proportional representation. That definitely isn’t fair and is undemocratic.

What happened in Prince Edward Island a couple years ago? Apparently, the electorate did vote — 52 percent of the people that voted — to change to a proportional representation system. But in fact, only 36 percent of the electorate actually voted, which meant that 18 percent of the electorate actually voted for that change. The P.E.I. government at the time decided that that was not a mandate, and neither is this referendum. I think that that is something that we should definitely take into consideration, the decision that the Prince Edward Island government made at that time.

What about all of these different types of PR systems? They are very confusing. There’s dual-member proportional representation. What I know about it is you’re given two options, appointed by political parties. All losing votes are distributed to the parties to allow them to appoint candidates elsewhere, which, of course, is what would allow a fringe party with 5 percent of the vote to actually get in and have seats in the Legislature, even if they had a marginal showing.

Then, of course, there’s mixed-member proportional. This is the only one that is on the list on the ballot that is actually being used anywhere in the world. In this system, again, we have very little details. But as I mentioned before, we’ve been told that there could be up to 40 percent of the MLAs that are actually appointed. But we don’t know, to this extent, whether or not that would be an open list — in other words, you would actually know who they were — or a closed list, to be determined later by the party brass.

The other system that is listed on the ballot is called the rural-urban or two-tiered mix of an STV system that apparently British Columbians actually rejected in 2005 and 2009. Whether or not a riding is rural or urban, we don’t know. These sorts of details…. We have no idea if where you live would actually be classified as rural or urban. So how do we know, if somebody is interested in this rural-urban system, how they would be classified? No, we won’t know until after the referendum is closed.

Another video that I would encourage listeners out there to take a look at is by our member for Vancouver–False Creek, who did a cute little video. It was very well done. You could understand it just by the animation. I would certainly recommend that people check that out. He called it, “This referendum is of political parties, by political parties, for political parties,” not for the people and not for the voters.

[2:40 p.m.]

The other thing I wanted to mention…. I’m kind of digressing a little bit here, because I wanted to talk about the member for Cowichan Valley. She was talking about the benefits of proportional representation being more kinder and gentler. I actually do admit that she is probably one of the more kind, more gentle individuals in this House, and I particularly take note of how calm she was when that mouse ran across the floor during her speech, which was very impressive.

She said: “Democracy has increasingly become a game of political parties figuring out how to woo small pockets of potential voters based on tapping into self-interest and less and less about parties and politicians putting forward a coherent vision for the future that works to forge consensus. Election campaigns are not about bringing us together. They are sowing seeds of disunity and fragmentation.”

Then she went on to speak about other countries in the OECD, which were purportedly successful with proportional representation. I’d like to bring your attention to an article that was just published on October 10, very recently. It was published in Foreign Policy. It’s called: “Is Sweden Ungovernable?” I would encourage anybody that is actually considering voting for proportional representation to check out what’s going on in Sweden right now, what’s going on in Germany right now and what’s going on in New Zealand right now.

What they have said is: “Sweden is the latest example of political gridlock…. All over Europe, in different multiparty systems, the government formation process is taking longer and longer.” A researcher at the University of Vienna — and I remember that the members of the Green Party are talking in this House about evidence, so I’m quoting research here — says: “Among other things, this has to do with populist parties taking power.”

They talk about how in the Netherlands, it took 208 days to put a new government in place. In Germany, after nearly six months, the conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats were finally able to create the so-called grand coalition that rules today. In Italy — many of us have known what has gone on in Italy — apparently there have been 65 governments since World War II. In June, it took them three months, after the vote, to actually get a government.

It’s not just right-wing populist parties that are contributing to the gridlock though. Politics in numerous European countries is becoming increasingly fractured, with more parties entering parliament and earning a bigger share of the vote. It isn’t just, as I said, the far-right parties that have benefitted from the decline of the traditional centre-left and centre-right parties either. The Greens, far-left parties and other upstart movements have also gained vote share.

“Should right-wing parties continue to make gains going forward,” this article goes on to say, “it will be increasingly difficult to exclude them from the government formation process — or, on the other hand, to form stable governments without them. That’s a general phenomenon: the higher the number of parties that you have in parliament, the more difficult it is” to hammer out a deal or get something done.

Then the last point that I’ll make on this article: “The rise of populists has slowed the process of government formation across Europe and resulted in increasingly weak governing coalitions. And that ultimately feeds the support for these populist parties.” I think that those are some points that are important to mention while we’re having this discussion on the referendum for proportional representation.

Our member from Surrey-Panorama was very eloquent when he talked about what was going on in New Zealand, and I’m just going to briefly go over it. I’m not going to spend very much time. But we do know that New Zealand First, which is a small party, received 7 percent of the vote. They elected nine members in the 2017 election, all off of party lists.

[2:45 p.m.]

Winston Peters, their party leader, came the closest by being the runner-up in his riding of Northland, a riding he used to represent. But he wasn’t actually directly elected this time. Nine MPs were appointed, not elected. This Winston Peters, the party leader, has been the deputy leader while the actual Prime Minister is on maternity leave.

The Alternative for Germany is the German political party identified as the far right. Part of the AfD have racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and xenophobic tendencies linked to far-right movements such as neo-Nazis and identitarianism. They are calling for an immediate closing of Germany’s borders and to kick out Syrian refugees who have found shelter in Germany. I might mention that this is Europe. This is Germany. I don’t think that sounds kinder or gentler.

In summary, then, I think that when we are all looking at whether we are going to vote for a proportional representation system or not, we should be looking at what the information is that we’re actually getting from the referendum process. We know that there’s many, many things missing.

The Premier actually did say, when he was speaking to the UBCM a couple of weeks ago, to join him in this leap of faith and support the proportional representation. But you know what? I’m not going to do that.

I worry that we don’t have enough information from this referendum. I worry that we don’t know how many MLAs will be actually elected. We don’t know exactly how many MLAs are going to be appointed from political parties. We don’t know how they’ll be appointed. Closed lists? Open lists? How many of them?

We have no idea about the maps. We have no idea how big the ridings are going to be. We know that they will be bigger, but we don’t know how big they will be. We don’t know what the definition of a rural riding is, and we don’t know what the definition of an urban riding is.

I am very much looking forward to the debate. Our leader has called on the Premier to debate this. It’s been a while, at least a week I think, that the challenge was agreed on, and now we are waiting. The Premier is here now. I will be looking forward to seeing the Premier give us a date so that we can all get together in front of our television sets and watch the two leaders duke it out. Then we’ll really know the real show.

Hon. J. Horgan: It is an honour and privilege to rise in support of Bill 40 today. I was delighted to hear the comments from one of the three, not four, members from the North Shore — to offer her presentation and cite noted scholar Bill Tieleman as the foundation of her argument. It is truly a weird world that we live in when I hear B.C. Liberals quoting chapter and verse from the book of Tieleman. Nonetheless, it is the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. Pretty much anything can happen here.

Nonetheless, I am taking the opportunity to stand and speak in support of changing our current electoral system. I’m doing that because I believe, after too many times of having less than 50 percent of the voters elect a government that has 100 percent of the power…. In fact, every time since Confederation but one, that has been the case. I think it’s time to put people back in the centre of our politics, and I believe that supporting the proportional representation referendum this fall will allow us to do that.

It’s a voting system that leads, in my opinion, to fairer, more responsive governments that put people at the centre of politics and have to ensure that they are fairer and more transparent. Just as we have eliminated big money from politics, we believe we should take away this notion that a small minority of voters can have all of the power after an election, which has been the case time after time after time here in British Columbia.

The next logical step, if you’re taking big money out, if you’re saying that citizens should be the focus of election campaigns, then I think that you should also say to citizens: “We want your values to be reflected in this institution.” Not 40 percent of the values, not 37 percent of the values, but a majority of the values.

[2:50 p.m.]

We have the good fortune right now, with the first-past-the-post system, to have a government that was elected with the same number of votes, virtually, as the opposition party — the same number of votes, almost the same number of seats. A government was formed when one of the two major parties made an agreement with the third party, which had 17 percent of the votes in the last election campaign, to demonstrate a clear majority of voters putting in place a government that will be working for them. We’ve done a good deal of work since we were sworn in. I’ll inventory some of that later on.

Why we introduced Bill 40 and why we’re having the discussion today is because I wanted to make sure that citizens in British Columbia understood that we have an opportunity to take a leap of faith, as the member said on the other side, and turn our backs on a system that gives power to the few over the wishes of the many and, instead, have an opportunity to embrace proportional representation for two election campaigns.

If we don’t like it, we’ll have a second referendum, and we can go back to the system that we have now. Or we can ask citizens to vote in favour of the system that they’ve selected this fall during the referendum campaign. I believe that’s fair.

I believe that, again, gives the people the opportunity to make these decisions, not just the people in this room. That’s critically important. If we are going to be truly transparent in what we do in this place, we should give power back to the people. We’ve taken big money out. We are now allowing citizens to be the centre of election campaigns. That’s as it should be, and I am very confident that this November, the majority of people will vote in favour of changing from what we have to a better way forward.

Now, the current system that we have…. I heard the member from the North Shore talk about instability. I’m reflecting on how many different federal governments we’ve had just in this century. There was an election in 2000, an election in 2004 and then in 2006, in 2008, then 2011 and then 2015, and I think we’re going to have another one next year. So that’s seven elections since the changing of the century.

That, somehow, is more stable in the minds of many on that side of the House than allowing a generous representation of votes to come together after an election campaign to form a government that focuses on the values and views of the majority of British Columbians. I think that’s not only fair but it’s appropriate, and it happens in other jurisdictions around the world.

I always rise up when I see members on the other side point to anomalies in other jurisdictions but not point to the anomalies we have right here in Canada. For example, we had an election in New Brunswick recently where one party received 38 percent of the votes and another party received 32 percent of the votes. The party with the largest number of seats had 6 percent less of the vote. How does that make sense? How is it democratic that one party with literally 32 percent of the votes has the largest number of seats in the Legislature? It’s not right. It’s not fair. British Columbians will have an opportunity to change that in the days and weeks ahead, and I’m very excited about that.

When we look at a whole host of other issues, what comes back for me is my own personal view on this question. In 2005, I was running for the first time to be a member of this place. At that time, there was a referendum on proportional representation. I was too busy focusing on knocking on doors. I was too busy doing the things that we as elected representatives do. My view on the matter was: “Well, I don’t want to learn more about what we could be. I’m going to go with what we have,” and I voted against proportional representation.

For four years, I sat on that side of the House offering, I’d like to think, on occasion, useful suggestions to the government, whether it be in this place or in the budget estimates that happen annually, bringing forward ideas from not just myself but from the people that I represented at that time in Malahat–Juan de Fuca, and I got zero response from the government.

They did not receive 50 percent of the votes — far less than that, in fact — but they had 100 percent of the power and the ability to say to me, as a member of this place, that my views didn’t matter and that my constituents’ views didn’t matter because of the banner I carried one day four years ago. I think that’s wrong.

You know what? People think that’s wrong as well. They would prefer to see their elected representatives working together and grappling with the very challenging issues that we face right across the board. Whether it’s on climate action, social development and poverty reduction or the opioid crisis, people want us to work together.

The conflict that comes with our adversarial system is not what they see today. Instead, they see cooperation when two parties came together in the interests not necessarily of ourselves but of the broader public. It’s working, and it will continue to work with proportional representation.

[2:55 p.m.]

If you look across the spectrum at countries — some of them that have been identified by the member from the North Shore — around the world that have proportional representation, they inevitably elect more women, and they elect more people of colour. At the end of the day, the values and views of the disparate community that they represent are in the Legislature — not outside the Legislature but in the Legislature. So people can confidently vote for the candidate that shares their values and know that those values will be represented in the Legislature after the election.

I see my friend from West Vancouver–Capilano, one of the longest-serving in the place, someone I hold in high regard. He wins his constituency by an overwhelming number of votes. There have been times, I believe, that he has topped all of the polls of all of the people in this place, which says to the good citizens of West Vancouver–Capilano: “If you have a divergent view from your member of the Legislature, the likelihood of those views being reflected in this Legislature is zero.” Despite the fact that the member for West Vancouver–Capilano is thoughtful and compassionate and reaches across the aisle, at the end of the day, people who chose to vote against his political party are not represented here.

Similarly, I can look just to my immediate right to the member for Victoria–Beacon Hill, who also gets elected with significant majorities election after election. I can say confidently that all views in her constituency are reflected and represented here, but that’s an anomaly. By and large, when people go to vote and their candidate does not gain success on election night, their views are shut out from this place. That’s wrong, and we can change that.

Those that are talking about how somehow this is going to change, that the citizens’ responsibility in our parliamentary process will change because of the system that we use to fill the seats in here, are just plain wrong. Under proportional representation, citizens will go to the same church basement, the same high school gym wherever they live, they will be given a list of names of human beings — fallible, all of them — and they will make a deter­mination. They’ll put an X beside one of those individuals. They’ll put it in the box, and they’ll go home and say: “I wonder how that will work out.”

Well, what they will know, under proportional representation, is that their views and values will be reflected in this place because all of the votes will count. Not just the votes in West Vancouver–Capilano, not just the votes in Victoria–Beacon Hill but all votes will reflect the diversity of our community. That’s a good thing, not something to be afraid of.

In 2005, I voted against proportional representation. In 2009, I voted in favour of it. There was not one single change in the question — not a comma, not a period, nothing. But I knew after four years of opposition time without any influence — not personal influence but any influence — on behalf of my constituents on the policies of government that something needed to change.

When I was given the good fortune of becoming Leader of the Opposition in 2014, I worked with my colleagues here and my colleagues across the province who put their names forward and said: “We are going to campaign on electoral reform because we need to make sure that this institution reflects the values of 21st-century British Columbia — not the 1870s but 2018.”

That’s why proportional representation’s time has come. The fear should stop. The practical understanding…. You don’t need a degree in statistics. You don’t have to be a political scientist. You continue to do your civic duty by going to the polling place and exercising your franchise by putting an X beside the person that best reflects your values. After you do that, you can say with absolute certainty that your values will be reflected in this place. That, again, as they say in the business, is a good thing. Maybe not in Cariboo North, but everywhere else, that’s the case.

I hear it every day as I travel around British Columbia. I hear from people who are saying: “I’m really glad you guys are working together. I’m really happy to see that. I like the idea that you’re cooperating. You’re putting aside your personal differences, and you’re working in the best interests of British Columbians.” I hear it over and over again.

Of course, when you’re in government, you have an opportunity to travel around and talk directly to people. When you’re in opposition, you’re looking for a parade to lead, and I’m certain that someday a parade will come by that the member for Cariboo North can join into. But for now, the question before us is Bill 40 and the opportunity to say to British Columbians: “You can embrace a change in our electoral process this fall, and if you don’t like it, two elections hence you’ll have an opportunity to vote against it.”

[3:00 p.m.]

That’s not so for the people of New Brunswick and not so for the people of Ontario, who just elected a government with 40 percent of the votes that now has 100 percent of the power. Regardless of how you feel about Doug Ford’s politics — it’s really not important — the question of whether one individual and his collection of MLAs should have all of the power with only 40 percent of the vote clearly clangs like a bell in the ear of those who want to talk about genuine democracy and genuine parliamentary reform.

I believe we can and should be proud of our values when we go into an election campaign and be proud of our values when we go in to vote. And if the candidate of our choice in West Vancouver–Capilano is unsuccessful, does that mean that our values are no longer going to be reflected in the Legislature? I would think it should not, and I know that the member would support me in this. He knows there are good people in his constituency that choose not to vote for him. Should they be shut out? I think not. And he agrees with me. He’s nodding his head in favour. Thank you, Member.

I believe that in the 21st century, we should have an electoral system that allows the diversity of our communities to come into this place, to knock down those doors and be in here to talk about the challenges people are facing in minority communities, the challenges people are facing in poverty. The challenges of rural and remote communities are better reflected by proportional representation, not worse.

To have members on the other side say: “Well, we won’t be able to find our MLA….” Goodness me, the member for Stikine represents an area one-quarter the size of British Columbia. He tries his level best to be in every corner of that, but there are days that his constituents can’t find him because he’s in Dease Lake, not in Smithers. That’s a big distance.

I know members are looking at their Google Maps right now. Those of us who live in smaller communities can only imagine what the member for Stikine has to do, the member for Peace River North…. These are massive constituencies. So how do we put in place an electoral system that will recognize our diversity and geography and also sparse populations of some of those rural areas and burgeoning populations in our urban centres? We need to find a way to figure that out.

The current system is not serving us well. That’s why we brought forward changes, and that’s why we’re here today — to give citizens of British Columbia the opportunity to change what they have and bring in something that supports cooperation, rather than encourage conflict.

I heard some of the members earlier talk about the partisanship that’s coming to this debate. Partisanship is very much part of this place, and I think that it serves us poorly as individuals and as the body politic, because we’re constantly clashing with each other, even on minute differences of opinion. I believe that proportional representation allows those minute differences to disappear and, instead, cooperation and consensus to emerge.

We’ve seen that in recent months with the members from the Green caucus and the members from the NDP caucus. We’ve seen that with members of the Liberal caucus who I’ve been working with since I had the privilege of being sworn in as Premier. It can happen. It will happen more frequently with proportional representation.

Instead of spreading panic and fear, instead of talking about not taking risks, instead of saying, “You won’t be able to understand it; it’s too confusing,” I would encourage the members on the other side to say: “Let’s work together on making our electoral system more reflective and representative of the values of 21st century British Columbia.” Using a system from the 1800s is clearly not serving us well. It’s not serving the citizens of British Columbia. At the end of the day, because of the partisanship that emerges, the constant clash between government and opposition, which….

I don’t want to diminish our parliamentary institutions completely. Sometimes there’s value in that back-and-forth. But I think all members, in moments of clarity and honesty, would also recognize that we are better when we’re working together. Liberal, New Democrat, Greens — we’re better when we’re working together. Proportional representation allows those alliances to be formed after the election rather than the rigid lines in the sand that are formed under our current system.

“You shall not agree with the member on the other side,” says the book when you arrive under first-past-the-post. Under proportional representation, you come to this place with an open heart, an open mind and a spirit of cooperation that will lead to better outcomes for people at the end of the day.

What have we been able to do working together with our colleagues in the Green caucus? We’re addressing the out-of-control housing crisis, the challenges that we’re facing in British Columbia when it comes to affordability of homes for people. We’re addressing the costs of people’s medical services premiums by eliminating them by next year, working together with other members of the Legislature.

[3:05 p.m.]

We’ve cut costs on ferry routes. Where’s my member from ferry land? We’ve stabilized B.C. Ferries. There’s more work to be done there. We certainly want to make sure we can get a ferry to Bella Coola sometime soon. The guys on the other side promised it, and they’re still promising. Unbelievable.

We need to work together to have bold action on climate change. By the end of this year, my colleagues from the Ministry of Environment and all members of this House will be working together to make sure that we will have hard targets that we’ve already voted for. Those people on that side of the House supported us in that instance. We will have hard targets that we will realize — again, working together to make sure that happens.

That’s what consensus government is all about. That’s what cooperation is all about. Take the conflict out — the rigid line across the middle of the floor that inevitably comes from first-past-the-post because the winner takes all in those circumstances.

Surely, I am not out of time. Am I really? Good, I was worried about that. You leaned forward. I thought: “My goodness, it’s been so long.” I’ve still got pages to turn over, hon. Speaker.

Interjection.

Hon. J. Horgan: Thank you. I think I might.

One of the other things, of course, we’ve been able to work on together, the Green caucus and the NDP, is bringing in the first universal accessible quality child care program in B.C.’s history. Again, putting people at the centre of the equation. Investing in skills training. Investing in post-secondary education and K-to-12 education. Making sure that our children get the best opportunity they possibly can. Working across party lines to make sure that happens.

Proportional representation will allow us to do that not just by random circumstance, which is what we found ourselves in after the May 2017 election, but after every election. All of the people that are elected to this place will have to find their way forward together, not for themselves but for the people that sent them here. The people of British Columbia will have good government, cooperative government, not the conflict we’ve seen too many times in the past.

Most importantly, we will not see again a government that has less than 50 percent support of the people in this room having 100 percent of the power. I don’t know how anyone could call that democratic. I’m just perplexed that Bill Tieleman, my dear friend, who is quoted time and time again by B.C. Liberals…. I believe he was denigrated time and time again in the most recent past. Nonetheless, I’m surprised that members on the other side of the House would prefer fear over a frank dialogue about how we get ourselves into the 21st century.

Maybe that’s what separates them from us. Maybe that’s why they’re there, and we’re over here. Maybe it’s because we put in our platform a commitment to bring forward a referendum on electoral reform that says: “Do you want what you’ve had all these years that gives you arrogant majority governments that stop listening to you the minute the poll closes? Or do you want to have a government going forward that will be responsive every day to the values and wishes of the people of British Columbia and that will work across party lines?”

I say yes. I say yes to the referendum this fall. I say yes to making sure that cooperation is the value of the day, not conflict. They want to fearmonger. They want to say the world will come to an end if we vote for something we don’t understand.

My goodness, they make it sound as if this is complicated. We’re going to the same church basement, as I said earlier. We’re going to the same high school. You’re going to get a list of names. They’re going to be fallible human beings, every one of them. Voters will make their best educated guess on who will serve them and who will reflect their values. They’ll put an X. They’ll drop it in the box. After that’s over, people will come to this place, and they’ll work together in the interests of all British Columbians. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Only those who want to cling to the past and cling to their big-money politics that allowed them, election after election, to form majority governments with less than 50 percent of the vote. That’s what they want to protect. We on this side of the House and the Green caucus — everyone over here — and the majority of British Columbians will say: “Thankfully, this November, we will have an opportunity to make sure our values are in this institution, working for us, the people of British Columbia.” What could be better than that?

[3:10 p.m.]

S. Bond: I very much appreciate the opportunity to join other members in this House as we discuss something as important as a potential change to the electoral system in British Columbia. I want to assure the Premier, who….

I have to say that I appreciate being in this House, hearing speeches that are passionate, that are emotional. They should be. In fact, it sounds to me like this Premier is probably ready to take on a debate. He took it on in the House, and we’d like to challenge him now to take it outside of the House. Let’s have this conversation in a venue where the Premier has a chance to bring these ideas right to the front of British Columbians’ attention. It sounds like the Premier is ready for a debate. He’s probably ready to give an answer to the fact as to whether or not he’ll have that debate outside this chamber.

I want to assure the Premier that one of the things we want to make very clear is that while the members on that side of the House, including the Premier, want to characterize our comments in terms of using the word “fear,” what we’d like to see from the members on the opposite benches are some facts. The Premier continues to use the phrase that most British Columbians are starting to get more worried about. He continues to take pride in saying: “Let’s take a leap of faith.” In fact, it’s been characterized as: “Let’s take a leap into the dark.”

This is a place where there should be emotion in speeches, where it is the place where we should have frank and timely discussions, especially about something this fundamental. We’re about to make a choice about the future of electoral reform in British Columbia. What are we debating today? We’re debating a one-page bill that says to British Columbians: “You might be a bit uncomfortable about where we’re at. You may not have all the information you need. But you know what? We’re going to give you a do-over.” On something as essential and fundamental as how we elect the people who represent British Columbians, we’re prepared to give them a do-over just in case it doesn’t work out.

We should care deeply about how people are chosen to serve in this chamber. I stand here as the 57th woman elected to this place. I still find that a humbling thing to think about, much less say out loud — the 57th woman elected to this place. I take my job very seriously. While I respect the Premier’s ability to insert humour and make comments about how we serve our constituents, I want to clarify for the record that in his comments about his time on the opposition bench when he brought issues to the government of the day and he got no response — that is simply not accurate.

I take my job seriously, and I have asked the people of Prince George–Valemount five times, at the provincial level, to send me to Victoria. I am grateful that each and every one of those times, they said yes. It matters. People take their right to vote very seriously, and they take the time to get to know the people whose names are on the ballots.

Again, while the Premier stands here and tries to assure British Columbians that, “Oh yes, they’ll get to pick the names on the ballot,” he forgot to mention the part about each one of these models making a fundamental shift. Each one of the models gives more authority to parties to choose those names on the ballot. He left that part out of his speech.

It’s not fearmongering; it’s fact-finding. There are three models put before British Columbians, each of them transferring more of the power about who chooses those names, who puts those names on the ballots. That’s not fearmongering; that’s fact-finding. British Columbians need to know that that happens in each and every one of those three models.

[3:15 p.m.]

Recently, as I went to vote in the advanced polls, I was so moved by watching a young man who is running for public office for the first time in Prince George, for a position on the city council. You know what his goal was? It was to be the first person in line at the advance polls to cast his ballot.

I was in the lineup behind him. I have to admit I remembered what it was like when I saw my name on a ballot for the first time. I watched as he enthusiastically was the first person in our city to vote. I looked, and I thought: “This is the future.” He’s excited about seeing his name on a ballot. He is working hard every single day in our community, one on one, meeting people, talking to them and meeting in the community. His name wasn’t picked by a party and put on the ballot. He felt called to public service.

Despite the Premier’s comments just moments ago, there are no guarantees about whose name will be on the ballot in your riding or my riding or any riding in British Columbia, because we do not know the details.

I represent a riding not nearly as large as some members in this House, but my riding is currently the size of Belgium. The rewards are many. For 17 years, as I have driven up and down that highway, I have gotten to know people by their names. I know what they do. I know where they work. I know the issues that matter.

For anyone, much less the Premier, to suggest in this House that I come to this House and completely ignore the issues that are important to all of the constituents in my riding is simply offensive. Every other member of this House should be standing up and saying exactly the same thing.

I represent resilient, incredible people, and not once when they have come into my office or they have called me or they have texted me or they have stopped me in a parking lot or in the grocery store have I ever asked them who they voted for. It doesn’t matter.

It is one of the things that upsets me most about the presentations and the leaflets and the posts and the accusations — that MLAs in this House serve only the ones that voted for them. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is one thing that I think I can say for every member of this House — that they probably agree with that. They should be just as offended as I am about that.

Once our voters have chosen their MLA, we serve our constituents — not our supporters or our members but our constituents, our citizens, our residents. If there is an MLA in this House that uses that as the principle of their public service, and I highly doubt that there is, they should be embarrassed and shocked and shamed by that. That is not what we are called to do.

When this debate sinks to the point that one of the key arguments is: “Well, they don’t serve everyone….” In fact, we had, in a humorous way, that very comment uttered by the Premier of British Columbia — that that doesn’t happen. “Once you get elected, the rest of the people in your constituency don’t matter.” Well, I want to put on the record that I take offence to that, and every other MLA who does their job should as well.

I don’t ask who they voted for. It doesn’t matter. I am here to serve my constituency, my community, my region, and I will pour my heart and soul into continuing to do that on a personal, intimate, well-informed way.

[3:20 p.m.]

Today we have before us Bill 40. Now, I have been here for a long time in my career, and there aren’t many bills that are one page long. In fact, the Finance Minister today tabled two bills, and they are hundreds of sections long. They are big. The Finance Minister and I will have a chance to discuss those, I’m sure, at length over the next few days.

If you look at the title of this bill — nothing extraordinary. No reason to raise flags. Yet all of us, if we actually took the time to think about it, should be concerned about the words on that one page. You see, Bill 40 attempts to bind future governments to hold a subsequent referendum on whether or not we should keep the proportional representation system should there be a decision by British Columbians to move to a new system.

This bill ignores the well-known and straightforward principle that the Attorney General and this government are simply not in a position to limit the power of future legislatures. It’s equivalent to legislation 101. And this is coming from an Attorney General who stood in this Legislature and told us and British Columbians that he was going to be neutral in this process.

Let’s take a moment and consider that the Attorney General has dropped this bill in the Legislature in the middle of an emotional, contentious debate in our province about one of the most fundamental pillars of any society — how we elect the people who govern.

In just days, envelopes are going to start arriving in people’s mailboxes, asking them to carefully consider how they vote. The decision to change an electoral system should be determined only after there is a fair process, an independent process. There should be ample time for education and discussion and to engage with British Columbians.

Now, do you think it’s an accident that the referendum is tucked neatly between the end of summer vacation, the return to school, the fall activities, Thanksgiving and municipal elections?

While we’re thinking that maybe the only thing that people are thinking about electoral reform is “I don’t understand it,” the most common reaction I get when talking to my constituents, whether they voted for me or not, is: “What referendum?” We’re about to ask British Columbians to change the electoral process in British Columbia, and most of them do not know there is a referendum. What on earth is the rush? I’ll get to that in a moment.

In that context, the Attorney General, through Bill 40, says to British Columbians: “Don’t worry about your decision. Let’s just consider change. Let’s give it a try, and if you don’t like it, we’ll change it back.”

On the one hand, we hear about how important it is that people need to have education, information, take a thoughtful approach and learn as much as they can before they mark their ballot. After all, in my view, the outcome is pretty important.

On the other hand, this bill clearly sends a message that it’s okay if you’re not quite sure. If you don’t have all of the information you need, it’s okay. If you don’t have the details you need, just give it a shot. To repeat once again the motto of this Premier’s approach: take a leap of faith. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll do another referendum.

Let’s be clear. It might be a one-page bill. It might have an innocuous title. But if you look at when it was tabled and what it is intended to do, it is to try to ease the concerns, the rightful concerns, the rightful degree of discomfort that many British Columbians are facing. “It’s okay. You get a do-over.”

[3:25 p.m.]

There have been rules put in place related to this referendum, and the intent of those rules is to ensure that there is a level playing field, that there’s no undue influence, that everyone plays by the same set of rules — except with Bill 40.

While many think that most people don’t really pay attention to what’s going on in the Legislature, and they would be right about that, this bill, once forced through the Legislature, will be used to give people who genuinely and rightly are considering how they will vote a sense of false comfort by making a promise, which cannot be kept, that there will be a subsequent referendum. “Don’t worry. Take a leap of faith. Change the system. We can always change it back again.”

Really? Does anyone actually believe that if a system is put in place that encourages, mobilizes and brings multiple parties to this Legislature, there will ever be a second referendum to consider reversing the very system that gives power to those parties? Of course not. So this bill, on a single sheet of paper, is designed to provide some degree of comfort to voters that if they, to quote the Premier, “take a leap of faith” and the outcome isn’t what they had expected, they can have a do-over. “We’ll just change it back.”

Anyone who takes even a few minutes to think about this will recognize that it won’t work that way. There won’t be a do-over. So instead of spending our time debating a one-page bill that attempts to bind future governments and promises a subsequent referendum, we should be spending our time debating the flawed process that this Attorney General and government have created.

Once again, apparently if you ask tough questions about the process, apparently if you ask for more facts, apparently if you want to have the models that have been suggested explained to you, that equates to fearmongering, according to virtually every member on the other side of the House. Actually, that’s our job. It’s our job to ask those questions, to question the process on behalf of the constituents and other British Columbians whose voices are not heard on that issue.

If the Premier, his government and the members of the Green Party want British Columbians to take a leap of faith, then they should be at least prepared to answer the tough questions that a process like this deserves. We are changing, potentially, the electoral system in British Columbia. We’re not changing the colour of the carpet in the Legislature.

Here’s what we know, and it was, again, interesting. Again, I want to express my respect for the Premier being able to present his views here in the Legislature, but I didn’t hear the Premier explain how he promised British Columbians a simple yes-no ballot. That is not the case. Fearmongering? No. Fact-presenting.

There are two questions on the ballot, including a grid for ranking. And do you know what’s most disappointing? Considering the stakes, considering the significance of this process, one would have thought that on the ballot you could have at least had the words printed, “You only need to fill out question 1,” so that people who were confused about that at least had that certainty. Was that possible? No. It wasn’t because that question was not asked. That is the second most common reaction I get from people: “Do I have to fill out question 2?” Promised a simple yes-no.

[3:30 p.m.]

The Premier also said there would be an independent process. Well, that certainly isn’t the case. The Attorney General is the lead on this file. The questions were approved by cabinet. Bill 40, introduced in the Legislature in the middle of this debate in British Columbia, simply saying: “It’s okay. Don’t worry. We’ll give you a do-over.”

We know that, as I said earlier, in just a few days, a voting package will be arriving in mailboxes across the province and that many people are not even aware there is a referendum. There is confusion, not nearly enough time for people to get the kinds of information that they need. We know that there are three forms of proportional representation on the ballot. I don’t know if you’ve been to a forum in your community or asked someone from Fair Vote or the government or the Greens or somebody: “Which model would you recommend to British Columbians?”

You know what the answer is? This was the answer in my forum in Prince George on the weekend: “Pick any one. I’m not going to choose one.” Well, if there is so much confidence that proportional representation is going to make things so much better, then stand up and argue on behalf of a model, with clarity and detail and specifics, and let British Columbians have a fair and appropriate process.

Two of the models, two of the systems…. Maybe this doesn’t matter if you don’t live in rural B.C. It matters to me. I’ve heard rural members stand up on the other side with glowing praises, sending out videos. There’s a model called rural-urban. I would challenge anyone in this Legislature to describe for me whether Prince George, Valemount and McBride are rural or urban. How are they going to choose when they don’t even know how they fit in that model?

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Dual-member. Who can explain it? Here’s the kicker. Those two models were not even included in the government’s on-line engagement process. British Columbians didn’t even get to have feedback about that, despite the promise that there would be an engagement and a consultation that was legitimate and valid. Two of the models on the ballot were not included in the consultation dialogue. Even worse, from my perspective, they are in place nowhere in the world.

I love my province. I love my constituency. I work hard to represent all of my constituents. Yet the best we get to offer them are three models, none of which most people can explain, all of which shift some degree of authority to powers to choose their MLAs, and two of which have never been tried in the world before. In my view, that is simply not good enough for British Columbians.

I would absolutely love to hear the Premier stand up and explain to British Columbians how no one will name a specific model. “Let’s choose three, two of which do not operate in the world.” And when we ask those tough questions, that’s called fearmongering? No, it’s called actually getting information to British Columbians so they can make an informed decision about one of the most important and fundamental things that any province or jurisdiction can look at.

We also know that there are no regional or voter participation thresholds. Now, we can say that. What does that mean? I, in this Legislature, asked the Attorney General directly about participation thresholds. What it means is this: it doesn’t matter how many people participate. We’re going to have whatever number that is. It may be small; it may be large.

We don’t know what it’ll be, but we’re prepared to change the electoral system of British Columbia based on whoever participates, and 50 percent plus one is all we need. If you think about that, even for another five minutes, when you break down the vote…. Let’s say for a moment that British Columbians decide they want a system of proportional representation. Are they choosing one model?

[3:35 p.m.]

No, that vote will be split between three choices. Do the math. We start out with whoever participates, 50 percent plus one, and we break that down even further if they choose a model of proportional representation. How low will we go? When is this process considered valid? When will this government, this coalition government, believe they have a mandate from the people of British Columbia? What percentage does it require? Apparently none. In my view, that’s simply not good enough for British Columbians. Call it fearmongering. I call it fact-finding. How on earth can this government suggest that it is fair or reasonable to run this referendum without a participation threshold?

Here’s one of the ones that the people where I live are grappling with. I don’t stoop to fearmongering, but I can tell you, I’m going to talk about this every single day with the people I represent, because there’s no regional threshold. To those members who have small rural communities in their ridings, I look forward to them going home and explaining to their constituents how in heavily populated urban areas, their votes will count more than ours will because there’s no regional threshold.

Basically, you can tell people who live where I do that with the stroke of a pen and the elimination of a regional threshold: “Thank you very much. You get to participate. But by the way, if you live in a large urban centre, that’s where the decision is going to be made.” Fearmongering? No, fact-finding.

I guess something else that the Premier didn’t raise in his comments…. I think that if we’re going to have an honest, legitimate debate about this, we need to make sure that all the cards are on the table. I heard and I very much appreciated the passion and the personal views. But make no mistake about it.

I encourage people to turn to page 3 of the confidence and supply agreement. There’s a motivation for having this referendum at breakneck speed without proper details, without proper information. No regional thresholds. “Let’s get it done. Let’s have a do-over.” This is what it says: “A referendum on proportional representation will take place in the fall of 2018, concurrent with the next municipal election.” Well, not only that. “The parties agree that they will work together in good faith to consult British Columbians to determine the form of proportional representation that will be put to a referendum…. The parties agree to…support…the agreed-upon form.”

Deciding to change an electoral system is one of the most fundamental decisions that British Columbians can make. It is our job to ask tough questions. There are simply not enough details. There are no maps. No one in this House can tell me how many people, how many MLAs, will represent my riding of Prince George–Valemount. No one can tell me how big it is, where the names are going to come from. No one can even answer the question: how low does the voter participation rate have to be before can we say this is not legitimate?

Again, I say that while I appreciate the Premier having been in this place and making his comments, he promised British Columbians it would be independent. There would be a yes-no question. My question to the members on the other side of the House, on behalf of all of my constituents, not the ones that voted for me, because I don’t ask them that, and neither do any of my colleagues, and I’m sure no one else…. What I say today is this is not good enough for British Columbians. What is the rush? It is time to start over.

[3:40 p.m.]

Hon. J. Sims: It’s an honour and a privilege today to stand here and speak in favour of Bill 40, Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Amendment Act, 2018.

Today we have a historic opportunity to make change that could have a profound and positive impact on B.C. politics for generations, and we will lead the way for the rest of the country. We have an opportunity to change our voting system so that everyone’s vote can count.

Let me tell you why this is so important. For years in my professional life, I was a teacher. As a teacher, I taught socials 8, 9, 10 and 11. I had the privilege of teaching young children about our democratic institutions. It was always very difficult to explain to students how, in British Columbia, some party, any party, that only got, let’s say, 40 percent of the votes could possibly end up with 100 percent of the power and could end up with more seats, because at the same time, I was teaching the value of the individual’s vote.

I took time to teach that aspect, because I know that those who went before us sacrificed a lot so that we could have the right to vote. So for me as a teacher — and it’s definitely in the curriculum — it was very important to teach our students about civic responsibility and about the different forms of government that exist around the world.

The one question that always stumped me and made me reflect was when students would say to me: “How can you say my vote counts when a political party that only has 42 percent of the votes gets to be in power and basically gets their way?” They had the privilege of coming to sit in these hallowed hallways and in the balcony and watch some of the shenanigans from question period, I would say. For those students, even at the age of 16, they realized the value of their vote.

I got to tell them the wonderful stories and heart-wrenching stories of how women were not even recognized as persons when men first got the right to vote, how the struggle ensued by women who went before me, assisted by some men, to get the right to vote. I can tell you that there is nothing more fundamental to a democracy than to exercise our right to vote and for that vote to count.

While a Member of Parliament, I can tell you that I went regularly to visit the five women on the Hill, with their teacups and all, and to reflect on the journey women like myself have taken to be able to sit in those Houses, whether it’s the House of Commons or here in British Columbia, our Legislature. It’s that fundamental belief in our right to have a vote and to exercise that vote. Then that drives me to how that vote has to count for it to be meaningful for us to have a democratic system that truly works.

Don’t get me wrong. The current system has worked in a variety of ways. Sometimes it has worked better than others. But at the same time, here we have a historic opportunity to ensure that every vote counts and to make sure that we have democratic institutions that truly reflect the diversity of beliefs that exist in our communities. And that is fundamental.

[3:45 p.m.]

Let me talk a little bit about the general election that occurred recently, October 1, in Quebec, and let’s see what happened there. Coalition Avenir Québec received 37 percent of the popular vote but got 59 percent of the total seats. The Coalition Avenir Québec have 100 percent of power — 37 percent of the popular vote, 59 percent of the seats yet 100 percent of the power. They actually don’t have to consult with anyone, but only 37 percent of Quebeckers voted for them.

What this story illustrates is that something in our current system is broken. Too many people feel that their vote does not count. Whether I’ve been in my riding or whether I’ve been travelling around the province as part of my ministerial work, I do meet people who do feel disenfranchised. They feel their vote hasn’t counted in the past, that their vote is wasted. Too many people feel that our current voting system does not work for them, and that’s a wake-up call for this Legislature.

If we have voters out there in large numbers feeling that the current system does not work for them, does not reflect their values, and that very often their voices cannot be heard, then we have to pay attention, because that is a danger to democracy. When people feel disenfranchised, then they don’t exercise their right to vote.

These voters see situations like Quebec. They see situations like Ontario, where we’ve had a recent election that was very divisive — I would say very, very divisive — where a political party that has won 40 percent of the vote is now in charge of 100 percent of the power and the decision-making. There the new Premier in Ontario doesn’t have to work with anyone, and his decisions are hurting the most vulnerable in that province.

We saw something similar happen in this province under the previous administration. Election after election, they would get less than half of the votes, grab 100 percent of the power, and it was hard-working people who paid the price.

We just have it look at what’s happened to our social programs; the decimation that happened in the education system, both K to 12 and post-secondary; the apprenticeship sys­tem; the cost of housing; affordability issues that got way out of control. The B.C. Liberals made everyone pay more for everything while cutting important services like health and education.

To be fair, I have to give the B.C. Liberals credit, because they got me into politics. It’s true. It was the cuts made by the federal conservatives that got me to run to be a Member of Parliament, because I didn’t like to see the changes that were happening to the country I loved. Here in B.C., my political activism was fueled by what I saw happen to public education, health care, working people, our social safety net in the years 2000 and plus.

For 16 long years, we watched cuts and policies that affected people: school closures, health care waits getting longer and longer, lack of affordable housing, need for child care investment, poverty issues. I could go on and tell some pretty graphic stories, but I think I paint a picture.

[3:50 p.m.]

The truth is that the old, outdated first-past-the-post voting system only really works for those on the top. The B.C. Liberals and their wealthy friends are desperate to keep the old way of voting because it makes it easier for them to control government with a minority of votes. With first-past-the-post, they can cut services and make life more expensive while doing favours for their rich friends.

We see, right now, a lot of concern and a lot of anxiety about changing the electoral system. But let me tell you, it is British Columbians who will make that decision. That decision about a change in the electoral system is not going to be made by the B.C. Liberal opposition party or the Green caucus or those of us who sit in government. That decision is going to be made by British Columbians.

Every British Columbian, no matter where they live in this province, will get the right to vote. They will have an opportunity to vote. I will encourage each and every British Columbian to get informed. Get your questions answered, and then go and vote, and have your say in choosing an electoral system that will reflect the diversity of our population.

This is not something that government is going to do in secret. This was something that was in our platform while we ran. Our Premier spoke about it passionately. This is something that we put out soon after we became government. People have had lots of time to learn about this. There were consultations done.

I would encourage British Columbians who are listening and all around this province: do your homework. Do your homework and get your questions answered. Make sure that you have the information you need. But please, once you are informed, exercise your right to vote and participate in this democratic decision to determine for British Columbians — every single British Columbian determining — the kind of electoral system they want.

It’s British Columbians who will pick and choose. It’s the voters who turn out to vote. Based on the information they have, they are the ones who are going to do the voting. Proportional representation is a choice to be made by British Columbians, and I can say that I will be supporting this referendum.

I’ll be honest. The first time this referendum came out, I did not support it. I found it didn’t have the information I needed or the understanding. But I have taken the time, and I’m sure British Columbians will take the time so that they can make an informed vote. They’re going to get to vote no matter where they live. Each British Columbian who is eligible to vote will get a vote.

It is every person’s responsibility to make sure that they exercise their right to vote, knowing that if they go for a change in an electoral system, every vote will count, and votes won’t be wasted. It takes away this idea of strategic voting, which I always find bizarre.

Proportional representation will strengthen the voice of people from every region of this province because every vote will count, and MLAs won’t be able to ignore voters anymore. I want to say, with respect, and to my colleagues across the way, I truly believe that all of us, when we are elected, do our very best to represent every constituent in our riding. We do our best when we’re in the riding. But I also know that when we enter these hallowed rooms, somehow partisanship kicks in.

[3:55 p.m.]

We want parties to be more accountable. I believe proportional representation will take us there because it will force us to work together and to collaborate. You know, collaboration is better if it happens willingly, but sometimes you have to stage collaboration. Proportional representation will stage collaboration, and it will encourage people to work together. Those who hold a majority of seats but not a majority of the vote, under the current system, will never again be able to push through their extreme agendas and get away with it.

We can all cite examples of extreme agendas — like, with a stroke of a pen, stripping the working and learning conditions for students out of teachers’ collective agreements, those that were duly negotiated just removed with the stroke of a pen, to the point that even articles that related to how we remove students with special needs, during an earthquake…. Even those provisions were deleted. Those were acts of extremism.

The majority of countries around the world now use some form of proportional rep, like in New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland. We’ve seen their experiences. We’ve seen the governments that are stable and have a greater sense of satisfaction because they are working together in collaboration instead of in a confrontational mode. There is greater diversity amongst elected representatives, and voter turnout, especially youth voter turnout, increases.

Over the next several weeks, you’re going to hear a lot of rhetoric and misleading claims from the other side. The no side, the B.C. Liberals and their friends, we must remember, have a very personal stake in keeping the status quo. We all fear change to an extent, and I think there is some anxiety.

We’ve already banned big money from elections, and now we have an historic chance to finish the job and have a system where every single person’s vote counts. We have a chance to put power back in the hands of regular people, not just the wealthy and well connected. And we don’t just have one choice; we have two.

It is up to British Columbians whether we change our voting system to one where every vote counts, and it is going to be up to British Columbians whether we keep that system in the second referendum. That is critical. We get to try it out for two elections, and then we’re bringing it back to a vote again, because we want to see whether it works for British Columbians. They need to have that assurance.

We have a chance to finally put people at the centre of politics, not just temporarily but for good.

M. Morris: My pleasure to get up and speak in relation to Bill 40, the referendum act, 2018.

When this first came about, I had to revert back to my days in the RCMP where everything that we did as an organ­ization, as a police force in enforcing the laws of Canada, had to be anchored in some form of legislation or some form of authority.

When the hint of proportional representation was presented in this House and people were speaking about it, I thought: what is the authority that we can hang proportional representation on, that we can link it to, to ensure that it’s something that we can move forward with?

The glue that binds us together in this great country of ours — it’s the greatest country in the world — is the constitution, the Canadian constitution. In 1982, it was amended to include the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So from 1867 until 1982, we brought in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

[4:00 p.m.]

Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there is section 3 that states that every citizen has the right to vote for a member of the House of Commons or of a Legislative Assembly and to be qualified for membership therein. Pretty straightforward — every citizen has the right to vote for a member of the House of Commons or a Member of the Legislative Assembly. It doesn’t say that political parties can appoint Members of the Legislative Assembly or the House of Commons. It says that every citizen has the right to vote for that particular member.

To me, that was a flag that said: “Hmm. There’s something wrong here. I don’t see the connection between all the models of proportional representation that have been presented by the Attorney and that I’ve seen throughout the world.” They did not connect to the constitution of this great country of ours.

The first real in-depth analysis of section 3 of the Charter came in the mid-’80s, as did most of the Charter of Rights challenges that we saw across Canada, whether it was in criminal law, administrative law or, in this case, electoral process. The first test case came in the mid-’80s. It was initiated by somebody in British Columbia. It went to the B.C. Court of Appeal back in 1989. The decision from the B.C. Court of Appeal came out and basically said that….

First of all, the challenge was, at this time, what proportional representation in Bill 40 is trying to address here. The challenge came to the court and said: “We don’t need electoral boundaries in British Columbia. One vote, one person, so everybody’s vote should be equal right across the province here.” When the courts had a look at it — it resulted in that 1989 decision — they said: “Well, no. We do need electoral boundaries.” We need them for a variety of reasons, but one of the main reasons was that we need them to protect everybody’s right to vote under section 3 of the Charter.

That decision was written by Beverley McLachlin, who at that time was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. A year after that, she was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada — a very learned individual. In 2000, she became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and she held that position for 18 years until she retired not too long ago in 2018. She had an opportunity to look at this over the years.

This particular decision from 1989, which I’m going to go into a little more depth on, has been utilized as one of the foundational cases that has been referenced in just about every other challenge in the Supreme Court of Canada on electoral processes in Canada. In that 1989 decision, the court recognized that there were ten core values that collectively guaranteed our right to vote under section 3 of the Charter.

The first one was the right not to be denied the franchise on the grounds of race, sex, educational qualifications or other unjustifiable criteria — pretty straightforward. Any citizen has the right to vote for a member of the Legislative Assembly and won’t be denied that franchise on those particular grounds.

The second one is the right to be presented with a choice of candidates to vote on. Not parties — the choice of candidates to vote on. Remember that these are core values that the courts have recognized as being fundamental in section 3 of the Charter of Rights. The third one is a right to a secret ballot. The fourth one is the right to have one’s vote counted. The fifth one is the right to have one’s vote count for the same as other valid votes cast in a district.

You see, these core values are talking about the right to have one’s vote counted, not to have one’s vote diminished because of some mathematical formula but to have one’s vote counted.

The right to sufficient information about public policies to permit an informed decision. Hmm. That’s certainly not prevalent in this referendum, in Bill 40.

I’m going to just veer off a little bit here and talk about the referendum process in Bill 40 before I go on with the rest of these core values of section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The referendum that has been proposed by this government and the amendments in Bill 40 indicate….

[4:05 p.m.]

It’s a referendum that has no thresholds — regional thresholds or voter thresholds. It is not following the same principles as a general election would be held under. There are a couple of Supreme Court of Canada decisions, and I brought them up to the Attorney during the debates that we had in committee on this. The Supreme Court of Canada has come out on a couple of occasions now and said that the same general principles that apply to a general election also apply to a referendum.

Under the provincial statutes that we have here in British Columbia, we can’t hold a general election at the same time that we have a municipal election. The criteria for voters is different for both types of elections, and it confuses voters. But what do we have here? We’ve got a referendum being held at the same time that we’re holding a municipal election. The campaign periods are overlapping. There is no threshold for regional votes. There is no threshold for voter participation.

Our constitution, the federal Constitution Act, 1982, basically outlines the criteria used for electoral reform. Mind you, they’re referring to the House of Commons, but the constitution is applicable to provincial legislation as well. In that, it says that 60 percent of the electoral districts, with 50 percent of the population, need to approve electoral reform. This referendum is not even close to that, with no regional thresholds and only 50 percent of eligible votes cast. Far different from 50 percent of the eligible voters — a very big, significant difference there. That is detrimental, and it’s against the constitution of this great country that we live in.

Going back to those ten core values of section 3 of the Charter, the seventh core value is the right to be represented by a candidate with at least a plurality of votes in a district. Now, if we have an election, and if we go with some of the examples that the Green Party and the government members that are supporting proportional representation talk about, we have a member elected with a plurality of votes in a certain district, but because they didn’t meet that 5 percent threshold that the Attorney has indicated is going to be core in the proportional representation models that he’s presenting, they would not be considered to hold a seat in the Legislature, contrary to the Charter.

No. 8 is the right to vote in periodic elections. Pretty straightforward.

No. 9 — I’m going to spend a little bit of time talking about No. 9 here — is: “The right to cast one’s vote in an electoral system which has not been ‘gerrymandered’” — these are the words of the court — “that is, deliberately engineered so as to favour one political party over another.”

Let’s have a look at this system. The gerrymandering began with the agreement between the Greens and the NDP, but it continued with the appointment of the not-so-neutral arbiter, the Attorney General. It continued on with the biased public consultation process that government initiated. It continued with the formation and the passing of the referendum act 2018, that flawed piece of legislation that doesn’t have regional thresholds or voter thresholds involved, which is, again, against our constitution. It has been designed to take place during a municipal election, probably to take advantage of the voters, who might be confused, who might have voter fatigue — a number of reasons why they may have chosen to hold it at that particular time.

They’ve chosen to use mail-in ballots, which, again, is a system that is confusing to a lot of people. We could have a postal strike. There could be a number of factors that could influence the number of votes that are cast in this particular election, all in favour of those who wish this system to pass because they’re hoping that people will be fatigued, be confused, that they won’t bother to vote, that they won’t get their ballots in on time.

[4:10 p.m.]

There are a number of factors there. The gerrymandering has been prominent in this whole process right from the beginning.

No. 10, the right to equality of voting power. This is from the 1989 decision. Representation by population is one of the most fundamental democratic guarantees, and the notion of equality of voting power is fundamental to representation by population.

In that particular time, the court went back and looked at the history of British Columbia. They looked at the constitution, and they looked at what made this country so great. We started off in 1867 with the constitution. It was recognized right then, back in those days, by the first Prime Minister of Canada, who said that equality of voting power is significant and representation by population is paramount but that we also have to take into consideration the geographical and regional differences that we have right across this great country of ours. And there are many.

When we look at the major population of Canada, it runs within the bottom 20 percent of our great country from coast to coast. The density of population per kilometre in Canada — and British Columbia is about the same — is about 4.5 people per square kilometre.

The government throws out Germany and a number of other places as good examples of where proportional representation works. I don’t think it’s working to all that great an extent over there. But I look at the population density in Germany. It’s something like 230 people per square kilometre — significantly different than what we have here in British Columbia and Canada.

The court at that time looked at this and the challenge of British Columbia having one person, one vote, and we don’t need electoral boundaries. The court came back, and they said: “No, you guys really do.”

The drawing of the boundaries that had established…. We had two-member ridings at the time, dual-member ridings. We had single-member ridings. We had population deviations of up to 70 percent between some of the ridings in British Columbia — large disparities right across the board that diminished the value of votes in several regions in British Columbia.

The court told British Columbia that the Constitution Act, which dictated how the electoral boundaries were to be set up, was unconstitutional. As a result of the direction from the court, British Columbia brought in the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, which established a commissioner that went out every couple of electoral cycles.

He or she would go out with a group of very learned people and make sure that all of the electoral districts in the province were equal in population. The court said that you can deviate by plus or minus 25 percent — no more but plus or minus 25 percent.

A lot of that was taken from the Fisher report. The Fisher Commission went out and looked at electoral reform in British Columbia back in the early ’80s, and that was one of the recommendations that Judge Fisher had in his report. So the courts accepted that. They said we can deviate by plus or minus 25 percent. We look at the population of British Columbia — about 4.7 million people. Divide that between the 87 ridings we have, and it’s roughly about 55,000 people per riding plus or minus 25 percent.

One of the considerations that the commissioner took into consideration is the fact that rural British Columbia is different. You look at the fact that the capital regional district of B.C., the greater Victoria area, has more people in that small little southern tip of Vancouver Island than we have from Cache Creek north, in the province. The city of Surrey has more people than we have in the northern 80 percent of the province. The regional district of greater Vancouver and the capital regional district of greater Victoria here have just over 60 percent of the province’s population on 0.53 percent of the land mass. So yeah, regional differences come into play in a significant way in this province.

[4:15 p.m.]

One of these regional considerations is the fact that…. There was a report out by the Northern Development Initiative Trust, based out of Prince George and looking after most of the northern part of the province, that indicated that rural British Columbia, including northern Vancouver Island, contributed, on average, over the last ten years about 78 percent of B.C.’s resource exports. Pretty significant.

When you look at that as a dollar figure, that equates, on average, to between $10 billion and $24 billion annually being produced by rural British Columbia. I’ve said this in this House before: we punch above our weight. Those regional considerations need to be taken seriously by the commissioner when he goes to adjust the B.C. electoral boundaries. The court said that’s an important part of it.

That was modified again. I think it was in 2003. There was another court decision that came out, and the court upheld the earlier decision. This was the Supreme Court of Canada. They said that yeah, equality of voting is very important, and the regional and geographic considerations are an important aspect of determining representation by population, but there are a couple of other things that need to be taken into consideration: effective representation and meaningful representation.

I know I’ve heard Fair Vote Canada and other proponents for proportional representation talk about effective representation. They’re talking about effective representation in the House or in the Legislature. The courts have determined that effective representation is in the electoral process itself, leading up to the election. Everybody in Canada and in British Columbia should have an opportunity to be effectively represented in the electoral process so they have an opportunity to go out and listen to their candidates, listen to all the candidates that are vying for election within that particular district, and they’ll vote for him or her based on what those folks have to offer.

And meaningful, so that they do get the chance to vote. They have a chance to go into a polling station and vote, in a meaningful way, for the representative that they feel is best suited to do the job for their particular district or electoral area. The courts didn’t say that a party gets to choose the representatives for the various areas.

In his report How We Vote, the Attorney states: “No political party would be eligible to receive seats through a system’s proportional allocation method unless the party received at least 5 percent of the overall vote in the province or region.” That doesn’t reflect the ten core values that the courts have determined are core to section 3 of our Charter rights. It doesn’t reflect that at all.

The courts have upheld numerous challenges on electoral processes right across Canada. It’s the constitution that binds us to keep everybody on the straight and narrow and to keep people’s Charter rights in the forefront. Every piece of legislation that this House passes needs to pass that constitutional challenge. In this case, it’s not.

I’m going to quote from the justice from the 1989 case, because I think this is key. It says: “If, in giving substance to this right to vote, the court interprets section 3 as granting to citizens the right to a certain degree of proportional representation, then legislation efforts must be measured against the standard and, if they fall short, be declared unconstitutional.” Legislative efforts must be measured against this standard and, if they fall short, be declared unconstitutional.

They’re not meeting the standard. They’ve missed all ten of the core values of section 3 of the Charter of Rights. Section 3 of the Charter of Rights is that every citizen of British Columbia has the right to vote for a member of the Legislature. Every citizen has the right to vote for a member of this House. It doesn’t say that a party has the right to appoint a member of this House.

[4:20 p.m.]

I haven’t seen a proportional representation model anywhere…. I’ve looked at many of them. I’ve looked at all the different countries, and I’ve read the same information that many people in this House have read. I was looking for the constitutional ties that these models have to our constitution and our Charter of Rights, and I haven’t found one that measures up to that. There is not one model that I’ve seen that would be in compliance with our charter and our constitution in Canada.

Unless the Attorney and members of government and the Green Party have some hidden information somewhere to show that voter equality, regional geographical differences would be taken into consideration and that everybody’s vote will count for the same as anybody else’s vote within a district…. I’d be willing to have a look at that. But to this point in time, I have seen nothing to indicate that the charter would be upheld and the constitution has been respected with respect to proportional representation, whether it’s here in British Columbia or anywhere else in the country.

People need to have a real close look at that. I hope the Attorney has a close look at that to ensure that he’s not leading British Columbians down a path that is unconstitutional, where he’s breaching the charter rights of the citizens of this country.

I have to ask the Attorney this. You have your political goals and aspirations in mind. Is that taking precedence over the charter rights of our citizens in this country by taking away their right to vote for members of this Legislative Assembly? From what I have seen so far, I’m inclined to believe that. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m inclined to believe that they don’t care about the charter rights under section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that holds this country together.

We have a strong country because of our constitution and our charter. The Constitution Act, 1982, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that has been embedded in that, is the strength of our country. It has helped make us what we are today. We can measure up against any other country in the world as being strong and united, and that’s what helps keep us united.

I’m not going to be voting in favour of Bill 40. I think it’s unconstitutional, the whole Referendum Act 2018. I think that proportional representation is unconstitutional. If the Attorney and government are suggesting that we need a constitutional change in Canada in order to bring proportional representation out, perhaps that’s the first step that should be taken, not a referendum that is denying people their charter rights under section 3, not a referendum that is unconstitutional, that doesn’t meet the electoral process to change.

Seek a change in the Constitution of Canada if you want to implement proportional representation in this province and across this country. Don’t do it through a back door. Don’t do it by gerrymandering a system to confuse voters and to try and slip something under the carpet when nobody’s looking in hope that you’ll be able to meet some kind of an agreement that you have with your Green partners.

Be straight up with it. Challenge it. I’d like to hear the Attorney’s comments on whether this is a process that meets today’s constitutional criteria. I firmly believe that it doesn’t.

Again, I’ll be voting against this bill and this whole process, and we’ll see where it comes out at the end of the day.

Hon. R. Fleming: I’m pleased to take my place in this debate, talking about an enhancement on the democratic possibility and future of the province of British Columbia, and this bill specifically, which already adds to the process that we see unfolding today in British Columbia, where people are making a decision on what their voting system will look like in the future and also being given, through Bill 40, the added assurance that they will get to look at the voting system again in two elections hence.

[4:25 p.m.]

I will be speaking to the bill quite specifically but also within the context of a campaign that is happening right now in every part of British Columbia around what the future of democracy looks like in British Columbia.

This is an historic chance to put people in British Columbia at the centre of politics provincially, to give people more choices in communities that they live in, to give regions right across British Columbia — rural, urban and suburban — a stronger voice in this democratic chamber, and to have a better balance of what voters’ intentions look like in our parliament.

We can think of many advantages of how a proportional representation system will better engage British Columbians. The evidence is around the world: higher voter turnout, more reflective chambers of the demographics of the nation state or the provincial entity, and on and on and on.

Democratic engagement is something that should concern all of us as legislators. It wasn’t that long ago, the 2009 election, where British Columbia almost slipped under the 50 percent threshold. We’d been complacent for a long time in Canada and British Columbia that we had higher voting levels than our neighbours to the south, that we honoured the memory of those who sacrificed themselves, their lives, their families, in defence of democracy in this country through great conflicts over time.

That was the Canadian way. To show your respect for citizenship and rights and freedoms that were hard-won and defended against threats in generations gone by — showing up to vote. We were almost at the point where, in British Columbia, in this proud province, less than one in two people were exercising that right to vote. That should concern all of us. It has bumped up since, in elections, but it remains in a place where nobody should be satisfied, where growing apathy for our political institutions and our system is a constant concern.

That’s why this referendum on, potentially, adopting a new voting system is so important to people in B.C. I’m so proud of it because it is part of a bigger package to reinvigorate politics in British Columbia, to rebuild trust and credibility with voters in B.C.

The first step that we took, of course, was to ban big money and take that out of politics here in British Columbia. We had become an international laughingstock — the Wild West of the continent of North America in terms of how few rules we had around campaign finance reform — worse than the United States. Not even prohibitions against foreign powers influencing and contributing to political parties. We saw the grotesque heights to which the former governing party took advantage of that situation.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Now they are really sore and hurting since we took that important step in getting rid of big money in B.C. politics. It is banned, it is illegal, and that is an accomplishment of this government. And the referendum on proportional representation to have a more responsive democracy is in light of democratic reforms that we have made as a government.

It’s time to take the next step. It’s time it look at a voting system that’s fairer, that puts more power in the hands of ordinary voters.

We have had a number of examples recently in Canada under the first-past-the-post system where a very low plurality of votes, a minority of votes, has delivered vastly disproportionate number of seats in parliament. We can look at New Brunswick. We can look at the outsized influence that an anti-francophone party now has, thanks to the vagaries and distortions of the first-past-the-post system, under the system that they defend.

We can look at the election results in Quebec to see, again, the vastly artificial, inflated plurality of seats for a party that received a minority of the votes.

[4:30 p.m.]

We can also look at Ontario, where there is surely a lot of buyer’s remorse right now politically. Doug Ford, who is dragging his province far to the right after his Trump-style campaign, received barely 40 percent of the vote, and that government now has 100 percent of the power. Believe me. They are going to use it in ways that will punish citizens in that jurisdiction.

We’ve had a lot of examples very recently — recent weeks, recent months — where British Columbians can look at the results and say: “Do we want to have that again? Do we want to have that possibility?” That’s the debate we’re going to have.

It’s also the debate that the opposition actually tried to shut down through their friends, challenging the entire referendum process through the courts. That was an abject failure, of course. They actually hitched their wagon to a group that is anti-proportional referendum that sought to intervene in the courts and argue that there should be no limits to big business and union donations again. They tried to use the referendum process and the courts as a back door to restore big money, which this parliament banned democratically and legitimately only a year ago. That’s what they tried to do.

What they really hate is a parliament that’s actually working, that represents more than half the votes in British Columbia — in fact, nearly six in ten votes in the last general election in British Columbia — that has formed a working coalition that has brought in significant progressive reforms for the people of British Columbia. That’s what they dislike, that it shuts them out. They have no constructive ideas, and they face a united coalition government that represents a majority intent of the votes that were cast in British Columbia.

Proportional representation, yes, might mean a whole lot more of that. It might. Even their leader has commented that it works quite well in other English-speaking jurisdictions around the world. I’ll get to that quote a little bit later.

We have heard so much fantastical misinformation from the other side. What they really resent is the fact that people have the power in their hands to decide on what their voting system looks like. They want, themselves, to be able to distort and misinform the process that is going on. I would’ve expected a more transparent and fair debate out there in the public realm, let alone in this chamber. I understand that rhetoric can flare up here and facts can fade away in this chamber in a flight of rhetorical fancy. I get that. But out there in the public realm, they should be honest about whom we are talking about.

To disparage and insult so many democratic jurisdictions around the world…. Well, thank God these people aren’t in charge of Canadian foreign relations, because they insult 85 percent of the OECD countries in the world that have proportional representation voting systems. That’s what they do each and every time they actually insist that those are not democratic countries. That is preposterous.

Let’s go to the not-so-left-leaning Economist magazine. Nine of the ten most democratic countries in the world use — guess what voting system — proportional representation: Norway, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, Austria, Finland, Switzerland. Some of the most transparent, strong democracies in the world have been using proportional representation for a long time.

These members over here apparently know best. Well, how do you like…?

Interjection.

Hon. R. Fleming: Oh, somebody mentioned Greece. Now, how proud are you of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, one of five countries in the world that uses first-past-the-post? If you’re going to throw out ridiculous arguments, if you’re going to challenge…

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, through the Chair.

Hon. R. Fleming: …energy superpowers in some of the most prosperous economies in the world that use a democratic form of government called proportional representation, then own the other guys that use your system.

Thank you, Madame Speaker.

The evidence around the world — when you take the aggregate of the body politic of all of these countries, including ours — around voter turnout does demonstrate again and again a correlation between proportional representation and higher voter turnout. Now, we think that’s a good thing, to have more people showing up and exercising their vote. That’s what we fought for as a country, and that’s what the evidence suggests around the world. More people turn up and vote if they see their vote count towards the makeup of parliament in a more concrete way. Is that something that the opposition is opposed to?

[4:35 p.m.]

Again, the aggregate of all democratic countries, including ours — first-past-the-post systems and others — looks at the makeup of parliament in terms of gender. And guess what. Proportional representation systems help get more women elected in parliaments around the world. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? It is to us. It is to us in our coalition parties. Is it not a good thing to our friends across the way? Wow.

Finally, let’s look at the issue around stable governments, because there is a huge body of scholarly work that looks at durability and stability of governments in countries like ours that use first-past-the-post and the majority of countries that use proportional representation. And guess what. In a longitudinal study, 1945 to 1998, postwar to the turn of the century, first-past-the-post countries averaged more elections than those countries that use proportional representation. That’s not a good argument, although they trot it out over and over again.

I have to say that one of the things that has made up my mind to vote in favour of this referendum is a lot more personal. It comes from my wife’s experience of growing up in a country that was ripped apart by war. I’m speaking of Belfast, Northern Ireland — The Troubles, the 1970s. This was a desperate time of political violence, assassinations and murders. It was a time when Stormont, the parliament, was no longer functioning. It was a time when two communities were at each other’s throats, and it was no place for families to raise kids — with armies on the streets and terrorist activities disrupting daily life and killing innocent people on a regular basis.

Extraordinary laws were passed. Civil liberties were curtailed — freedom of assembly, freedom of speech. As I said, the parliament was suspended. There were no elections. This is in a country in Great Britain that uses our same parliamentary system. That’s not that long ago. It was a conflict born of circumstances, which I won’t go into, that span much more than a century, and it was a time where many, many people, thousands of people, lost their lives.

They’ve had a reconciliation process there. They’ve had the involvement of Canadians, which we can be proud of, in helping that country find its way towards peace — and involving the Americans as well, President Clinton. The peace process was successful in Northern Ireland because there was an agreement between the community that represents about 55 percent of Northern Ireland, the protestant majority, and the 45 percent Catholic minority.

Now, there was no way that they would be able to agree on a restored parliament and a democratic system and turn their guns in, reform the police services, create civil institutions and create functioning courts and all of the things that are normal, indispensable parts of a democracy if they put in a first-past-the-post system that would give a 55 percent majority absolute dominance over a significant but still religious minority. There was no way.

The path to peace in Northern Ireland — and it is a very, very peaceful place today — and in other countries, I might add, relied on negotiations and political agreement on a system of government that used a proportional representation system, a Westminster-style parliament just like ours and a proportional representation voting system.

The quality of life in Northern Ireland is immeasurably better today. The peace process is an unmitigated success that we should celebrate around the world. Canadians helped reform a discredited police service and create the police service of Northern Ireland. But they didn’t use our political voting system to be able to overcome what, at one time, seemed intractable and violent disagreement in that country. They used a system that would be based on more trust and more power-sharing opportunities.

I offer that as a personal example of a country I’ve been to a number of times to point out that, quite opposed to some of the hysterical examples I’ve heard from the opposite side, we have many, many concrete examples of where in this parliament connected to our mother parliament in Great Britain we have seen a proportional representation system work much better.

[4:40 p.m.]

We could go to Scotland for a moment, if I may. The reason why the separatists in Scotland have been unsuccessful in breaking apart Great Britain and going their own way is because they have a proportional representation parliament. They can’t get 100 percent of the power with 30 or 40 percent of the votes. They have to share power with other parties that disagree with their national separation intentions. Proportional representation has actually saved Scotland to remain within that union.

Now, first-past-the-post in Canada has actually taken our country to the brink of breaking up. We can all remember the decade when the Bloc Québécois had almost all 60 seats in the House of Commons and held the country to ransom for their separatist project. They had an outsized number of seats based on a minority of votes that they achieved in Quebec.

It enhanced their bargaining power and their ability to get to a referendum, under the winning conditions, as they called it, that brought us this close to Canada being shattered apart. So let’s talk about those kinds of examples if we want to have a really, really honest debate, because first-past-the-post has produced many distortions. It’s produced many extremists.

Proportional representation is a feature of some of the most prosperous, democratic, transparent nations in the world. It has helped peace processes in troubled countries in regions of the world. It is actually a much more widely utilized system of voting than what we have here in British Columbia.

Another distortion, I think, we hear from those who are opposed to the referendum, those that are supporting the no side, is that this referendum is too complicated. Actually, it’s very simple. Both the independent Chief Electoral Officer and the courts of British Columbia have said it’s very simple.

We’ve heard from the Chief Electoral Officer. The sample ballot is available to the opposition and every British Columbian to scrutinize. There’s no mystery here at all. Voters have the choice to answer both questions or just one. People’s ballots will be counted if they vote for just one question.

They can rank the systems, if they’d like, on question 2 — 1, 2 and 3 — kind of just like the Liberal leadership ballot, I think, where you could rank your candidates. Apparently, Liberal members understood that. They can understand this ballot, one would think. The balloting period is long, October 22 to November 30.

The facts matter here, and the facts that they should have the decency to explain to British Columbians are this. If a proportional representation system is adopted in British Columbia, the government has said that following the referendum “an independent electoral boundaries commission will determine the number and boundaries of the electoral districts and regions represented in the Legislature.”

The point is it’s not parties. It’s not smoke-filled backrooms. It will be an independent officer of the Legislature. Unless they are arguing that the judiciary and the independent officer of this Legislature are now politically tainted….

Go ahead and make that argument. If you really want to bring the black helicopters through the sky and go conspiratorial here, be my guest, because that’s pretty much the tone we’re hearing from the B.C. Liberals out there in our communities. But if they don’t believe that, they should have the decency to explain that somebody free of politics, free of political interference, an independent member of this chamber, makes those decisions following a referendum.

Now, they like to scare people and say: “There’re going to be so many more politicians.” Not true. The total numbers of the MLAs in this House will be between 87, as there are today, and 95. So it’ll either be the same size or slightly larger. It’s also been explained that no region is going to have fewer MLAs post-referendum than they do today.

Now with Bill 40, it’s clear to voters when they cast their ballots that another referendum will be held in two general elections’ time.

Now, surely they’d support that, because surely, they’re going to respect the will of the voters when they’re counted after November 30, right? The B.C. Liberals are going to respect the wish of the voters going into the next general election under either the current system or a new voting system. I do want to hear that in this debate.

[4:45 p.m.]

If they accept that the people’s vote is the final determinant of what kind of voting system we’re going to use and that then an independent process will determine what the ridings look like, then they will respect that there’s now going to be a law guaranteeing British Columbians a second referendum in eight years’ time.

I would like to hear that the B.C. Liberal Party will respect the referendum process and they will respect the law when Bill 40 becomes a statute in British Columbia. I’d love to hear that when the next speaker stands up in this debate.

Now, the reason I want to hear that…

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. Members.

Hon. R. Fleming: …is because the member for Prince George–Valemount was saying, over and over again, that there’s no do-over. She was accusing the government, just an hour or so ago, that we’re passing a law that we won’t respect. She’s saying that we’re going to break a law after we pass it, after all stages of debate. She says that we’re going to violate and rescind Bill 40 after it becomes law.

Now that is a different kind of misinformation. That is an accusation that’s pretty scurrilous, I have to say, to say the least. Maybe it’s because it’s from a former old government that violated the constitution of Canada on a regular basis and got nailed in the courts for doing it, over and over again, by passing illegal legislation. Maybe that’s what’s colouring their commentary.

They should have a little bit of faith in the integrity of lawmakers on every side of this House. We pass this bill, and it becomes law. Every member of this chamber, no matter how they voted on the bill, yea or nay, should respect that it becomes the law of British Columbia. So have a little faith in the lawmakers — point one.

Also, have some faith in the intelligence and sophistication and the health of the democratic body politic of British Columbia — that if a government were to rip that law up, people in British Columbia would be out on the streets. They’d be holding government to account to make sure that they have that second referendum.

You remember what happened with the HST? I know you do.

Deputy Speaker: Member, through the Chair.

Interjection.

Hon. R. Fleming: Which is exactly why we should have proportional representation — don’t you agree?

Interjection.

Hon. R. Fleming: Wow.

Now, a couple of other tropes that have been brought out by the opposition here. The member for Chilliwack-Kent has been particularly amusing, and as always, he skates on pretty thin ice, away from the political mainstream. I thought his comments were interesting.

His central anxiety, of course, was that the party apparatchiks, probably in his own party, would have more power over him. Now that’s interesting because, again, to try and create a distinction here where there is basically none is an interesting tactic on behalf of the B.C. Liberal Party.

The B.C. Liberal Party, as far as I know, controls the nomination process of every one of its 87 candidates today. Has that changed in your constitution, I ask? I don’t think so. That’s how it is under first-past-the-post, and that’s how it would work under proportional representation. A nomination process under this system, a nomination process under that system, it will still be members of the party deciding who’s on the ballot. The members of the party decide who is on the ballot.

As I recall, just to maybe stoke the paranoia of the member for Chilliwack-Kent, I think parties have the responsibility to vet candidates too, so you might want to keep an eye on some of those extreme opinions every once in a while. I know you fired some candidates before, and I think under the new system, you could still fire candidates in the future, if you so wanted to. And that’s a responsible thing to do, in some instances, believe me. Fantastic.

Prince George–Mackenzie, this was an interesting comment. I respect the gentleman very much, but he raised the trope of gerrymandering. Wow. Yes. Now, an interesting history lesson, because the last political party that had the power to gerrymander in the province of British Columbia was his forerunner, the Social Credit, the centre-right, who governed this place under first-past-the-post with 40 percent of the votes and 100 percent of the power. That’s the only way that you can gerrymander the political system — is to have all the power and control the boundary process.

[4:50 p.m.]

Now, we don’t have that system anymore, as the gentleman from Prince George-Mackenzie said. How on earth would we get it again? Do you think we’re going back to a past where we didn’t have an independent boundary commission? You think we’re going back to Grace McCarthy — Gracie’s finger and all that stuff? Absolutely not. That ship has sailed.

That kind of gerrymandering may exist in first-past-the-post jurisdictions down south, but it doesn’t exist in British Columbia anymore — and thankfully so, assuming you still have faith in the independence of the electoral boundaries commissioner. That process would continue. To say otherwise, I think, is irresponsible.

There are a lot of other arguments that are being mustered in a sort of desperate “no” campaign that are pretty silly. There’s a fella here — I kind of like the guy — George Salamis, who’s a mining executive. But I’m sorry. This op-ed piece that he wrote is ludicrous in the extreme. Here’s the headline: “Proportional Representation is Bad for B.C. but Very Bad for B.C. Mining.”

Now, to tie a political voting system to an economic in­vestment decision is interesting. If he really wants to go down that road, we can do that. We can look at the largest sovereign wealth fund created from the resource sector and hydrocarbons in the world, which is in proportional-representation Norway. We can look at that. That kind of undermines his argument. We can look at all of the Canadian mining companies that are making record investments in mining copper in — I don’t know — proportional representation governments like Chile. International mining companies continue to invest in Chile.

You know what? Actually, let’s dwell on Chile for a mo­ment, because not only does Chile have the investor confidence of the mining sector internationally, it was also able to overthrow a fascist dictatorship, a military dictatorship, by having a referendum and adopting a proportional representation parliamentary system. It’s a good-news story on every front — prosperous and democratic. That’s a silly op-ed, but of course, it gets retweeted by B.C. Liberals all the time in an attempt to distract from what is, relatively, a simple question for British Columbians to consider.

What the audience is probably having a hard time understanding from the Leader of the Opposition is where he stands on a given day. It was only June 2017, not too long ago — not the ancient mists of time; we don’t have to go back 16 years — when he said: “Minority governments are routine all through the English-speaking world. They function reasonably well. Some people think they function very well because of this kind of compromise, because of this kind of joint position that absorbs information, ideas, from all the parties for the betterment of British Columbia.”

They were offering our friends in the Green Party a referendum on proportional representation. They were offering all kinds of inducements. Today he’s reversed his position 100 percent.

I know that the members opposite are really enjoying this sort of strange bravado coming from the member from Shaughnessy on having a debate, because I understand that he orchestrated that the Mission Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t allow the member for Delta North to debate him. Before he goes around challenging others to have a debate — which, by the way, we’re having in this chamber…. We’re having it because we have a coalition government. We’re having it because they’re not in power anymore. They cancelled five of the eight fall sittings.

No sooner does the Leader of the Opposition throw down the challenge to the member for Delta North than he rescinds it and gets the chamber of commerce to get him uninvited from that debate. Then the sorry end to that little spectacle last week was that the chamber of commerce, probably pretty perturbed at the unilateral behaviour of the B.C. Liberal Party, just decided to cancel the whole event anyway.

Way to go promoting debate, B.C. Liberals. You sabotaged the whole thing. After challenging somebody to a duel, you didn’t even show up for the sword fight.

Bill 40 is good legislation. It’s good for B.C., and I support it wholeheartedly.

S. Thomson: It’s a pleasure to rise and provide some comments on Bill 40. It’s very interesting to sit and listen to the debate and listen to the member opposite, the member for Victoria–Swan Lake. He talked about misinformation, that this had been a campaign of misinformation.

[4:55 p.m.]

What it has really been is a campaign of lack of information, because when you look at the number of things that have been left out, at this point, in terms of detail around the options, this is the lack of information that voters and citizens are trying to deal with in assessing the options.

He talked about transparency. Well, in my view, when you’re considering something as fundamental as this, as a change to our electoral system, not having those details and not having that information available doesn’t meet, in my view, that test of transparency.

The member opposite talked about Northern Ireland and had some very heartfelt comments and some very important comments with respect to the history there and the situation there. But what the member didn’t talk about, right at this point, is the fact that in Northern Ireland, their parliament hasn’t met for 18 months. Nobody is governing, and it is under proportional representation. There’s just an example. Some important history, but, again, not the current situation in Northern Ireland.

In making my comments, I want to just be clear. It won’t be a surprise to anybody. I’m not going to support Bill 40 and the legislation that is in front of us, the amendment to the Electoral Referendum Act of 2018.

I also want to say and I also want to make it clear that I’ve said, in my previous comments and as I participated in presentations and meetings in my constituency, that I would be quite prepared to have a proper process around looking at electoral reform — one that is independent, one that is guided by an informed process, guided by citizens through a citizens’ assembly. That is what happened in 2005 and 2009. That is the way the process should be won, and that is a process that I would have supported. This is not that process.

This bill, Bill 40 — really, what it does is it perpetuates and tries to somehow make better a less-than-legitimate process, a flawed process from the outset. I’m not sure how you can support further legislation that’s built on such a shaky premise and a shaky foundation. Just look at the foundation that we have in place for this, that this amendment is built on, in terms of bringing an amendment to an existing piece of legislation that is built on a foundation — one where there was a clear commitment by the Premier that we would have a clear and informed process for voters.

Now we have two questions, three options, two of which never have been used, 29 elements of those options that are still left to be determined after the vote. How is that allowing citizens in British Columbia to make an informed decision in such an important process? The lowest possible threshold that they could go to: 50 percent plus one, exempting this process from the standards set out in the referendum legislation. No regional threshold. In the previous referendum, 60 percent of ridings in support was a required threshold, ensuring that the voice and the significant importance of rural and interior British Columbia was recognized and acknowledged. This process does not do that.

No riding maps. Citizens are being asked to vote on systems that have not been used anywhere, yet the government is choosing not even to provide maps of electoral districts, the number of electoral districts or how many representatives would be in those districts. How can you even determine that when you don’t have the maps? The information we have is, instead, that political parties will choose a representative. In the case of each of these systems that have been proposed by the government, that’s the case. Again, it’s the systems proposed by government, not by an informed citizens’ process.

In the rural-urban option, voters are going to be asked to decide on a system in which they actually do not know whether they will choose the representative through STV or mixed-member proportional representation. They don’t even know what system they’ll get when they vote, because there are no definitions, no maps and no criteria around what will determine a rural riding and what will determine an urban riding.

[5:00 p.m.]

In the Okanagan, for example, we have a mix of urban and rural communities. They don’t know, at this point, in voting around these options, how that option would even work. There are no maps. There are no definitions, no minimum-voter-turnout threshold. This is one that concerns me greatly, and I think it should concern everyone that this has not been given consideration on something so fundamental as this proposal or this process that’s being put out to voters here in British Columbia.

You can look at a situation where, depending on how all of this divides out in this process…. Let’s just use an example. Let’s say…. And people do talk about: “What’s the voter turnout going to be?” Significant concerns about how high the voter turnout may be in this process, given the method that’s being selected for this.

Let’s say that it’s 50 percent in that and that it is fairly close in the voting process — 52, 48, all that kind of nature. If there is a change, that 50 percent of 50 percent…. Then break that down again. That leaves you 25 percent of the potential voters that have voted for change. You break that down over the three options, and those could be fairly evenly split. Who knows how that’s going to work out? You could potentially have an option chosen by a little over 8 percent to 10 percent of voters in British Columbia that would make that change — and one that would be binding.

For something as fundamental as this, I don’t think that is a bar or a standard that should be even contemplated or considered in something this significant. And the fact that all the way through this process there’s been discussion around that minimum threshold, and the members opposite have simply refused to consider even a minimum threshold of eligible voters in order to do something as significant as this.

We know the story in P.E.I. At least they had the sense, and wisely, I think, to decide not to proceed because, in their view, the voter turnout was so low that it didn’t meet a level that would meet public acceptance for such a significant and fundamental change.

Another part of the foundation — no citizen engagement process, no citizens’ assembly like there was in 2005 and 2009. In those processes, British Columbia citizens ensured that they had options to consider that were developed in a non-partisan and an independent manner. That was a process that ensured confidence and legitimacy to the outcome.

This process doesn’t do that. It doesn’t meet that test. Everything has been decided in secret. Both the engagement survey and the final ballot questions were written and finalized behind closed doors. The results were not released until the final days of the legislative sitting in the spring, which allowed no time for debate — only a short emergency debate on something so critical for our province.

Again, we have the situation where we have no maps, and people won’t be able to see what their ridings will look like under any of the proposed systems — under any of the proposed systems. That is being left until after the referendum — over 29 details to be confirmed afterwards and to be confirmed by government. Details that will not have that voter and citizen engagement or voting decision.

You can go through each of the options and look at all of the items that are still left to be determined — whether there are maps, the riding boundaries, open lists, closed lists. All of those processes, in terms of how…. Under each of those different systems are important critical details that are being left until after the vote, things like whether the lists are open or closed, as I said, whether voters have one or two votes, percentage of list seats, whether a set or flexible number of seats and the order of candidates on the ballots. That’s all under the mixed-member option.

Under dual-member proportional — what the total number of MLAs should be, whether there should be a number or a range of MLAs, whether a reserved number of seats should be part of the formula.

[5:05 p.m.]

Under the rural-urban PR, the ratio of PR seats in rural regions and ballot options for urban seats, open and closed lists, whether voters have one or two votes, whether losing first-past-the-post candidates can be appointed by a party list.

The order for allocating PR seats. Whether to have a flexible number. How to fill those vacant seats. All of those important, important details that citizens and voters are being asked to make decisions on when they’re making that very, very important vote. How can you explain to people what they’re voting on when there’s so much detail that is being left out?

No wonder, when we go to many of the forums and even when the questions are asked of the proponents who are proposing the change here or supporting the change here…. If you ask them the very specific questions…. How does this option work? How is it going to be applied? What are the details of it? Even they can’t answer those questions. How do you expect voters to make the kinds of decisions here that are so critical to this fundamental process when even proponents for it can’t answer those specific questions?

The members opposite seem to have put — and I’ve heard in the debate — lots of discussion around and a great deal of the weight on the survey. They keep referring back to the survey as being one that drove the process, one that now leads to having all of those values in the survey reflected in the process that’s underway. That was one that was graded and run by four academics that had been sworn to confidentiality. In the end, three of the academics felt that the end result of the survey was biased and unfair.

The Attorney General, who is supposed to be a neutral arbiter in this process, had his own staff input into the referendum process. So I’m not sure how you can rely on that survey process to defend the process that you currently have here, which doesn’t have that informed process and doesn’t have the kinds of details that are necessary to ensure that we make a really clear decision that is built around having the confidence of having all the knowledge about what you’re voting for and what will result from it.

Now we’re being asked to support a bill that says: “Don’t worry about all that. Let’s take a flyer. Let’s take a leap of faith on what we currently have in front of the people.” To bring this forward, this additional leap of faith process, in the middle of the referendum process just as we’re in the process of ballots being mailed out to voters…. Maybe, if the strike notice that was served today doesn’t disrupt the process.

Again, the government is injecting itself with this element and this process right in the middle of the campaign. I’m not sure how that, again, leads to an independent, informed decision process. Many people have asked me, since the legislation was introduced, when I’ve talked to people back in the constituency: “What’s the reason for this?” Many are asking: “Why did this come forward? Why did this come forward at this particular time?”

Well, I think it’s very clear. The answer is just like the process that we’ve had today. The answer is because they want to continue to influence the decision, continue to run a process that is flawed and continue to have a design in the process that will lead to an outcome that they want to achieve. Both the timing and the intent of this amendment are to influence that decision process.

It’s to say: “Don’t worry; be happy.” It’s just like that Bobby McFerrin song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” “Everything’s going to be okay. I know you’re voting on something when you don’t know exactly how it’s going to be implemented. You don’t know exactly which way it’s going to go. But don’t worry, you’re going to have another chance down the road to fix it if you don’t get it right this time.”

This is really…. I kind of looked at this in the….

[5:10 p.m.]

The Premier made the commitment that it would be a simple, straightforward question, first-past-the-post against a clearly defined option. Well, I guess, maybe, you might be able to argue that this move is that. The only problem with it is it’s ten to 12 years later. He’s finally following through on his commitment to do what he promised to do in the campaign to have that clear process, but ten to 12 years after the fact — two election cycles, maybe more, after the fact. He might be able to stand up and say: “Well, I’ve met my commitment.” I just don’t think that cuts it.

I was really interested, and a little surprised, in the discussion earlier, to hear some of the comments from the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, when she was making her comments on this debate on Bill 40. She made the point…. She said: “I was listening to the member opposite from Chilcotin a little while ago, and I don’t know if she understands what’s in this bill. I think it’s really important to recognize that this bill that we’re debating right now is actually not about the vote for PR or not or staying with first-past-the-post. It’s actually a completely different bill that says that after two elections, there’s the opportunity to have another referendum.”

Well, I think that’s just a little bit naive in this process. What we are talking about is the whole process around proportional representation. Bill 40, with its attempt to influence decisions, is simply part of that history and the process that we have seen in this legislation from the beginning — a flawed process based on a very shaky foundation that starts with a low threshold, no minimum threshold, a question and ballot process that doesn’t meet the commitments made by the Premier. So many elements left unsaid or undetailed at this point in the process.

It is what we’re talking about. When we’re talking on this side of the House about this bill and about the amendment to the bill to provide for that opportunity, it really is about the whole process. In my view, the process, as I said from the beginning, has been flawed. I’m not sure how you can support a process that binds a future government but one that is based on such a fundamentally flawed process. We really should be looking at ensuring that the process that we look at in terms of electoral reform….

As I said earlier, I would have been quite prepared and would have welcomed a process that looked at electoral reform through a proper process, with a citizens’ assembly, with a reasonable time frame of engagement in the process with citizens in order to develop a fully informed process, just as was done in 2005 and 2009. But that’s not the case here.

The Premier said very clearly at UBCM that this is a leap of faith. You know, I think that is an understatement at best. Really, what this is, is a bit of a fanciful future process around: “You’re going to have a second shot at this at some point.” It’s really an even bigger element of a leap of faith and, as I said, binding some form of future government that will result from a proportional representation system, if it passes.

This really has been a flawed process. Bill 40 carries on that charade. I don’t support the current process, and I can’t support the bill that is before us.

[5:15 p.m.]

While I would hope that some common sense might prevail on the other side of the House and that this bill would be withdrawn, I don’t hold out any expectation that that would be the case and that we focus our efforts on the current process because, clearly, that one is proceeding — not to have it clouded with this additional element that, as I pointed out earlier, is simply designed, in my view, to influence the outcome, just as all the other elements of the process have done.

I will be joining my colleagues in voting against the bill, because I really don’t think that this amendment that’s in Bill 40 is appropriate at this time. I don’t think that it is, in terms of timing and intent. And it’s built on a flawed foundation, a flawed system in the whole process that we have around proportional representation. I think that it is a shame that we have not done this in a process that allows for informed decisions to be made and for everybody to have confidence that the decisions are being made in a fully informed and independent, transparent manner.

With so much detail left out in the process, I just can’t support Bill 40. I will be voting against it when I have the opportunity.

J. Rice: I am honoured to rise here today to speak in favour of electoral reform in British Columbia. For too long, our old, outdated voting system has put too much power in the hands of too few. This fall we’ll have a provincewide referendum that gives British Columbians a chance to replace the status quo with proportional representation — a way of voting that puts people at the centre of politics.

Pro rep, used by democracies around the world, provides more choice for voters, more accountability and more collaboration between parties to get things done for people. It’s a system used by countries around the world to ensure that everyone’s vote counts. A party that gets 25 percent of the votes gets 25 percent of the seats in the Legislature.

The B.C. Liberal opposition and their rich friends are desperate to keep the old way of voting because it makes it easier for them to control government with a minority of votes. Made-in-B.C. proportional representation means we can elect governments that work for everyone.

Here are some of the words of wisdom about voting systems from the former Premier Christy Clark. In 2009, when Christy Clark hosted her own radio show on CKNW, she gave a measured and thoughtful argument as to why our province should drop the first-past-the-post voting system and adopt a proportional system.

In a video filmed in her radio studio, an ever-exuberant Clark talked about why she once preferred the voting system of first-past-the-post. But once she got out of politics, as a regular citizen, she felt differently. At the time, voters were about to determine whether a form of proportional representation, STV, should be considered. She stated:

“First up, let’s talk about the single most important vote that you are going to cast when you go to the polls on Tuesday. I have a confession to make. I voted against STV in the last election. I even campaigned against it in the last election.

“It was an idea that was spawned by an assembly of non-partisan, everyday citizens, and at the time, I have to say, it didn’t appeal to me. At the time, I believed that my vote was right, because I liked our first-past-the-post system.

“Our current system served my personal interests as a politician very well, thank you. I, like many of our entrenched interests who are today fighting for proportional representation, didn’t see a need to change a system that worked well for me.”

What about considering an electoral system that works well for everyone?

Clark goes on to say:

“I hear that people are sick to death of the way that our political system works. Increasingly, fewer and fewer young people are going to the polls every single year. They just say there’s no point in exercising their franchise, because their vote doesn’t matter.”

These sentiments still ring true today. I heard this on the doorstep in the last election and the election before that.

[5:20 p.m.]

Clark elaborates to say that while lack of representation and a feeling of not having a voice are things that frustrate voters, she confirms that first-past-the-post doesn’t bother people who it benefits. “I can guarantee you that they’re not things that bother the hacks and backroom boys and politicians who are served by our first-past-the-post system.”

That speaks to who’s fighting against pro rep right now, such as the friends of the B.C. Liberals buying full-page ads to whip up fear and mislead voters; former B.C. Liberal cabinet ministers writing op-eds in newspapers, doing the same; rhetoric attempting to divide rural and urban voters by stating that rural MLAs will suddenly disappear; or my favourite, the full-page ad that I saw in my local paper of the riding of North Coast, my riding, redrawn into the entire half of the province, a plausible new riding.

These are misleading statements by the B.C. Liberals who attempt to instil a fear into northern and rural voters that life will be dictated by the cities.

Let’s set the record straight. Proportional representation is good for all voters, rural and urban. No matter where you live or who you vote for, you deserve to elect an MLA who shares your values. That’s the basic principle of proportional representation.

All models of proportional representation have strong local and regional representation. Voters will retain their local representatives, and no seats will move to the cities. Every model will be tailored to the geography of each region, and riding boundaries will continue to be determined by a community of interest, identity, historical patterns and the need to keep geographic size of ridings manageable.

Hon. Speaker, I think we have to switch gears here. I reserve my right to take my place.

J. Rice moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Motions Without Notice

RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT

A. Weaver: Pursuant to the agreement regarding my application under Standing Order 35, I rise to move the following motion.

By leave, I move:

[That this House do now adjourn to discuss a matter of urgent public importance, namely, that in light of the recent IPCC special report on global warming and in light of the Federal emergency debate on this subject which occurred yesterday, whether we as legislators are acting with sufficient urgency and demonstrating the appropriate leadership on preparing for and mitigating the escalating impacts of climate change on our province.]

Deputy Speaker: Please proceed.

A. Weaver: Thank you, hon. Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly, for allowing this emergency debate to take place. I note that my two colleagues in the B.C. Green Party and I will each have the floor for a few minutes, and we’ll divvy up the topics that we’d like to cover here. I’ll speak to my background in science. My colleague the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands will speak about our responsibility, and my colleague the MLA for Cowichan Valley will focus on opportunity and, where possible, hope.

This is the first week the Legislature has convened since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report was released. Three expert IPCC working groups issued a dire and urgent warning to governments around the world, including our own, arguing that we must immediately ramp up our efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees or face serious and irreversible consequences.

I know a little bit about the IPCC, having served as a lead author in that regard for the last four international assessments, and it was a proud moment for me to see a former post-doc and PhD student serving on the recent panel’s committee report.

Over the last 150 years, Earth has made a transition from the past, when climate affected the evolution of human societies, to the present, in which humans are affecting the evolution of climate and weather. Today we are at a pivotal moment in human history. Our generation will be responsible for deciding what path the future climate will take. You and I, as elected officials, will either be complicit in allowing climate change to despoil our world, or we can lead the way and choose a new future.

[5:25 p.m.]

As a climate scientist, a lead author on four previous IPCC assessments, I know that it is my moral responsibility to speak about climate change as clearly and accurately as possible. I do not aim to alarm but need to emphasize the severity of the threat that lies ahead, because it is so often underestimated.

The current state of B.C.’s climate and environment is not “the new normal,” as many have been saying. Normal implies a plateau and consistency. We are not facing a plateau. We are on the edge of a very steep downward trend, and I’m sad to say that this is just the beginning.

Over hundreds of millions of years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, together with global temperatures, dropped slowly as carbon was stored slowly in the sediments of the deep ocean and the great gas, oil and coal reserves of today were formed. Yet in a matter of just a few decades, the carbon drawn down over many tens of millions of years is being released back to the atmosphere. In a single generation, humans are taking atmospheric conditions back to that which existed during the age of the dinosaurs. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now far exceeds the natural range over the last million years, and it’s still rising quickly.

Metaphorically, we’re piling more blankets on an overheating planet. The hotter it gets, the more symptoms, if you will, humans will experience. If global emissions do not start to dramatically decline in the next few years, many millions of people, including British Columbians, will be at risk from heatwaves, drought, floods, storms and wildfires. Our coasts and cities will be threatened by a rising sea level. Many ecosystems, plants and animals will face widespread extinction, including most of the world’s coral reef systems.

This is not new information. Scientists have been raising concerns about what their data has been showing for years, for decades, for more than a century. In fact, in 1938, Guy Callendar made a presentation to the Royal Society of London which claimed (1) that humans had increased the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, (2) that increased CO₂ could cause an increase in global temperatures and (3) that global temperatures were rising.

In the early 1800s, Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was the very first to recognize that the atmosphere was essentially transparent to incoming radiation from the sun but was very effective at blocking outgoing radiation to the solar system, thereby creating the greenhouse effect. In the mid-1800s, John Tyndall, a British scientist, was the first to be able to determine that different greenhouse gases absorbed, preferentially, different wavelengths of infrared radiation.

In 1957, Roger Revelle and Hans Suess from the University of California warned that the oceans could not absorb the human emissions of carbon dioxide as fast as they were being produced. They stated, in their seminal work: “Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future…. We are returning, to the atmosphere and oceans, the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years.”

On and on it goes. In the 1980s the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency…. Said the Academy of Sciences: “We’re deeply concerned about the magnitude of environmental changes.” They noted: “We may get in trouble in ways that we have barely imagined.” The Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. said this: “Agricultural conditions will be significantly altered, environmental and economic systems potentially disrupted, and political institutions stressed. Changes by the end of the 21st century could be catastrophic, taken in the context of today’s world. A soberness and a sense of urgency underlie our response to a greenhouse warming.”

This is not new scientific information, as I’ve said. What is new, however, is how urgent and how dire the scientific warnings have become. What’s remarkable, when you look at this issue compared to every other environmental issue out there, is that the people speaking loudest, strongest and most frequently are the scientists themselves — out of concern for the direction we are taking our planet.

In recent years, the consequences of rising carbon dioxide and temperatures have become painfully clear. We’re on target to take ocean surface acidity into a realm for which we have no comparison in the history of Earth. Coral beds that have been around for millions of years are going extinct on a widespread basis. In Canada, overall precipitation will increase, but it’ll come in fewer and more extreme events interspersed between longer periods of drought. There’ll be an increased risk of flooding and wildfire, and we’ve seen that in British Columbia two years in a row.

[5:30 p.m.]

At the rate we’re going, we’re looking at between 20 and 50 percent of the world’s species, almost certainly including the iconic Fraser River sockeye and Canada’s polar bear, becoming committed to extinction this century.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

As temperatures warm, salmon will have increased mortality rates as they struggle through hot waters to their spawning grounds. In southern regions, streams will dry up.

Think for a moment about massive crop failures, economic collapse and millions of climate refugees desperate for safer homes. Our growing consumption levels are unsustainable on an earth with finite resources, and the limit is clearly in view.

Think about whatever issue you care about most as an MLA in British Columbia — economic growth, affordability, health care, education, poverty, transportation, agriculture, reconciliation, child care, housing, resource development, fisheries, forestry, safety, security, prosperity, family. Every single one will be undermined and endangered by unmitigated climate change.

I know that this can sound scary, an overwhelming proposition. It’s a normal human reaction to resist change and instead try to preserve the status quo. But the IPCC report, the one released this last weekend, tells us exactly where this leads.

We need to start now to build a new way of life. It can be a shift that provides economic opportunities like this province has never seen. By tackling climate change seriously, with carefully designed policies, B.C.’s economy can grow in new ways. We can prosper in a time of crisis, but it requires us to be honest with ourselves. In your work and mine, it is important we keep the spotlight on the stark and alarming reality of climate change and not get lost in the everyday bustle or the fog of November’s rain.

The time for “yes but” arguments — yes, but other people emit more; or yes, but other industries are worse; or yes, but B.C. is small and this is a global problem — has passed. We now need “yes and” arguments: yes, other people emit more; yes, other industries will always be worse; and yes, B.C. is small compared to the world, yet we will do our part. As much as we may wish, we don’t have jurisdiction over the world, but we have influence in B.C., where we live. That is what is important.

This is an all-of-government issue, so it needs to be an all-government solution — every ministry, every MLA, every riding, every sector. We need everyone to look at the area they have influence on and think about how they can make positive change in the context of a warming world.

As the IPCC special report makes painfully clear, we only have a few short years left to steer away from catastrophic climate change. Choosing to take action is a luxury set to expire; soon, we will be forced. We must not squander this opportunity.

Thank you again to everyone in this chamber for allowing this emergency debate to take place.

R. Glumac: I am honoured to have the opportunity today to participate in this very important debate, following a similar debate at the federal level, but you know, we need to do more than debate. We need to take action, each of us. Every one of us needs to take action. Every individual, every corporation, every level of government, every country in the world needs to take action now. We can no longer afford to wait. We can no longer say that our impact is so small that it wouldn’t make a difference. By working together, we can make a difference.

Our global temperature is already 1 degree higher than pre-industrial levels. Already, we’re seeing devastating hurricanes, record droughts, massive forest fires producing choking smoke lasting for months in the summer, destruction of our ecosystems, loss of our iconic salmon runs. It is critically important that we find a way to limit the global temperature increase to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Otherwise, things will get much worse.

To do this, we need to limit how much carbon we’re putting into the atmosphere. At our current rates, we will surpass that amount of carbon in three to ten years, according to the IPCC report. When I think about that, my heart sinks. My son is in grade 2. By the time he’s in grade 5, it could be too late, and I wonder what kind of world my kids are going to grow up in. Climate change is a moral issue. We owe it to our children today to bring about transformational change across all sectors of society. We need to make it as easy as possible for each of us, every one of us, to be part of the solution.

[5:35 p.m.]

We need to work with other levels of government — municipal, federal, international — and with the private sector to incentivize changes to the way we do things, to embrace innovative solutions for clean energy in a sustainable economy. We already have incredible companies here in B.C., like General Fusion, who are leading the development of clean fusion energy in the world, and companies like Carbon Engineering that have developed technology to pull carbon out of the atmosphere for a low cost.

In B.C., we can be climate leaders. People can look to us as an example of how things should be done. Just last week, I was at the Cascadia Innovation Conference. I heard from Governor Inslee, from Washington, saying how inspired he was by B.C. for our climate leadership. He talked about how we’re one of the few jurisdictions with a carbon tax, yet we’re the fastest-growing economy in Canada, proving that climate action and economic growth are not opposing forces.

In fact, the clean, green, sustainable economy is the economy of the future. It is the way forward, and Washington is following now, looking at a carbon tax of their own. As the governor said when he spoke in this House less than a year ago: “And we must be victorious in the fight against climate change, because without victory, there is no survival. There is no plan B. This is one of the greatest challenges of our time.”

We can rise to that challenge. We can work together for our children, for our future. I know the problem before us is daunting, but there is hope. We can lead the way. B.C. can lead the way forward, and that is exactly what we will do.

S. Furstenau: I’d like to echo my colleague’s gratitude to the Speaker and the Members of the Legislative Assembly for allowing this emergency debate to take place. Standing Order 35 emergency debates are rarely granted, especially in majority governments, but it has been wonderful to hear from all members of the House on this vital issue.

I’m grateful to also have a few minutes to discuss this matter of urgent public importance, to consider whether we, as legislators, are acting with sufficient urgency and demonstrating the appropriate leadership on preparing for and mitigating the escalating impacts of climate change on our province.

Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a special report on the consequences of a 1.5 degree rise in global temperatures. The United Nations committee confirmed that the consequences of global warming of 1 degree are already being felt — more extreme weather events, rising sea levels and decreasing sea ice in the Arctic. The world’s leading climate scientists also warned we only have a dozen years — a dozen years — to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

The panel has made it clear that preventing a single extra degree of heat could make a life-or-death difference for millions across the globe. It also firmly states that our current course of action is simply not working. Our growing consumption levels are unsustainable on an earth with finite resources, and the limit is clearly in view.

There was a time and place when fossil fuels contributed significantly to human advancement. They effectively allowed us to transition our industrial practices, spur economic growth and lift people out of poverty in the western world. We can recognize the incredible value that those technologies and innovations had in their place and time but acknowledge that we are now in a different time. We have a transformed economy, different sources of energy, and we need to keep progressing forward.

To meet the required emission levels outlined by the panel, Canada’s emissions will need to be reduced by almost half, far below our current trajectory. According to the IPCC, the world needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030 to avoid catastrophic climate change. If we fail, the effects of climate change will hit the most disadvantaged in our societies hardest and first.

[5:40 p.m.]

We are already facing a crisis of inequality, both within Canada and across the globe. Any compassionate government that purports to care about people’s well-being must take immediate action to meet our emissions reduction targets as well as to assist communities to adapt to the effects of climate change that are already beginning to take hold. If we act with urgency, we can couple strong climate policies with an approach that will also improve the health and the well-being of the people we serve.

Dr. Debra Roberts from the IPCC says that the next few years will be the most important in human history because the decisions that we make now as political leaders will affect generations to come. Like my colleague from Oak Bay–Gordon Head said at the top of this debate, for the first time in history, “Earth has made a transition from the past, when climate affected the evolution of human societies, to the present, in which humans are affecting the evolution of climate and weather.”

Today we are at a pivotal moment. Our generation will be responsible for deciding what paths the future climate will take. Dr. Jim Skea, co-chair of the IPCC working group, said that we know the physics are there. We know the chemistry is there. We know the science is there. “The final tick box is the political will.”

What an opportunity we have as legislators. It is scary and daunting, of course, but it is still an opportunity. Our fate is not sealed. We need to lean into that; we need to chase that. We need to fight for that with everything we have, because everything is at stake. As writer Alex Steffen said: “The difference between the best possible and worst possible outcomes ahead are staggeringly vast. Giving up before we fight for the best outcomes available is unwise and unethical. At no point on this trajectory will it be too late to work to make things better.”

We need to start now to build a new way of life.

P. Milobar: It gives me great pleasure to rise on behalf of our caucus to stand up here today and to speak to this important emergency motion. I couldn’t agree more with the former speaker about the biggest thing that we need is political will to see change.

What a long way we have come in this House. I can remember — it wasn’t that long ago — when the phrase used to be “Axe the tax.” Look where we’ve accelerated to as a group of legislators, where “Axe the tax” is no longer the siren call of others within this Legislature.

There absolutely does need to be that political will. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over 16 long months is anything but political will. Frankly, all we have seen is Bill 34 come forward. Other than renaming the title of our previous emissions legislation and changing the date of the target from 2020 to 2030 — which still, actually, has the same target of reduced emissions by 2030 that our original plan had — the only fundamental change within Bill 34, the only action we’ve seen on this file so far, is that it actually added a subsection enabling the Minister of Environment, by way of regulation, to deal with LNG and not have to deal with LNG emissions in the Legislature.

In fact, what it does is that it enables the Minister of Environment to be able to set standards and emission standards for LNG. He confirmed this in the committee stage — that, in fact, the LNG emissions can be their own singular category. So although most climate plans have three sections, one being industrial, there’s nothing that actually says you can’t create a fourth silo and have LNG be a stand-alone, its own emission target, and not be part of the aggregate of the rest of industry or transportation.

[5:45 p.m.]

I will be looking with great interest, moving forward, as we see the climate plan, which we have now heard will be late fall. I’m assuming that will be, probably, the last day of the session or so, or the last day or two. We will finally get a chance to see what is being proposed to actually fundamentally change the direction around the climate plan. I say that because, and I think everyone would agree, platitudes aren’t going to solve the GHG emissions issue.

Just recently British Columbia was recognized at the 2018 UN Climate Action Awards for a carbon neutral government program. This is what the criteria was based on: in 2010, B.C. became the first government at the provincial, territorial or state level in North America to take 100 percent responsibility for its greenhouse gas emissions. This was based on from 2010 to 2017. I would suggest there’s been a lot done, in spite of the calls for “Axe the tax” in that same time frame.

What we have seen in that time frame is lower emissions from operations — 3.4 percent from 2010, relative to the 9 percent population increase. This is straight from the United Nation award information that they posted on line just recently.

The reason this is important is because, as other members of this House have said, it will be hard enough to meet our legislative greenhouse gas emissions targets. With LNG, it will be virtually impossible. Now interestingly enough, that’s now the Minister of Environment, who is in charge of the LNG file and has confirmed that he has the ability to set very tailor-made LNG GHG emission targets.

Again, why this is so important is because it’s that political will that we’ve heard about that is required. The political will, the political drive to be able to stand in the face of people yelling slogans like “Axe the tax” and other slogans, to stand there and implement true climate action as a government.

I say that because when you read the confidence and supply agreement…. After 16 months of inaction on this file, one does have to wonder. Could you imagine a Legislature, where instead of it being a confidence and supply agreement, it’d been crafted up to say something, I don’t know, along the lines of “climate adaptation solution agreement.”

Could you imagine if that had been the political will — to create the agreement to broker power and allow governance to happen in British Columbia, if instead of confidence and supply agreement, we had something like a climate adaptation and solution agreement? However, that would require political will, not just on the current government’s part, but it would require political will on people negotiating.

I did a little deeper dive into the CASA agreement, as it’s well known. In this case, it truly is a confidence and supply agreement. Unfortunately, it’s not a climate adaptation solution agreement, because the very first condition within the confidence and supply agreement is that prop rep shall happen. In fact, prop rep has five conditions attached to it in that agreement. Most certainly, it was not the number one priority within the negotiation of the two parties as they negotiated CASA. If it was, if climate was, then it would’ve been a climate adaptation solution agreement, instead of a confidence and supply agreement.

To be fair, once you read through 19 other bullet points of things mentioned in the CASA agreement, you finally get to the climate being mentioned and action that needs to be taken on climate. When you look at that, there’s only a couple of bullet points. There are actually more bullet points on the details of the prop rep vote, which is the number one issue within that agreement, then climate change. Again, talking to political will.

Expand to fugitive and slash piles. No action has been taken on that in 16 months.

Deliver rebate cheques so a majority are better off. Well, that hasn’t happened, because we know a majority, now that the carbon tax is no longer revenue-neutral, are actually paying more in carbon taxes than they ever have.

Implement a climate action strategy to meet our targets. I’m assuming that means the two co-signers of the agreement, but no one really knows what those targets are.

Then we jump forward to Bill 34, in the spring of this year, and we realize that their targets are the same as our targets were. One has to wonder why the delay, why it’s taking so long.

[5:50 p.m.]

I mentioned the increased carbon tax. The increase in carbon tax, which is part of the confidence and supply agreement, which is no longer revenue-neutral. Part of the hallmark of the time frame of the UN award I mentioned is a time frame when carbon tax was revenue-neutral in British Columbia. For that and other reasons, we were recognized by the United Nations for our work from 2010 to 2017.

However, the increased carbon tax that is no longer revenue-neutral…. The amount of revenue collected off of that carbon tax, just coincidentally, almost coincides with what the provincial surpluses are budgeted for over the next few years. However, after almost 45 hours, I believe it was, of estimates with the minister, the government cannot point to any increased spending of any significance with the extra carbon tax. Therefore, it’s coming in as a strict revenue source with no definitive spending area.

Now, there has been lots of talk about innovation. There’s been lots of talk about having innovation funds and lots of talk about trying to support industry. But there’s been no definitive direction given to industry at this point.

What we have, after 16 long months, is an increase of carbon tax that will increase again in April, no longer revenue-neutral. We have industry still waiting to know how this increased carbon tax that they can tap into to leverage to try to help themselves to modernize, to help themselves drive down emissions, to help themselves meet the GHG targets…. The industry is floundering out there, wanting to know why they’re sending in their increased carbon tax cheques with no support coming back from the government at all.

The political will needs to be there. There is supposed to be political will within the government coalition partners to make this happen. But as I say, when we look at what actual, tangible pieces have been done in almost a year and a half, one has to really scratch their head. We’re not sure how this is going to tie in.

We heard questions earlier today about train 1 and 2 with the LNG project — again, a project this side of House fully supports. I want to make that very clear. But we’re not even sure if the climate plan is going to address trains 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and any other potential future LNG projects or if it’s going to be a window dressing of a climate plan where everyone can pat themselves on the back and say, “This is a wonderful document with wonderful targets and ideals,” and miraculously, all of the reference point dates will be after the next election.

Therefore, any bluster — any direction that governments may fall over this, any direction around any of that — will have conveniently been figured out to be made to look like it’s an action plan, when, in actual fact, the deliverable is theoretical at best. All we have to look at is Bill 34 to see what happens when you have nothing but a window dressing on a bill. That is the big concern moving forward.

We can talk in this House about how the clock is ticking, and I agree the clock is ticking. We need to make sure we have substantive change. We need to embrace new technology. We need to figure out ways to have the greenest energy moving forward.

We have over one million people moving into this jurisdiction in the next short while. They are all going to need energy. We have three billion people who’ll be populating this earth over the next few years. They are going to need energy, and they’re going to need clean energy. So our energy consumption is going up, whether we like it or not, strictly based on population.

We need to make sure that we are driving to have the cleanest and best in green technology and green energy as we possibly can. However, empty words and empty documents aren’t going to get us there. What we really need to see is actual action.

Although an emergency debate is wonderful and proposed by the Third Party in this House, it’s the Third Party in this House that chose to make prop rep be their number one issue in a confidence and supply agreement, not climate change. Now, 16 months later, climate change is their number one issue, not prop rep. If you want to talk political will, if you want to talk political direction, that’s absolutely an area we need to look at.

As I’ve said, thankfully, we’ve come a long way from Axe the Tax. In fact, we’ve gone away from Axe the Tax to: “We’re going to keep all the tax and not even give it back to you.”

Interjection.

[5:55 p.m.]

P. Milobar: Oh, we would love to see so many taxes axed. It’s incredible. We’ve lost count of how many taxes need to be axed. We’ve never called….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

P. Milobar: Well, at least we know the government is awake now.

The best part is that we never once called to axe the revenue-neutrality portion of carbon tax. We’ve wondered why, of course, the government needs to fill their coffers with non-revenue-neutral carbon taxes and not actually have a deliverable plan to make sure that those funds are spurring on innovation, helping drive the greener economy and making sure that we do have clean, reliable power to make us a jurisdiction and take care of that competitive advantage.

Again, political will is needed. We’ve watched for 16 months where that political will has sat on the sidelines about climate change until today’s emergency debate.

I’m not sure what happens after an emergency debate where there’s no actual vote for any further action, but frankly, this feels like an emergency debate designed to try to walk back statements around LNG, around climate plans, around the consequences of those climate plans and what would happen to the government if those conditions aren’t met. That’s what this feels like today.

This feels like this is a way to set the stage for when, in a couple of weeks, we finally get to see the climate plan — a climate plan that will be nothing but sheer window dressing; a climate plan that won’t have true measurable targets until after the next election, mark my words; and a climate plan that will, in all likelihood, probably be 100 percent based on some theoretical idea that as long as we put everyone in an electric car in the next 3½ years, life will be pretty good and LNG can go full steam ahead.

We need to make sure it’s a proper climate plan. We need to make sure that there’s more than the convenience of emergency debate for an hour. We need to make sure that the government is being scrutinized properly and to make sure that in areas that it’s a good plan, we recognize that. But we need to make sure — and it takes all members of this House, and it certainly takes members of the third party — to actually live by their word and scrutinize those.

No one disputes the Leader of the Third Party’s skill set and expertise in this area. It would be a shame to see that go to the wayside for some political expediency of a document that may just be nothing more than window dressing. As I say, the climate adaptation solution agreement could have accomplished the same thing as the confidence and supply agreement, but it would have required that climate change be the number one issue within the document, not proportional representation.

To sum up, we have Bill 34, which is not a whole heck of a lot, to be truthful. In fact, interestingly enough, I met with a couple of environmental groups before Bill 34 was adopted, and they had the exact same things to say before I could even say it. So it was even viewed that way within the NGO worlds. We have prop rep–first conditions. We have tons of other conditions before we even get to climate mention.

Lo and behold, 16 months later, we’re scrambling around and rushing on the eve of our threats to take down the government over greenhouse gas emission plans and climate change plans and LNG investments, and we have an emergency debate. The cynic in me would suggest the timing of this is a little bit more than convenient, but you know, I don’t like to be one that’s too cynical, I guess.

We have increased carbon taxes, which will be going up again April 1, that are non-revenue-neutral — non-revenue-neutral in spite of the confidence and supply agreement that says to deliver rebate cheques so the majority are better off. The majority, as we’ve established in estimates, aren’t going to see those rebate cheques — not the majority. There will be some that will see the rebate cheques but not the majority. That’s a big difference. But apparently, you know, the points and the issues within these plans are a little bit flexible, depending how convenient you need that to be.

We have a 2018 UN climate action award. It sounds very impressive, but it was based on all the years that we were in government. I would suggest that the UN recognized the good job that we did, the great work we did as a party. I look forward to the resubmission by the new government over the next year and a half or two years to get similar validation from the United Nations.

[6:00 p.m.]

We know they place heavy stock in United Nations documents and opinions. One would assume that they would be seeking the same type of validation of their new climate plan to make sure it’s meeting that same high standard of recognition with the United Nations that 2010 to 2017 did.

Basically, this is a wonderful discussion to have. I think it is a good use of the House’s time when you’re talking about things that are going to affect all of our economies, environments and futures. We all love our kids. We all love our grandchildren. I don’t think anyone gets to claim the moral high ground on that, in spite of repeated attempts.

I think it’s safe to say that everyone wants to make sure, in this House, that B.C. has a bright and prosperous future. I think everyone recognizes that we need to keep coming up with green technology, innovative technology, innovative energy ideas, and we need to meet the growing demand of a growing province.

We need a plan that’s real. We need a plan that’s more than window dressing. We need a plan that does more than amend the title from a piece of legislation that was ten years old. Albeit, it amended the title of a UN award-winning piece of legislation, but it amended the title, nonetheless.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for this time. I really do hope there will be political will moving forward and that there will actually be some action behind words that have been uttered over the last 16 months versus more rhetoric and more platitudes. I hope that what we see in a climate plan delivered is a true action document, not just more editing and cut-and-paste jobs, call it a day and make sure that targets are well after the fact. Very lofty, theoretical goals but not ones that you can actually accomplish in the real world, where the sky is actually blue.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the time.

Hon. J. Horgan: I’m pleased to rise to participate in this emergency debate brought forward by the Leader of the Third Party, the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, who is widely acknowledged as certainly the expert in the field in this Legislature and well beyond. It’s an asset to all members of this House to have his experience at play not just in this debate but, in fact, as we go forward developing the climate plan that my colleague, the Minister of Environment, is working on very diligently, along with representatives from industry, NGOs, academia and a broad spectrum of Indigenous peoples as well.

I believe a committee was put together with the express purpose of making the progress that the member from Kamloops is so concerned about. I also want to say that the previous government…. We have to go back two governments to the leadership that was shown then by Gordon Campbell after a trip to Hawaii and his annual collection of books brought him to a place that made British Columbia, at that time, a leader in climate action.

That leadership has lagged in the past number of years. An example of that would have to be the previous government’s desire to only proceed with emission-reducing transit initiatives in the Lower Mainland provided they had a referendum thumbs-up from the people in the region. That didn’t happen, and we stalled on much-needed transit improvements that would have reduced emissions over the past number of years, only now being approved by this government and the federal government in Ottawa. That’s one graphic example of the recent turning away by the people on the other side of the House from real, genuine climate action.

I’m very happy and pleased to partner with members of the Third Party and my colleagues here in the House and to speak today about the urgent need for all of us to put aside the cynicism that the member raised and this notion that there’s nothing we can do. Instead, we have to adapt and make sure that British Columbia becomes, again, a leader in climate action. I’m confident that by the end of this year we’ll be doing that.

It is certainly the responsibility of all of us in this House to bring forward those issues that are pressing and important to all of our constituents. To have an emergency debate today, following on the heels of the UN Intergovernmental Panel report that gives us even more startling information on how rapidly we need to respond to the changing world environment….

I don’t think we need look any further. I know my friend from Cariboo-Chilcotin endured not one but two of the worst fire seasons in B.C. history. My colleagues from the north coast and from Stikine and into Prince George and the north understand full well, after this past summer, the challenges we face here in British Columbia. They are there before our very eyes. We’re feeling it. We were breathing it in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island for weeks and weeks.

[6:05 p.m.]

We look to the United States and the horrific fires in California and the severity of hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. These are obvious examples of the need, the imperative, for the international community to grasp the nettle and take immediate action.

It should not fall to a subnational government on the west coast corner of North America to lead the way, but by goodness, because of Gordon Campbell’s leadership and the leadership that we can, as a group, show today in 2018, British Columbia can once again take that mantle as leaders not just in North America but around the world.

I am proud to have the opportunity to work with every member of this place to make sure that we can get back to that point. As I see my colleagues in other provinces falling away from the leadership that the current Prime Minister brought back from Paris…. We’ve seen province after province, election after election, turn away from the absolute obvious to anyone who has eyes to see. For those of us who had lungs to breathe in the Lower Mainland and across British Columbia for the past two summers, it is imperative that we do hang together on this.

I appreciate the member’s cynicism. That’s quite often what we hear from all of our constituents when we walk about and talk about these issues. But when you’ve experienced it tangibly, as my friend from Cariboo-Chilcotin and her constituents did…. There is no more important issue for those of us in this House and the people of this country and, in fact, the people of the world than that we address these issues.

We are going to do our level best to meet the bar. We expect the opposition to work with us and to be aggressive in their criticisms if we fall short. I know absolutely, with certainty, my friend from Oak Bay–Gordon Head will be at the front of that line. I want to assure all of you in this House and all of those watching at home that this debate is something that we are working on each and every day. It is an emergency not just because we’re standing here. It’s an emergency because it’s absolutely obvious to us that the human condition is changing.

We need to adapt. We need to have a low-carbon economy. British Columbia is very well placed to do that. We have innovators. We have entrepreneurs. We have an innovation commission that was just appointed to make sure that we can bring in the new economy, the low-carbon economy, and meet the challenges of climate change here in British Columbia. But it’s not just here, my friends. And 4½ million people in a sea of seven billion makes a very little drop, but that drop is important. That leadership is important.

I’m proud of the work that was done by the previous government. I’m proud of the work that my colleague and his associates on the Climate Solutions and Clean Growth Advisory Council are doing, and I am very much proud to stand with the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head and his colleagues and anyone on that side of the House who wants to work together collectively to address this scourge. It’s the least we can do for the next generation. I know we’re up for it.

A. Olsen: Thank you to the members of this Legislative Assembly for allowing this emergency debate to take place this afternoon.

This is the first week the Legislature has convened since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report was released. Three expert IPCC working groups issued a dire and urgent warning to governments around the world, including our own, arguing that we must immediately ramp up our efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or face serious and irreversible consequences.

At the current levels of commitment, the world is on course for a disastrous 3 degrees of warming. The report states that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban infrastructure and industrial systems. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide will need to fall by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero by 2050.

We have a responsibility to future generations to do our absolute best to make sure the decisions we make today, on their behalf as well…. We must be accountable for our territory. I often tell the stories of XÁLS, the creator of the WSÁNEĆ territory. XÁLS left that place, left that territory for the WSÁNEĆ, the people that live here today and in the past.

[6:10 p.m.]

The key message that he left us was that we were to be accountable for our territory, that we were to make decisions that would not diminish it and that we weren’t to take more than could be replenished. We heard the words of Chief Maureen Thomas of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation speak something similar weeks ago when she was explaining why her nation was fighting the Kinder Morgan pipeline. She said: “We need to come together to find a way to ensure our future generations can enjoy the world to the extent that we do. We must ask ourselves: have I done enough to ensure the future of my grandchild?”

The decision-makers in this place have a responsibility for more than just a four-year election cycle. We have a responsibility for the future as well. We need to be stewards of this province. In a world threatened by climate change, that means heeding the warning of climate scientists and acting with urgency.

All over our province, we see signs of our world being out of balance. We share B.C. with countless species that have uncertain futures — the grizzly, the caribou, the orcas, the chinook, the steelhead. They are highly visible species and indicators of how well our ecosystems are doing. When they falter, we falter. Orcas are struggling to find food and quiet in our Salish Sea. The Thompson River steelhead, a world-renowned, genetically unique species, are facing extirpation. British Columbia is one of the last strongholds for the grizzly.

These animals are powerful symbols of our home, and in their absence we have no right to call this place super or natural. It does not have to be this way. These trends are not natural, and they are not inevitable. They have been triggered by a series of choices made by our governments, by us. In a new generation of leadership, we can choose to renew our relationship with the ecosystems that sustain our lives. We can choose to renew our relationship with our world.

I am a father first and foremost, and when I think about the legacy that I want to leave to Silas and Ella…. I know every one of us who are parents are thinking about that. What are we leaving our children?

I encourage you to think about those words and to think about the words of our Indigenous leaders like Chief Thomas, who ask the question: have I done enough to ensure the future of my grandchild? HÍSW̱ḴE SIÁM.

Hon. G. Heyman: It is my honour to take my place in this important emergency debate. I want to begin by thanking the Leader of the Third Party for moving the motion for this critical and important debate.

Many people in the past days have characterized the most recent UN IPCC report as a wake-up call, as highlighting the inescapable fact that we need to take action. But we have had a series of wake-up calls over more than a couple of decades with respect to climate change.

I think the message we need to take from the fact that the Leader of the Third Party has correctly characterized this as an emergency debate and the IPCC has correctly characterized this as a critical juncture, both for action and opportunity for people of the planet…. It’s the kind of wake-up call that can spur us into working together to find the solutions that we need to find now, the solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the globe, but starting in our own jurisdictions, where we have control, where we can show leadership, where we can take responsibility and do our part, and where we can model success for the rest of our nation and the rest of the world.

[6:15 p.m.]

To do that, we need to work together. I understand as well as anyone that this place is partisan. I understand that the role of the opposition parties is to hold government to account, and I welcome them in fulfilling that role, as I and my colleagues took on that role when we were on the other side of the House. But we always believed that if there was an initiative in which we could cooperate, if there was an initiative in which we could work collaboratively to make a difference for British Columbians, we should do that.

I just want to say clearly today that I welcome the contributions of anyone inside this House or outside this House to make British Columbia a better place and to meet the challenge that the IPCC report has put in front of us to take the action we need to take — today, tomorrow, in the coming years and in the coming decades — to meet the challenge of keeping global warming to a level that will not be catastrophic for our children and for our grandchildren.

When I first became aware of the issues of climate change, people were talking about the need to hold global warming to 2 degrees Centigrade. More recently, in Paris, we have begun to talk about 1.5 degrees, because the impacts on low-lying island nations will be severe even with that.

What the IPCC report made clear is that we have to meet that 1.5 degree challenge. We have to take action immediately to meet it, because the difference between 1.5 and 2 is not half a degree. It is orders of magnitude higher in terms of negative impacts on populations, on people who live near the coast, on economies, on the survival of ecosystems and, ultimately, on a healthy planet — the healthy planet we want to leave to our children and grandchildren, the healthy planet we should be leaving to our children and grandchildren.

We shouldn’t be talking about our desire to do it. We need clear plans and strategies to accomplish just that.

When we talk internally as politicians about how we communicate with the public about the need to take action, most people who specialize in communications say you can’t talk to people about cataclysms and catastrophes without showing them hope. Because if all they see is darkness, they cannot fathom how to deal with it. If they see hope, opportunity and a place for them to enter and play their part in averting catastrophe and creating better lives for their children and grandchildren, they will be eager. They will be eager to take the hands that are outstretched to them to do just that.

That’s the other thing that we hear from the IPCC report. From leaders of the IPCC panel, we hear that limiting the temperature increase requires unprecedented changes in society but will have huge benefits. The important thing to realize — and that’s what we’re trying to do in developing a clean growth climate action strategy for British Columbia — is that unprecedented change is not necessarily negative. Unprecedented change offers huge opportunities for us to make lives better, more affordable, to build better economies for British Columbia, and protect the precious ecosystems on which we depend.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

They also said that tackling climate change can be consistent with ensuring people around the world can be healthy and prosperous and have clean air and water. That’s a worthy challenge for us to take up. That’s an important crisis, in the sense of opportunity to be taken, for us to see.

When I attended the annual UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn last year, I was struck by two things. I was struck by the role that some national governments, states, cities and provinces around the globe are taking to make a difference, to show leadership, to do their part to reduce emissions and to show that a bottom-up approach does work. Because a bottom-up approach proves that it can be done to the advantage of populations and people.

[6:20 p.m.]

The other thing I heard, from Indigenous people from the southern hemisphere, from island nations, from low-lying communities, and from Indigenous people from across Canada — from the Arctic to the interior of British Columbia to Ontario to Saskatchewan — is that climate change and global warming impact them deeply. They are on the front lines.

Unlike many others, unlike us, unlike my parents who came here from Europe, they don’t move around. They have an identity that is rooted in the land, in their place, in their traditions, in their culture. If they can no longer connect with the land, the place, the traditional spiritual values, cultural values, economic and food values attached to a healthy environment and ecosystem where they have lived for millennia, everything falls apart for them. Even their languages are connected to that.

What I took away from that conference was the desire to do my part to make a difference and the desire to work with my colleagues in my party, in the Third Party and across the aisle to make a difference.

We are building a clean growth climate action strategy to meet the targets that we legislated — to do our part in British Columbia and to help Canada do its part to meet the global challenge to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees. We didn’t do it for show. We didn’t do it for window dressing.

We did it to set a goalpost, for which we have to lay out a clear strategy with clear steps, with attainable steps to reduce emissions in every part of the economy, in every part of transportation, in every part of communities, in a way that is clear, strategic, defensible, credible and that brings us to the point of building a better society, seizing the economic opportunities for a better life, a more prosperous life — a modern, diverse, low-carbon economy that supports the kinds of communities and the kind of world we all want to live in.

We intend to be judged for the strategy we bring forward. We intend to be held accountable by the Third Party, by the opposition, but most importantly, we intend and will be held accountable by the British Columbians we were elected to serve. I stand here, humbly, to say that’s a great responsibility for all of us. It’s a great responsibility that my Premier has asked me to take on. I take it seriously, and I intend to bring forward a plan that will meet the challenge and the opportunity that the IPCC has identified.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this important motion. I will now take my seat.

Hon. M. Farnworth: I thank all members for participating in this debate.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until Wednesday, October 17, at 1:30 p.m.

The House adjourned at 6:23 p.m.